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At least 145 records · Page 8

The Multi-Center Airborne Coherent Atmospheric Wind Sensor, MACAWS

In 1992 the atmospheric lidar remote sensing groups of the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, NOAA Environmental Technology Laboratory, and Jet Propulsion Laboratory began a joint collaboration to develop an airborne high-energy Doppler laser radar (lidar) system for atmospheric research and satellite validation and simulation studies. The result is the Multi-center Airborne Coherent Atmospheric Wind Sensor, MACAWS, which has the capability to remotely sense the distribution of wind and absolute aerosol backscatter in the troposphere and lower stratosphere. A factor critical to the programmatic feasibility and technical success of this collaboration has been the utilization of existing components and expertise which were developed for previous atmospheric research by the respective institutions. The motivation for the MACAWS program Is three-fold: to obtain fundamental measurements of sub-synoptic scale processes and features which may be used as a basis to improve sub-grid scale parameterizations in large-scale models; to obtain similar datasets in order to improve the understanding and predictive capabilities on the mesoscale; and to validate (simulate) the performance of existing (planned) satellite-borne sensors. Examples of the latter include participation in the validation of the NASA Scatterometer and the assessment of prospective satellite Doppler lidar for global tropospheric wind measurement. Initial flight tests were made in September 1995; subsequent flights were made in June 1996 following improvements. This paper describes the MACAWS instrument, principles of operation, examples of measurements over the eastern Pacific Ocean and western United States, and future applications.

Rothermel, Jeffry↗

Adventures in Modern Time Series Analysis: From the Sun to the Crab Nebula and Beyond

With the generation of long, precise, and finely sampled time series the Age of Digital Astronomy is uncovering and elucidating energetic dynamical processes throughout the Universe. Fulfilling these opportunities requires data effective analysis techniques rapidly and automatically implementing advanced concepts. The Time Series Explorer, under development in collaboration with Tom Loredo, provides tools ranging from simple but optimal histograms to time and frequency domain analysis for arbitrary data modes with any time sampling. Much of this development owes its existence to Joe Bredekamp and the encouragement he provided over several decades. Sample results for solar chromospheric activity, gamma-ray activity in the Crab Nebula, active galactic nuclei and gamma-ray bursts will be displayed.

solar chromospheric activity↗

Developing an Advanced Environment for Collaborative Computing

Knowledge management in general tries to organize and make available important know-how, whenever and where ever is needed. Today, organizations rely on decision-makers to produce "mission critical" decisions that am based on inputs from multiple domains. The ideal decision-maker has a profound understanding of specific domains that influence the decision-making process coupled with the experience that allows them to act quickly and decisively on the information. In addition, learning companies benefit by not repeating costly mistakes, and by reducing time-to-market in Research & Development projects. Group-decision making tools can help companies make better decisions by capturing the knowledge from groups of experts. Furthermore, companies that capture their customers preferences can improve their customer service, which translates to larger profits. Therefore collaborative computing provides a common communication space, improves sharing of knowledge, provides a mechanism for real-time feedback on the tasks being performed, helps to optimize processes, and results in a centralized knowledge warehouse. This paper presents the research directions. of a project which seeks to augment an advanced collaborative web-based environment called Postdoc, with workflow capabilities. Postdoc is a "government-off-the-shelf" document management software developed at NASA-Ames Research Center (ARC).

Becerra-Fernandez, Irma↗

Theoretical research program to study chemical reactions in AOTV bow shock tubes

The main focus was the development, implementation, and calibration of methods for performing molecular electronic structure calculations to high accuracy. These various methods were then applied to a number of chemical reactions and species of interest to NASA, notably in the area of combustion chemistry. Among the development work undertaken was a collaborative effort to develop a program to efficiently predict molecular structures and vibrational frequencies using energy derivatives. Another major development effort involved the design of new atomic basis sets for use in chemical studies: these sets were considerably more accurate than those previously in use. Much effort was also devoted to calibrating methods for computing accurate molecular wave functions, including the first reliable calibrations for realistic molecules using full CI results. A wide variety of application calculations were undertaken. One area of interest was the spectroscopy and thermochemistry of small molecules, including establishing small molecule binding energies to an accuracy rivaling, or even on occasion surpassing, the experiment. Such binding energies are essential input to modeling chemical reaction processes, such as combustion. Studies of large molecules and processes important in both hydrogen and hydrocarbon combustion chemistry were also carried out. Finally, some effort was devoted to the structure and spectroscopy of small metal clusters, with applications to materials science problems.

Taylor, Peter R.↗

FASTSAT a Mini-Satellite Mission...A Way Ahead

The Fast Affordable Science and Technology Spacecraft (FASTSAT) is a mini-satellite weighing less than 150 kg. FASTSAT was developed as government-industry collaborative research and development flight project targeting rapid access to space to provide an alternative, low cost platform for a variety of scientific, research, and technology payloads. The initial spacecraft was designed to carry six instruments and launch as a secondary rideshare payload. This design approach greatly reduced overall mission costs while maximizing the on-board payload accommodations. FASTSAT was designed from the ground up to meet a challenging short schedule using modular components with a flexible, configurable layout to enable a broad range of payloads at a lower cost and shorter timeline than scaling down a more complex spacecraft. The integrated spacecraft along with its payloads were readied for launch 15 months from authority to proceed. As an ESPA-class spacecraft, FASTSAT is compatible with many different launch vehicles, including Minotaur I, Minotaur IV, Delta IV, Atlas V, Pegasus, Falcon 1/1e, and Falcon 9. These vehicles offer an array of options for launch sites and provide for a variety of rideshare possibilities.

Boudreaux, Mark↗

AWIPS II Application Development, a SPoRT Perspective

The National Weather Service (NWS) is deploying its next‐generation decision support system, called AWIPS II (Advanced Weather Interactive Processing System II). NASA's Short‐term Prediction Research and Transition (SPoRT) Center has developed several software 'plug‐ins' to extend the capabilities of AWIPS II. SPoRT aims to continue its mission of improving short‐term forecasts by providing NASA and NOAA products on the decision support system used at NWS weather forecast offices (WFOs). These products are not included in the standard Satellite Broadcast Network feed provided to WFOs. SPoRT has had success in providing support to WFOs as they have transitioned to AWIPS II. Specific examples of transitioning SPoRT plug‐ins to WFOs with newly deployed AWIPS II systems will be presented. Proving Ground activities (GOES‐R and JPSS) will dominate SPoRT's future AWIPS II activities, including tool development as well as enhancements to existing products. In early 2012 SPoRT initiated the Experimental Product Development Team, a group of AWIPS II developers from several institutions supporting NWS forecasters with innovative products. The results of the team's spring and fall 2013 meeting will be presented. Since AWIPS II developers now include employees at WFOs, as well as many other institutions related to weather forecasting, the NWS has dealt with a multitude of software governance issues related to the difficulties of multiple remotely collaborating software developers. This presentation will provide additional examples of Research‐to‐Operations plugins, as well as an update on how governance issues are being handled in the AWIPS II developer community.

Burks, Jason E.↗

Environmental Justice Needs-Assessment For Health & Air Quality: Assessing the Needs and Capacity of Organizations Working Towards Health and Environmental Justice Related to Health and Air Quality

Health and air quality are concerns in environmental justice (EJ) work, as air contaminants and their adverse health effects inequitably impact communities that are often underrepresented in research and litigation. Previously, the NASA DEVELOP National Program partnered with organizations that focus on a variety of health and air quality concerns and is now committed to partnering directly with EJ organizations to address inequities in health and air quality through the application of Earth observations. To support the establishment of future partnerships, DEVELOP is working to identify potential partners for further EJ research in the U.S. regarding health and air quality. This project conducted a needs assessment with EJ organizations to quantify their EJ involvement, geospatial capacity, and interest in collaborating with DEVELOP. A broad literature review identified multiple factors influencing health and air quality for potential DEVELOP projects: agriculture, heat, wildfires, industry and transportation infrastructure, and miscellaneous factors (e.g., burning, urban heat island effect, smoke plumes, truck exhaust, and noise). The needs assessment showed that 22% of the organizations interviewed were primarily concerned with transportation infrastructure, 21% with industry, 19% with heat, 10% with miscellaneous factors (e.g., resource mining, COVID-19), 8% with wildfires, 7% with agriculture, and 6% with resource mining. This will help inform the DEVELOP Program's pursuit of EJ projects relating to health and air quality. The team also created a directory for communities impacted by air pollutants to connect with geospatial resources and NASA Applied Sciences personnel for future EJ health and air quality work.

Elizabeth Duran↗

Developing SNMS for Full-Spectrum High-Sensitivity In-Situ Isotopic Analysis of Individual Comet Grains Collected by Stardust?

In anticipation of the return of comet (and ISM?) dust grains by the Stardust mission [1] in mid-January next year, Academia Sinica (AS) and Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) have entered into a collaboration to develop instrument and method for the isotopic analysis of these samples. We need to achieve the highest possible sensitivity so that we can analyze individual grains one at a time to the smallest possible size. Only by doing so can we hope to reach one of the main science goals of the mission, namely the recognition of those isotopically distinct grains each carrying the characteristic signature of a particular nucleosynthetic stage of its parent star. In order to facilitate the interpretation of these grains the second requirement of our method is that the measurements must be made over the widest possible mass range before samples exhaustion. For instance, the thermonuclear fusion reactions that produced the isotopes of various major elements of a wide mass range required drastically different temperatures. Therefore their abundances could constrain the conditions at greatly varying depth inside the source star hence its structure and evolution.

Chen, Chun-Yen↗

Autonomous Satellite Operations Via Secure Virtual Mission Operations Center

The science community is interested in improving their ability to respond to rapidly evolving, transient phenomena via autonomous rapid reconfiguration, which derives from the ability to assemble separate but collaborating sensors and data forecasting systems to meet a broad range of research and application needs. Current satellite systems typically require human intervention to respond to triggers from dissimilar sensor systems. Additionally, satellite ground services often need to be coordinated days or weeks in advance. Finally, the boundaries between the various sensor systems that make up such a Sensor Web are defined by such things as link delay and connectivity, data and error rate asymmetry, data reliability, quality of service provisions, and trust, complicating autonomous operations. Over the past ten years, researchers from the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC), General Dynamics, Surrey Satellite Technology Limited (SSTL), Cisco, Universal Space Networks (USN), the U.S. Geological Survey (USGS), the Naval Research Laboratory, the DoD Operationally Responsive Space (ORS) Office, and others have worked collaboratively to develop a virtual mission operations capability. Called VMOC (Virtual Mission Operations Center), this new capability allows cross-system queuing of dissimilar mission unique systems through the use of a common security scheme and published application programming interfaces (APIs). Collaborative VMOC demonstrations over the last several years have supported the standardization of spacecraft to ground interfaces needed to reduce costs, maximize space effects to the user, and allow the generation of new tactics, techniques and procedures that lead to responsive space employment.

Miller, Eric↗

Overview: Small Aircraft Transportation System Airborne Remote Sensing Fuel Droplet Evaporation

The NASA Nebraska Preparation Grant was designed to solidify relationships, intensify communication, and launch collaborative initiatives among Nebraska researchers and key contacts at NASA research centers and enterprises. In doing so, Nebraska was successful in laying the groundwork for the foundation for numerous long-term, mutually beneficial collaborations that were subsequently proposed and awarded in the NASA EPSCoR 2000 competition. The NASA Nebraska EPSCoR Preparation Grant was managed by the same administrative team that oversees Nebraska's NASA Space Grant and EPSCoR programs. An advisory board (later Technical Advisory Committee) made up of voting representatives from all affiliate and partner organizations regularly reviewed grant progress and direction. The University of Nebraska at Omaha's Aviation Institute, the host institution for all three programs, provided additional administrative oversight and program evaluation through established review mechanisms. This structure has served NASA well and has been cited as a model program. The second year of preparation grant funding served as a significant opportunity for Nebraska to lay the groundwork for the continued elevation and success of its NASA EPSCoR program. In anticipation of the NASA EPSCoR 2000 grant competition, Year 2 funding enabled funded researchers to further broaden and enhance the quality and quantity of collaborations with NASA Field Centers, Codes, and Enterprises. The plan set the stage for long-term research and outreach endeavors that have contributed significantly to the achievement of NASA's strategic objectives; the state of Nebraska's economic and aerospace development efforts; and have advanced Nebraska s aeronautics research efforts to a national leadership level. The overarching goal of the NASA Nebraska EPSCoR Preparation grant was met by facilitating research endeavors among Nebraska faculty that addressed research and technology priorities of the NASA Field Centers, Codes, and Strategic Enterprises. During the first year of funding, Nebraska established open and frequent lines of communication with university affairs officers and other key personnel at all NASA Centers and Enterprises, and facilitated the development of collaborations between and among junior faculty in the state and NASA researchers. As a result, Nebraska initiated a major research cluster, the Small Aircraft Transportation System Nebraska Implementation Template.

Bowen, Brent↗

Deep Space Habitat Concept of Operations for Extended Duration Transit Missions

NASA's Capability-Driven Framework (CDF) describes an approach for progressively extending human exploration missions farther into the Solar System for longer periods of time as allowed by developments in technology and spacecraft systems. Within this framework design reference missions (DRMs) targeted for several specific destinations are being used to assess different combinations of vehicles, operations, and advanced technologies to help understand which combination will best support expanded human exploration both efficiently and sustainably. Several of the identified destinations have been found to require missions with a round trip duration exceeding one year. These mission durations exceed the capabilities of current human-rated spacecraft if resupply from Earth is not possible. This makes the design of an efficient and reliable Deep Space Habitat (DSH) critical for reaching these destinations. The paper will describe the current understanding of DSH capabilities and functions that must be exhibited by any future habitat design for these missions. This description of the DSH is presented in the form of a concept of operation, which focuses on the functions that any DSH must provide, as opposed to a specific DSH design concept. Development of a concept of operations, based on DRM features, provides a common basis for assessing the viability of design concepts incorporating differing configurations and technologies. A study team with representation from several NASA Centers and relevant engineering and scientific disciplines collaborated to develop this DSH concept of operations for the transit phases of these missions. The transit phase of a mission is defined as the time after leaving Earth but before arrival at the destination and the time after leaving the destination but before arriving back at Earth. These transit phases were found to have many common features across all of the destinations being assessed for the CDF and thus arguing for a common concept of operations for all of the associated DRMs. The paper first describes the CDF and potential destinations being considered within this framework. DRMs representative of those currently being assessed will then be discussed to illustrate the range of capabilities that the DSH must support. The 18 functions identified by the multi-discipline analysis team are then described at a summary level. Several specific examples of the potential use for this concept of operations are described.

Hoffman, Stephen J.↗

Gateway to the Future: Lessons Learned in Development of the Refueling Systems for NASA's First Lunar Space Station

Developed in collaboration with international and commercial partners, Gateway will be humanity’s first space station around the Moon as a vital component of NASA’s deep space exploration plans to the Moon, Mars and beyond. As part of it’s focus on developing a sustainable, long term lunar capability, both it’s Xenon based Solar Electric Propulsion System, as well as it’s bi-propellant Reaction Control System of the Gateway are designed to be on-orbit refuellable. Through design studies, numerical modeling, hardware development, and early testing, the system architecture has undergone significant changes to meet mission requirements and utilize evolving hardware capabilities between concept formulation and it’s successful completion of it’s Critical Design Review. This paper presents key lessons learned during this process, highlighting specific design elements and test results that contribute to a robust and adaptable refueling system for the Gateway.

Christopher Radke↗

Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Data Reporting (TAMDAR) Overview

This paper is an overview of the Tropospheric Airborne Meteorological Data Reporting (TAMDAR) project, giving some history on the project, various applications of the atmospheric data, and future ideas and plans. As part of NASA's Aviation Safety and Security Program, the TAMDAR project developed a small low-cost sensor that collects useful meteorological data and makes them available in near real time to improve weather forecasts. This activity has been a joint effort with FAA, NOAA, universities, and industry. A tri-agency team collaborated by developing a concept of operations, determining the sensor specifications, and evaluating sensor performance as reported by Moosakhanian et. al. (2006). Under contract with Georgia Tech Research Institute, NASA worked with AirDat of Raleigh, NC to develop the sensor. The sensor is capable of measuring temperature, relative humidity, pressure, and icing. It can compute pressure altitude, indicated and true air speed, ice accretion rate, wind speed and direction, peak and average turbulence, and eddy dissipation rate. The overall development process, sensor capabilities, and performance based on ground and flight tests is reported by Daniels (2002), Daniels et. al. (2004) and by Tsoucalas et. al. (2006). An in-service evaluation of the sensor was performed called the Great Lakes Fleet Experiment (GLFE), first reported by Moninger et. al. (2004) and Mamrosh et. al. (2005). In this experiment, a Mesaba Airlines fleet was equipped to collect meteorological data over the Great Lakes region during normal revenue-producing flights.

Daniels, Taumi S.↗

Gateway to the Future: Lessons Learned in Development of the Refueling Systems for NASA's First Lunar Space Station

Developed in collaboration with international and commercial partners, Gateway will be humanity’s first crewed space station around the Moon as a vital component of NASA’s Artemis Program for exploration to the Moon, Mars and beyond. As part of it’s focus on developing a sustainable, long term lunar capability, both Xenon based Solar Electric Propulsion System, as well as bi-propellant Reaction Control System of Gateway are designed to be on-orbit refuelable. Through design studies, numerical modeling, hardware development, and substantial testing, the system architecture has undergone significant changes to meet mission requirements and utilize evolving hardware capabilities between concept formulation and the successful completion of its Critical Design Review. This paper presents key lessons learned during this process, highlighting specific design elements and test results that contribute to a robust and adaptable refueling system for the Gateway.

Christopher Radke↗

Software To Secure Distributed Propulsion Simulations

Distributed-object computing systems are presented with many security threats, including network eavesdropping, message tampering, and communications middleware masquerading. NASA Glenn Research Center, and its industry partners, has taken an active role in mitigating the security threats associated with developing and operating their proprietary aerospace propulsion simulations. In particular, they are developing a collaborative Common Object Request Broker Architecture (CORBA) Security (CORBASec) test bed to secure their distributed aerospace propulsion simulations. Glenn has been working with its aerospace propulsion industry partners to deploy the Numerical Propulsion System Simulation (NPSS) object-based technology. NPSS is a program focused on reducing the cost and time in developing aerospace propulsion engines

Blaser, Tammy M.↗

Infusion of AI/ML Technology into Operational NASA Data Systems

NASA has been developing a variety of Artificial Intelligence / Machine Learning technologies related to Earth Observations. In most cases, the full value of such a technology is realized when it is infused into an operational system. NASA’s Earth Science Data Systems program has been formulating repeatable methods to execute technology infusion. These efforts include the Advancing Collaborative Connections for Earth System Science (ACCESS) program, a Technology Infusion Playbook, and an assemblage of working groups investigating methods for infusion collaboration, community development, and capacity building. ESDS has also been executing a pathfinder activity to infuse a machine-learning-driven recommender of science keywords for Earth Observation datasets, which is intended to be used for metadata curation in the Earth Observation System Data and Information System.

C Lynnes↗

Quantitative Comparison of Proprietary and Open-Source Georeferencing Tools for Use with Astronaut Photography

The Crew Earth Observations (CEO) Facility within the Earth Science and Remote Sensing Unit at NASA’s Johnson Space Center supports the acquisition, analysis, and curation of astronaut photography of Earth’s surface and atmosphere. Astronauts on the International Space Station (ISS) respond to requests from CEO to acquire imagery of scientific and education targets, to include high profile targets in response to activations from the International Charter for Space & Major Disasters (also known as the International Disaster Charter, or IDC) and NASA’s Disasters Program. CEO facilitates the acquisition of astronaut photography in response to IDC events and delivers georeferenced data products to the United States Geological Survey (USGS) for distribution to the disaster community. Using GeoRef, an internal web-based tool developed in collaboration with NASA’s Ames Research Center, CEO generates data packages of georeferenced imagery, uncertainty images for assessing control and tie point accuracy, and metadata documenting raw and processed data. Operational experience with the Georef software identified vulnerabilities to internal code and server errors that can significantly increase time of data production. As such, CEO developed a backup procedure in case the GeoRef software experiences front-end or back-end errors. A system using OSGEO’s open-source QGIS software combined with a semi-automated pipeline using the object-oriented Python language and the Geospatial Abstract Library for generating metadata is quantitatively compared to GeoRef’s data package for quality and productivity. Root Mean Square Error (RMSE) provides a standard measurement of data quality as it relates to ground error. Assessing RMSE measurements generated from georeferenced astronaut photographs acquired with different obliquity and focal length offers a comprehensive accuracy assessment of the software’s transformation algorithms. This assessment will indicate the software's ability to produce data products with the least ground-error or highest data quality regarding ground accuracy. In addition, a comparison of the software’s efficiency in generating a data package that includes georeferenced images, metadata, and uncertainty images for measuring tie/ground point error was performed. Initial results, based on the comparison of three nadir-facing astronaut photographs acquired with a 95mm focal length, reveal the QGIS-based system's average RMSE is 2.36 (pixels) suggesting its georectification system produces data products that meet and perhaps improve upon Georef solution's average RMSE of 32.99 (pixels). However, the QGIS system was unable to reproduce two unique Georef data products, uncertainty images for measuring tie and control point errors and a translated unwrapped image. In addition, the Georef software is designed to accept handheld camera pose information from a hardware component (Geosens) scheduled for deployment on the ISS in late 2018; this information is intended to provide increased accuracy and auto-registration capability for astronaut photographs. Future work is expected to determine the QGIS-based georectification system’s potential as an open-source alternative (and operational backup) to Georef for georeferencing the full range of resolutions and viewing angles unique to handheld digital camera imagery in support of ISS disaster response activities.

Jagge, Amy M.↗

Understanding the International Space Station Crew Perspective following Long-Duration Missions through Data Analytics & Visualization of Crew Feedback

The International Space Station (ISS) first became a home and research laboratory for NASA and International Partner crewmembers over 16 years ago. Each ISS mission lasts approximately 6 months and consists of three to six crewmembers. After returning to Earth, most crewmembers participate in an extensive series of 30+ debriefs intended to further understand life onboard ISS and allow crews to reflect on their experiences. Examples of debrief data collected include ISS crew feedback about sleep, dining, payload science, scheduling and time planning, health & safety, and maintenance. The Flight Crew Integration (FCI) Operational Habitability (OpsHab) team, based at Johnson Space Center (JSC), is a small group of Human Factors engineers and one stenographer that has worked collaboratively with the NASA Astronaut office and ISS Program to collect, maintain, disseminate and analyze this data. The database provides an exceptional and unique resource for understanding the "crew perspective" on long duration space missions. Data is formatted and categorized to allow for ease of search, reporting, and ultimately trending, in order to understand lessons learned, recurring issues and efficiencies gained over time. Recently, the FCI OpsHab team began collaborating with the NASA JSC Knowledge Management team to provide analytical analysis and visualization of these over 75,000 crew comments in order to better ascertain the crew's perspective on long duration spaceflight and gain insight on changes over time. In this initial phase of study, a text mining framework was used to cluster similar comments and develop measures of similarity useful for identifying relevant topics affecting crew health or performance, locating similar comments when a particular issue or item of operational interest is identified, and providing search capabilities to identify information pertinent to future spaceflight systems and processes for things like procedure development and training. In addition, the comments were scored for sentiment using a polarity scoring algorithm to identify both positive and negative comments for particular groups and clusters, allowing the team to make analytically informed decisions regarding future hardware and operating procedures. The use of polarity scoring with time series analysis was used to provide insight into how crew health and habitability is changing throughout various spaceflight increments or the station lifecycle as a whole. Finally, a visualization framework was developed to address the needs of the end users to search for and analyze comments by user, category or mission. This paper will discuss how the use of an analytical framework in conjunction with the current human interface, improved the understanding of crew perspective and shortened the time for analysis allowing for more informed decisions and rapid development of improvements. These methods are significantly optimizing the way that this valuable data can be assessed and applied to current and future spaceflight design and development. This collaboration allows the FCI OpsHab team to effectively analyze and share data in a more automated and timely fashion. Trends are no longer derived manually and can be illustrated effectively and accurately with these evolving techniques to an ever growing group of human spaceflight end users.

Bryant, Cody↗