NASA Administrator Bolden and Transportation Secretary Foxx to announce new technology at Charlotte International Airport

WASHINGTON, DC – NASA and the US Department of Transportation (USDOT) will hold a ribbon-cutting and news conference at the Charlotte Douglas International Airport in North Carolina on Friday, June 24, to announce the opening of a new collaboration aimed at making air travel safer and more efficient.

The leaders will discuss the technological innovations the partnership will develop. They’ll also discuss NASA’s 10-year aeronautics budget proposal and New Aviation Horizons Initiative, President Obama’s 21st Century Clean Transportation Initiative, and USDOT’s plan to modernize air traffic management, called the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). The ribbon-cutting ceremony will open a new Airspace Technology Demonstration-2 (ATD-2) research laboratory at the Charlotte airport.

The event will take place at 10 a.m. EDT in the airport’s original terminal building located at 4700 Yorkmont Road in Charlotte. Media are requested to be in place by 9:45 a.m. Parking is available in the gravel surface lot to the right as you approach the Old Terminal.

NASA, the FAA, American Airlines the National Air Traffic Controllers Association (NATCA) and the Charlotte Douglas International Airport are collaborating on the ATD-2 project, a five-year activity to integrate existing and emerging technologies to streamline arrival, departure, and surface operations.