Online seminar: The DLR flight test vehicle UpLift to accelerate climate-neutral technologies

Commercial aviation is to become climate-neutral by 2050. This requires enormous efforts in all areas. New, disruptive, climate-friendly technologies must be introduced in the shortest possible time and the high safety standards of aviation must be met. In order to enable climate-neutral aviation in 2050, new aircraft must be put into service by 2035 at the latest, and many individual technologies even much earlier. In addition to extensive ground tests, this primarily requires flight tests under realistic boundary conditions of the newly developed, climate-friendly technologies. The UpLift project addresses this major challenge by supplementing and completing DLR's test bed landscape with a flight test vehicle. The UpLift flight test vehicle was procured in 2023 and is to be modified in further steps by 2025 so that it has the most universal basic equipment possible, enabling the flexible testing of new, climate-friendly technologies at a high level of technological maturity in flight tests. The focus of this presentation is on the procurement of the D328, its integration into the DLR research fleet, including its commissioning and its construction at the time of the presentation. The presentation will be rounded off with an explanation of the process of how the German national aviation industry can reserve and utilise this flight test vehicle for its individual development processes.