NASA has developed an experimental fully electric plane with 14 motors on its wings. Take a closer look at the X-57 Maxwell.

NASA X-57 Maxwell. NASA

NASA has created the X-57 Maxwell, a fully-electric experimental aircraft with 14 motors on its wing.
The aircraft is powered by two 400-pound lithium-ion battery packs in the cabin that contain 23 kilowatt hours of power.
NASA has published its research, procedures, designs, and technology from the X-57 development project online for different industry developers — such as urban air mobility designers — to use.
The aircraft is being used for technology research and won’t be available for commercial use.
The X-57’s first test flight will occur later this year on an unannounced date.
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NASA has created the X-57 Maxwell, a fully-electric experimental aircraft with 14 motors, all on its wing.

The Maxwell falls under NASA’s X-plane “experimental planes” category and is the first piloted X-plane in 20 years. NASA’s principal investigator Sean Clarke told Business Insider that this two-decade gap is because several X-plane aircraft that NASA has developed over the last 10 to 20 years have been autonomous.

The decision to put a pilot in the Maxwell came because NASA’s test pilots are “high performance and [NASA gets] so much benefit from having them in the seat,” Clarke said. Having pilots on the aircraft simplifies its design because the pilot can spot and diagnose issues while operating the aircraft.

However, NASA didn’t build the X-57 body: an Italian Tecnam P2006T served as the starting point for the Maxwell. NASA then tested and outfitted — through multiple modification series — the P2006T with new batteries, instruments, smaller wings, and electric motors instead of the traditional double-piston engines.

The inspiration for the X-57’s “Maxwell” nickname came from a 19th-century physicist who specialized in electromagnetism: James Clerk Maxwell.

NASA decided to embark on this X-57 Maxwell project as it started seeing an increase in accessibility to light yet “reliable” motors and motor controllers, according to Clarke.
NASA Langley/Advanced Concepts Lab, AMA, Inc
“We [started] to think of using [these technologies] in an interesting way to redesign how an aircraft could behave,” Clarke said.
NASA Langley/Advanced Concepts Lab, AMA, Inc
Furthermore, NASA wanted to figure out how to move an aircraft’s propulsion system to a different location while also altering its wing to give the aircraft a fast but efficient cruise speed.
Ken Ulbrich/NASA
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