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NASA NTRS2018

An Interoperability Concept for Detect and Avoid and Collision Avoidance Systems: Results from a Human-In-The-Loop Simulation

The integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System (NAS) poses a variety of technical challenges to UAS developers and aviation regulators. In response to growing demand for access to civil airspace in the United States, the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has produced a roadmap identifying key areas requiring further research and development. One such technical challenge is the development of a "detect and avoid" system (DAA) capable of providing a means of compliance with the "see and avoid" requirement in manned aviation. The purpose of the DAA system is to support the pilot, situated at a ground control station (GCS), in maintaining "DAA well clear" of nearby aircraft through the use of GCS displays and alerts. In addition to its primary function of aiding the pilot in maintaining DAA well clear, the DAA system must also safely interoperate with existing NAS systems and operations, such as the airspace management procedures of air traffic controllers (ATC) and Collision Avoidance (CA) systems currently in use by manned aircraft, namely the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System (TCAS II). It is anticipated that many UAS architectures will integrate both a DAA system and a TCAS II. It is therefore necessary to explicitly study the integration of DAA and TCAS II alerting structures and maneuver guidance formats to ensure that pilots understand the appropriate type and urgency of their response to the various alerts. This paper presents a concept of interoperability for the two systems. The concept was developed with the goal of avoiding any negative impact on the performance level of TCAS II while retaining a DAA system that still effectively enables pilots to maintain DAA well clear. The interoperability concept described in the paper focuses primarily on facilitating the transition from a late-stage DAA encounter (where a loss of DAA well clear is imminent) to a TCAS II Corrective Resolution Advisory (RA), which requires pilot compliance within five seconds of its issuance. The interoperability concept was presented to 10 participants (6 active UAS pilots and 4 active commercial pilots) in a medium-fidelity, human-in-the-loop simulation designed to stress different aspects of the DAA and TCAS II systems. Pilots' ability to maintain separation, their rate of compliance and response times using the interoperability concept are reported. Results indicated that pilots exhibited comprehension of, and appropriate prioritization within, the DAA-TCAS II combined alert structure. Pilots demonstrated a high rate of compliance with TCAS II RAs and were also seen to respond to corrective RAs within the five second requirement established for manned aircraft. The DAA system presented under test was also shown to be effective in supporting pilots' ability to maintain DAA well clear in the overwhelming majority of cases in which pilots had sufficient time to respond.

Rorie, R. Conrad↗

NASA NTRS2018

A Cellular Backshell Concept for a Planetary Entry Vehicle

The development of an alternative, novel backshell concept to replace the traditional approach for the backshell of a planetary entry vehicle, was initiated in this study. The motivation was to determine if the novel concept, with the potential to provide significant improvements compared to the traditional approach, would be feasible. In initiating this effort, two cellular-type structures were chosen for evaluation. Preliminary structural finite element analysis models of just a single backshell panel were created for both a traditional design and the cellular concepts. Structural results revealed similar behavior for all the models. Although these initial results predicted higher mass values for the cellular structures, eventually adding more variables to the cell structure to further tailor the cellular concept, may significantly lower the mass predicted, and is justification for further study. Additionally, a novel approach to the thermal protection system of the cellular structures was proposed that included the use of advanced thermal blanket insulation. Thermal sizing analysis was performed for a simplified planetary entry heating condition producing a preliminary thermal design. However, further development and testing will be needed to determine if the proposed novel thermal protection approach, in conjunction with the cellular structure, would be an attractive alternative candidate backshell concept for future planetary entry vehicles.

Krings, Ethan↗

NASA NTRS2019

Past and Future Operations Concepts of NASA's Earth Science Data and Information System

NASA committed to support the collection and distribution of Earth science data to study global change in the 1990's. A series of Earth science remote sensing satellites, the Earth Observing System (EOS), was to be the centerpiece. The concept for the science data system, the EOS Data and Information System (EOSDIS), created new challenges in the data processing of multiple satellite instrument observations for climate research and in the distribution of global-coverage remote sensor products to a large and growing science research community. EOSDIS was conceived to facilitate easy access to EOS science data for a wide heterogeneous national and international community of users. EOSDIS was to provide a spectrum of services designed for research scientists working on NASA focus areas but open to the general public and international science community. EOSDIS would give researchers tools and assistance in searching, selecting and acquiring data, allowing them to focus on Earth science climate research rather than complex product generation. Goals were to promote exchange of data and research results and expedite development of new geophysical algorithms. The system architecture had to accommodate a diversity of data types, data acquisition and product generation operations, data access requirements and different centers of science discipline expertise. Steps were taken early to make EOSDIS flexible by distributing responsibility for basic services. Many of the system operations concept decisions made in the 90s continued to this day. Once implemented, concepts such as the EOSDIS data model played a critical role developing effective data services, now a hallmark of EOSDIS. In other cases, EOSDIS architecture has evolved to enable more efficient operations, taking advantage of new technology and thereby shifting more resources on data services and less on operating and maintaining infrastructure. In looking to the future, EOSDIS may be able to take advantage of commercial compute environments for infrastructure and further enable large scale climate research. In this presentation, we will discuss key EOSDIS operations concepts from the 1990's, how they were implemented and evolved in the architecture, and look at concepts and architectural challenges for EOSDIS operations utilizing commercial cloud services.

Moses, John F.↗

NASA NTRS2019

Recommendation for a Medical System Concept of Operations for Gateway Missions

NASA’s exploration missions to cis-lunar space will establish a permanent gateway to future transport missions to Mars. These missions mandate a significant paradigm change for mission planning, spacecraft design, human systems integration, and in-flight medical care due to constraints on mass, volume, power, resupply, and medical evacuation capability. These constraints require medical system development to be tightly integrated with mission and habitat design to provide a sufficient medical infrastructure and enable mission success. This concept of operations provides a vision of medical care needs that will be used to guide the development of a medical system for the cis-lunar Gateway Habitat. This medical system will serve as the precursor to what is implemented in future exploration missions to Mars. This concept of operations documents an overview of the stakeholder needs and system goals of a medical system and provides examples of the types of activities for which the system will be used during the mission. This concept of operations informs the ExMC systems engineering effort to define the Gateway Habitat Medical System by documenting the medical activities and capabilities relevant to Gateway missions, as identified by the ExMC clinician community. In addition, this concept of operations will inform the subsequent systems engineering process of developing technical requirements, system architectures, interfaces, and verification and validation approaches for the medical system. This document supports the closure of ExMC Gap Med01: We do not have a concept of operations for medical care during exploration missions, corresponding to the ExMC-managed human system risk: Risk of Adverse Health Outcomes & Decrements in Performance due to Inflight Medical Conditions.

Rubin, David↗

NASA NTRS2019

Far-Term Exploration of Advanced Single-Aisle Subsonic Transport Aircraft Concepts

Far-term single-aisle class aircraft concepts for potential entry-into-service of 2045 were investigated using an Interactive Reconfigurable Matrix of Alternatives (IRMA) approach. The configurations identified through this design space exploration were then distilled into three advanced aircraft concepts best characterizing the prominent features identified through the IRMA exploration. These three aircraft concepts were then configured and sized for a 150-passenger capacity and a 3,500 nautical mile design mission. Mission block fuel burn was estimated and compared to a far-term conventional configuration baseline concept and a 2005 l. These comparisons suggest considerable potential improvements in fuel efficiency from the investigated advanced concepts.

Quinlan, Jesse R.↗

NASA NTRS2020

Parametric Cost Estimates of Four 20 Ton Payload Mars EDL Vehicle Concepts

Cost is one of the biggest obstacles to sending humans to Mars. Many studies have examined various vehicles and/or technologies which could be used to send humans to Mars. However, nearly all of these studies have either ignored cost or have used the mass of the vehicles as a surrogate for cost. This work presents parametric cost estimates of four Mars Entry, Descent, and Landing vehicle concepts capable of landing 20 tons of payload on the surface of Mars. The concepts are the Co-Optimization Blunt-body Re-entry Analysis-Mid lift to drag ratio Rigid Vehicle (Cobra–MRV), Adaptive Deployable Entry and Placement Technology (ADEPT), Hypersonic Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerator (HIAD), and Capsule concepts. Two variants of the HIAD concept are studied, one with a single HIAD heatshield and one with two HIADs. The study presents the development and production cost of each vehicle and the total cost to build five flight units and fifteen flight units. Five flight units is representative of a single mission, or a "Flags and Footprints" style campaign, whereas fifteen flight units is representative of multiple missions going to multiple sites on Mars. All costs presented in this work are normalized to the average of the first unit production cost of the lander concepts. There is a large amount of uncertainty both in the design of the vehicles and the cost of the vehicles and it is impossible to claim with certainty which vehicle will cost the least. However, it is likely that the total cost to produce five flight units will be in the following ranking from least costly to most costly, Single HIAD, Capsule, Dual HIAD, Cobra, ADEPT. The ranking for fifteen units is similar but with the positions of the Dual HIAD and Cobra reversed. This study only considers the cost of the entry vehicle and does not take into account the effect of the entry vehicle’s mass on the cost of the in-space propulsion stage or launch vehicle.

Paul D Friz↗

NASA NTRS2020

Integrated Demand Management: Concepts and Procedures

This report provides a comprehensive description of the Integrated Demand Management concept. Motivation: NASA’s Integrated Demand Management (IDM) research explores the idea that, under certain conditions, time-based flow management (TBFM) arrival operations can benefit from the coordinated use of a strategic traffic management initiative (TMI) to “precondition” the inbound demand. The research was motivated by the observation that TBFM was usually turned off during convective weather, even in facilities where it was routinely used. Our hypothesis was that strategic adjustments to the inbound traffic so that it provided a better match to the off-nominal changes in capacity observed during these conditions could enable TBFM scheduling to continue to provide effective support for arrival traffic management. Concept: IDM proposes that a TMI (e.g., a Collaborative Trajectory Options Program, or CTOP) be used to adjust the rate and/or geographic distribution across flows of the traffic inbound to a high-demand, TBFM-managed airport before that traffic reaches the TBFM planning horizon. After this strategic preconditioning, TBFM can then tactically fine-tune the demand to deliver a well-managed, orderly feed to the destination airport. Coordinated use of these two flow management capabilities is intended to improve system performance in terms of: • Equity of ground delay assignment, avoiding excessive ground delay for TBFM-scheduled departures, without penalizing longer flights; • Throughput, by distributing traffic to maximize use of available capacity; • Predictability for operators, providing advance notice about the impact on individual flights; • Increased flexibility, supporting operator mitigation strategies such as slot swapping or trajectory options; • Efficiency of flight operations, using ground delay more effectively and reducing airborne delay. The operational description in this document highlights how the IDM concept builds upon already existing tools and procedures, and also indicates where tool enhancements could facilitate conduct of IDM operations. However, enhanced tools are not a requirement for concept introduction. In fact, initial deployment that focused on training procedures and rationale for coordinated use of TFMS and TBFM, without changes to existing tools, might be a simpler way to introduce and to familiarize traffic managers with the idea of preconditioning. The concept and procedures described in this document can hopefully provide useful guidance for introduction of IDM into field operations..

IDM↗

NASA NTRS2018

How Do You Go From a Concept Idea to a NASA Selected Mission? Formulating the Psyche Discovery Mission with JPL's Concurrent Engineering Teams

JPL’s Office of Formulation provides continuity of support and access to domain subject matter experts, as Principal Investigators mature their mission concepts from “cocktail napkin” ideas to Preliminary Design Reviews [1]. Using NASA’s Psyche mission as a case study, we describe JPL’s concurrent engineering A-Team and Team X support to the Psyche competed concept study team in the areas of 1) Initial Feasibility, 2) Trade Space Exploration, 3) Spacecraft Point Design and Cost Estimate, 4) Science, Technical, Management, and Cost Review, and 5) Strategy and Communication Development. NASA’s Psyche Discovery-class mission started as a grassroots idea from Principal Investigator L.T. ElkinsTanton. Is there a compelling Discovery mission to visit the interior of a body for the first time, by sending a mission to an iron metal asteroid? In less than five years the Psyche concept was selected as a mission under NASA’s Discovery Program. While Psyche had a dedicated concept development team [2], they utilized JPL’s concurrent engineering teams, methods, analysis tools, and subject matter experts throughout their mission concept formulation lifecycle

Ziemer, John↗

NASA NTRS2018

A Dual Multilayer Insulation Blanket Concept to Radically Reduce Heat Loss From Thermally Controlled Spacecraft and Instruments

At large distances from the Sun (e.g. Jupiter/Saturn), the solar flux is less than 4% that at Earth. This requires very large solar arrays to meet the power demands of a typical new mission concept. Heat loss through Multi-Layer Insulation (MLI) blankets typically constitutes the vast majority of the total heat loss. Hence, improvements to MLI blankets that reduce heat loss are advantageous to the spacecraft design. The overall effective emittance (ε*) of MLI is usually a range dependent on the number of layers, size of blanket, seams, feedthroughs, layer density and operating temperatures of the heat source and heat sink. A concept has been developed at JPL to reduce the ε* by as much as a factor of two, which produces a corresponding reduction in heat losses. This concept utilizes two MLI blankets physically separated by traditional bumpers or spacers used for micrometeoroid protection. The outer surface of the inner blanket and the inner surface of the outer blanket are low emissivity surfaces to further minimize the total ε* of the overall dual MLI system. Analytical predictions of a dual MLI concept have been made using test data based ε* correlations. A development test has been conducted to validate the dual blanket design’s performance. This paper will describe the dual blanket design concept, schemes for its implementation, and the corresponding test results to validate its performance.

Duran, Mark↗

NASA NTRS2021

Cooperative Upper Class E Airspace: Concept of Operations and Simulation Development for Operational Feasibility Assessment

Upper Class E Traffic Management (ETM) is a novel community-based traffic management concept incorporating the FAA, NASA, and industry’s collaborative efforts to support safe, efficient, and scalable future operations in the airspace near and above 60,000 ft. The concept complements Air Traffic Control (ATC) infrastructure and Air Traffic Management (ATM) services by facilitating cooperative operations with ETM provided services. This paper presents an initial Cooperative Separation Management (CSM) concept for High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) vehicles’ conflict detection and resolution during their extended operations. A prototype simulation platform has been developed to visualize and assess the concept during demonstrations to stakeholders. Further development plans for simulations and the CSM concept are discussed.

upper Class E airspace↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Cooperative Upper Class E Airspace: Concept of Operations and Simulation Development for Operational Feasibility Assessment

upper Class E airspace↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Initial Regulatory and Certification Approach for the SUSAN Electrofan Concept

New aircraft concepts and associated technologies are required to meet emerging environ-mental impact goals, while still meeting established airworthiness certification standards and regulations. The SUbsonic Single Aft eNgine (SUSAN) Electrofan is one of these concepts, utilizing a single aft-mounted engine, electrified aircraft propulsion, and an emergency backup battery. This paper explores the current certification and regulatory barriers to this novel aircraft design and the potential methods for adapting certification and regulatory requirements for the SUSAN Electrofan concept. Although some certification requirements, such as the Extended Operations regulations for continued operation after the loss of an engine, can be met with only minor changes, other requirements require modifications to the regulations or the aircraft concept for compliance. Early insight to the certification approach for the SUSAN concept, while the design is still undergoing trade space exploration, allows the development of the aircraft alongside any modifications to certification standards.

SUSAN Electrofan↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Design Concepts to Meet EASA SC-VTOL-01 Single Failure Criteria

The objective of the current work is to discuss European Union Aviation Safety Agency (EASA) SC-VTOL-01 single failure criteria, VTOL.2250(c). Prior studies have developed concept distributed propulsion and flight control (DPFC) system architectures and found they comply with EASA SC-VTOL-01 probabilistic failure criteria, VTOL.2510(a). Prior work developed two all-electric DPFC systems utilized in a quadrotor concept aircraft developed by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA); one uses interconnecting shafts and gearboxes to interconnect redundant motors with each rotor system and the other uses gearboxes to connect redundant motors locally, near each rotor. Common between the two electric DPFC systems were rotor shafts, epicyclic systems, and motors. The current work explores Category I failures in drive systems, relevant research to support fail-safe design practices for gear systems, research and adjacent industry trends in motor fail-safety and reliability, and proposed design concepts to comply with VTOL.2250(c). Continued research in fail-safe design concepts and design guidance will benefit eVTOL and conventional rotorcraft, alike. Continued research in these areas will benefit eVTOL certification against SC-VTOL-01, and could optimistically translate to more widespread adoption of similar fail-safe design concepts into new rotorcraft designs certified against CS-29.

Rotorcraft↗

NASA NTRS2022

PAAV Concept Document

The Pathfinding for Airspace with Autonomous Vehicles (PAAV) Concept Document, version 1.0, lays out the key challenges and potential solutions for the use of uncrewed aircraft (UA) technology for future regional air cargo operations. The challenges and solutions described in this document were informed by communications with the UA industry community (e.g., RTCA, the Federal Aviation Administration, and regional air cargo business operators), as well as the PAAV team’s research activities during the last two years including four tabletop exercises, a human-in-the-loop simulation study, a numerical simulation study, a functional allocation study, and flight data analysis (Appendix A). This document first describes the expected operational context of PAAV (Section 2), such as the flight mission, baseline UAS components, nominal operations, m:N operations (i.e., "m" remote pilots per "N" aircraft), and off-nominal operations. This context sets the scope for the PAAV concept development work. PAAV concept development assumes that UA operations will be increasingly autonomous. Thus, near- and far-term assumptions are defined (Section 3). PAAV identified seven key challenges for UA operations (Section 4): - Flight route planning - Separation and flow management - Traffic pattern integration - Contingency management - Taxi, takeoff, and landing - m:N operations - Communications operations The following 13 potential solutions to these challenges are then described (Section 5): - Scalable communications architecture - Data link - Designated UAS corridors - Crew planning for m:N operations - Flight route optimization - Traffic load-level control - Trajectory solutions with data link - Automated hazard avoidance for m:N operations - Traffic pattern integration (TPI) tool - Standard lost command and control (C2) link (LC2L) procedures - Automated hazard avoidance under LC2L - Auto-taxi, auto-takeoff, and auto-land - Ground control station (GCS) user interface for m:N operations The document attempts to link each of these solutions to one or more of the challenge areas. Novel solutions involving numerous automation technologies are needed to mitigate traffic and airspace management challenges, especially for realizing m:N operations and ensuring safety under LC2L conditions. The purpose of this document is to help understand alternatives and tradeoffs among potential solutions and provide a foundation for a cohesive PAAV concept that will be described and refined in subsequent concept versions.

Unmanned aircraft, uncrewed aircraft, regional air↗

NASA NTRS2022

A Model-Based Approach for Europa Lander Mission Concept Exploration

This study investigates the usage of a system model as a means to capture concept formulation for a potentialmission. Efforts are underway at JPL to explore thearchitectural and system concepts for a lander on Europa.Executing a mission on the surface of Europa poses uniquechallenges that will require the lander to operate with onboardautonomy that is more sophisticated than systems previouslyoperated by JPL. Current tasks to explore surface missionconcepts intend to identify concepts that enable a high degree ofonboard autonomy as well as identify the issues and technicallimitations that restrict autonomy. The Europa lander missionconcept team is developing a system model to support thisexploration.The results of this study highlight how executable systemmodeling and the associated engineering environment may beapplied to pre-project conceptual exploration. The applicationof system modeling has resulted in a central system model thatprecisely describes the concepts formulated by the EuropaLander Mission Concept Team. Documentation in the form ofdiagrams and narrative has been directly generated from thesystem model and accessible by team members in a webapplication. The executability of the system model enablesvarious analyses such as simulation of interactions betweencomponents and evaluating system behavior againstrequirements. Execution of the system model has produced statetimelines, plots of system variables, and simulation traces basedon input scenarios. The executable system model enables therapid and repeatable production of these artifacts.

Reeves, Glenn↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Design Exploration of a Mild Hybrid Electrified Aircraft Propulsion Concept

NASA has performed in-depth research and analysis into hybrid-electric aircraft concepts featuring high levels of electrification. Many of these concepts were found to be infeasible, whereas feasible designs were significantly heavier and more costly compared to conventional concepts. This study presents the development and analysis of an alternative mild hybrid concept that uses relatively low levels of stored electric energy applied strategically throughout the mission. The team researched several mild hybrid technologies, developed integrated aircraft models, and then evaluated the effects of these technologies on vehicle level performance metrics. Technologies explored in this study include the Turbine Electrified Energy Management system, electric taxi, electric climb assist, and replacing the auxiliary power unit with on-board electric energy storage. Key enabling technologies were energy storage devices that prioritized high power output over energy capacity and integrating electric motors with the shafts of the gas turbine engines. Significant performance improvements were observed when applying multiple technologies separately and in combination, with the most promising configuration incorporating all of them at once. Results for the mild hybrid configuration indicate an 8.2% reduction in block fuel, a 7.7% reduction in equivalent CO2 emissions, and a 3.5% increase in gross takeoff weight compared to a conventional baseline. Results of a cost analysis suggest the mild hybrid slightly reduces direct operating cost plus interest, which demonstrates that aircraft emissions can be significantly reduced without the cost increases associated with highly electrified concepts.

Turbine Electrified Energy Managment↗

NASA NTRS2023

Concept Design for a 5 MW Partially Superconducting Generator

This paper presents a concept design for the 5 MW generators on NASA’s SUSAN hybrid electric flight concept. The performance targets for this machine are 25 kW/kg and 99% efficiency. The concept design is a partially superconducting machine that builds on NASA’s past work on its High Efficiency Megawatt Motor (HEMM). A partially superconducting machine design tool is used to create a preliminary concept design capable of achieving the target specifications for the SUSAN generator. Higher fidelity design and analysis is applied to the preliminary design. After high fidelity analysis the machine is predicted to achieve 22.3 kW/kg and 99.1% efficiency. Lessons learned from this concept design will be incorporated in the next iteration of the machine.

Thomas Tallerico↗

NASA NTRS2023

Concept Design of a 5 MW Partially Superconducting Generator

This paper presents a concept design for the 5 MW generators on NASA’s SUSAN electric flight demonstrator concept vehicle. The performance targets for this machine are 25 kW/kg and 99% efficiency. The concept design is a partially superconducting machine that builds on NASA’s past work on its High Efficiency Megawatt Motor(HEMM). A partially superconducting machine design tool is used to create a preliminary concept design capable of achieving the target specifications for the SUSAN generator. Higher fidelity design and analysis is applied to the preliminary design. After high fidelity analysis the machine is predicted to achieve 22.3 kW/kg and 99.1% efficiency. Lessons learned from this concept design will be incorporated in the next iteration of the machine.

Thomas Tallerico↗