David Willis details the life of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Boeing 757 and highlights some of the many research programmes it participated in during its career as a testbed.
Although several Boeing 757s have been involved in NASA projects, the Administration has only ever owned one example of the airliner. Between 1994 and 2009 a Boeing 757 aircraft served as a research platform with the organisation, primarily tasked with evaluating technology with the aim of improving aviation safety. Several of the systems it pioneered have since become common in commercial aviation today.
