DARPA Awards Aurora Funding to Continue VTOL X-Plane Development

Aurora's Excalibur which provided a technical foundation for its VTOL XPlane.   Photo courtesy Aurora Flight Sciences

by Scott Kesselman



Today, DARPA awarded Manassas, Virginia-based Aurora Flight Sciences phase 1B funding to continue development in their VTOL X-Plane program through a preliminary design review in October 2015.



Aurora’s VTOL design will use distributed electric propulsion for performance advances and is designing all components to work for vertical and horizontal flight, allowing for seamless transitions through various phases of autonomous flight.



Aurora is working with Rolls-Royce Liberty Works, Honeywell and ThinGap. Rolls-Royce provides propulsion systems and Honeywell provides electrical power generation and distribution technology. ThinGap is providing its high-power and torque-density permanent magnet synchronous motors, according to an Aurora press release.



“Aurora’s innovative VTOL X-Plane design builds on our extensive heritage working for DARPA and the U.S. Army, including our GoldenEye ducted fan and our Excalibur turbine-electric hybrid aircraft,” says John Langford, CEO of Aurora.