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At least 37 records · Page 2

The Very Light Jet Arrives: Stakeholders and Their Perceptions

This article summarizes the initial results of a systematic study that addressed issues related to the direct and indirect market impact of very light jet (VLJ) aircraft. Although reports in the popular press offer wide-ranging estimates of the impact that these new jets will have on existing air travel, no systematic data exists that may be of use to all potential stakeholders. This introductory study serves to describe potential VLJ users and their perceptions of this new type of aircraft.

Cobb, Richard↗

Forward Contamination of Ocean Worlds: A Stakeholder Conversation

A fundamental requirement for space missions designed to touch “potential habitats” is the single number 10−4, the allowable probability of a single Earth organism contaminating the potential habitat. Many aspects of a mission that affect its complexity and cost – hardware design and manufacture, assembly and test, and mission operations – are driven by this value, so it is important, on the threshold of an era of exploring ocean worlds, to have confidence in it. Yet despite its long pedigree and occasional reviews, we find that the current requirement lacks programmatically defensible justification. At issue are three weaknesses: 1) microbial biology, in particular the science of extremophiles, is a rapidly changing field; 2) forward contamination is both a scientific and an ethical issue, yet no ethics-based conversation is apparent within policy-setting circles; 3) because of these two factors, policy-setting cannot be static. We review the history of the requirement; how the evolving understanding of biology could drive it up or down; how the forward-contamination hazard relates to risk-management practice and to the ethics profession; and how a contemporary stakeholder conversation could adapt lessons already learned by other fields.

Waltemathe, Michael↗

PolarMERRA: A Polar-Focused Global Reanalysis Project for Scientific and Stakeholder Needs

The adequate modeling of physical processes in the Arctic and Antarctic is vital for developing prediction capabilities and for obtaining an understanding of rapidly evolving polar conditions, including their potential global impacts. These processes are often poorly represented in global models and reanalyses, owing to a legacy modeling focus on midlatitude processes, as well as a scarcity of observations needed for model development in polar regions. The polarMERRA initiative, a joint effort between NASA’s Cryospheric Sciences and Modeling and Prediction programs, seeks to improve the representation of cryospheric and polar atmospheric processes and to develop an open-source framework for a quantitively evaluation of polar-relevant variables against current and future satellite and in-situ observations, models, and reanalyses. Here, we evaluate the impacts of spatial resolution and modifications to sea ice, ice sheet, and atmospheric parameterizations on the representation of high latitude conditions by using a quantitative scorecard approach that leverages NASA’s extensive satellite record. Investigations are conducted using the NASA Goddard Earth Observing System model (GEOS) and its data assimilation system (GEOS DAS). Through a quantitative identification of process deficiencies, bias reductions in key surface variables, including temperature and precipitation over cryospheric surfaces, may be achieved. The polarMERRA project additionally seeks to identify additional data sources for use in the GEOS DAS, and to incorporate data and parameterization improvements into future model and reanalysis products for scientific and stakeholder use.

Lauren C Andrews↗

NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement Mission: Leveraging Stakeholder Engagement & Applications Activities to Inform Decision-making

The application of satellite precipitation estimates from NASA’s Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission for decision-making has been a focus for the mission since launch. As a result, GPM data have enabled a range of applications that address societal needs, including water resource management, crop forecasting, ecological monitoring, disaster response, public health, aviation, weather forecasting, and climate modeling, among others. GPM applications activities have continued to focus on user engagement through in person trainings and interviews, workshops, webinars, and educational outreach activities. The goals of these efforts are to synthesize community data needs in order to effectively support and enable decision-making across agencies, academia and the global community. While these efforts have helped the GPM mission establish a large stakeholder community that encompasses federal and state partners, academic institutions, nd private and nonprofit companies, there remains difficulties associated with accessing, processing, and applying the data to support or enable applications. In this article, we present GPM applications strategies and approaches used to enhance the applications value of GPM data, and most importantly, demonstrate how these efforts have and can inform different decision-making contexts. This work also provides a discussion on key lessons learned from the user community and how this information can be utilized to help better support and shape applications approaches for future NASA Earth Science missions.

Satellite precipitation↗

Tracing NASA Contributions Toward Aviation Safety Stakeholder Guidance

The System-Wide Safety project at NASA is developing the concept and a subset of supporting technologies for evolving safety management from a post-accident iterative improvement on safety performed by large commercial operators only to predictive and increasingly autonomous safety functions that are performed during operations across vehicles, airports, and services. The system of interest is the In-time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS), recommended by the National Academies for NASA to develop the concept in coordination with the broad and diverse community of stakeholders in aviation safety. Because the system context is the airspace and aviation industry, it is important to create and maintain traceability from the research work and system architecture elements developed at NASA to community-created roadmaps and aviation agency guidance.

IASMS↗

Energize the Future - Systems Engineering Processes and Methods: Tracing NASA Contributions Toward Aviation Safety Stakeholder Guidance

The System-Wide Safety project at NASA is developing the concept and a subset of supporting technologies for evolving safety management from a post-accident iterative improvement on safety performed by large commercial operators only to predictive and increasingly autonomous safety functions that are performed during operations across vehicles, airports, and services. The system of interest is the In-time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS), recommended by the National Academies for NASA to develop the concept in coordination with the broad and diverse community of stakeholders in aviation safety. Because the system context is the airspace and aviation industry, it is important to create and maintain traceability from the research work and system architecture elements developed at NASA to community-created roadmaps and aviation agency guidance.

MBSE↗

Space Nuclear Power Public and Stakeholder Risk Communication

The 1986 Challenger accident coupled with the Chernobyl nuclear reactor accident increased public concern about the safety of spacecraft using nuclear technology. While three nuclear powered spacecraft had been launched before 1986 with little public interest, future nuclear powered missions would see significantly more public concern and require NASA to increase its efforts to communicate mission risks to the public. In 1987 a separate risk communication area within the Launch Approval Planning Group of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory was created to address public concern about the health, environmental, and safety risks of NASA missions. The lessons learned from the risk communication strategies developed for the nuclear powered Galileo, Ulysses, and Cassini missions are reviewed in this paper and recommendations are given as to how these lessons can be applied to future NASA missions that may use nuclear power systems and other potentially controversial NASA missions.

Galileo↗