Sec. 501. National Aeronautics and Space Administration activities
473 words·~2 min read·
/bill/118/hr/3560/rh/section-501·A research copy — for the controlling text, always check the official state or federal source. Not legal advice.
Consistent with the research plan in section 102, the Administrator, in consultation with the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration and other Federal agencies, shall, subject to the availability of appropriations, carry out research and development to facilitate the safe integration of advanced air mobility and unmanned aircraft systems into the National Airspace System. Research topics may include— sense and avoid capabilities; the transition of unmanned aircraft system traffic management into operational use in the National Airspace System; safety related to autonomy, autonomous unmanned aircraft systems, and remotely-piloted unmanned aircraft systems; human systems integration; and hazardous weather condition avoidance.
Section 31504 of title 51, United States Code, is amended by inserting at the end the following: Operational flight data derived from these cooperative agreements shall be made available, in appropriate and usable formats, to the Administration and the Federal Aviation Administration for the development of regulatory standards. . In carrying out the research and development under subsection (a), the Administrator shall continue to coordinate and partner with the Federal Aviation Administration, the Department of Defense, the Department of Homeland Security, industry, academia, and labor organizations to mature and help implement unmanned aircraft system traffic management related concepts, architectures, services, and strategic as well as tactical deconfliction to advance the safe integration of drones into the National Airspace System.
As an interim step, the Administrator shall leverage commercial and public good unmanned aircraft system applications, such as wildfire and disaster monitoring and mitigation, to demonstrate and help validate concepts, architectures, and other measures toward the safe integration of unmanned aircraft systems into the National Airspace System. In addition, the Administrator shall carry out research and development on protocols for enabling the safe integration of many simultaneous drone operations beyond visual line of sight.
The Administrator shall apply lessons learned from unmanned aircraft systems research, development, demonstration, and testing to advanced air mobility systems. The Administrator shall contribute to, as appropriate, efforts to inform the development of voluntary consensus-based technical standards, as led by standards development organizations, to facilitate the incorporation of advanced air mobility and unmanned aircraft systems into the National Airspace System and shall coordinate with other relevant government agencies and nongovernmental entities, including industry and labor organizations, in its contributions to standards development activities.
The Administrator shall coordinate with the Administrator of the Federal Aviation Administration to conduct an assessment to identify metrics, estimated milestone dates, and performance measures necessary to safely integrate unmanned aircraft systems and advanced air mobility systems into the National Airspace System. Not later than 120 days after the completion of the assessment in subsection (f), the Administrator shall submit a report on the progress towards meeting the metrics, milestone dates, and performance measures to the Committee on Science, Space, and Technology of the House of Representatives and the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate.