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The activities of the TU Center are reported. Areas reported include: TUSC clientele informaton, dissemination and assistance, faculty information service, and cooperation with other agencies. The general aviation news letter is included along with transfer and impact reports.
This plan is NASA's initial description of its projected research and development activities for the years 1978 through 1982. Stated goals are: (1) assurance of U.S. Preeminence in aviation, (2) scientific exploration of the universe, (3) global information services, and (4) permanent U.S. presence in space. The program represents a budget increase in NASA's aeronautical and space research and development of between three and four percent per year in terms of FY 1978 dollars.
Articles concerning imaging studies on the geomorphology, mineralogy, and topology of various landforms are reported. One hundred and ninety citations are listed and an index by National Technical Information service citation number is included. Several illustrations of L-band radar imagery are presented.
The concept of an orbiting personal navigation system as a possible application for a large space structure is considered. The navigation system would have to be part of a large, integrated, multifunction Information Service Platform to justify its complexity and assured use by a large segment of the civilian population. The navigation configuration is a large cruciform which utilizes a linear phased array antenna design. The two antenna arms generate narrow, orthogonal beam patterns on the ground which are electrically scanned east to west and south to north. A passive ground receiver detecting the beam passage determines the user's position in earth longitude and latitude coordinates.
The NASA Scientific and Technical Information Program operations are performed by two contractor operated facilities. The NASA STI Facility, located near Baltimore, Maryland, employs about 210 people who process report literature, operate the computer complex, and provide support for software maintenance and developments. A second contractor, the Technical Information Services of the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics, employs approximately 80 people in New York City and processes the open literature such as journals, magazines, and books. Features of these programs include online access via RECON, announcement services, and international document exchange.
A survey of states concerning the use of LANDSAT in support of the comprehensive planning assistance program (Title IV, section 701) of the Housing and Community Development Act (1974) which is aimed mostly at small communities and rural counties, shows: (1) state governments used or were aware of the application of LANDSAT for inventorying land use and land cover at the state and local level; (2) use of satellite data was associated with the development of automated geographic information systems and the computer capability of handling and analyzing mapped information and other data tied to geographic coordinates and boundaries; and (3) LANDSAT capabilities in states tend to be institutionalized within state government information services where they can be readily assessed by state agencies. A summary of the state program for New Jersey and South Dakota is presented along with the state development guide plans, the rationale for using the satellite, and potential applications.
A quarterly listing of those documents and related publications that have been issued and placed in the AgRISTARS tracking system is presented. The Tracking List Report provides a catalog, by project, of technical publications arranged by type of document and gives the reference AgRISTARS document numbers, title and date of publication, the issuing organization, and the National Technical Information Service reference number.
One of the major responsibilities of the JPL Computing and Information Services Office is to develop and maintain a JPL plan for providing computing services to the JPL management and administrative community that will lead to improved productivity. The CISO plan to accomplish this objective has been titled 'Management and Administrative Support Systems' (MASS). The MASS plan is based on the continued use of JPL's IBM 3032 Computer system for administrative computing and for the MASS functions. The current candidate administrative Data Base Management Systems required to support the MASS include ADABASE, Cullinane IDMS and TOTAL. Previous uses of administrative Data Base Systems have been applied to specific local functions rather than in a centralized manner with elements common to the many user groups. Limited capacity data base systems have been installed in microprocessor based office automation systems in a few Project and Management Offices using Ashton-Tate dBASE II. These experiences plus some other localized in house DBMS uses have provided an excellent background for developing user and system requirements for a single DBMS to support the MASS program.
A quarterly listing of documents issued and placed in the AgRISTARS tracking system is provided. The technical publications are arranged by type of documents. The reference AgRISTARS document number, title and date of publication, the issuing organization, and the National Technical Information Service reference number is given.
Model deformations near the active plate boundaries of Western North America using space-based geodetic measurements as constraints are discussed. The first six months of this project were spent gaining familarity with space-based measurements, accessing the Crustal Dynamics Data Information Computer, and building time independent deformation models. The initial goal was to see how well the simplest elastic models can reproduce very long base interferometry (VLBI) baseline data. From the Crustal Dynamics Data Information Service, a total of 18 VLBI baselines are available which have been surveyed on four or more occasions. These data were fed into weighted and unweighted inversions to obtain baseline closure rates. Four of the better quality lines are illustrated. The deformation model assumes that the observed baseline rates result from a combination of rigid plate tectonic motions plus a component resulting from elastic strain build up due to a failure of the plate boundary to slip at the full plate tectonic rate. The elastic deformation resulting from the locked plate boundary is meant to portray interseismic strain accumulation. During and shortly after a large interplate earthquake, these strains are largely released, and points near the fault which were previously retarded suddenly catch up to the positions predicted by rigid plate models. Researchers judge the quality of fit by the sum squares of weighted residuals, termed total variance. The observed baseline closures have a total variance of 99 (cm/y)squared. When the RM2 velocities are assumed to model the data, the total variance increases to 154 (cm/y)squared.
Through the use of a computerized Geographic Information Service (GIS), field data on methane emissions and water inundation levels have been combined with remotely sensed vegetation cover data. This permits a more precise extrapolation of point flux measurements to regional scale flux estimates. Since the GIS allows changes in environmental variables to be included in the model, the sensitivity of emissions on large scales to changes in these parameters may be studied. Here, methane flux measurements from the Everglades marsh complex are reported, giving the flux by vegetation class.
A large data base of Seasat-A Satellite Scatterometer (SASS) measurements merged with high-quality surface-truth wind, wave, and temperature data has been documented. The data base was developed for all times when selected in situ measurement sites were within the SASS footprint. Data were obtained from 42 sites located in the coastal waters of North America, Australia, Western Europe, and Japan and were assembled by correlating the SASS and surface-truth measurements in both time and distance. These data have been archived on a set of nine-track 6250 bpi ASCII coded magnetic tapes, which are available from the National Technical Information Service.
This document presents formal NASA technical reports, papers published in technical journals, and presentations by Marshal Space Flight Center (MSFC) personnel in FY 85. It also includes papers of MSFC contractors. After being announced in STAR, all of the NASA series reports may be obtained from the National Technical Information Service (NTIS), 5285 Port Royal Road, Springfield, Va. 22161.
The mean flow structure upstream, around within, and in the near wake of a turbulent junction or horseshoe vortex is reported for an incompressible subsonic flow. Measurements of the primitive variables of velocity and pressure are reported on all surfaces bounding the region of the vortex flow and on three transverse and one streamwise plane within the flowfield itself for comparisons between the measured and any calculated flow variables. Detailed surface flow visualizations and some direct force measurements of surface shear stress are also available. The data is a highly detailed, coherent, self-consistent set offered to the computational fluid mechanics community as a standard test case for the evaluation of the capability of numerical solvers intended for predicting the flowfield in such a complex, separated, three-dimensional turbulent flow. This data base is available for copying to user supplied tapes or for transmission via BITNET, as well as in two National Technical Information Service (NTIS) reports.
A series of viewgraphs on computer networks at the Johnson Space Center (JSC) are given. Topics covered include information resource management (IRM) at JSC, the IRM budget by NASA center, networks evolution, networking as a strategic tool, the Information Services Directorate charter, and SSC network requirements, challenges, and status.
The National Geodetic Survey (NGS) independently generates precise ephemerides for all available Global Positioning System (GPS) satellites. Beginning in 1991, these ephemerides were produced from double-differenced phase observations solely from the Cooperative International GPS Network (CIGNET) tracking sites. The double-difference technique combines simultaneous observations of two satellites from two ground stations effectively eliminating satellite and ground receiver clock errors, and the Selective Availability (S/A) signal degradation currently in effect. CIGNET is a global GPS tracking network whose primary purpose is to provide data for orbit production. The CIGNET data are collected daily at NGS and are available to the public. Each ephemeris covers a single week and is available within one month after the data were taken. Verification is by baseline repeatability and direct comparison with other ephemerides. Typically, an ephemeris is accurate at a few parts in 10(exp 7). This corresponds to a 10 meter error in the reported satellite positions. NGS is actively investigating methods to improve the accuracy of its orbits, the ultimate goal being one part in 10(exp 8) or better. The ephemerides are generally available to the public through the Coast Guard GPS Information Center or directly from NGS through the Geodetic Information Service. An overview of the techniques and software used in orbit generation will be given, the current status of CIGNET will be described, and a summary of the ephemeris verification results will be presented.
The recent awakening to the reality of human-induced changes to the environment has resulted in an organized effort to promote global change research. The goal of this research as outlined by NASA's Earth System Science Committee (Earth System Science: A closer View, 1988) is to understand the entire Earth system on a global scale by describing how its component parts and their interactions have evolved, how they function, and how they may be expected to evolve on all timescales. The practical result is the capacity to predict that evolution over the next decade to century. Key variables important for the study of global change include external forcing factors (solar radiance, UV flux), radiatively and chemically important trace species (CO2, CH4, N2O, etc.), atmospheric response variables (temperature, pressure, winds), landsurface properties (river run-off, snow cover, albedo, soil moisture, vegetation cover), and oceanic variables (sea surface temperature, sea ice extent, sea level ocean wind stress, currents, chlorophyll, biogeochemical fluxes). The purpose of this document is to identify existing data sets available (both remotely sensed and in situ data) covering some of these variables. This is not intended to be a complete list of global change data, but merely a highlight of what is available. The information was extracted from the Master Directory (MD), an on-line scientific data information service which may be used by any researcher. This report contains the coverage dates for the data sets, sources (satellites, instruments) of the data and where they are archived.
The National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) and World Data Center A for Rockets and Satellites (WDC-A-R&S) has a long record of participation in the worldwide efforts to establish and improve empirical models for the different regions of the solar-terrestrial environment. The center maintains a unique archive of solar-terrestrial models and related applications software, described in a recently published models catalog. The software packages are distributed on tape, diskette, and on-line on the Space Physics Analysis Network (SPAN). Four of the most frequently requested models (IRI, MSIS/CIRA, IGRF, AE-8/AP-8) can also be accessed and run on the NSSDC Online Documentation and Information Service (NODIS) account, which can be reached from any SPAN node.