Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “networked communities”

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 37 records · Page 2

Metrics for Operator Situation Awareness, Workload, and Performance in Automated Separation Assurance Systems

A research consortium of scientists and engineers from California State University Long Beach (CSULB), San Jose State University Foundation (SJSUF), California State University Northridge (CSUN), Purdue University, and The Boeing Company was assembled to evaluate the impact of changes in roles and responsibilities and new automated technologies, being introduced in the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen), on operator situation awareness (SA) and workload. To meet these goals, consortium members performed systems analyses of NextGen concepts and airspace scenarios, and concurrently evaluated SA, workload, and performance measures to assess their appropriateness for evaluations of NextGen concepts and tools. The following activities and accomplishments were supported by the NRA: a distributed simulation, metric development, systems analysis, part-task simulations, and large-scale simulations. As a result of this NRA, we have gained a greater understanding of situation awareness and its measurement, and have shared our knowledge with the scientific community. This network provides a mechanism for consortium members, colleagues, and students to pursue research on other topics in air traffic management and aviation, thus enabling them to make greater contributions to the field

Strybel, Thomas Z.↗

Impacts and Conclusions of NASA DEVELOP’s Environmental Justice Landscape Analyses and Feasibility Studies

The NASA DEVELOP National Program builds dual capacity in their partner organizations and participants (students and early or transitioning career professionals) to apply Earth science and remote sensing for decision making about environmental and policy issues. The first iteration of projects at DEVELOP’s Environmental Justice (EJ) node conducted landscape analyses to identify geospatial understandings and needs of organizations working at the intersection of EJ and disasters and air quality. Their findings about collaboration, community engagement, networking, and holistic approaches to justice informed the planning and structures of the EJ node’s successive feasibility projects, which leverage NASA Earth observations and sociodemographic and economic data to provide geospatial analyses tailored to partner concerns. This poster provides an overview of DEVELOP’s approach to conducting EJ feasibility projects, use of Earth observations, end products, project outcomes, challenges, and impacts.

Julianne Bo-Heen Liu↗

NASA/DOD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project. Report 35: The use of computer networks in aerospace engineering

This research used survey research to explore and describe the use of computer networks by aerospace engineers. The study population included 2000 randomly selected U.S. aerospace engineers and scientists who subscribed to Aerospace Engineering. A total of 950 usable questionnaires were received by the cutoff date of July 1994. Study results contribute to existing knowledge about both computer network use and the nature of engineering work and communication. We found that 74 percent of mail survey respondents personally used computer networks. Electronic mail, file transfer, and remote login were the most widely used applications. Networks were used less often than face-to-face interactions in performing work tasks, but about equally with reading and telephone conversations, and more often than mail or fax. Network use was associated with a range of technical, organizational, and personal factors: lack of compatibility across systems, cost, inadequate access and training, and unwillingness to embrace new technologies and modes of work appear to discourage network use. The greatest positive impacts from networking appear to be increases in the amount of accurate and timely information available, better exchange of ideas across organizational boundaries, and enhanced work flexibility, efficiency, and quality. Involvement with classified or proprietary data and type of organizational structure did not distinguish network users from nonusers. The findings can be used by people involved in the design and implementation of networks in engineering communities to inform the development of more effective networking systems, services, and policies.

Bishop, Ann P.↗

National Aeronautics and Space Administration Training Grant Supplement

The following section summarizes the impact of the Ohio Space Grant Consortium (OSGC) in Ohio and to NASA over the last four-year period (February 1, 2001 to April 30, 2005) and highlights the important accomplishments of the consortium. The strength of the OSGC network of universities, community colleges, government agencies, industry, and outreach affiliates is well-established and is growing. The OSGC Consortium Management Structure was designed and remains committed to using the talents and diversity of everyone within this collaborative network, and operational policies and procedures are such that all consortium members are active contributors resulting in quality OSGC programs in research, education and service, while receiving a relatively small amount of NASA funds. The number of quality activities, both on- and off-campus, and collaborations/partnerships that OSGC has established with NASA and government agencies, state and local government, educational institutions, and private industry, has been impressive. Further desired university affiliate expansion requires additional funds. Diversity is shown in the OSGC 12-member Executive Committee by the presence of three campus representatives from Central State University, Wilberforce University, and The Ohio State University (two underrepresented minority, one female). One additional female campus representative (Cleveland State University) is currently on sabbatical leave and a valuable alternate member attends. Other additional female and underrepresented minority members are on the larger OSGC Advisory committee. All committee members participate fully in all consortium management and policy decisions. The OSGC Executive Committee strives to achieve and communicate a culture of trust, respect, teamwork, open communication, creativity, and empowerment. These programs have shown results and impact by their visibility and importance to Ohio and to NASA, resulting in strategic alliances created throughout Ohio. These alliances have improved over the last 4 years.

DeWitt, Kenneth J.↗

Centennial of Flight Educational Outreach

The Centennial of Flight Education Outreach project worked with community partners to disseminate NASA Education materials and the Centennial of Flight CD-ROM as a vehicle to increase national awareness of NASA's Aerospace Education products, services and programs. The Azimuth Education Foundation and the Ninety Nines, an International Women Pilots Association, Inc. were chartered to conduct education outreach to the formal and informal educational community. The Dryden Education Office supported the development of a training and information distribution program that established a national group of prepared Centennial of Flight Ambassadors, with a mission of community education outreach. These Ambassadors are members of the Ninety Nines and through the Azimuth Foundation, they assisted the AECC on the national level to promote and disseminate Centennial of Flight and other educational products. Our objectives were to explore partnership outreach growth opportunities with consortium efforts between organizations. This project directly responded to the highlights of NASA s Implementation Plan for Education. It was structured to network, involve the community, and provide a solid link to active educators and current students with NASA education information. Licensed female pilots who live and work in local communities across the nation carried the link. This partnership has been extremely gratifying to all of those Ninety-Nines involved, and they eagerly look forward to further work opportunities.

McCarthy, Marianne↗

Working Toward A National Coordinated Soil Moisture Monitoring Network: Vision, Progress, and Future Directions

Soil moisture is a critical land surface variable, impacting the water, energy, and carbon cycles. While in situ soil moisture monitoring networks are still developing, there is no cohesive strategy or framework to coordinate, integrate, or disseminate these diverse data sources in a synergistic way that can improve our ability to understand climate variability at the national, state, and local levels. Thus, a national strategy is needed to guide network deployment, sustainable network operation, data integration and dissemination, and user-focused product development. The National Coordinated Soil Moisture Monitoring Network (NCSMMN) is a federally led, multi-institution effort that aims to address these needs by capitalizing on existing wide-ranging soil moisture monitoring activities, increasing the utility of observational data, and supporting their strategic application to the full range of decision-making needs. The goals of the NCSMMN are to 1) establish a national “network of networks” that effectively demonstrates data integration and operational coordination of diverse in situ networks; 2) build a community of practice around soil moisture measurement, interpretation, and application—a “network of people” that links data providers, researchers, and the public; and 3) support research and development (R&D) on techniques to merge in situ soil moisture data with remotely sensed and modeled hydrologic data to create user-friendly soil moisture maps and associated tools. The overarching mission of the NCSMMN is to provide coordinated high-quality, nationwide soil moisture information for the public good by supporting applications like drought and flood monitoring, water resource management, agricultural and forestry planning, and fire danger ratings.

C. Bruce Baker↗

Advanced Air Mobility Vertiport Considerations: A List and Overview

Advanced air mobility (AAM) is an emerging field in aeronautics that involves utilizing small aircraft for everyday transportation and other services, and many AAM aircraft are envisioned to take off and land at new infrastructure termed vertiports. This paper describes a variety of considerations related to AAM vertiports that need to be considered in the planning for and deployment of vertiports in practice. The factors include siting, design, regulations, safety, environmental impact, social acceptance, equity, and operational integration factors. Over 450 considerations were compiled from Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) participating in NASA’s AAM Ecosystem Working Groups (AEWGs) in October 2021. This paper consolidates these considerations and broadly disseminates the valuable knowledge of these SMEs. These considerations can be used by researchers to conduct demand and network analysis, local transportation planners to develop AAM networks for their community, and the AAM ecosystem members to identify policy, standards, and research gaps.

vertiport considerations↗

NASA's unique networking environment

Networking is an infrastructure technology; it is a tool for NASA to support its space and aeronautics missions. Some of NASA's networking problems are shared by the commercial and/or military communities, and can be solved by working with these communities. However, some of NASA's networking problems are unique and will not be addressed by these other communities. Individual characteristics of NASA's space-mission networking enviroment are examined, the combination of all these characteristics that distinguish NASA's networking systems from either commercial or military systems is explained, and some research areas that are important for NASA to pursue are outlined.

Johnson, Marjory J.↗

Computer networking at SLR stations

There are several existing communication methods to deliver data from the satellite laser ranging (SLR) station to the SLR data center and back: telephonmodem, telex, and computer networks. The SLR scientific community has been exploiting mainly INTERNET, BITNET/EARN, and SPAN. The total of 56 countries are connected to INTERNET and the number of nodes is exponentially growing. The computer networks mentioned above and others are connected through E-mail protocol. The scientific progress of SLR requires the increase of communication speed and the amount of the transmitted data. The TOPEX/POSEIDON test campaign required to deliver Quick Look data (1.7 kB/pass) from a SLR site to SLR data center within 8 hours and full rate data (up to 500 kB/pass) within 24 hours. We developed networking for the remote SLR station in Helwan, Egypt. The reliable scheme for data delivery consists of: compression of MERIT2 format (up to 89 percent), encoding to ASCII Me (files); and e-mail sending from SLR station--e-mail receiving, decoding, and decompression at the center. We do propose to use the ZIP method for compression/decompression and the UUCODE method for ASCII encoding/decoding. This method will be useful for stations connected via telephonemodems or commercial networks. The electronics delivery could solve the problem of the too late receiving of the FR data by SLR data center.

Novotny, Antonin↗

A Future for Rotorcraft that Engages with New Application Domains

The objective of this paper is to present ideas related to possible new application domains to consider for future rotorcraft research and development efforts. Some of these application domains have been points of discussion in an earlier body of work at NASA Ames Research Center, but some are anticipated to be wholly new. The goal is to aid in securing a robust and expansive rotorcraft research community for the next four decades at least. To achieve that goal and to pursue the identified new application domains, it will be essential to engage in collaborative networking with other research communities such as intelligent systems developers and roboticists.

Vehicle Autonomy↗

NSI customer service representatives and user support office: NASA Science Internet

The NASA Science Internet, (NSI) was established in 1987 to provide NASA's Offices of Space Science and Applications (OSSA) missions with transparent wide-area data connectivity to NASA's researchers, computational resources, and databases. The NSI Office at NASA/Ames Research Center has the lead responsibility for implementing a total, open networking program to serve the OSSA community. NSI is a full-service communications provider whose services include science network planning, network engineering, applications development, network operations, and network information center/user support services. NSI's mission is to provide reliable high-speed communications to the NASA science community. To this end, the NSI Office manages and operates the NASA Science Internet, a multiprotocol network currently supporting both DECnet and TCP/IP protocols. NSI utilizes state-of-the-art network technology to meet its customers' requirements. THe NASA Science Internet interconnects with other national networks including the National Science Foundation's NSFNET, the Department of Energy's ESnet, and the Department of Defense's MILNET. NSI also has international connections to Japan, Australia, New Zealand, Chile, and several European countries. NSI cooperates with other government agencies as well as academic and commercial organizations to implement networking technologies which foster interoperability, improve reliability and performance, increase security and control, and expedite migration to the OSI protocols.

Source record↗

Developing a Fault Management Guidebook for Nasa's Deep Space Robotic Missions

NASA designs and builds systems that achieve incredibly ambitious goals, as evidenced by the Curiosity rover traversing on Mars, the highly complex International Space Station orbiting our Earth, and the compelling plans for capturing, retrieving and redirecting an asteroid into a lunar orbit to create a nearby a target to be investigated by astronauts. In order to accomplish these feats, the missions must be imbued with sufficient knowledge and capability not only to realize the goals, but also to identify and respond to off-nominal conditions. Fault Management (FM) is the discipline of establishing how a system will respond to preserve its ability to function even in the presence of faults. In 2012, NASA released a draft FM Handbook in an attempt to coalesce the field by establishing a unified terminology and a common process for designing FM mechanisms. However, FM approaches are very diverse across NASA, especially between the different mission types such as Earth orbiters, launch vehicles, deep space robotic vehicles and human spaceflight missions, and the authors were challenged to capture and represent all of these views. The authors recognized that a necessary precursor step is for each sub-community to codify its FM policies, practices and approaches in individual, focused guidebooks. Then, the sub-communities can look across NASA to better understand the different ways off-nominal conditions are addressed, and to seek commonality or at least an understanding of the multitude of FM approaches. This paper describes the development of the "Deep Space Robotic Fault Management Guidebook," which is intended to be the first of NASA's FM guidebooks. Its purpose is to be a field-guide for FM practitioners working on deep space robotic missions, as well as a planning tool for project managers. Publication of this Deep Space Robotic FM Guidebook is expected in early 2015. The guidebook will be posted on NASA's Engineering Network on the FM Community of Practice website so that it will be available to all NASA projects. Future plans for subsequent guidebooks for the other NASA sub-communities are proposed.

Fesq, Lorraine M.↗

LANDSAT technology transfer to the private and public sectors through community colleges and other locally available institutions

Major first year accomplishments are summarized and plans are provided for the next 12-month period for a program established by NASA with the Environmental Research Institute of Michigan to investigate methods of making LANDSAT technology readily available to a broader set of private sector firms through local community colleges. The program applies a network where the major participants are NASA, university or research institutes, community colleges, and obtain hands-on training in LANDSAT data analysis techniques, using a desk-top, interactive remote analysis station which communicates with a central computing facility via telephone line, and provides for generation of land cover maps and data products via remote command.

Rogers, R. H.↗

Policy issues in interconnecting networks

To support the activities of the Federal Research Coordinating Committee (FRICC) in creating an interconnected set of networks to serve the research community, two workshops were held to address the technical support of policy issues that arise when interconnecting such networks. The workshops addressed the required and feasible technologies and architectures that could be used to satisfy the desired policies for interconnection. The results of the workshop are documented.

Leiner, Barry M.↗

Unalakleet Climate: Analyzing Permafrost Degradation and Drainage Networks in Unalakleet, Alaska

The coastal community of Unalakleet is currently the 8th most at-risk community in Alaska due to the adverse effects of climate change that include permafrost degradation, severe coastal erosion, and sea-level rise-induced flood inundation caused by increasingly frequent storm surges. In response, the community has started a managed relocation with support from the Native Village of Unalakleet (NVU) and the National Renewable Energy Lab (NREL)’s Alaska campus in Fairbanks. The Unalakleet Climate NASA DEVELOP team partnered with NREL to provide remote sensing support and analysis for resilience planning in Unalakleet, supporting their ongoing relocation efforts and guiding future expansion. The team utilized Sentinel-1 C-Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR), WorldView-2, and WorldView-3 datasets from 2017 – 2023 to analyze seasonal summer subsidence and utilized a 2014 Ancillary USGS 5 m Alaska DEM to conduct drainage network analyses that included watershed delineation and Height Above Nearest Drainage (HAND) analysis. The team also used high-resolution WorldView images to locate stable reference points that served as quality control for the team’s analyses. The team’s end products included maps containing subsidence and drainage zones information at and surrounding the relocation site. The team’s products provide NREL with valuable data that enables them to better assist Unalakleet’s managed relocation and assists Unalakleet with adapting to the catastrophic effects of climate change and build resilience in a community on the front lines of climate change.

Ian Lee↗

Demand access communications for TDRSS users

The Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) has long been used to provide reliable low and high-data rate relay services between user spacecraft in Earth orbit and the ground. To date, these TDRSS services have been implemented via prior scheduling based upon estimates of user needs and mission event timelines. While this approach may be necessary for large users that require greater amounts of TDRSS resources, TDRSS can potentially offer the planned community of smaller science missions (e.g., the small explorer missions), and other emerging users, the unique opportunity for services on demand. In particular, innovative application of the existing TDRSS Multiple Access (MA) subsystem, with its phased array antenna, could be used to implement true demand access services without modification to either the TDRSS satellites or the user transponder, thereby introducing operational and performance benefits to both the user community and the Space Network. In this paper, candidate implementations of demand access service via the TDRSS MA subsystem are examined in detail. Both forward and return link services are addressed and a combination of qualitative and quantitative assessments are provided. The paper also identifies further areas for investigation in this ongoing activity that is being conducted by GSFC/Code 531 under the NASA Code O Advanced Systems Program.

Zillig, David↗