Page 12 - Aerotech News and Review, Sept. 7 2018

NASA begins flights
to advance military
research on pilot
breathing
of aircraft types, aircrew equipment types and flight conditions. The flight conditions that will be tested include anything from benign environments, typical in instrument proficiency train- ing, to more strenuous environments, such as those found in high altitude, aerobatic maneuvering and combat maneuvering.
Over the past five years, both the U.S. Navy and U.S. Air Force have no- ticed an increase of pilots experiencing physiological events, or PEs, during flight. PEs can consist of several symp- toms, including cognitive impairment, numbness, tingling, lightheadedness, behavioral changes and fatigue. While the history of these PEs can be traced back to the early 1990s, the causes for such occurrences remains unknown. Despite the military’s analysis and cor- rective actions to resolve the issue, PEs still persist and the root cause for these events remains elusive.
In March 2017, the NESC assembled a multidisciplinary team to perform an
NASA pilot Jim Less climbed into the cockpit of the F/A-18 aircraft, se- cured his safety equipment, and took in a long and deep breath.
It’s not every day that NASA is tasked with a mission that could save someone’s life, but for the next few months that has become a focus for pilots out at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center.
Managed by the NASA Engineering and Safety Center at Langley Research Center in Virginia, Armstrong’s newest flight series will task its pilots with the role of simulating a series of in-flight activities to better understand how flight conditions can impact a pilot’s breathing during high-performance aircraft flights.
On Aug. 3, Armstrong began a series of flight tests that will identify the im- pacts of flying in high-performance air- craft on the human body. NASA plans to dedicate 160 flight hours where the NESC will measure the breathing of five NASA pilots across a range
NASA photograph by Carla Thomas
NASA pilot Jim Less sits in the cockpit of a NASA F/A-18 aircraft in preparation for flight tests that will be used to understand the physiological impacts that high-performance aircraft have on pilots.
independent assessment of the Navy’s previous research. The assessment was intended to support the Navy in devel- oping more robust and efficient meth- ods for analyzing how the human body responds in high-performance aircraft, during flight. This team consisted of
several technical experts in the areas of environmental control systems, oxygen systems, life support systems, aviation systems, systems engineering, flight medicine, physiology, human systems/ human factors, analytical chemistry, safety, and data mining and analysis.
During a recent congressional tes- timony, NESC principal engineer Clinton Cragg described NASA’s pre- liminary evaluation and findings. “We found that there has been very little in- vestigation surrounding the human in
See PILOTS, Page 13
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