Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “National Airspace System”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 55 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2017

Concept of Operations for Integrating Commercial Supersonic Transport Aircraft into the National Airspace System

Several businesses and government agencies, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration are currently working on solving key technological barriers that must be overcome in order to realize the vision of low-boom supersonic flights conducted over land. However, once these challenges are met, the manner in which this class of aircraft is integrated in the National Airspace System may become a potential constraint due to the significant environmental, efficiency, and economic repercussions that their integration may cause. This document was developed to create a path for research and development that exposes the benefits and barriers of seamlessly integrating a class of CSTs into the NAS, while also serving as a Concept of Operations (ConOps) which posits a mid- to far-term solution (2025-2035) concept for best integrating CST into the NAS. Background research regarding historic supersonic operations in the National Airspace System, assumptions about design aspects and equipage of commercial supersonic transport (CST) aircraft, assumptions concerning the operational environment are described in this document. Results of a simulation experiment to investigate the interactions between CST aircraft and modern-day air traffic are disseminated and are used to generate scenarios for CST operations. Finally, technology needs to realize these operational scenarios are discussed.

Underwood, Matthew C.↗
NASA NTRS2024

Analysis of Hybrid Electric Aircraft Operations in the National Airspace System

This paper investigates the fuel burn and flight time impacts of hybrid electric aircraft operating in the National Airspace System. Future scenarios with hybrid electric flights and the same passenger travel capacity between city pairs as a baseline scenario, taken from historical data, were created. Aircraft that serviced select flights in the baseline scenario were replaced with hybrid electric aircraft based on the flight’s range and seat capacity. Additional hybrid electric flights were added to future scenarios when necessary to keep the future scenario passenger capacity equal or greater to that of the baseline scenario. The baseline and future scenarios were simulated in the NAS Digital Twin, a live, virtual, and constructive environment for building and executing simulations of the Nation Airspace System. Results showed that the future scenarios with hybrid electric flights saved fuel burn, but increased flight time. In the future scenarios, the additional hybrid electric flights did not cause any airports to exceed their operational capacity.

Simulation↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Operating Hybrid Electric Aircraft in the National Airspace System

This paper investigates the fuel burn and flight time impacts of hybrid electric aircraft operating in the National Airspace System. Future scenarios with hybrid electric flights and the same passenger travel capacity between city pairs as a baseline scenario, taken from historical data, were created. Aircraft that serviced select flights in the baseline scenario were replaced with hybrid electric aircraft based on the flight’s range and seat capacity. Additional hybrid electric flights were added to future scenarios when necessary to keep the future scenario passenger capacity equal or greater to that of the baseline scenario. The baseline and future scenarios were simulated in the NAS Digital Twin, a live, virtual, and constructive environment for building and executing simulations of the Nation Airspace System. Results showed that the future scenarios with hybrid electric flights saved fuel burn, but increased flight time. In the future scenarios, the additional hybrid electric flights did not cause any airports to exceed their operational capacity.

hybrid electric aircraft↗
NASA NTRS2016

Initial Demonstration of the Real-Time Safety Monitoring Framework for the National Airspace System Using Flight Data

As new operational paradigms and additional aircraft are being introduced into the National Airspace System (NAS), maintaining safety in such a rapidly growing environment becomes more challenging. It is therefore desirable to have an automated framework to provide an overview of the current safety of the airspace at different levels of granularity, as well an understanding of how the state of the safety will evolve into the future given the anticipated flight plans, weather forecast, predicted health of assets in the airspace, and so on. Towards this end, as part of our earlier work, we formulated the Real-Time Safety Monitoring (RTSM) framework for monitoring and predicting the state of safety and to predict unsafe events. In our previous work, the RTSM framework was demonstrated in simulation on three different constructed scenarios. In this paper, we further develop the framework and demonstrate it on real flight data from multiple data sources. Specifically, the flight data is obtained through the Shadow Mode Assessment using Realistic Technologies for the National Airspace System (SMART-NAS) Testbed that serves as a central point of collection, integration, and access of information from these different data sources. By testing and evaluating using real-world scenarios, we may accelerate the acceptance of the RTSM framework towards deployment. In this paper we demonstrate the framework's capability to not only estimate the state of safety in the NAS, but predict the time and location of unsafe events such as a loss of separation between two aircraft, or an aircraft encountering convective weather. The experimental results highlight the capability of the approach, and the kind of information that can be provided to operators to improve their situational awareness in the context of safety.

Real-time Safety Monitoring↗
NASA NTRS1979

Aircrew displays and avionics for application in a future national airspace system

A concept for increased pilot involvement in a future National Airspace System was evolved during the FAA New Initiatives in Engineering and Development Users responsibilities and ways in which they might interact. The technical feasibility of the system is indicated by the sophisticated level of presently manufactured digital computers and display avionics, and the application of that technology under design by the major airframe manufacturers. Data collected during simulations and flights with the Terminal Configured Vehicle Program B-737 airplane are shown to have direct application to the new system concept. The adoption of the operational changes envisioned, offers some potentially significant advantages to the user.

Salmirs, S.↗
NASA NTRS2016

Real-Time Safety Monitoring and Prediction for the National Airspace System

As new operational paradigms and additional aircraft are being introduced into the National Airspace System (NAS), maintaining safety in such a rapidly growing environment becomes more challenging. It is therefore desirable to have both an overview of the current safety of the airspace at different levels of granularity, as well an understanding of how the state of the safety will evolve into the future given the anticipated flight plans, weather forecasts, predicted health of assets in the airspace, and so on. To this end, we have developed a Real-Time Safety Monitoring (RTSM) that first, estimates the state of the NAS using the dynamic models. Then, given the state estimate and a probability distribution of future inputs to the NAS, the framework predicts the evolution of the NAS, i.e., the future state, and analyzes these future states to predict the occurrence of unsafe events. The entire probability distribution of airspace safety metrics is computed, not just point estimates, without significant assumptions regarding the distribution type and or parameters. We demonstrate our overall approach by predicting the occurrence of some unsafe events and show how these predictions evolve in time as flight operations progress.

National Airspace System↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Framework for National Airspace System (NAS) Level Sustainability Assessment of New Aircraft

This paper introduces a framework for investigating the future sustainability benefits of conceptual vehicles. The framework considers the complex interactions between such vehicles and how it can be flown in the National Airspace System. Aggregate benefits for reduction in fuel use and emissions need to consider fleet wide operations, demand distributions, NAS Infrastructure, and differing business models. To extract true system level benefits multi-objective function optimization for operational energy use, acoustics, emissions and NAS Wide efficiency and interoperability incorporating physic-based system-wide flight simulations in the National Airspace system is required. The framework marries traditional vehicle synthesis processes with a NAS Simulation environment to simulate how a new synthesized vehicle will behave in the NAS.

Sustainability↗
NASA NTRS2015

Assessment of a National Airspace System Airborne Rerouting Tool

This paper presents the assessment of a National Airspace System airborne rerouting tool. The tool implements NASA’s Dynamic Weather Routes concept for wind-corrected flying-time savings during convective weather activity. A description of the system, as applicable to the entire United States airspace is provided, and results are presented demonstrating benefits of such a system from various Centers and airlines’ perspectives. Three cases for selection of reroute-return capture fix, which prevent unrealistically large controller clearances are presented. Results are shown for potential time- and fuel-savings (over 134,000 minutes and 4.2 million lbs. of fuel for over 35,000 proposed reroutes) and sector congestion reduction (over 121 hours in congested sectors) for all 20 Centers. The data used were for 30 days with highest delays attributable to convective weather from April to October of 2014. Other results show the evaluation of the maneuver or reroute start point (a parameter representing the amount of coordination time needed), which highlight the need for a controller-pilot data link. A data link would help achieve higher savings. The results for persistence time, beyond which the time-savings dwindle quickly, help determine the maximum coordination time required for each Center. Finally, an assessment from a current National Operations Manager at the Air Traffic Control System Command Center of the FAA is documented. Those suggestions could improve the efficiency of the air transportation system, especially with the expected improvements in the traffic flow management infrastructure. Currently, one industry partner and one airline are assessing this technology for commercial operational use.

Benefits Assessment↗
NASA NTRS2015

Measured Response for UAS Integration into the National Airspace System

The measured response (MR) is the response time of aircraft to Air Traffic Controller (ATCo) commands and clearances. The overall MR can be broken up into several components, including the pilot verbal latencies (MR1), the time between the end of an ATCo clearance and the beginning of the pilots read back, and the execution initiation latency (MR2), the time between the end of the ATCos clearance and when the pilot begins to execute a maneuver. The MR is a crucial concern for the integration of Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) into the National Airspace System (NAS) due to potentially greater latencies stemming from remote pilot communication and command execution. As a result, it is important to quantify what latencies in verbal responding and command execution are acceptable for safe and efficient operations in the NAS. The present studies begin to address these issues in a series of four simulations supported by the UAS Integration into the NAS program.

UAS in the NAS↗
NASA NTRS2015

Identification and Analysis of National Airspace System Resource Constraints

This analysis is the deliverable for the Airspace Systems Program, Systems Analysis Integration and Evaluation Project Milestone for the Systems and Portfolio Analysis (SPA) focus area SPA.4.06 Identification and Analysis of National Airspace System (NAS) Resource Constraints and Mitigation Strategies. "Identify choke points in the current and future NAS. Choke points refer to any areas in the en route, terminal, oceanic, airport, and surface operations that constrain actual demand in current and projected future operations. Use the Common Scenarios based on Transportation Systems Analysis Model (TSAM) projections of future demand developed under SPA.4.04 Tools, Methods and Scenarios Development. Analyze causes, including operational and physical constraints." The NASA analysis is complementary to a NASA Research Announcement (NRA) "Development of Tools and Analysis to Evaluate Choke Points in the National Airspace System" Contract # NNA3AB95C awarded to Logistics Management Institute, Sept 2013.

Smith, Jeremy C.↗
NASA NTRS2006

Analysis of System-Wide Investment in the National Airspace System: A Portfolio Analytical Framework and an Example

In this paper, the authors review the FAA s current program investments and lay out a preliminary analytical framework to undertake projects that may address some of the noted deficiencies. By drawing upon the well developed theories from corporate finance, an analytical framework is offered that can be used for choosing FAA s investments taking into account risk, expected returns and inherent dependencies across NAS programs. The framework can be expanded into taking multiple assets and realistic values for parameters in drawing an efficient risk-return frontier for the entire FAA investment programs.

Bhadra, Dipasis↗
NASA NTRS2013

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration in the National Airspace System (NAS) Project

NASA's UAS Integration in the NAS project, has partnered with Rockwell Collins to develop a concept Control and Non-Payload Communication system prototype radio, operating on recently allocated UAS frequency spectrum bands. The prototype radio will be used to validate initial proposed performance requirements for UAS control communications. This presentation will give an overview of the current status of the design, development, and flight test planning for this prototype radio.

Griner, James H.↗
NASA NTRS2014

Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Integration in the National Airspace System (NAS) Project, UAS Control and Non-Payload Communication System Phase-1 Flight Test Results

NASA's UAS Integration in the NAS project, has partnered with Rockwell Collins to develop a concept Control and Non-Payload Communication (CNPC) system prototype radio, operating on recently allocated UAS frequency spectrum bands. This prototype radio is being used to validate initial proposed performance requirements for UAS control communications. This presentation will give an overview of the current status of the prototype radio development, and results from phase 1 flight tests conducted during 2013.

communication↗