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NASA has taken the US technical lead in assessing and reducing risks associated with operations of non-code MLPVs, with the goal of developing technical standards and processes for continued use, maintenance, inspection, and repair of MLPVs
An acoustic flight test of six helicopters conducted by NASA, FAA, and the US Army is described. Microphone arrays were used to collect acoustic data for source noise characterization, to investigate the acoustic impacts of maneuvering flight, and to develop and evaluate noise abatement operations for helicopters on approach. Atmospheric data and vehicle state data were also collected. Noise metrics are calculated and plotted for all conditions tested. All data described are publicly available upon request.
Observing and better understanding clouds and aerosols are priorities in the NASA Earth Science Decadal Survey, US National Climate Assessment, and Intergovernmental Panel on Climate Change Report. The Global Learning & Observations to Benefit the Environment (GLOBE) Program is NASA's largest and longest running citizen science program in the Earth Sciences that collects cloud observations. Since January 2017, NASA GLOBE students and citizen scientists have submitted over 800,000 cloud observations worldwide using both paper-based and smartphone app platforms. In this presentation, we compare satellite, model, and volunteer-reported total cloud cover. The comparison reveals a systematic misreporting of obscured skies (sky not visible due to smoke, dust, haze, etc.) versus overcast skies (100% total cloud cover) by GLOBE participants. We discuss implications for improving procedures for volunteer reporting under overcast and obscured sky conditions, and relevance for reporting extreme air pollution events in areas with little or no formal institutional monitoring networks.
In April 1985, the NASA Advanced Technology Advisory Committee (ATAC) reported to Congress the results of its studies on advanced automation and robotics technology for use on Space Station Freedom. This material was documented in the initial report (NASA Technical Memorandum 87566). The progress made by Levels 1, 2, and 3 of the Office of Space Station in developing and applying advanced automation and robotics technology are described. Emphasis was placed upon the Space Station Freedom Program responses to specific recommendations made in ATAC Progress Report 9, the Flight Telerobotic Servicer, the Advanced Development Program, and the Data Management System. Assessments are presented for these and other areas as they apply to the advancement of automation and robotics technology for the Space Station Freedom.
The NASA critical path road map identifies "trauma and acute medical problems" as a clinical capability risk category (http://criticalDath.isc.nasa.gov). Specific risks include major trauma, organ laceration or contusion, hemoperitoneum, pulmonary failure, pneumo- and hemothorax, burn, open bone fracture, blunt head trauma, and penetrating injury. Mitigation of these risks includes the capability for critical care monitoring. Currently, the International Space Station (ISS) Crew Health Care System (CHeCS) does not provide such a capability. The Clinical Space Medicine Strategic Planning Forum (4/8/97), sponsored by NASA Medical Operations, identified the development of trauma care capabilities as one of the top priorities for space medicine. The Clinical Care Capability Development Project (CCCDP) subsequently undertook the task to address this need.
A NASA Aeronautics Research Institute (NARI) intern project in Summer 2020 involved the research, design, and sourcing of a small unmanned aerial system (sUAS) for use during U.S. Coast Guard (USCG) search-and-rescue (SAR) missions. This report summarizes the results of the project.
This story is about an unlikely NASA mission to the Moon. It was unlikely because it was started with far too little time and too-little money to complete. It was unlikely because it was able to take chances to accept risk of failure. It was unlikely because it was searching for the unthinkable: water-ice on the moon... Figure 1-1: LCROSS Mission. The mission of the Lunar CRater Observation and Sensing Satellite (LCROSS) was to investigate the possibility of water ice in craters on the Moon s poles. This is certainly an interesting scientific topic in itself, but I intend to focus on the compelling experience of managing the LCROSS Project in the context of this storied Agency. Perhaps most interesting are the implications this story has for managing any development effort, lunar or not, and working a balance to achieve success. NASA is by design a risk-taking agency within the US Government. It could be argued that NASA s purpose in the aerospace community is to take on the really big challenges that either the corporate world can t afford, are not yet profitable endeavors, or are just too risky for private corporations to entertain. However, expectations of the Agency have evolved. A combination of grim human tragedies and some very public cost and schedule overruns have challenged the public s and Congress s tolerance for risk-taking within the Agency. NASA, which is supposed to be in the business of taking risks to do bold, difficult things, has become less and less able to do so within its cost framework. Yet effectively replacing prudent risk management with attempts to "risk-eliminate" is completely unaffordable. So where does risk-taking fit within the Agency, or within private/corporate organizations for that matter? Where astronauts play there is clearly concern about risk. When an organization puts humans in harm s way, it is understandably going to take extra effort to assure nobody gets hurt. Doing so, of course, costs money - a lot of money to pay for labor and hardware which is attempting to assure nothing will go wrong. Sophisticated designs, with doubly- or triply-redundant systems, extensive testing to verify those systems, and numerous engineering test units built to learn and evolve a hardware design, all drive the cost and time required to implement. Human spaceflight is an expensive business because of the exceptional system complexity and levels of assurance required for human space travel. What about missions that do not involve human spaceflight? What about missions whose potential failure will not take a human life, whose costs are small and whose urgency and importance are limited by design? A portfolio consisting of this type of mission can be designed to be risk tolerant, not requiring large expenditures to guarantee against failure. With the money saved, the number of missions that can be executed within the portfolio grows, or the total cost of the portfolio can be reduced. The NASA LCROSS mission is a pathfinder example of a low-cost, quick turn-around mission which struck a balance on mission risk, while accomplishing big objectives, like defining how we understand the Moon.
NASA has been collecting Earth observation data from spaceborne instruments since 1960. Today, there are tens of satellites orbiting the Earth and collecting frequent global observations for the benefit of mankind. Collaboration between NASA and organizations in the US and other countries has been extremely important in maintaining the Earth observation capabilities as well as collecting, organizing and managing the data. These collaborations have occurred in the form of: 1. NASA’s developing and launching spacecraft and instruments for operation by other agencies; 2. Instruments from collaborating organizations being flown on NASA satellites; and 3. Instruments from NASA being flown on satellites from collaborating organizations. In addition, there are collaborations such as joint science teams, data exchanges, and participation in international organizations to promote interoperability of various data systems. The purpose of this paper is to describe some of the Earth science data-related collaborative efforts in which NASA participates, and highlight a few results relevant to Earth system science research obtained through such collaborations.
The NASA research grant to Wilberforce University enabled us to establish the Research Institute for Technical Careers (RITC) in order to improve the teaching of science and engineering at Wilberforce. The major components of the research grant are infrastructure development, establishment of the Wilberforce Intensive Summer Experience (WISE), and Joint Research Collaborations with NASA Scientists. (A) Infrastructure Development. The NASA grant has enabled us to improve the standard of our chemistry laboratory and establish the electronics, design, and robotics laboratories. These laboratories have significantly improved the level of instruction at Wilberforce University. (B) Wilberforce Intensive Summer Experience (WISE). The WISE program is a science and engineering bridge program for prefreshman students. It is an intensive academic experience designed to strengthen students' knowledge in mathematics, science, engineering, computing skills, and writing. (C) Joint Collaboration. Another feature of the grant is research collaborations between NASA Scientists and Wilberforce University Scientists. These collaborations have enabled our faculty and students to conduct research at NASA Lewis during the summer and publish research findings in various journals and scientific proceedings.
The first joint meeting between NASA, KNMI and FMI scientists was held on 13 & 14 June, 2000, almost exactly 10 years ago. NASA had recently selected 14 US scientists to work on instrument calibration, science algorithms, and validation activities related to the Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI) that we being built by collaboration between the Netherlands and Finland for flight on NASA's EOS Aura satellite. The progress on this project had been remarkable for a space based instrument. Only two years before this meeting my colleague Ernest Hilsenrath and I had visited Netherlands at the invitation of Fokker Space to persuade KNMI management to collaborate with NASA on this mission. And only 4 years after the first science meeting was held OMI was lunched on the Aura spacecraft. Next month will be the 6 th anniversary of this launch and very successful operation of OMI. All this was possible because of the leadership from Dr. Hennie Kelder and KNMI management who in 1998 saw the opportunity for Netherlands in the mission and stepped up to the challenge by creating a young and talented team of scientists at KNMI under the leadership of Dr. Pieterenel Levelt. This vision has now put Netherlands as the leading country in the world in monitoring air quality from space. Recent selection of TROPOMI by ESA attests to the success of this vision. I will present some selected highlights of our very successful collaboration on this project over the past 10 years.
This viewgraph representation presents an overview of findings of a NASA agency-wide Knowledge Management Team considering culture and knowledge management issues at the agency. Specific issues identified by the team include: (1) NASA must move from being a knowledge hoarding culture to a knowledge sharing culture; (2) NASA must move from being center focused to being Agency focused; (3) NASA must capture the knowledge of a departing workforce. Topics considered include: what must NASA know to remain NASA, what were previous forms of knowledge reproduction and how has technological innovations changed these systems, and what changes in funding and relationships between contractors and NASA affected knowledge reproduction.
This presentation will demonstrate a case study of interdisciplinary research done in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform, in addition to in the local machine. We conduct data analysis next to data by leveraging various cloud-based data in NASA Earthdata Cloud, which are distributed by different missions/NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), and cloud computing resources at NASA. For instance, we directly access multiple datasets stored in the AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets using a Python Jupyter notebook through a JupyterHub interface hosted in AWS (without having to download data), and conduct data analysis next to data in the cloud. We will also show how to share the research results following Open Source policy. This case study characterizes the change in wildfire events in the western United States during the past 20 years. In particular, we focus on the wildfires in California in 2021, one of the most severe wildfire years occurring in the most recent 20 years in California. We will analyze the possible causes of wildfires, such as drought conditions and climate variability, and examine the impacts of wildfires on air quality and atmospheric composition, and on land cover. We will examine the data distributed by the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC), including aerosols and meteorological data from the NASA Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2), precipitation from the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) and Global Precipitation Climate Project (GPCP), and aerosol index from Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI). We also utilize the data distributed by the Physical Oceanography (PO) DAAC, such as Sea Surface Temperature (SST) data from the Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST), and the data distributed by Land Processes (LP) DAAC, such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI).
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As National Airspace System (NAS) is going through the Digital Transformation journey, data science and analytics methods can significantly contribute to improving the traditional physics-based decision-making tools. The adoption of AI/ML methods will not only help accelerate Federal Aviation Administration (FAA)’s vision of Info-centric NAS but also contribute to the overall objective of sustainable aviation. AI/ML can improve the ground and airspace operations by enhancing the accuracy of current decision-making tools used by the airlines and the FAA to manage traffic on the ground and in the air. Huge amount of data that gets collected during a flight. AI/ML methods can extract information from this data and provide valuable insights to make better operational decisions. NASA has partnered with the FAA and commercial airlines such as American and Southwest Airlines on this effort and has successfully demonstrated the benefits of using ML in real world environment by reducing delays and optimizing ground operations at the US airports. In 2022 itself, NASA demonstrated real-world benefits (over 24K lbs. of fuel savings, over 76.6K lbs. CO2 emission savings, and several hours of delay savings) by deploying ML based prediction models to optimize ground operations at Dallas/Fort Worth International and Dallas Love Field Airports in Texas. These tools are being deployed on the cloud for broader deployment, adaptability, and scalability. NASA is developed a reference implementation of the cloud-based platform to significantly lower the bar to development and distribution of these digital services for aviation. In this talk, I will share information about the Digital Information Platform project, the novel AI/ML based approaches used for optimizing ground operations and the opportunities to partner with NASA on these demonstrations.
With the Constellation Program, NASA is entering a new age of space exploration that will take us back to the Moon, to Mars, and beyond, and NASA is developing the new technology and vehicles to take us there. At the forefront are the Orion spacecraft and the Ares I launch vehicle. As NASA's gateway to space, Kennedy Space Center (KSC) will process and launch the new vehicles. This will require new systems and extensive changes to existing infrastructure. KSC is designing a new mobile launcher, a new launch control system, and new ground support equipment; modifying the Vehicle Assembly Building, one of the launch pads, and other facilities; and launching the Ares I-X flight test. It is an exciting and challenging time to be an engineer at KSC.
A workshop was organized on the topic of the title and held on August 20-23, 2000 at the Syracuse University Minnowbrook Conference Center in Blue Mountain Lake, New York. Attendance was by invitation only, forty-two guests attended and thirty presentations were made. Support was received from NASA Glenn Research Center, the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research the European Office of Aeronautical Research and Development, the Asian Office of Aeronautical Research and Development and Syracuse University. This workshop was the third in a trienniel series beginning in 1993. A publication under a NASA CP number will be issued and include all abstracts. No full written papers were required. This report includes a list of attendees and the program of presentations. The next workshop is scheduled for August 2003.
A workshop was organized on the topic of the title and held on August 17-20, 2003 at the Syracuse University Minnowbrook Conference Center in Blue Mountain Lake, New York. Attendance was by invitation only, 47 guests attended and 30 presentations were made. Support was received from NASA Glenn Research Center, the US Air Force Office of Scientific Research, the European Office of Aeronautical Research and Development, the Asian Office of Aeronautical Research and Development and Syracuse University. This workshop was the fourth in a trienniel series beginning in 1993. A publication under a NASA CP 2004-212913 will be issued and include all abstracts. No full written papers were required. This report includes a list of attendees and the program of presentations. The next workshop is scheduled for August 20-23, 2006.
The presentation describes the recently awarded ACCESS project to provide data management of NASA remote sensing data for the Northern Eurasia Earth Science Partnership Initiative (NEESPI). The project targets integration of remote sensing data from MODIS, and other NASA instruments on board US-satellites (with potential expansion to data from non-US satellites), customized data products from climatology data sets (e.g., ISCCP, ISLSCP) and model data (e.g., NCEP/NCAR) into a single, well-architected data management system. It will utilize two existing components developed by the Goddard Earth Sciences Data & Information Services Center (GES DISC) at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center: (1) online archiving and distribution system, that allows collection, processing and ingest of data from various sources into the online archive, and (2) user-friendly intelligent web-based online visualization and analysis system, also known as Giovanni. The former includes various kinds of data preparation for seamless interoperability between measurements by different instruments. The latter provides convenient access to various geophysical parameters measured in the Northern Eurasia region without any need to learn complicated remote sensing data formats, or retrieve and process large volumes of NASA data. Initial implementation of this data management system will concentrate on atmospheric data and surface data aggregated to coarse resolution to support collaborative environment and climate change studies and modeling, while at later stages, data from NASA and non-NASA satellites at higher resolution will be integrated into the system.