NASA’s experimental X-57 Maxwell electric plane will likely never take off despite years of development, after the US government agency announced the project’s cancellation due to safety issues.
The programme will end operations in September, NASA announced on Friday (23 June), cancelling plans for a 2023 test flight.
The project, which started in 2016, encountered “several challenges to safe flight”, the announcement said. These included mechanical issues that appeared late into the modified Tecnam P2006T’s lifecycle, and a lack of available critical components required to develop experimental hardware.
“Given the approaching planned end of aircraft operations, the timeline would not allow the team to reach acceptable flight conditions,” the announcement said.
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