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NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Flight Test Exploration of Integrated Wildfire Response Operations with Crewed and Uncrewed Air Assets

Since 2016, Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and NASA have partnered to investigate the safe and efficient integration of uncrewed aircraft systems (UAS) in disaster relief operations. Current disaster response operations would benefit from the use of UAS but are limited by the need for safe airspace integration technologies and enabling regulations. The work presented in this paper focuses on the safe integration of UAS and helicopters in active wildfire disaster response operations. The authors propose the use of mission planning and traffic management technologies, including onboard pilot situation awareness support technologies, to coordinate airspace operations between crewed and uncrewed aircraft (e.g., UAS). A representative wildfire scenario including a helicopter and UAS was developed. The helicopter mission included a flight path that mimicked the siphoning of water from a natural water reservoir (lake) and a subsequent water drop over vegetation along the progressing edge of a fire perimeter. Simulated UAS were assumed to conduct aerial ignition flights in the vicinity as part of a controlled burn of the vegetation ahead of the fire front to create a natural barrier between the fire and a nearby populated area. A situation awareness tool was developed and used to support the helicopter pilots’ task to stay clear of the volume of airspace where the UAS was conducting its operation while efficiently conducting the fire suppression mission. A flight test using JAXA’s experimental helicopter was conducted in August 2022 to validate the developed technology. The advantages of the developed technology were demonstrated, and pilot feedback confirmed that real-time awareness of the UAS operation airspace helped the flight planning and execution of a safe mission that minimized the flight time loss due to the potential interference with the UAS. Post-flight interviews with the pilots indicated no sufficient increase in the pilots’ workload and provided ideas for future technology development. Future research will provide recommendations to standards development organizations to support considerations for crewed-uncrewed interactions in disaster-response operations.

disaster response↗

DOE OSTI2021

Sub-diffractional cavity modes of terahertz hyperbolic phonon polaritons in tin oxide

Abstract Hyperbolic phonon polaritons have recently attracted considerable attention in nanophotonics mostly due to their intrinsic strong electromagnetic field confinement, ultraslow polariton group velocities, and long lifetimes. Here we introduce tin oxide (SnO 2 ) nanobelts as a photonic platform for the transport of surface and volume phonon polaritons in the mid- to far-infrared frequency range. This report brings a comprehensive description of the polaritonic properties of SnO 2 as a nanometer-sized dielectric and also as an engineered material in the form of a waveguide. By combining accelerator-based IR-THz sources (synchrotron and free-electron laser) with s-SNOM, we employed nanoscale far-infrared hyper-spectral-imaging to uncover a Fabry–Perot cavity mechanism in SnO 2 nanobelts via direct detection of phonon-polariton standing waves. Our experimental findings are accurately supported by notable convergence between theory and numerical simulations. Thus, the SnO 2 is confirmed as a natural hyperbolic material with unique photonic properties essential for future applications involving subdiffractional light traffic and detection in the far-infrared range.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Management of Operations under Visual Flight Rules in UTM for Disaster Response Missions

The disaster response domain has experienced an increased focus in recent years due to the rise in number and scale of events, lessons learned from past experience, and emerging technologies that make possible a more coordinated and effective response. As part of this focus, JAXA and NASA have been collaborating on the integration of manned and unmanned aircraft in support of disaster response operations through integrated testing of their respective mission planning and optimization system (Disaster Relief Aircraft Information Sharing Network, or D-NET) and an automated UAS traffic management system (e.g., UTM). In 2018, JAXA and NASA jointly participated in a large-scale disaster drill in Japan where the integration of systems was successfully demonstrated through real-time data exchanges, visualization, and decision making as part of the coordinated airspace management of a manned helicopter in VFR conditions and unmanned small UAS operating in common areas. This work details a flight test consisting of two flights that were conducted December 2019 near the Chofu Aerodrome in Tokyo, which focused on the evaluation of pilots operating under Visual Flight Rules (VFR) communicating through D-NET and sharing intent and position information within UTM. This work contributes to defining the necessary requirements for digital coordination between manned and unmanned operations. UTM requires the use of operation volumes, which are spatial and temporal volumes that encompass UAS flight trajectories and account for technical performance errors and deviations due to disturbances (e.g., wind). A series of flights, representing different missions, used landmark-based operation volumes and conformance of the aircraft to those operation volumes were tracked within UTM. Experienced disaster response helicopter pilots provided insight on the development of the operation plans and their usability during disaster response operations. Results from the flight test supported the suggested benefits of using landmarks for planning and positional awareness and highlighted the need for future research in advanced visualization capabilities to support operations that consider both system constraints and flight deck/airspace management interaction.

disaster response↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

An Investigation Into Transecting Satellites in Future Space Traffic Management Scenarios

The number of satellites expected to populate the near-Earth space environment is set to dramatically increase in the coming decade as new large constellations are approved and deployed. Current strategies for placing new batches of these satellites on orbit often involve launching into an initial orbit, and then performing apogee raising maneuvers to reach a target altitude. Similarly, end-of-life planning for these constellation satellites can consist of de-orbit burns that lower perigee to permit disposal via re-entry. Both the raising and de-orbiting maneuvers can result in the individual satellites traveling in high-eccentricity orbits that have the potential to transect other spacecraft trajectories. While individual large constellations may be able to coexist in separate altitude and inclination bands, having thousands of satellites moving between these bands as new satellites are replaced and old ones are removed could pose additional collision risks. Similar concerns have been raised regarding the impact that large numbers of university-class CubeSats might have in terms of their overall collision risk, especially as these satellites typically do not have propulsion systems for active maneuvering. To assess the impact that transecting satellites might have to future space traffic management strategies, this study explored a variety of future realistic scenarios using a high-fidelity simulation tool. The model can simulate the orbit of tens of thousands of resident space objects (RSOs) simultaneously, to include active satellites, debris, rocket bodies, or even future hypothetical scenarios, using a realistic force model that incorporates non-spherical gravity, atmospheric drag, solar radiation pressure, and more. As the model is run forward in time, various statistics and meta-data are gathered on any predicted conjunction event, providing insight into the nature and frequency of potential collisions, e.g., what size are the two satellites, who operates the satellites, are they active or passive objects, etc. Additional customization is available in terms of how probability of collision is computed, and how the probability ellipsoids and screening volumes are determined. The simulation tool also allows for rule-based maneuvers for active satellites, e.g, given an advance conjunction “warning,” one or both of the satellites can maneuver to a safe distance. A wide range of maneuvers can be implemented using impulsive or low-thrust methods, and the latencies can also be varied, e.g., using maneuver lead times of 48 hours, 24 hours, or 12 hours. Validation of the simulation results is performed against current and historical datasets available, to include comparisons to prior conjunction data messages (CDMs), object properties (mass, volume, etc.), and two-line-element records from both public and internal sources. Using the simulation environment, an assessment on the general risks that transecting satellites might pose for hypothetical future space object environments will be presented. This will involve the simulation of approximately 50,000 new large constellation satellites, in addition to the existing catalog of approximately 20,000 known resident space objects (RSOs), over propagation periods of one month to one year. A description of the simulation methodologies, scenarios evaluated, and validation methods will also be presented, as well as a preliminary assessment of the effectiveness of several candidate maneuver strategies that have the potential to reduce collision risk between active satellites.

Brian Gunter↗

NASA NTRS1999

The Conference Proceedings of the 1999 Air Transport Research Group (ATRG) of the WCTR Society

Issues around direct flights across Taiwan Strait are always one of the hottest topics in eastern Asia transport market. Although the direct links have not been connected yet, they are still highly concerned by different disciplines of politics, laws, and management. Airlines and related business also watch closely to these issues for policy changes will easily affect their interests in Chinese market which the future of the air transportation in eastern Asia is heavily depending on. In the past decades, Hong Kong was the most important hub in this market; it will still be an important one in the future. It is proved, however, traffic on the link between Hong Kong and Taiwan can be shifted to the link between Macau and Taiwan, so can it be shifted to the links across Taiwan Strait. Moreover, outgoing passengers from China transferred in Hong Kong can also find transit services in Taiwan. These movements will possibly cause a big change in eastern Asian air transport system for there are millions of passengers travelling in this area. The uncertainties of direct links across Taiwan Strait are still leaving, some problems unsolved. Whether the direct links will be defined as international routes or domestic' routes are not clear; the selection of hubs and airlines to provide direct services are not yet made; even the type of freedoms and bilateral agreements can also change the market and network quite a lot. A much bigger volume of passengers can also be found if further travelling deregulation for Chinese to travel across Taiwan Strait can be made. All these variables are making issues around direct flights worthy of continuous observant.

Zhang, Anming↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Define Minimum Safe Operational Volume for Aerial Vehicles in Upper Class E Airspace

The variety of vehicle performance in upper Class E airspace requires a method that can efficiently compute the minimum safe operational boundary between aircraft. This work presents a mathematical method to define the minimum safe operational boundary needed for aerial vehicles operating in upper Class E airspace. This method focuses on the extra separation required by vehicle maneuverability, communication delay, and control/operator response time. A sensitivity study is then performed to provide a general understanding of the impact of these factors on the extra separation needed. Experiments with pairwise encounters are conducted to verify the results generated by the proposed methods.

Separation↗

NASA NTRS2005

Flight Experiment Investigation of General Aviation Self-Separation and Sequencing Tasks

A new flight operations concept called Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) Higher Volume Operations (HVO) was developed to increase capacity during Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) at non-towered, non-radar airports by enabling concurrent operations of multiple aircraft. One aspect of this concept involves having pilots safely self-separate from other aircraft during approaches into these airports using appropriate SATS HVO procedures. A flight experiment was conducted to determine if instrument-rated general aviation (GA) pilots could self-separate and sequence their ownship aircraft, while following a simulated aircraft, into a non-towered, non-radar airport during simulated IMC. Six GA pilots' workload levels and abilities to perform self-separation and sequencing procedures while flying a global positioning system (GPS) instrument approach procedure were examined. The results showed that the evaluation pilots maintained at least the minimum specified separation between their ownship aircraft and simulated traffic and maintained their assigned landing sequence 100-percent of the time. Neither flight path deviations nor subjective workload assessments were negatively impacted by the additional tasks of self-separating and sequencing during these instrument approaches.

Murdoch, Jennifer L.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Define Minimum Safe Operational Volume for Aerial Vehicles in Upper Class E Airspace

Separation standard↗

NASA NTRS2015

Pilot Evaluation of a UAS Detect-and-Avoid System's Effectiveness in Remaining Well Clear

Unmanned aircraft will equip with a detect-and-avoid (DAA) system that allows them to comply with the requirement to see and avoid other aircraft, an important layer in the overall set of procedural, strategic and tactical separation methods designed to prevent mid-air collisions. Although the effectiveness of the DAA system will be set to a minimum threshold by regulators, different combinations of algorithms, displays and procedures could be used to meet that minimum. The research presented in this paper indicates the effectiveness of the combined pilot-DAA system as a function of the DAA design requirements and provides data that may be used to model the behavior of pilots when employing such systems. Over the course of two simulations 21 professional UAS pilots evaluated eight different DAA system designs and metrics were collected on their ability to maintain the well clear separation standard. The independent variables were the time horizon at which pilots were alerted to potential losses of well clear, the location of the traffic display, and the tools and informational elements available on the display to aid the pilot in detecting and resolving those potential losses. In the second experiment the UAS encountered two categories of aircraft: those equipped with simulated transponders that could be seen dozens of miles away and those without that were only detectable by a simulated radar within a range of six nautical miles. The data indicate that integrating the traffic display with the primary mission map directly in front of the pilot reduced the frequency of losses of well clear. Improved detection and resolution tools, including explicit maneuver guidance and a trial planning capability, had less of an effect in reducing the frequency of losses but significantly reduced the time in loss when they occurred. The amount of warning time provided to the pilot had a strong effect on their ability to remain well clear: when alerts were first presented with less than about 15 seconds to a predicted loss of well clear pilots were able to maneuver successfully in only 26 percent of encounters, whereas they were about 83 percent successful when they had more than 15 seconds. Pilots' ability to separate from the two categories of aircraft was nearly the same after accounting for the amount of alert time provided in each encounter, although the limited surveillance volume for the non-transponder equipped aircraft meant alerts tended to occur later and therefore were more difficult to resolve.

loss of well clear↗

NASA NTRS2021

Detection and Tracking of Aircraft in the Far-Field from Small Unmanned Aerial Systems

Onboard far-field aircraft detection is needed for safe non-cooperative traffic mitigation in autonomous small Unmanned Aerial System (sUAS) operations. Machine vision systems, based on standard optics and visible light detectors, possess the ideal size, weight, and power (SWaP) requirements for sUAS. This work presents the design and analysis of a novel aircraft detection and tracking pipeline based on optical sensing alone. Key contributions of the work include a refined range inequality model based on sensing and detection with FAA well-clear separation assurance distances between aircraft in mind, a detector fusion method to maximize the benefit of two image detectors, and a comparative analysis of Linear Kalman-filtering and Extended Kalman-filtering to seek optimal tracking performance. The pipeline is evaluated offline against multiple intruder platforms, using two types of flight encounters: multirotor sUAS vs. fixed-wing sUAS and multirotor sUAS vs. general aviation(GA)plane. Analysis is restricted to the rate-limiting head-on and departing collision volume cases vertically separated for safety. Results indicate that it is feasible to use the proposed optical spatial-temporal tracking algorithm to provide adequate alerting time to prevent penetration of well-clear separation volumes for both sUAS and GA aircraft.

Unmanned Aerial System↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Autonomous Contingency Management In Urban Air Mobility: The Communication Network Awareness Machine System

Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) has begun the modernization of the nation’s air transportation system (NAS), with goals to improve system safety, increase operation efficiency and capacity, provide enhanced predictability, resilience and robustness [1]. The overall objective of the Air Traffic Management-eXploration (ATM-X) project is to facilitate the goals of NextGen by conducting research to enable the growing demand of new, mission variant, air vehicles with safe access to the NAS. The implementation and utilization of new and burgeoning technologies that are both flexible, scalable, and systematically user-focused are requisite for ATM-X to achieve its intention of NAS safe entry [2]. Researchers from NASA Langley’s Flight Deck Integration Team have developed a system architecture that would allow ATM-X to leverage the necessary capabilities of an Increasingly Autonomous System (IAS), machine-agent that will promote the safe access and operation of air vehicles within what has become the byproduct of NextGen modernization, a Net-Centric airspace architecture and an Urban Air Mobility (UAM) community. Conducting flight operations within this type of architecture constrains the human-agent’s natural ability by data management. When the massive volume of data, its types, and the acquisition speed at which the data is ingested is observed it becomes evident that the human-agent will be functioning at an operational disadvantage. Therefore, the development and integration of intelligent machine-agents into the flight deck are a necessary implementation to achieve ATM-X overall objective of safe access and operation in the NAS.

Urban Air Mobility↗

NASA NTRS2005

The Small Aircraft Transportation System Higher Volume Operations (SATS HVO) Flight Experiment

This paper provides a summary of conclusions from the Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS) Higher Volume Operations (HVO) Flight Experiment which NASA conducted to determine pilot acceptability of the HVO concept for normal conditions. The SATS HVO concept improves efficiency at non-towered, non-radar airports in Instrument Meteorological Conditions (IMC) while achieving a level of safety equal to today s system. Reported are results from flight experiment data that indicate that the SATS HVO concept is viable. The success of the SATS HVO concept is based on acceptable pilot workload, performance, and subjective criteria when compared to the procedural control operations in use today at non-towered, non-radar controlled airfields in IMC. The HVO Flight Experiment, flown on NASA's Cirrus SR22, used a subset of the HVO Simulation Experiment scenarios and evaluation pilots in order to validate the simulation experiment results. HVO and Baseline (today s system) scenarios flown included: single aircraft arriving for a GPS non-precision approach; aircraft arriving for the approach with multiple traffic aircraft; and aircraft arriving for the approach with multiple traffic aircraft and then conducting a missed approach. Results reveal that all twelve low-time instrument-rated pilots preferred SATS HVO when compared to current procedural separation operations. These pilots also flew the HVO procedures safely and proficiently without additional workload in comparison to today s system (Baseline). Detailed results of pilot flight technical error, and their subjective assessments of workload and situation awareness are presented in this paper.

Williams, Daniel M.↗

NASA NTRS1998

Soot and Sulfuric Acid from Aircraft: Is There Enough to Cause Detrimental Environmental E-kCTSs?

Aerosol from aircraft can affect the environment in three ways: First, soot aerosol has been implicated to cause Icing-tern ozone depletion at mid-latitudes in the lower stratosphere at a rate of approx. 5% per decade. This effect is in addition and unrelated to the polar ozone holes which are strongly influenced by heterogeneous chemistry on polar stratospheric clouds. Second, the most obvious effect of jet aircraft is the formation of visible contrails in the upper troposphere. The Salt Lake City region experienced an 8% increase in cirrus cloud cover over a 15-year period which covariates with an increase in regional commercial air traffic. If soot particles act as freezing nuclei to cause contrail formation heterogeneously, they would be linked to a secondary effect to cloud modification that very likely is climatologically important. Third, a buildup of soot aerosol could reduce the single scatter albedo of stratospheric aerosol from 0.993+0.004 to 0.98, a critical value that has been postulated to separate stratospheric cooling from warming. Thus arises an important question: Do aircraft emit sufficient amounts of soot to have detrimental effects and warrant emission controls? During the 1996 SUCCESS field campaign, we sampled aerosols in the exhaust wake of a Boeing 757 aircraft and determined emission indices for sulfuric acid (EI(sub H2SO4) = 9.0E-2 and 5.0E-1 g/kg (sub FUEL) for 75 and 675 ppm fuel-sulfur, respectively) and soot aerosol (2.2E-3 less than EI(sub SOOT) = l.lE-2 g/kg (sub FUEL)). The soot particle analysis accounted for their fractal nature, determined electron-microscopically, which enhanced the surface area by a factor of 26 and the volume 11-fold over equivalent-volume spheres. The corresponding fuel-sulfur to H2SO4 conversion efficiency was 10% (for 675 ppmm fuel-S) and 37% (for 75 ppmm fuel-S). Applying the H2SO4 emission index to the 1990 fuel use by the worlds commercial fleets of 1.3E11 kg, a conversion efficiency of 30% of 500 ppmm fuel-S would have led to an annual contribution to the atmospheric sulfur budget by aircraft of 2.E7 kg H2SO4. This is about one part in 1.E4 of anthropogenic sulfate from other sources. The soot emission index given above yielded a 1990 injection of soot aerosol by aircraft of 1.E6 kg. Thus, soot amounts to only five percent of the aerosol generated by aircraft. Its reactivity with ozone would have to be 20 times that of sulfuric acid particles to make it chemically significant. Nevertheless, the findings, of stratospheric soot loadings commensurate with aircraft fuel consumption, based on the emission index given above and the assumption of stratospheric residence times of the order of one year implicate aircraft as stratospheric polluters. A trend similar to soot of H2SO4 aerosol loading could not be deciphered, neither from in situ measurements nor SAGE II satellite extinction, against the "noise" due to volcanic eruptions. Observation of soot particles at 20 km altitude which, if emitted by aircraft were generated at 10-12 km altitude, suggests a displacement of those particles against gravity. Because eddy mixing is virtually absent in the lower stratosphere and isentropic mixing explains lofting to only about 15 km, radiometric forces acting on morphologically and chemically asymmetric soot particles must be considered a possibility. The consequence could be an extended residence time of soot against that of sulfuric acid aerosol that would lower the single scatter albedo with time.

Pueschel, R. F.↗

DOE OSTI2021

Transportation Hub Infrastructure Expansion: Decision Support Under Uncertainty

The Athena project (www.athena-mobility.org) has worked to investigate the relationship between the Dallas-Fort Worth Airport (DFW) and the greater Dallas area in order to better understand and therefore better inform future decision-making regarding the critical infrastructure that influence mobility between the airport and the city. Through this work, infrastructure related to curbside pickup and drop-off, parking, public transit, and the road network congestion were identified as critical to the operation of the DFW transportation hub. The infrastructure analysis and expansion aspect of the Athena project is focused on the restructuring of the CTA curb as a hierarchical curb and the building or repurposing of parking infrastructure as the interplay between these two areas. Many sources of uncertainty exist that may impact future airport and transportation hub operations, such as passenger volume growth, population demographic changes over time, electric vehicle (EV) adoption rates, and autonomous vehicle (AV) adoption rates. Due to these sources of uncertainty, we have selected for our research a modeling framework that can capture various types of uncertainty and hedge against those uncertainties in the optimization process. We analyze road network and curb congestion, the rise of transportation networking companies, trends in parking usage, existing policies around this infrastructure, airport revenue streams, and other contributing factors to enable infrastructure decision making with less uncertainty. To accomplish this wholistic analysis, we have developed a novel multi-stage, multi-period stochastic optimization model which considers the airport's decisions from 2025-2045 under different possible future macro trajectories and day-to-day variations in operational conditions captured as "annual representation of operations" scenarios with respective probabilities. This model has also been designed to leverage the outputs of various efforts under the Athena project to create a combined decision framework for infrastructure decisions. These various efforts include the route optimization model, the ASPIRES simulation, the mode choice model, and the SUMO traffic simulation. Our computational experiments of this system at scale have resulted in a working version of our infrastructure model which enables the explicit representation and consideration of various sources of uncertainty in the decision process to enable robust, flexible decision-making. This model has been effectively run on NREL's HPC system, Eagle, with large numbers of stochastic scenarios and shows promise as a scalable tool for robust consideration of uncertainties in airport planning. We have tested our model using 30,240 operational circumstances in total, resulting in a problem with more 200 million variables. This model was solved in several different configurations, and a workflow to simulate the performance of the infrastructure model results was developed and deployed. In general, our results indicate that a combination of remote parking, remote curb infrastructure, and dynamic pricing can generate revenue, reduce emissions, accommodate emerging technologies such as AVs and EVs, and manage airport passenger growth over time. We note the success of the proposed strategy depends on the data collection and forecasting abilities of DFW. We have also seen that the AV adoption by TNCs might necessitate larger amounts of remote curb. The results of this work inform strategies for airport infrastructure decision making, as well as demonstrate the value of an adaptable model, but also indicate that there are avenues remaining where further research would be of value.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

NASA NTRS2016

Pilot Critical Incident Reports as a Means to Identify Human Factors of Remotely Piloted Aircraft

It has been estimated that aviation accidents are typically preceded by numerous minor incidents arising from the same causal factors that ultimately produced the accident. Accident databases provide in-depth information on a relatively small number of occurrences, however incident databases have the potential to provide insights into the human factors of Remotely Piloted Aircraft System (RPAS) operations based on a larger volume of less-detailed reports. Currently, there is a lack of incident data dealing with the human factors of unmanned aircraft systems. An exploratory study is being conducted to examine the feasibility of collecting voluntary critical incident reports from RPAS pilots. Twenty-three experienced RPAS pilots volunteered to participate in focus groups in which they described critical incidents from their own experience. Participants were asked to recall (1) incidents that revealed a system flaw, or (2) highlighted a case where the human operator contributed to system resilience or mission success. Participants were asked to only report incidents that could be included in a public document. During each focus group session, a note taker produced a de-identified written record of the incident narratives. At the end of the session, participants reviewed each written incident report, and made edits and corrections as necessary. The incidents were later analyzed to identify contributing factors, with a focus on design issues that either hindered or assisted the pilot during the events. A total of 90 incidents were reported. Human factor issues included the impact of reduced sensory cues, traffic separation in the absence of an out-the-window view, control latencies, vigilance during monotonous and ultra-long endurance flights, control station design considerations, transfer of control between control stations, the management of lost link procedures, and decision-making during emergencies. Pilots participated willingly and enthusiastically in the study, and generally had little difficulty recalling critical incidents. The results suggest that pilot interviews can be a productive method of gathering information on incidents that might not otherwise be reported. Some of the issues described in the reports have received significant attention in the literature, or are analogous to human factors of manned aircraft. In other cases, incident reports involved human factors that are poorly understood, and have not yet been the subject of extensive study. Although many of the reported incidents were related to pilot error, the participants also provided examples of the positive contribution that humans make to the operation of highly-automated systems.

unmanned aircraft systems↗

NASA NTRS2015

Data Recipes: Toward Creating How-To Knowledge Base for Earth Science Data

Both the diversity and volume of Earth science data from satellites and numerical models are growing dramatically, due to an increasing population of measured physical parameters, and also an increasing variety of spatial and temporal resolutions for many data products. To further complicate matters, Earth science data delivered to data archive centers are commonly found in different formats and structures. NASA data centers, managed by the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS), have developed a rich and diverse set of data services and tools with features intended to simplify finding, downloading, and working with these data. Although most data services and tools have user guides, many users still experience difficulties with accessing or reading data due to varying levels of familiarity with data services, tools, and or formats. The data recipe project at Goddard Earth Science Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC) was initiated in late 2012 for enhancing user support. A data recipe is a How-To online explanatory document, with step-by-step instructions and examples of accessing and working with real data (http:disc.sci.gsfc.nasa.govrecipes). The current suite of recipes has been found to be very helpful, especially to first-time-users of particular data services, tools, or data products. Online traffic to the data recipe pages is significant, even though the data recipe topics are still limited. An Earth Science Data System Working Group (ESDSWG) for data recipes was established in the spring of 2014, aimed to initiate an EOSDIS-wide campaign for leveraging the distributed knowledge within EOSDIS and its user communities regarding their respective services and tools. The ESDSWG data recipe group is working on an inventory and analysis of existing data recipes and tutorials, and will provide guidelines and recommendation for writing and grouping data recipes, and for cross linking recipes to data products. This presentation gives an overview of the data recipe activites at GES DISC and ESDSWG. We are seeking requirements and input from a broader data user community to establish a strong knowledge base for Earth science data research and application implementations.

data recipe↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Communication Network Awareness Machine System Phase I Development: The Intelligent Party-Line Schema

As NextGen continues toward the full implementation of a Net-Centric Architecture (N-CA)it will inherently provide a continuous increase to the Three-Vs components (Volume, Velocity, and Variety) of big data . This will create an insurmountable environment for direct-action aviation personnel (DAAP)as the DAAP’s natural abilities to manage and process data into actionable information will be overmatched by the Three-Vs. Therefore, conducting operations within a N-CA requires that new tools and applications be researched and developed to aid the DAAP’s ability to understand and manage data, mitigate non-normals, create contingency plans and actions. This paper will describe a research area at NASA Langley Research Center known as the Intelligent Party-Line (IPL).

Intelligent Party-Line↗

NASA NTRS2007

Digital Multicasting of Multiple Audio Streams

The Mission Control Center Voice Over Internet Protocol (MCC VOIP) system (see figure) comprises hardware and software that effect simultaneous, nearly real-time transmission of as many as 14 different audio streams to authorized listeners via the MCC intranet and/or the Internet. The original version of the MCC VOIP system was conceived to enable flight-support personnel located in offices outside a spacecraft mission control center to monitor audio loops within the mission control center. Different versions of the MCC VOIP system could be used for a variety of public and commercial purposes - for example, to enable members of the general public to monitor one or more NASA audio streams through their home computers, to enable air-traffic supervisors to monitor communication between airline pilots and air-traffic controllers in training, and to monitor conferences among brokers in a stock exchange. At the transmitting end, the audio-distribution process begins with feeding the audio signals to analog-to-digital converters. The resulting digital streams are sent through the MCC intranet, using a user datagram protocol (UDP), to a server that converts them to encrypted data packets. The encrypted data packets are then routed to the personal computers of authorized users by use of multicasting techniques. The total data-processing load on the portion of the system upstream of and including the encryption server is the total load imposed by all of the audio streams being encoded, regardless of the number of the listeners or the number of streams being monitored concurrently by the listeners. The personal computer of a user authorized to listen is equipped with special- purpose MCC audio-player software. When the user launches the program, the user is prompted to provide identification and a password. In one of two access- control provisions, the program is hard-coded to validate the user s identity and password against a list maintained on a domain-controller computer at the MCC. In the other access-control provision, the program verifies that the user is authorized to have access to the audio streams. Once both access-control checks are completed, the audio software presents a graphical display that includes audiostream-selection buttons and volume-control sliders. The user can select all or any subset of the available audio streams and can adjust the volume of each stream independently of that of the other streams. The audio-player program spawns a "read" process for the selected stream(s). The spawned process sends, to the router(s), a "multicast-join" request for the selected streams. The router(s) responds to the request by sending the encrypted multicast packets to the spawned process. The spawned process receives the encrypted multicast packets and sends a decryption packet to audio-driver software. As the volume or muting features are changed by the user, interrupts are sent to the spawned process to change the corresponding attributes sent to the audio-driver software. The total latency of this system - that is, the total time from the origination of the audio signals to generation of sound at a listener s computer - lies between four and six seconds.

Macha, Mitchell↗