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Program computes benefits and other relevant factors for Federal Civil Service employees. Computed information includes retirement annuity, survivor annuity for each retirement annuity, highest average annual consecutive 3-year salary, length of service including credit for unused sick leave, amount of deposit and redeposit plus interest.
Major constraints to the utilization of LANDSAT by state governments are identified. Six recommendations are made: (1) commitment by the federal government to assure LANDSAT data continuity and compatibility; (2) federal support of LANDSAT system; (3) federal agency responsibility should be clearly defined; (4) commitment by the federal government to prior consultation with the state in LANDSAT decisions; (5) commitment by the federal government to systematic and ongoing technology transfer programs; and (6) improvement of the data processing and delivery system. The transfer of technology from NOAA to the private sector and its impact on the state governments utilizing LANDSAT are also discussed.
The relationship of federally sponsored computer-aided design/computer-aided manufacturing (CAD/CAM) programs to the aircraft life cycle design process, an overview of NAAD'S CAD development program, an evaluation of the CAD design process, a discussion of the current computing environment within which NAAD is developing its CAD system, some of the advantages/disadvantages of the NAAD-IPAD approach, and CAD developments during transition into the IPAD system are discussed.
En route noise for advanced propfan powered aircraft has become an issue of concern for the Federal Aviation Administration. The NASA Aircraft Noise Prediction Program (ANOPP) is used to demonstrate the source noise and propagation effects for an aircraft in level flight up to 35,000 feet altitude. One-third octave band spectra of the source noise, atmospheric absorption loss, and received noise are presented. The predicted maximum A-weighted sound pressure level is compared to measured data from the Aeronautical Research Institute of Sweden. ANOPP is shown to be an effective tool in evaluating the en route noise characteristics of a DC-9 aircraft.
As part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) initiated program on global civil aviation, NIST is assisting Federal Aviation Administration in its research to improve fire detection in aircraft cargo compartments. Aircraft cargo compartment detection certification methods have been reviewed. The Fire Emulator-Detector Evaluator (FE/DE) has been designed to evaluate fire detection technologies such as new sensors, multi-element detectors, and detectors that employ complex algorithms. The FE/DE is a flow tunnel that can reproduce velocity, temperature, smoke, and Combustion gas levels to which a detector might be exposed during a fire. A scientific literature survey and patent search have been conducted relating to existing and emerging fire detection technologies, and the potential use of new fire detection strategies in cargo compartment areas has been assessed. In the near term, improved detector signal processing and multi-sensor detectors based on combinations of smoke measurements, combustion gases and temperature are envisioned as significantly impacting detector system performance.
The content of this handbook includes Earth Science Enterprise; The Earth Observing System; EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS); Data and Information Policy; Pathfinder Data Sets; Earth Science Information Partners and the Working Prototype-Federation; EOS Data Quality: Calibration and Validation; Education Programs; International Cooperation; Interagency Coordination; Mission Elements; EOS Instruments; EOS Interdisciplinary Science Investigations; and Points-of-Contact.
NASA's objective for the Applied Sciences Program of the Science Mission Directorate is to expand and accelerate the realization of economic and societal benefits from Earth science, information, and technology. This objective is accomplished by using a systems approach to facilitate the incorporation of Earth observations and predictions into the decision-support tools used by partner organizations to provide essential services to society. The services include management of forest fires, coastal zones, agriculture, weather prediction, hazard mitigation, aviation safety, and homeland security. In this way, NASA's long-term research programs yield near-term, practical benefits to society. The Applied Sciences Program relies heavily on forging partnerships with other Federal agencies to accomplish its objectives. NASA chooses to partner with agencies that have existing connections with end-users, information infrastructure already in place, and decision support systems that can be enhanced by the Earth science information that NASA is uniquely poised to provide (NASA, 2004).
Atmospheric particles including mineral dust, biomass burning smoke, pollution from carbonaceous aerosols and sulfates, sea salt, impact air quality and climate. The Aerosol Robotic Network (AERONET) program, established in the early 1990s, is a federation of ground-based remote sensing aerosol networks of Sun/sky radiometers distributed around the world, which provides a long-term, continuous and readily accessible public domain database of aerosol optical (e.g., aerosol optical depth) and microphysical (e.g., aerosol volume size distribution) properties for aerosol characterization, validation of satellite retrievals, and synergism with Earth science databases. Climatological aerosol properties will be presented at key worldwide locations exhibiting discrete dominant aerosol types. Further, AERONET's temporary mesoscale network campaign (e.g., UAE2, TIGERZ, DRAGON-USA.) results that attempt to quantify spatial and temporal variability of aerosol properties, establish validation of ground-based aerosol retrievals using aircraft profile measurements, and measure aerosol properties on compatible spatial scales with satellite retrievals and aerosol transport models allowing for more robust validation will be discussed.
The Federal Aviation Administration's Surveillance and Broadcast Services Program has supported implementation of the Automatic Dependant Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) In-Trail Procedure (ITP) on commercial revenue flights. ADS-B ITP is intended to be used in non-radar airspace that is employing procedural separation. Through the use of onboard tools, pilots are able to make a new type of altitude change request to an Air Traffic Service Provider (ATSP). The FAA, in partnership with United Airlines, is conducting flight trials of the ITP in revenue service in the Pacific. To support the expansion of flight trials to the rest of the US managed Pacific Airspace Region, a computerized batch study was conducted to investigate the operational impacts and potential benefits that can be gained through the use of the ITP in the Pacific Organized Track System (PACOTS). This study, which simulated the Oakland managed portion of the PACOTS, suggests that potential benefits in the PACOTS are significant with a considerable increase in time spent at optimum altitude and associated fuel savings.
The Synthetic and Enhanced Vision Systems for NextGen (SEVS) simulation and flight tests are jointly sponsored by NASA's Aviation Safety Program, Vehicle Systems Safety Technology project and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA). The flight tests were conducted by a team of Honeywell, Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation and NASA personnel with the goal of obtaining pilot-in-the-loop test data for flight validation, verification, and demonstration of selected SEVS operational and system-level performance capabilities. Nine test flights (38 flight hours) were conducted over the summer and fall of 2011. The evaluations were flown in Gulfstream.s G450 flight test aircraft outfitted with the SEVS technology under very low visibility instrument meteorological conditions. Evaluation pilots flew 108 approaches in low visibility weather conditions (600 ft to 2400 ft visibility) into various airports from Louisiana to Maine. In-situ flight performance and subjective workload and acceptability data were collected in collaboration with ground simulation studies at LaRC.s Research Flight Deck simulator.
Synthetic Vision Systems and Enhanced Flight Vision System (SVS/EFVS) technologies have the potential to provide additional margins of safety for aircrew performance and enable operational improvements for low visibility operations in the terminal area environment. Simulation and flight tests were jointly sponsored by NASA's Aviation Safety Program, Vehicle Systems Safety Technology project and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) to evaluate potential safety and operational benefits of SVS/EFVS technologies in low visibility Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) operations. The flight tests were conducted by a team of Honeywell, Gulfstream Aerospace Corporation and NASA personnel with the goal of obtaining pilot-in-the-loop test data for flight validation, verification, and demonstration of selected SVS/EFVS operational and system-level performance capabilities. Nine test flights were flown in Gulfstream's G450 flight test aircraft outfitted with the SVS/EFVS technologies under low visibility instrument meteorological conditions. Evaluation pilots flew 108 approaches in low visibility weather conditions (600 feet to 3600 feet reported visibility) under different obscurants (mist, fog, drizzle fog, frozen fog) and sky cover (broken, overcast). Flight test videos were evaluated at three different altitudes (decision altitude, 100 feet radar altitude, and touchdown) to determine the visual advantage afforded to the pilot using the EFVS/Forward-Looking InfraRed (FLIR) imagery compared to natural vision. Results indicate the EFVS provided a visual advantage of two to three times over that of the out-the-window (OTW) view. The EFVS allowed pilots to view the runway environment, specifically runway lights, before they would be able to OTW with natural vision.
In January 2013, a human-in-the-loop evaluation of the Operational Airspace Sectorization Integrated System (OASIS) was conducted in the Airspace Operations Laboratory of the Human Systems Integration Division (Code TH) in conjunction with the Aviation Systems Division (Code AF). The development of OASIS is a major activity of the Dynamic Airspace Configuration (DAC) research focus area within the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) Airspace Systems Program. OASIS is an advisory tool to assist Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) En Route Area Supervisors in their planning of sector combinedecombine operations as well as opening closing of Data-side (D-side) control positions. These advisory solutions are tailored to the predicted traffic demand over the next few hours. During the experiment, eight retired FAA personnel served as participants for a part-task evaluation of OASIS functionality, covering the user interface as well as the underlying algorithm. Participants gave positive feedback on both the user interface and the algorithm solutions for airspace configuration, including an excellent average rating of 94 on the tool usability scales. They also suggested various enhancements to the OASIS tool, which will be incorporated into the next tool development cycle for the full-scale human-in-the-loop evaluation to be conducted later this year.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s Surveillance and Broadcast Services Program Office considers Interval Management (IM) to be one of the three key, near-term applications to make use of ADS-B-In, the receiving and processing of Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast data on-board an aircraft. Interval Management is used to describe a wide range of operational applications and uses of airborne spacing technology. Interval Management makes use of improved scheduling and sequencing capabilities for the air traffic controllers (ATC) and precise, relative spacing of aircraft, to improve airport throughput, increase the use of Optimized Profile Descents (OPD), and reduce tactical controller workload. The IM applications are subdivided into two categories: one where the flight crew is authorized to manage their speed to achieve the IM goal while the controller retains separation responsibility and a second where the flight crew takes responsibility for both managing speed but also for separation from the specified target aircraft. The former is referred to as Interval Management-Spacing (IM-S) and the latter as Interval Management-Delegated Separation (IM-DS). For the past 10 years NASA has been working on a specific IM application called Airborne Precision Spacing (APS). This concept has focused on increasing runway throughput while enabling OPDs. It is seen as a specific application within the IM class of applications. This talk will present the current state of the APS concept including support for dependent parallel runway operations and how NASA is working to have APS support the broader IM activities. Planned development and testing of APS, including extensions to support IM-DS and FAA-planned flight trials will be presented along with several up-coming simulations.
The Federal Aviation Administration’s Surveillance and Broadcast Services Program Office considers Interval Management (IM) to be one of the three key, near-term applications to make use of ADS-B-In, the receiving and processing of Automatic Dependent Surveillance – Broadcast data on-board an aircraft. Interval Management is used to describe a wide range of operational applications and uses of airborne spacing technology. Interval Management makes use of improved scheduling and sequencing capabilities for the air traffic controllers (ATC) and precise, relative spacing of aircraft, to improve airport throughput, increase the use of Optimized Profile Descents (OPD), and reduce tactical controller workload. The IM applications are subdivided into two categories: one where the flight crew is authorized to manage their speed to achieve the IM goal while the controller retains separation responsibility and a second where the flight crew takes responsibility for both managing speed but also for separation from the specified target aircraft. The former is referred to as Interval Management-Spacing (IM-S) and the latter as Interval Management-Delegated Separation (IM-DS). For the past 10 years NASA has been working on a specific IM application called Airborne Precision Spacing (APS). This concept has focused on increasing runway throughput while enabling OPDs. It is seen as a specific application within the IM class of applications. This talk will present the current state of the APS concept including support for dependent parallel runway operations and how NASA is working to have APS support the broader IM activities. Planned development and testing of APS, including extensions to support IM-DS and FAA-planned flight trials will be presented along with several up-coming simulations.
The National Wildlife Federation (NWF) and its Eco-Schools USA program is focused providing an engaging educational experience to help students better understand the essential principles of Earth's systems and the impact of climate change on them. The program is aimed to provide those students with the ability to communicate about climate change and apply knowledge in decision making. To achieve these objectives, the NWF partnered with NASA scientists and developed the Eco-Schools USA Climate Change Connections (CCC) is a 9th-12th grade curriculum. CCC is designed to build upon and utilize the many NASA mission resources, programs, and associated interfaces to enhance authentic learning experiences for both educators and students. It seeks to develop an integrated systems-thinking approach to understanding and acting upon the issue of climate change. In collaboration with mission specialists from ICESat, LandSat, Terra, AQUA, AURA, a cross programmatic curriculum was developed to provide a unified or systems-thinking approach to addressing realworld Earth systems problems (see NWF web page below). In this presentation, we provide an overview of the Climate Change Connections lesson curriculum but focus specifically on a couple of example exercises where NASA data sets are used to teach basic lessons about aspects of the climate system as it pertains to the built environment. In particular, we show how data adapted from NASA’s GEWEX Surface Energy Budget are applied to a lesson in solar energy. These data sets are made available directly through NASA web portals entitled “My NASA Data” and the Prediction of Worldwide Renewable Energy Resource. At the POWER web portal there is a link to the Surface meteorology and Solar Energy web portal providing data sets tailored specifically to the assessment of solar energy resource at any location on the globe. Here, we depict the sources of these data and their subsequent usage in the Eco-Schools USA CCC Lessons.
Over the past 4 years, the United States (U.S.) Government has issued several new National policies that fundamentally change the approach to nuclear flight safety for aerospace applications, including the complete revision of the Federal policy for handling launch of spacecraft containing space nuclear systems. In response, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is updating its nuclear flight safety program while still maintaining consistency with other Federal policies, international conventions, and NASA’s own policies. To achieve this evolution, NASA is factoring in an objectives-driven and assurance case mindset to develop a risk-informed and performance-based program. NASA and others have successfully applied this mindset in other disciplines and contexts and it is being pursued here via broad cooperation within NASA and with external stakeholders. This paper will briefly describe how the NASA nuclear flight safety program is evolving to meet these changing needs.
In recent years, the United States (U.S.) Government has issued several new National policies that fundamentally change the approach to nuclear flight safety for aerospace applications, including the complete revision of the Federal policy for handling launch of spacecraft containing space nuclear systems. In response, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is updating its nuclear flight safety program while still maintaining consistency with other Federal policies, international conventions, and NASA’s own policies. To achieve this evolution, NASA is factoring in an objectives-driven and assurance case mindset to develop a risk-informed and performance-based program. NASA and others have successfully applied this mindset in other disciplines and contexts and it is being pursued here via broad cooperation within NASA and with external stakeholders. This paper will briefly describe how the NASA nuclear flight safety program is evolving to meet these changing needs.
NASA has initiated a new five year program this year, the Quiet Aircraft Technology (QAT) Program, a program which will investigate airframe and engine system noise reduction. QAT will also address community noise impact. As part of this community noise impact component, NASA will investigate air traffic management (ATM) challenges in reducing noise. In particular, controller advisory automation aids will be developed to aid the air traffic controller in addressing noise concerns as he/she manages traffic in busy terminal areas. NASA has developed controller automation tools to address capacity concerns and the QAT strategy for ATM Low Noise Operations is to build upon this tool set to create added advisories for noise mitigation. The tools developed for capacity will be briefly reviewed, followed by the QAT plans to address ATM noise concerns. A major NASA goal in global civil aviation is to triple the aviation system throughput in all-weather conditions while maintaining safety. A centerpiece of this activity is the Center/TRACON Automation System (CTAS), an evolving suite of air traffic controller decision support tools (DSTs) to enhance capacity of arrivals and departures in both the enroute center and the TRACON. Two of these DSTs, the Traffic Management Advisor (TMA) and the passive Final approach Spacing Tool (pFAST), are in daily use at the Fort Worth Center and the Dallas/Fort Worth (DFW) TRACON, respectively, where capacity gains of 5-13% have been reported in recent NASA evaluations. Under the Federal Aviation Administration's (FAA) Free Flight Phase One Program, TMA and pFAST are each being implemented at six to eight additional sites. In addition, other DSTs are being developed by NASA under the umbrella of CTAS. This means that new software will be built upon CTAS, and the paradigm of real-time simulation evaluation followed by field site development and evaluation will be the pathway for the new tools. Additional information is included in the original extended abstract.