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At least 145 records · Page 8

Developing Science Operations Concepts for the Future of Planetary Surface Exploration

Through fly-by, orbiter, rover, and even crewed missions, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has been extremely successful in exploring planetary bodies throughout our Solar System. The focus on increasingly complex Mars orbiter and rover missions has helped us understand how Mars has evolved over time and whether life has ever existed on the red planet. However, large strategic knowledge gaps (SKGs) still exist in our understanding of the evolution of the Solar System (e.g. the Lunar Exploration Analysis Group, Small Bodies Analysis Group, and Mars Exploration Program Analysis Group). Sending humans to these bodies is a critical part of addressing these SKGs in order to transition to a new era of planetary exploration by 2050.

Young, K. E.↗

Air Traffic Management Technology Demonstration - 3 (ATD-3): Operational Concept for the Integration of ATD-3 Capabilities Version 1.0

ATD-3 has developed four capabilities to address its goal and objectives. The four ATD-3 capabilities include: Dynamic Weather Routes (DWR), Multi-Flight Common Routes (MFCR), Traffic Aware Strategic Aircrew Requests (TASAR), and Dynamic Routes for Arrivals in Weather (DRAW). This document describes the long-term, mature vision for the use and incorporation of the ATD-3 capabilities into the National Airspace System (NAS). This vision describes their complementary interaction and the benefit capture that accrues from use. Recognizing that all capabilities are unlikely to be implemented in unison, each of the capabilities is designed and able to be implemented independently. As discrete portions of the integrated capabilities are planned, additional integration efforts should be undertaken to validate the complementary interactions and benefit pool are realized from the selected subset.

ConOps↗

Mars Pathfinder Mission Operations Concept

Mars Pathfinder is one of the first of NASA's Discovery series of low cost planetary missions. A number of innovative design, fabrication, and management techniques have been adopted during the development phase to stay within the percent 150M (FY

Low↗

Exploring Concepts of Operations for On-Demand Passenger Air Transportation

In recent years, a surge of interest in "flying cars" for city commutes has led to rapid development of new technologies to help make them and similar on-demand mobility platforms a reality. To this end, this paper provides analyses of the stakeholders involved, their proposed operational concepts, and the hazards and regulations that must be addressed. Three system architectures emerged from the analyses, ranging from conventional air taxi to revolutionary fully autonomous aircraft operations, each with vehicle safety functions allocated differently between humans and machines. Advancements for enabling technologies such as distributed electric propulsion and artificial intelligence have had major investments and initial experimental success, but may be some years away from being deployed for on-demand passenger air transportation at scale.

Nneji, Victoria Chibuogu↗

Commercial Low-Earth Orbit Destination (CLD) Concept of Operations

This concept of operations describes: - High-level Government goals, objectives, and needs for the CLD program, vehicle(s), and missions, - Strategies, policies, and processes for developing, certifying, maintaining, using, and retiring CLDs in the context of Government use, and - Government and CLD partner roles, responsibilities, and interactions during various phases of Government CLD operations. The intent of this document is to describe the overall high-level concept of how the end-to-end CLD service will be used to convey the nature and scope of services the Government intends to procure from the CLD partner. It will provide insight into NASA’s concepts for CLD operations rather than to provide mature, explicit, or complete requirements. It addresses how the concept of operations will be used to meet NASA expectations from an operational perspective to facilitate an understanding of the end-to-end CLD service needs, goals, and objectives (NGOs). Formal CLD requirements and standards are detailed in the NASA Commercial LEO Development Program’s (CLDP) various requirements, interface, process, and standards documents, as well as the contractual Statements of Work (SOW) and Data Requirement Deliverables (DRD). As such, the Concept of Operations can use terms such as “should” or “may” or “expects to” since it is not a contractual requirements document. It exists solely to convey the initial nature and type of services the Government intends to procure and is not, per se, a requirements document.

Operations↗

A Concept for Flexible Operations and Optimized Traffic into Metroplex Regions

A "Flexible Flight Operations" concept for airport metroplexes was studied. A flexible flight is one whose destination airport is not assigned until a threshold is reached near the arrival area at which time the runway which reduces overall delay is assigned. The concept seeks to increase throughput by exploiting flexibility. The quantification of best-case benefits from the concept was pursued to establish whether concept research is warranted. Findings indicate that indeed the concept has potential for significant reductions in delay (and cost due to delay) in the N90 (NY/NJ) and SCT (Southern California) metroplexes. Delay reductions of nearly 26% are possible in N90 when 30% of the commercial airline flights are flexible (smartly selected by their low probability of connecting passengers); nearly 40% delay reduction is found when 50% of the flights are flexible. In the SCT metroplex, delay reductions estimates are greater. Greater reductions result at SCT since it is less constrained currently than N90, providing "more room" to take advantage of flexibility. Using the flexible operations concept for on-demand/air taxi and General Aviation flights were found to be beneficial at NY/NJ, indicating the flexible operations concepts may be useful to wide variety of users..

DeLaurentis, Daniel↗

NASA 2007 Western States Fire Missions (WSFM)

This presentation describes the objectives of the 2007 Western States Fire Mission (WSFM), which included demonstrating capabilities of the Ikhana unmanned aerial system (UAS) to overfly and collect sensor data on widespread fires throughout the Western United States, demonstrating long-endurance (20+ hours) mission capabilities, and delivering real-time imagery within 10 minutes of acquisition. Additionally, the operations concept, operational zones, and landing sites are highlighted. Provisions of the certificate of authorization are also addressed. Imagery obtained from the WSFM are included.

Posada, Herman A.↗

A Concept of Operations for Far-Term Surface Trajectory-Based Operations (STBO)

The goal of this far-term STBO (Surface Trajectory-Based Operations) ConOps (Concept of Operations) is to increase the efficiency and predictability of airport surface operations, and reduce the environmental impact, by incorporating a time-based component to surface operations. In the far-term NextGen timeframe, airport surface operations will transition from current-day first-come, first-served operations, to strategically scheduled operations in which pilots are recruited as active participants in meeting the precise time-based goals of NextGen surface operations. The far-term STBO concept includes two-phases. Phase 1 introduces time-based traffic flow constraint points, which divide the taxi route into segments with an assigned Required Time of Arrival (RTA). This Phase 1 approach provides temporal certainty only near the traffic flow constraint points, but not in between. Minimal augmentations to the flight deck are required to support required time of arrival (RTA) management. Phase 2 further increases precision and efficiency by introducing full four-dimensional (4D) trajectories, with an x-y location for all times t. This phase assumes adoption of advanced flight deck equipage enabling higher temporal precision sufficient to support aircraft conformance to 4D trajectories. This allows more precision and less temporal uncertainty at all times along the route.

Surface Trajectory-Based Operations (STBO)↗

Concept Vehicles for VTOL Air Taxi Operations

Concept vehicles are presented for air taxi operations, also known as urban air mobility or on-demand mobility applications. Considering the design-space dimensions of payload (passengers and pilot), range, aircraft type, and propulsion system, three aircraft are designed: a single passenger (250-lb payload), 50-nm range quadrotor with electric propulsion; a six-passenger (1200-lb payload), 4x50 = 200-nm range side-by-side helicopter with hybrid propulsion; and a fifteen-passenger (3000-lb payload), 8x50 = 400-nm range tiltwing with turbo-electric propulsion. These concept vehicles are intended to focus and guide NASA research activities in support of aircraft development for emerging aviation markets, in particular VTOL air taxi operations. Research areas are discussed, illustrated by results from the design of the concept vehicles.

Concept↗

Transformational Spaceport and Range Concept of Operations: A Vision to Transform Ground and Launch Operations

The Transformational Concept of Operations (CONOPS) provides a long-term, sustainable vision for future U.S. space transportation infrastructure and operations. This vision presents an interagency concept, developed cooperatively by the Department of Defense (DoD), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for the upgrade, integration, and improved operation of major infrastructure elements of the nation s space access systems. The interagency vision described in the Transformational CONOPS would transform today s space launch infrastructure into a shared system that supports worldwide operations for a variety of users. The system concept is sufficiently flexible and adaptable to support new types of missions for exploration, commercial enterprise, and national security, as well as to endure further into the future when space transportation technology may be sufficiently advanced to enable routine public space travel as part of the global transportation system. The vision for future space transportation operations is based on a system-of-systems architecture that integrates the major elements of the future space transportation system - transportation nodes (spaceports), flight vehicles and payloads, tracking and communications assets, and flight traffic coordination centers - into a transportation network that concurrently accommodates multiple types of mission operators, payloads, and vehicle fleets. This system concept also establishes a common framework for defining a detailed CONOPS for the major elements of the future space transportation system. The resulting set of four CONOPS (see Figure 1 below) describes the common vision for a shared future space transportation system (FSTS) infrastructure from a variety of perspectives.

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