Results for “Data Management Platform” — Page 18

NASA NTRS2024

Safety Assessment of Conformance Monitoring for Situational Awareness in UTM Operations

This report presents a systematic approach to evaluating the safety benefit of utilizing strategic deconfliction and Conformance Monitoring for Situational Awareness to manage the traffic that is comprised of both conforming aircraft and contingent aircraft. First, we developed a Monte-Carlo-based simulation platform that generates a range of nominal flight paths, a set of flight paths associated with contingent aircraft, encounters between conforming and contingent aircraft, and simulates aircraft's reported positions within conformance bounds. Next, we derived the mathematical equations for quantifying the level of safety, represented by the probability of mid-air collision per flight hour, using the flight data from the simulation platform. Finally, we compared the safety benefit of CMSA services in scenarios generated at different traffic densities and rates of contingent aircraft. This study suggests that strategic deconfliction and CMSA services can collaboratively handle traffic mixed with conforming and contingent aircraft more safely than strategic deconfliction alone.

CMSA↗

NASA NTRS2017

Augmenting Space Technology Program Management with Secure Cloud & Mobile Services

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Game Changing Development (GCD) program manages technology projects across all NASA centers and reports to NASA headquarters regularly on progress. Program stakeholders expect an up-to-date, accurate status and often have questions about the program's portfolio that requires a timely response. Historically, reporting, data collection, and analysis were done with manual processes that were inefficient and prone to error. To address these issues, GCD set out to develop a new business automation solution. In doing this, the program wanted to leverage the latest information technology platforms and decided to utilize traditional systems along with new cloud-based web services and gaming technology for a novel and interactive user environment. The team also set out to develop a mobile solution for anytime information access. This paper discusses a solution to these challenging goals and how the GCD team succeeded in developing and deploying such a system. The architecture and approach taken has proven to be effective and robust and can serve as a model for others looking to develop secure interactive mobile business solutions for government or enterprise business automation.

Hodson, Robert F.↗

NASA NTRS2009

NASA's Earth Observing Data and Information System

NASA's Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has been a central component of NASA Earth observation program for over 10 years. It is one of the largest civilian science information system in the US, performing ingest, archive and distribution of over 3 terabytes of data per day much of which is from NASA s flagship missions Terra, Aqua and Aura. The system supports a variety of science disciplines including polar processes, land cover change, radiation budget, and most especially global climate change. The EOSDIS data centers, collocated with centers of science discipline expertise, archive and distribute standard data products produced by science investigator-led processing systems. Key to the success of EOSDIS is the concept of core versus community requirements. EOSDIS supports a core set of services to meet specific NASA needs and relies on community-developed services to meet specific user needs. EOSDIS offers a metadata registry, ECHO (Earth Observing System Clearinghouse), through which the scientific community can easily discover and exchange NASA s Earth science data and services. Users can search, manage, and access the contents of ECHO s registries (data and services) through user-developed and community-tailored interfaces or clients. The ECHO framework has become the primary access point for cross-Data Center search-and-order of EOSDIS and other Earth Science data holdings archived at the EOSDIS data centers. ECHO s Warehouse Inventory Search Tool (WIST) is the primary web-based client for discovering and ordering cross-discipline data from the EOSDIS data centers. The architecture of the EOSDIS provides a platform for the publication, discovery, understanding and access to NASA s Earth Observation resources and allows for easy integration of new datasets. The EOSDIS also has developed several methods for incorporating socioeconomic data into its data collection. Over the years, we have developed several methods for determining needs of the user community including use of the American Customer Satisfaction Index and a broad metrics program.

Mitchell, Andrew E.↗

NASA NTRS2017

Software Defined Radios - Architectures, Systems and Functions

Software Defined Radio is an industry term describing a method of utilizing a minimum amount of Radio Frequency (RF)/analog electronics before digitization takes place. Upon digitization all other functions are performed in software/firmware. There are as many different types of SDRs as there are data systems. Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology has been proven in the commercial sector since the early 90's. Today's rapid advancement in mobile telephone reliability and power management capabilities exemplifies the effectiveness of the SDR technology for the modern communications market. In contrast the foundations of transponder technology presently qualified for satellite applications were developed during the early space program of the 1960's. SDR technology offers potential to revolutionize satellite transponder technology by increasing science data through-put capability by at least an order of magnitude. While the SDR is adaptive in nature and is "One-size-fits-all" by design, conventional transponders are built to a specific platform and must be redesigned for every new bus. The SDR uses a minimum amount of analog/Radio Frequency components to up/down-convert the RF signal to/from a digital format. Once analog data is digitized, all processing is performed using hardware logic. Typical SDR processes include; filtering, modulation, up/down converting and demodulation. This presentation will show how the emerging SDR market has leveraged the existing commercial sector to provide a path to a radiation tolerant SDR transponder. These innovations will reduce the cost of transceivers, a decrease in power requirements and a commensurate reduction in volume. A second pay-off is the increased flexibility of the SDR by allowing the same hardware to implement multiple transponder types by altering hardware logic - no change of analog hardware is required - all of which can be ultimately accomplished in orbit. This in turn would provide high capability and low cost transponder to programs of all sizes.

Sims, William H.↗

NASA NTRS2017

Software Defined Radios - Architectures, Systems and Functions

Software Defined Radio is an industry term describing a method of utilizing a minimum amount of Radio Frequency (RF)/analog electronics before digitization takes place. Upon digitization all other functions are performed in software/firmware. There are as many different types of SDRs as there are data systems. Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology has been proven in the commercial sector since the early 90's. Today's rapid advancement in mobile telephone reliability and power management capabilities exemplifies the effectiveness of the SDR technology for the modern communications market. In contrast the foundations of transponder technology presently qualified for satellite applications were developed during the early space program of the 1960's. SDR technology offers potential to revolutionize satellite transponder technology by increasing science data through-put capability by at least an order of magnitude. While the SDR is adaptive in nature and is "One-size-fits-all" by design, conventional transponders are built to a specific platform and must be redesigned for every new bus. The SDR uses a minimum amount of analog/Radio Frequency components to up/down-convert the RF signal to/from a digital format. Once analog data is digitized, all processing is performed using hardware logic. Typical SDR processes include; filtering, modulation, up/down converting and demodulation. This presentation will show how the emerging SDR market has leveraged the existing commercial sector to provide a path to a radiation tolerant SDR transponder. These innovations will reduce the cost of transceivers, a decrease in power requirements and a commensurate reduction in volume. A second pay-off is the increased flexibility of the SDR by allowing the same hardware to implement multiple transponder types by altering hardware logic - no change of analog hardware is required - all of which can be ultimately accomplished in orbit. This in turn would provide high capability and low cost transponder to programs of all sizes

Sims, Herb↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Delay Tolerant Networks: Operational, Evolving, an Ready for Expansion

The future of humanity’s presence beyond Earth depends on the successful commercialization of space. For commercialization to succeed, companies need cost-efficient architectures to support their business models and minimize risks for human capital, design, development, and operations. An ongoing challenge to any space enterprise is the reality that terrestrial network technologies are insufficient to provide reliable communications between assets in space. Whether you need to ensure your valuable data is safely transmitted to the ground or reliably delivered between platforms in orbit, ensuring data integrity over intermittent communication links is a necessity. Current solutions to space communications rely heavily on manual recording, storing, and retrieval of data from spacecraft. The current standard in space communication protocols, Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) Space Packet standard, is reliant on inflexible network architectures based around mission-critical infrastructure to ensure data delivery. However, by automating the recording, storing, retrieval, and verification of data with Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN), the operator is freed from the dependence on manual data management and expensive mission critical infrastructure. NASA has been developing delay tolerant systems since the late 1990’s. Multiple DTN implementations have been established during that time, each suited to different use cases. Most notably, the DTN deployment for the International Space Station (ISS) includes demonstration of two DTN technologies: Interplanetary Overlay Network (ION) and Delay Tolerant Network Marshall Enterprise (DTNME). Beyond ISS, there are even more NASA DTN deployments being considered. Now that DTN implementations are maturing, it is appropriate to reflect upon these decades of work, review the integration and performance of the existing ISS deployment, and explore the future possibilities for DTN deployment industry-wide. The ISS DTN deployment is a complex architecture consisting of different DTN implementations for the onboard and ground network environments. The ION DTN implementation is being used in the on-board network. The Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) DTN implementation, DTNME, is used by the ground network supporting ISS and will soon be a second onboard gateway too. The two implementations work cooperatively to provide high fidelity data services to flight operations users and payload developers across the globe. Though the two implementations yield a quality service, limitations are evident. Data rate, data storage, and device management are constrained by the services themselves and the complex nature of the deployment. Evolution of operations concepts will improve system capabilities and stability, but significant improvement will require additional development to the implementations themselves and to the overall deployment architecture. Taking advantage of the ongoing development and operation of the ISS DTN service will be central to the success of the future evolutions of NASA DTN deployments while demonstrating the benefits of DTN’s low-cost reliable data communication protocols for the growing commercial space industry. A broad effort on DTN integration and support is necessary to promote expansion beyond existing applications. NASA is developing several useful DTN implementations across a number of different systems: ION, DTNME, High-Rate DTN (HDTN), Bundle Protocol Library (BPLib), and others. To prevent fragmentation, DTN implementation teams need to communicate, collaborate, and integrate with one another to build a solid operational foundation for new DTN deployments. The establishment of a group that can assist new DTN users with understanding the purpose of each DTN implementation, provide best practices, and serve as a general knowledge base is paramount. Potential use of DTN on Gateway and other future NASA missions further drives the need for streamlined communication between DTN implementation teams. A well-integrated and highly engaged NASA DTN working group should help provide system architects the best DTN solutions for future commercial space efforts. This paper will first review the history of DTN implementations, explore the shortcoming of current space networking solutions given available limits in technology, and therefore establish the need for Delay Tolerant Networking in space communications. Secondly, the authors will explore NASA’s array of DTN implementations and highlight their usefulness to space applications. Thirdly, this paper will establish general DTN implementation distinguishing factors. Fourthly, the authors will discuss attempts to create a generic DTN comparison matrix, and the authors will review potential future topics in DTN innovation and collaboration, highlighting several key future efforts. Finally, this paper will describe how the institution of a NASA DTN Working Group will benefit DTN adoption across the governmental and commercial space sector. The goal of this paper is to encourage enthusiasm for DTN, share strategies for improving DTN on both current and future applications, promote the collaboration of DTN implementation groups within the international space operations community, and open the conversations about DTN, priorities, complexities, and innovation to the wider spaceflight industry.

DTN↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Delay Tolerant Networks: Operational, Evolving, an Ready for Expansion

The future of humanity’s presence beyond Earth depends on the successful commercialization of space. For commercialization to succeed, companies need cost-efficient architectures to support their business models and minimize risks for human capital, design, development, and operations. An ongoing challenge to any space enterprise is the reality that terrestrial network technologies are insufficient to provide reliable communications between assets in space. Whether you need to ensure your valuable data is safely transmitted to the ground or reliably delivered between platforms in orbit, ensuring data integrity over intermittent communication links is a necessity. Current solutions to space communications rely heavily on manual recording, storing, and retrieval of data from spacecraft. The current standard in space communication protocols, Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) Space Packet standard, is reliant on inflexible network architectures based around mission-critical infrastructure to ensure data delivery. However, by automating the recording, storing, retrieval, and verification of data with Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN), the operator is freed from the dependence on manual data management and expensive mission critical infrastructure. NASA has been developing delay tolerant systems since the late 1990’s. Multiple DTN implementations have been established during that time, each suited to different use cases. Most notably, the DTN deployment for the International Space Station (ISS) includes demonstration of two DTN technologies: Interplanetary Overlay Network (ION) and Delay Tolerant Network Marshall Enterprise (DTNME). Beyond ISS, there are even more NASA DTN deployments being considered. Now that DTN implementations are maturing, it is appropriate to reflect upon these decades of work, review the integration and performance of the existing ISS deployment, and explore the future possibilities for DTN deployment industry-wide. The ISS DTN deployment is a complex architecture consisting of different DTN implementations for the onboard and ground network environments. The ION DTN implementation is being used in the on-board network. The Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) DTN implementation, DTNME, is used by the ground network supporting ISS and will soon be a second onboard gateway too. The two implementations work cooperatively to provide high fidelity data services to flight operations users and payload developers across the globe. Though the two implementations yield a quality service, limitations are evident. Data rate, data storage, and device management are constrained by the services themselves and the complex nature of the deployment. Evolution of operations concepts will improve system capabilities and stability, but significant improvement will require additional development to the implementations themselves and to the overall deployment architecture. Taking advantage of the ongoing development and operation of the ISS DTN service will be central to the success of the future evolutions of NASA DTN deployments while demonstrating the benefits of DTN’s low-cost reliable data communication protocols for the growing commercial space industry. A broad effort on DTN integration and support is necessary to promote expansion beyond existing applications. NASA is developing several useful DTN implementations across a number of different systems: ION, DTNME, High-Rate DTN (HDTN), Bundle Protocol Library (BPLib), and others. To prevent fragmentation, DTN implementation teams need to communicate, collaborate, and integrate with one another to build a solid operational foundation for new DTN deployments. The establishment of a group that can assist new DTN users with understanding the purpose of each DTN implementation, provide best practices, and serve as a general knowledge base is paramount. Potential use of DTN on Gateway and other future NASA missions further drives the need for streamlined communication between DTN implementation teams. A well-integrated and highly engaged NASA DTN working group should help provide system architects the best DTN solutions for future commercial space efforts. This paper will first review the history of DTN implementations, explore the shortcoming of current space networking solutions given available limits in technology, and therefore establish the need for Delay Tolerant Networking in space communications. Secondly, the authors will explore NASA’s array of DTN implementations and highlight their usefulness to space applications. Thirdly, this paper will establish general DTN implementation distinguishing factors. Fourthly, the authors will discuss attempts to create a generic DTN comparison matrix, and the authors will review potential future topics in DTN innovation and collaboration, highlighting several key future efforts. Finally, this paper will describe how the institution of a NASA DTN Working Group will benefit DTN adoption across the governmental and commercial space sector. The goal of this paper is to encourage enthusiasm for DTN, share strategies for improving DTN on both current and future applications, promote the collaboration of DTN implementation groups within the international space operations community, and open the conversations about DTN, priorities, complexities, and innovation to the wider spaceflight industry.

DTN↗

NASA NTRS1977

Applications of space observations to the management and utilization of coastal fishery resources

Information needs of those concerned with the harvest and management of coastal fishery resources can be satisfied in part through applications of satellite remote sensing. Recently completed and ongoing investigations have demonstrated potentials for defining fish distribution patterns from multispectral data, monitoring fishing distribution and effort with synthetic aperture radar systems, forecasting recruitment of certain estuarine-dependent species, and tracking marine mammals. These investigations, which are reviewed in this paper, have relied on Landsat 1 and 2, Skylab-3, and Nimbus-6 supported sensors and sensors carried by aircraft and mounted on surface platforms to simulate applications from Seasat-A and other future spacecraft systems. None of the systems are operational as all were designed to identify and demonstrate applications and to aid in the specification of requirements for future spaceborne systems.

Kemmerer, A. J.↗

NASA NTRS2010

Optical Structural Health Monitoring Device

This non-destructive, optical fatigue detection and monitoring system relies on a small and unobtrusive light-scattering sensor that is installed on a component at the beginning of its life in order to periodically scan the component in situ. The method involves using a laser beam to scan the surface of the monitored component. The device scans a laser spot over a metal surface to which it is attached. As the laser beam scans the surface, disruptions in the surface cause increases in scattered light intensity. As the disruptions in the surface grow, they will cause the light to scatter more. Over time, the scattering intensities over the scanned line can be compared to detect changes in the metal surface to find cracks, crack precursors, or corrosion. This periodic monitoring of the surface can be used to indicate the degree of fatigue damage on a component and allow one to predict the remaining life and/or incipient mechanical failure of the monitored component. This wireless, compact device can operate for long periods under its own battery power and could one day use harvested power. The prototype device uses the popular open-source TinyOS operating system on an off-the-shelf Mica2 sensor mote, which allows wireless command and control through dynamically reconfigurable multi-node sensor networks. The small size and long life of this device could make it possible for the nodes to be installed and left in place over the course of years, and with wireless communication, data can be extracted from the nodes by operators without physical access to the devices. While a prototype has been demonstrated at the time of this reporting, further work is required in the system s development to take this technology into the field, especially to improve its power management and ruggedness. It should be possible to reduce the size and sensitivity as well. Establishment of better prognostic methods based on these data is also needed. The increase of surface roughness with fatigue is closely connected to the microstructure of the metal, and ongoing research is seeking to connect this observed evidence of the fatigue state with microstructural theories of fatigue evolution to allow more accurate prognosis of remaining component life. Plans are also being discussed for flight testing, perhaps on NASA s SOFIA platform.

Buckner, Benjamin D.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

SWIPE: Spectral Water Inversion Processor and Emulator

Degradation of Earth’s inland water resources due to anthropogenic perturbations and climate anomalies at both local and global scales continues to place human health at substantial risk. There is now a growing necessity to develop pragmatic approaches that allow timely and effective extrapolation of local processes, to spatially resolved global products, and to promote operational and sustainable resource policy management. This presentation will be discussing the progress made developing SWIPE: Spectral Water Inversion Processor and Emulator. SWIPE is a platform for advanced modeling of coastal and inland aquatic habitats. The goal is create a comprehensive and cohesive system to leverage recent advancements in computation and machine learning to develop a synthetic training ground for sensitivity studies and algorithm development. The four principal facets of SWIPE include: 1. Advanced two-layer coated sphere bio-optical modeling and GPU radiative transfer modeling, 2. Big Data involving massive synthetic spectral libraries of optical properties of various global aquatic particles, surface reflectance, and top-of-atmosphere reflectance, all at hyperspectral resolution leveraging high-end computing systems at NASA Ames Research Center, 3. Deep Learning for algorithm development for water quality inversion of concentrations of common biogeophysical variables as well as optics, full uncertainty characterization by water type, and forward emulation, and lastly, 4. Image Processing for application of developed retrieval algorithms for both hyperspectral and multispectral sensors with experimental corrections for global adjacency, noise, sunglint, and benthic reflectance. This presentation will demonstrate the Equivalent Algal Populations (EAP) two-layer coated sphere scattering model which has been used develop spectral libraries of hyperspectral inherent optical properties of roughly 80 species of phytoplankton, covering 15 different classes and nine taxonomic functional types. The EAP model was also used to derive spectral properties of 10 different non-algal particle functional types. Examples of how the SMART-G (Speed-up Monte-carlo Advanced Radiative Transfer using GPU) radiative transfer code is used to model optically complex aquatic signals will be presented and discussed in the context of creating a massive synthetic database which can leverage the full power of next generation machine learning techniques and high end computing for water quality inversion. We will discuss our active investigation in things like appropriate model architectures, dimensionality reduction techniques such as PCA and autoencoders, uncertainty quantification and abstaining, and which variables actually benefit most from hyperspectral information versus multispectral resolution. We are also curious about questions relating to cost/benefit analysis in terms of computation resources, neural network complexity, and data volumes. Answers to these questions will hopefully elaborate on cost efficiency for potential future sensor design considerations.

SWIPE↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Global Water Monitor: Lake, Wetland, and River Reach Monitoring for Resource Management and Hazard Observation

The Global Water Monitor is a monitoring program offering surface water-related products for lakes, reservoirs, river reaches, and wetlands, https://blueice.gsfc.nasa.gov/gwm. These products are derived from multiple satellite-based altimetry and multispectral imaging platforms. The primary measurements are water level, slope, and extent, derived from a series of NASA and other agency instruments (Sentinel-3,-6, ICESat-2, SWOT, MODIS). The system serves stakeholders, the US Department of Agriculture Foreign Agricultural Service and the US Geological Survey, as well as various international, national, state, and intelligence agencies, engineers, ecologists, and hydrological researchers. Considering the sensitivity of ground-based data and the remote accessibility of many basins, the satellites offer global coverage, accuracy, and continuity of measurements. Observation of storage fluctuations in lakes and reservoirs provides users with knowledge of short and long-term drought conditions that can affect both water and energy resources. Emphasis is on changing climatic conditions, water sharing between nations, and regional stability. Measurements across a wetland complex can assist with efforts to assess hydrological dynamics with a focus on conservation efforts that aid both natural ecology and the sharing of precious water resources – the latter potentially being required in a basin across the municipal, crop irrigation, aquaculture, livestock, and power station spectrum. Observations of river reaches assists in the collection of basic hydraulic information, particularly in gauge-poor regions, for modelling efforts and the estimation of discharge, and at high-latitudes satellite-based river observations serve projects that warn of spring melts and flood hazards. We look at how recent improvements in instrument technology and mission operations are assisting with acquiring true global coverage and cross-validation efforts, and how stakeholders interact with the project in terms of setting requirements, product format, and accessibility methods. Examples show the application of the products across a range of programs, and in addition to meeting operational requirements, how the multi-decadal surface water levels are creating a high-quality timeline of Earth Data Records.

Lakes↗

NASA NTRS1982

The tethered retrievable platform concept and utilization

Main components of the current configuration of a proposed tethered satellite system (TSS) for deploying instrumentation up to 100 km upward or downward from the Orbiter in LEO are described. The TSS consists of the Deployer Module, the Tether, and the Satellite Module, and remains connected to the equipment in the Orbiter bay for the entire mission. The Deployer Module is mounted on a pallet, and has a boom, a tether control mechanism, and a tether control capability, in addition to data acquisition and control systems. The Satellite Module features a thermal control, electrical power and distribution, data management and communication, attitude determination, propulsion, and payload capability. Deployment is unpowered, taking advantage instead of gravity gradients to move the payload from the Orbiter. Safety features include a cutter mechanism to disengage the tether from the Orbiter if retrieval of the payload is judged to endanger the crew and the Orbiter.

Laue, J. H.↗

NASA NTRS2023

Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition Program: Airbus U.S. Synthetic Aperture Radar Quality Assessment Summary

Quality assessment of the Airbus X-band Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) satellite products was conducted by the Commercial Smallsat Data Acquisition (CSDA) program’s radar subject matter experts, following the Joint NASA/ESA (European Space Agency) assessment draft guidelines. All three Airbus SAR spacecraft (TerraSAR-X, TanDEM-X, and PAZ) are based on the TerraSAR-X platform, and each have an active phased array antenna that is 4.8 x 0.7 m in the along-track and cross-track dimensions, respectively. TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X are in a helical orbit, creating a bistatic imaging geometry, in addition to being capable of independent monostatic observations. The PAZ mission follows TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X in the same 11-day orbit with a 5.5-day lag. TerraSAR-X and TanDEM-X are designed, developed, and operated through a Public-Private Partnership, while PAZ is a dual-use mission (civil and defense agencies), funded and owned by the Spanish Ministry of Defense and managed by Hisdesat (Hisdesat Servicios Estratégicos, S.A.), a Spanish private communications company. The assessment presented in this document is divided into two main parts: documentation review and the assessment of test datasets. The documentation review in sections 2.1 through 2.4 includes the assessment of the Airbus documentation provided to the CSDA evaluation team. The grading of these documents is given in columns 1-4 of the maturity matrix shown in section 1.1. Section 2.5 summarizes the evaluation performed by NASA using the data purchased through the CSDA program. The grading for this is given in the last column of the maturity matrix. Section 3 provides more detailed explanations on the methods and the results of the data analysis performed by NASA. Only the documents provided by Airbus for the evaluation were considered for the review. Additional documentation with more detailed description of the calibration and validation procedures may be available online but were not considered for this evaluation. The product information provided in the available documentation (RD-1, RD-2) and the product metadata together provided adequate information to work with the data. The product details in the metadata included the required information to work with the data in the common XML file format. Metrological traceability documentation was not provided to CSDA. All relevant characterization of the SAR system and data were provided, and the metadata include all relevant ancillary information. Documentation provided to CSDA included limited pre-flight and post-launch calibration information.

Batuhan Osmanoglu↗

NASA NTRS2003

Aerospace Communications Security Technologies Demonstrated

In light of the events of September 11, 2001, NASA senior management requested an investigation of technologies and concepts to enhance aviation security. The investigation was to focus on near-term technologies that could be demonstrated within 90 days and implemented in less than 2 years. In response to this request, an internal NASA Glenn Research Center Communications, Navigation, and Surveillance Aviation Security Tiger Team was assembled. The 2-year plan developed by the team included an investigation of multiple aviation security concepts, multiple aircraft platforms, and extensively leveraged datalink communications technologies. It incorporated industry partners from NASA's Graphical Weather-in-the-Cockpit research, which is within NASA's Aviation Safety Program. Two concepts from the plan were selected for demonstration: remote "black box," and cockpit/cabin surveillance. The remote "black box" concept involves real-time downlinking of aircraft parameters for remote monitoring and archiving of aircraft data, which would assure access to the data following the loss or inaccessibility of an aircraft. The cockpit/cabin surveillance concept involves remote audio and/or visual surveillance of cockpit and cabin activity, which would allow immediate response to any security breach and would serve as a possible deterrent to such breaches. The datalink selected for the demonstrations was VDL Mode 2 (VHF digital link), the first digital datalink for air-ground communications designed for aircraft use. VDL Mode 2 is beginning to be implemented through the deployment of ground stations and aircraft avionics installations, with the goal of being operational in 2 years. The first demonstration was performed December 3, 2001, onboard the LearJet 25 at Glenn. NASA worked with Honeywell, Inc., for the broadcast VDL Mode 2 datalink capability and with actual Boeing 757 aircraft data. This demonstration used a cockpitmounted camera for video surveillance and a coupling to the intercom system for audio surveillance. Audio, video, and "black box" data were simultaneously streamed to the ground, where they were displayed to a Glenn audience of senior management and aviation security team members.

Griner, James H.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Real World Applications of AI/ML in Optimizing Airspace Operations

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.

air traffic management↗

NASA NTRS2018

Model-Based Data Integration and Process Standardization Techniques for Fault Management: A Feasibility Study

This paper describes the theory and considerations in the application of model-based techniques to assimilate information from disjoint knowledge sources for performing NASA's Fault Management (FM)-related activities using the TEAMS® toolset. FM consists of the operational mitigation of existing and impending spacecraft failures. NASA's FM directives have both design-phase and operational-phase goals. This paper highlights recent studies by QSI and DST of the capabilities required in the TEAMS® toolset for conducting FM activities with the aim of reducing operating costs, increasing autonomy, and conforming to time schedules. These studies use and extend the analytic capabilities of QSI's TEAMS® toolset to conduct a range of FM activities within a centralized platform.

Haste, Deepak↗

NASA NTRS2009

Benchmarking Diagnostic Algorithms on an Electrical Power System Testbed

Diagnostic algorithms (DAs) are key to enabling automated health management. These algorithms are designed to detect and isolate anomalies of either a component or the whole system based on observations received from sensors. In recent years a wide range of algorithms, both model-based and data-driven, have been developed to increase autonomy and improve system reliability and affordability. However, the lack of support to perform systematic benchmarking of these algorithms continues to create barriers for effective development and deployment of diagnostic technologies. In this paper, we present our efforts to benchmark a set of DAs on a common platform using a framework that was developed to evaluate and compare various performance metrics for diagnostic technologies. The diagnosed system is an electrical power system, namely the Advanced Diagnostics and Prognostics Testbed (ADAPT) developed and located at the NASA Ames Research Center. The paper presents the fundamentals of the benchmarking framework, the ADAPT system, description of faults and data sets, the metrics used for evaluation, and an in-depth analysis of benchmarking results obtained from testing ten diagnostic algorithms on the ADAPT electrical power system testbed.

Kurtoglu, Tolga↗

NASA NTRS2023

NASA’s Digital Information Platform to Accelerate the Transformation of the National Airspace System

In order to accelerate the digital transformation of airspace operations, a foundational framework and infrastructure for providing sustainable, data-driven, and cohesive decision-making digital services for both traditional and emergent air vehicles is being developed. The reference implementation of Digital Information Platform builds an ecosystem for the aviation community by providing access to a secure and trusted source of aviation data and services. Several key features and services have been implemented to enable secure data sharing, communication, and service registration on the Platform. The technical approach used to implement these features is presented here. NASA-developed integrated aviation data and machine learning based prediction services to optimize airspace operations are available on the Platform. These services are being evaluated in an operational environment by flight operators and the real-world benefits are being captured. The Platform fosters collaboration among industry and researchers to develop complex aviation services and the aim is to make it publicly accessible for consumption by the aviation community.

Digital Transformation↗