Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “FLIGHT SAFETY”

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 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2023

Information and Best Practices Related to NASA Nuclear Flight Safety for Space Flights Involving Space Nuclear Systems

The purpose of this handbook is to facilitate a repeatable and robust process that promotes clear and effective interfaces between activities and stakeholders focused on meeting nuclear flight safety requirements for missions utilizing space nuclear systems (SNS), within the context of NASA’s broader nuclear-related activities and interfaces. NPR 8715.26, Nuclear Flight Safety, requires that the NASA project manager “incorporate nuclear flight safety considerations starting with program or project formulation through the point at which the SNS or other radioactive material no longer has the potential to affect Earth’s biosphere.” NASA’s use of SNS inherently involves partnering with other stakeholders to conduct a range of related activities that interface with nuclear flight safety. From a categorical perspective these include: (i) meeting the authorities and licensing requirements for possession and use of nuclear material, as governed by other Federal authorities; (ii) conducting National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) activities for nuclear-enabled missions; (iii) meeting Federal nuclear launch authorization requirements; (iv) conducting radiological contingency planning activities, including those associated with international commitments; (v) performing risk communication and public outreach activities; and (vi) ensuring decommissioning and disposal strategies reflect National policies and interests. It is the intent of this handbook to promote an effective interface between nuclear flight safety and these interrelated categorical activities. In addition to activities undertaken with partnering agencies, there are individual nuclear-related activities and programs that have a nexus to nuclear flight safety, and these include: (i) applicable NASA Standing Review Boards; (ii) the US Department of Energy nuclear safety activities conducted in partnership with NASA under Memoranda of Understanding; (iii) the Department of Defense’s Range Safety activities; (iv) NASA’s general involvement in interagency and international dialogues regarding nuclear safety; (v) the NASA-administered Interagency Nuclear Safety Review Board; (vi) NASA’s program and project governance activities and nuclear-specific Technical Discipline Team activities under the Office of the Chief Engineer; and others. It is the intent of this handbook to promote effective leveraging of these additional interrelated organizational activities, as appropriate.

Donald Helton↗
NASA NTRS2014

Range Safety Flight Elevation Limit Calculation Software

This program was developed to fill a need within the Wallops Flight Facility workflow for automation of the development of vertical plan limit lines used by flight safety officers during the conduct of expendable launch vehicle missions. Vertical plane present-position-based destruct lines have been used by range safety organizations at numerous launch ranges to mitigate launch vehicle risks during the early phase of flight. Various ranges have implemented data submittal and processing workflows to develop these destruct lines. As such, there is significant prior art in this field. The ElLimits program was developed at NASA's Wallops Flight Facility to automate the process for developing vertical plane limit lines using current computing technologies. The ElLimits program is used to configure launch-phase range safety flight control lines for guided missiles. The name of the program derives itself from the fundamental quantity that is computed - flight elevation limits. The user specifies the extent and resolution of a grid in the vertical plane oriented along the launch azimuth. At each grid point, the program computes the maximum velocity vector flight elevation that can be permitted without endangering a specified back-range location. Vertical plane x-y limit lines that can be utilized on a present position display are derived from the flight elevation limit data by numerically propagating 'streamlines' through the grid. The failure turn and debris propagation simulation technique used by the application is common to all of its analysis options. A simulation is initialized at a vertical plane grid point chosen by the program. A powered flight failure turn is then propagated in the plane for the duration of the so-called RSO reaction time. At the end of the turn, a delta-velocity is imparted, and a ballistic trajectory is propagated to impact. While the program possesses capability for powered flight failure turn modeling, it does not require extensive user inputs of vehicle characteristics (e.g., thrust and aerodynamic data), nor does it require reams of turn data after the traditional fashion of the Air Force ranges. The program requires a nominal trajectory table (time, altitude, range, velocity, and flight elevation) and makes heavy use of it to initialize and model a failure turn.

Lanzi, Raymond J↗
NASA NTRS2004

Autonomous Flight Safety System

Autonomous Flight Safety System (AFSS) is an independent flight safety system designed for small to medium sized expendable launch vehicles launching from or needing range safety protection while overlying relatively remote locations. AFSS replaces the need for a man-in-the-loop to make decisions for flight termination. AFSS could also serve as the prototype for an autonomous manned flight crew escape advisory system. AFSS utilizes onboard sensors and processors to emulate the human decision-making process using rule-based software logic and can dramatically reduce safety response time during critical launch phases. The Range Safety flight path nominal trajectory, its deviation allowances, limit zones and other flight safety rules are stored in the onboard computers. Position, velocity and attitude data obtained from onboard global positioning system (GPS) and inertial navigation system (INS) sensors are compared with these rules to determine the appropriate action to ensure that people and property are not jeopardized. The final system will be fully redundant and independent with multiple processors, sensors, and dead man switches to prevent inadvertent flight termination. AFSS is currently in Phase III which includes updated algorithms, integrated GPS/INS sensors, large scale simulation testing and initial aircraft flight testing.

Ferrell, Bob↗
NASA NTRS1971

System safety education focused on flight safety

The measures necessary for achieving higher levels of system safety are analyzed with an eye toward maintaining the combat capability of the Air Force. Several education courses were provided for personnel involved in safety management. Data include: (1) Flight Safety Officer Course, (2) Advanced Safety Program Management, (3) Fundamentals of System Safety, and (4) Quantitative Methods of Safety Analysis.

Eugene Holt↗
NASA NTRS1963

FLIGHT SAFETY ASPECTS OF MANNED SPACE FLIGHT

Flight safety program for mercury manned space vehicle consisting of development engineering and factory rollout inspections, interface control, flight safety reviews, and mission simulation

MANNED SPACECRAFT↗
NASA NTRS1967

Mission design for flight safety.

Manned space flight safety through mission trajectory design, considering hardware, software and operational constraints

MANNED SPACE FLIGHT↗
NASA NTRS2017

Quantifying Pilot Contribution to Flight Safety During an In-Flight Airspeed Failure

Accident statistics cite the flight crew as a causal factor in over 60% of large transport fatal accidents. Yet a well-trained and well-qualified crew is acknowledged as the critical center point of aircraft systems safety and an integral component of the entire commercial aviation system. A human-in-the-loop test was conducted using a Level D certified Boeing 737-800 simulator to evaluate the pilot's contribution to safety-of-flight during routine air carrier flight operations and in response to system failures. To quantify the human's contribution, crew complement was used as an independent variable in a between-subjects design. This paper details the crew's actions and responses while dealing with an in-flight airspeed failure. Accident statistics often cite flight crew error (Baker, 2001) as the primary contributor in accidents and incidents in transport category aircraft. However, the Air Line Pilots Association (2011) suggests "a well-trained and well-qualified pilot is acknowledged as the critical center point of the aircraft systems safety and an integral safety component of the entire commercial aviation system." This is generally acknowledged but cannot be verified because little or no quantitative data exists on how or how many accidents/incidents are averted by crew actions. Anecdotal evidence suggest crews handle failures on a daily basis and Aviation Safety Action Program data generally supports this assertion, even if the data is not released to the public. However without hard evidence, the contribution and means by which pilots achieve safety of flight is difficult to define. Thus, ways to improve the human ability to contribute or overcome deficiencies are ill-defined.

Etherington, Timothy J.↗
NASA NTRS2007

An Autonomous Flight Safety System

The Autonomous Flight Safety System (AFSS) being developed by NASA s Goddard Space Flight Center s Wallops Flight Facility and Kennedy Space Center has completed two successful developmental flights and is preparing for a third. AFSS has been demonstrated to be a viable architecture for implementation of a completely vehicle based system capable of protecting life and property in event of an errant vehicle by terminating the flight or initiating other actions. It is capable of replacing current human-in-the-loop systems or acting in parallel with them. AFSS is configured prior to flight in accordance with a specific rule set agreed upon by the range safety authority and the user to protect the public and assure mission success. This paper discusses the motivation for the project, describes the method of development, and presents an overview of the evolving architecture and the current status.

Bull, James B.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Range Safety for an Autonomous Flight Safety System

The Range Safety Algorithm software encapsulates the various constructs and algorithms required to accomplish Time Space Position Information (TSPI) data management from multiple tracking sources, autonomous mission mode detection and management, and flight-termination mission rule evaluation. The software evaluates various user-configurable rule sets that govern the qualification of TSPI data sources, provides a prelaunch autonomous hold-launch function, performs the flight-monitoring-and-termination functions, and performs end-of-mission safing

Lanzi, Raymond J.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Using Fuzzy Clustering for Real-time Space Flight Safety

To ensure space flight safety, it is necessary to monitor myriad sensor readings on the ground and in flight. Since a space shuttle has many sensors, monitoring data and drawing conclusions from information contained within the data in real time is challenging. The nature of the information can be critical to the success of the mission and safety of the crew and therefore, must be processed with minimal data-processing time. Data analysis algorithms could be used to synthesize sensor readings and compare data associated with normal operation with the data obtained that contain fault patterns to draw conclusions. Detecting abnormal operation during early stages in the transition from safe to unsafe operation requires a large amount of historical data that can be categorized into different classes (non-risk, risk). Even though the 40 years of shuttle flight program has accumulated volumes of historical data, these data don t comprehensively represent all possible fault patterns since fault patterns are usually unknown before the fault occurs. This paper presents a method that uses a similarity measure between fuzzy clusters to detect possible faults in real time. A clustering technique based on a fuzzy equivalence relation is used to characterize temporal data. Data collected during an initial time period are separated into clusters. These clusters are characterized by their centroids. Clusters formed during subsequent time periods are either merged with an existing cluster or added to the cluster list. The resulting list of cluster centroids, called a cluster group, characterizes the behavior of a particular set of temporal data. The degree to which new clusters formed in a subsequent time period are similar to the cluster group is characterized by a similarity measure, q. This method is applied to downlink data from Columbia flights. The results show that this technique can detect an unexpected fault that has not been present in the training data set.

Lee, Charles↗
NASA NTRS2010

Autonomous Flight Safety System

The Autonomous Flight Safety System (AFSS) is an independent self-contained subsystem mounted onboard a launch vehicle. AFSS has been developed by and is owned by the US Government. Autonomously makes flight termination/destruct decisions using configurable software-based rules implemented on redundant flight processors using data from redundant GPS/IMU navigation sensors. AFSS implements rules determined by the appropriate Range Safety officials.

Simpson, James↗
NASA NTRS1996

Enhancing the Flight Safety Culture Through Training

In the 1970's, flight safety professionals became profoundly concerned about the prevalence of crew-caused accidents and incidents, and the role of human error in flight operations. As result, they initiated a change in the flight safety culture which has grown to significant proportions today. At the heart of the evolution were crew concepts such as flightdeck management, crew coordination, and cockpit resource management, concepts which seemed to target critical deficiencies. In themselves, the concepts were not new but their incorporation into training as a direct means of changing the flight safety culture was an untried, almost 'grassroots' approach. The targeted crew concepts and skills were not an integral part of the typical training program; the methods, curriculum, media, and even course content itself, would have to be developed and implemented from the bottom up. A familiar truism in the pilot culture is that you should 'Train the way you fly; Fly the way you train'. In short, training was expected to provide the pilot with practical operational skills that were consistent with the performance standards they were required to maintain and the operational demands they met on a daily basis. In short, one could not simply command crews to use good CRM; one would have to research and define these skills operationally as well as develop and implement a consistent and effective training program. Furthermore, one would need active support and collaboration among the research, industry and government communities in order to ensure acceptance and continued commitment. Additional information is contained in the original extended abstract.

Kanki, Barbara G.↗