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Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)

Large aircraft fuselage section under assembly inside a manufacturing facility as part of composite aircraft production work.

Boeing assembles a composite aircraft fuselage section in one of its production facilities. Composite materials are used in major portions of modern aircraft, including sections of the fuselage and wings on aircraft such as the Boeing 787. NASA’s HiCAM project aims to help accelerate manufacturing processes for future composite aircraft.

Boeing

NASA’s Hi-Rate Composite Aircraft Manufacturing (HiCAM) project brought together its full team of Advanced Composites Consortium partners for a 2026 spring review at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

The meeting took place May 5-7, bringing together about 150 people from the consortium, a 22-member public-private partnership.

The review gave NASA and industry partners a chance to look at recent progress and plan for the work ahead. NASA announced recent portfolio decisions, selecting technologies that can have the greatest impact on manufacturing rate for the next airplane program.

During the meeting, teams reviewed the latest results from the project’s Development Phase and discussed early progress under Phase 2, known as the Demonstration Phase. This phase will scale up key manufacturing technologies in the coming years.

A major part of the event included full-day workshops focused on assembly demonstrations of two large aircraft structures: the wing and fuselage. These sessions brought together NASA researchers, industry engineers, and partners to share updates, exchange ideas, and discuss long-term plans. Many teams said they noticed stronger collaboration and coordination across the group this year.

That collaboration supports HiCAM’s goal of large-scale manufacturing demonstrations of a composite fuselage barrel and wing box in 2028 and 2029. These demonstrations represent major project milestones and will help show how advanced composite materials and processes could support faster, lower cost aircraft production.

NASA and its partners continue to make steady progress toward the project’s goals. The project’s work could help pave the way for new manufacturing methods for lightweight composite structures that make future aircraft easier to build and more efficient to operate.

Kimiko Booker
NASA Langley Research Center