Page 14 - Aerotech News and Review Dec. 16 2016

NASA, from 12
preliminary design of a “low boom” flight dem- onstration aircraft as part of the agency’s New Aviation Horizons initiative that was introduced in the Fiscal Year 2017 budget. NASA selected a team led by Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company of Palmdale, Calif., to complete a preliminary design for a Quiet Supersonic Tech- nology (QueSST) demonstrator. Researchers expect data from the BOSCO and Eagle Aero Probe experiments to benefit engineers in their efforts to design a supersonic aircraft that will produce only a soft “thump” in place of a dis- ruptive sonic boom, thereby paving the way for practical supersonic flight over populated areas.
UAS Integration into the National Airspace System
Over the past several years, NASA has worked with the Federal Aviation Administra- tion and industry partners to develop technolo- gies that support safe integration of unmanned aircraft systems into the National Airspace System. Flight Test Series 4 of this effort, consisting of 19 flights spanning nine weeks, concluded on June 30. These tests successfully demonstrated two detect-and-avoid (DAA) al- gorithms developed by NASA, General Atom- ics Aeronautical Systems Inc., and Honeywell that generated precise alerts necessary for a pilot controlling a UAS from the ground to re- main well clear of other aircraft.
More than 260 scripted encounters were per- formed between Armstrong’s Ikhana UAS — a civilian model of the MQ-9 Reaper — and manned “intruder” aircraft including NASA’s B200 King Air, T-34C, G-III, and TG-14 air- craft, a Honeywell C-90 King Air, and a U.S. Air Force C-12 King Air. All aircraft involved in the tests flew predetermined flight paths that triggered the DAA alerting and maneuver guid- ance logic, allowing Ikhana’s ground-based pi- lot to avoid collisions. To make this scenario as realistic as possible, intruders were equipped with a variety of different surveillance systems that identified them as either cooperative (those capable of sharing their location electronically) or non-cooperative aircraft.
Prandtl
This past summer, researchers at Armstrong continued working on an increasingly complex remotely piloted aircraft concept called the Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design to Lower Drag, or Prandtl-D. This design features an innovative method for determining the shape of the wing with a twist that could lead to an
11-percent reduction in fuel consumption. The concept may also lead to significantly enhanced controllability that could eliminate the need for a vertical tail and potentially to new aircraft designs. Several radio-controlled models of in- creasing size, spanning up to 25 feet, have been tested over the past few years.
Work on the Prandtl-D also led to a concept for a future Mars airplane. If the Preliminary Research Aerodynamic Design to Land on Mars, or Prandtl-M aircraft, is successful, it could be deployed from a satellite into the Mar- tian atmosphere to collect and transmit valu- able information back to Earth. Albion Bowers, NASA Armstrong chief scientist and Prandtl project manager has led the NASA effort with help from student interns.
Dropped from a radio-controlled mother plane, a remotely piloted Prandtl-M glider first flew in August. The project is part of the NASA Flight Scholars activity, which focuses on giv- ing community college students an early oppor- tunity to perform research, and the Education Unmanned Aerial Systems activity, which pro- vides college students an opportunity to work on NASA UAS projects.
Earth and Space Science
DC-8 Airborne Laboratory
In 2016, Armstrong’s airborne science fleet spanned the globe looking for answers to im- portant questions about Earth’s climate.
The center’s DC-8 flying laboratory deployed to New Zealand at the end of July as part of the Atmospheric Tomography (ATom) airborne science campaign to collect data on pollution in the lower atmosphere and its effects on the creation of greenhouse gases. The aircraft, a modified airliner equipped with scientific in- struments, landed in Christchurch at the begin- ning of a 26-day mission that included visits to the tropics, North Pole, Antarctica, South America, and Greenland.IOn October and No- vember, a team of scientists aboard the DC-8 undertook the 2016 Antarctic Campaign of the ongoing Operation IceBridge. Data from these missions is used to document changes in polar land and sea ice, and to evaluate climate mod- els. A laser altimeter records minute changes in the height of the ice surface from year to year so that scientists can compare the data and better understand the changing environmental condi- tions in Antarctica. Three additional radars are used to analyze elevation changes and the com- position of snow and ice layers, as well as the shape of the land underneath. The DC-8 also carries a high-resolution camera system. Opera-
tion IceBridge is currently funded until 2019.
ER-2 High-Altitude Research Platform
During February, the Spectral Polarimeter for Planetary Explorations (SPEX) instrument made its first flight aboard NASA’s ER-2 high- altitude research aircraft. Developed by the Netherlands Institute for Space Research, the SPEX is designed to measure aerosols within the atmosphere and will later be developed into a spaceborne sensor. Acting as a surrogate for the future satellite platform, the high-flying aircraft completed a series of three flights to ensure that the instrument will function prop- erly during flight and to prove its viability for future missions.
In August and September, the ER-2 joined a NASA P-3B for a series of coordinated sci- ence flights in the ORACLES (observations of aerosols above clouds and their interac- tions) campaign off the west coast of Namibia. Southern Africa produces almost a third of the world’s vegetative burning, which sends smoke particles up into the atmosphere, where they eventually mix with stratocumulus clouds over the southeastern Atlantic Ocean. In order to help improve current climate models, scientists are using the ORACLES study to investigate how these particles and their interaction with the clouds impact both regional and global sur- face temperatures and precipitation. The P-3B served as a low-flying platform for in-situ and remote sensing measurements of aerosols and clouds while the ER-2 provided a high-altitude view of the same area of interest using a combi- nation of polarimeter, radar, and lidar measure- ments. Expected to last several years, the OR- ACLES mission promises to provide scientific products with both short-term and long-term benefits for the people of southwestern Africa, as well as strengthening and focusing NASA’s existing connections to the regional earth sci- ence community.
Global Hawk UAV
As Hurricane Matthew bore down on Flori- da’s east coast in October, Armstrong’s remote- ly piloted Global Hawk research aircraft took part in the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) Sensing Hazards with Operational Unmanned Technology (SHOUT) field campaign. The civilian model of the Air Force’s RQ-4 Global Hawk reconnaissance platform was carrying an instrument called the High-Altitude Monolithic Microwave Inte- grated Circuit Sounding Radiometer (HAMSR), developed by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labora- tory in Pasadena, Calif. The aircraft also carried a dropsonde system developed by the National Center for Atmospheric Research, and the High Altitude Imaging, Wind and Rain Profile instrument managed by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. As the Global Hawk made multiple passes over the hurricane at an altitude of around 55,000 feet, data were transmitted in real time via a communications satellite to the ground, where they were imme- diately processed and shared with the SHOUT scientists. Images and data were also shared with weather forecasters at the NOAA/National Weather Service’s National Hurricane Center.
SOFIA
NASA’s Stratospheric Observatory for In- frared Astronomy (SOFIA) program had a very successful year with the completion of its fourth season of science flights. Cycle 4 missions began in February with plans calling for accomplishing as many as 106 flights and more than 550 hours of science observations by the end of January 2017. The SOFIA is a heavily modified Boeing 747SP airliner that carries a 100-inch (2.5-meter) telescope to al- titudes between 39,000 to 45,000 feet (12 to
14 km), above more than 99 percent of Earth’s atmospheric water vapor, giving astronomers the ability to study celestial objects at infrared wavelengths that cannot be seen from ground- based observatories.
During a flight in February, astronomers ob- served a planetary system around the star Vega (only 25 light years from Earth), a very young star some 1,500 light years away in the Orion star forming region, and a supermassive black hole hidden behind dense dust clouds in the center of a galaxy at a distance of 170 million light years. Scientists from the University of Georgia, University of Arizona, University of Texas at San Antonio, and the Space Telescope Science Institute in Baltimore, plus their col- laborators from institutions in the U.S. and Europe, obtained data using the Faint Object infraRed Camera for the SOFIA Telescope, or FORCAST, a combined mid-infrared camera and spectrometer. SOFIA research efforts in- volve the study of planets, moons, asteroids and comets in our solar system; star and planet formation; extrasolar planets and the evolution of planetary systems; the interstellar medium and interstellar chemistry; the nucleus of the Milky Way galaxy, and nearby normal and ac- tive galaxies.
In May, SOFIA’s suite of seven cameras, spectrometers, and high-speed photometers was joined by the High-resolution Airborne Wideband Camera-Plus (HAWC+) far-infrared camera and polarimeter. This is currently the only available astronomical camera for making images using far-infrared light, allowing stud- ies of low-temperature early stages of star and planet formation.
The SOFIA deployed to Christchurch, New Zealand, for seven weeks in June and July to conduct 24 science flights in the Southern Hemisphere. There, scientists had the oppor- tunity to observe areas of interest such as the Galactic Center and other parts of the Milky Way that are not visible or difficult to observe from the Northern Hemisphere.
The SOFIA project is an 80/20 partnership between NASA and the German Aerospace Center (DLR). Elements of the SOFIA pro- gram are located at NASA centers throughout California; the aircraft is based at NASA Arm- strong’s airborne science hangar in Palmdale while the SOFIA Program Office is located at NASA Ames Research Center in Moun- tain View, which manages SOFIA’s science and mission operations in cooperation with the Universities Space Research Association (USRA; Columbia, Md.) and the German SO- FIA Institute (DSI; University of Stuttgart).
Spaceflight Technology
Flight Opportunities Program
In July, NASA’s Flight Opportunities Pro- gram, which is part of the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and managed at Armstrong, selected more than a dozen pay- loads for the purpose of exploring new space technologies. The program provides opportu- nities for large and small businesses and uni- versities to demonstrate technologies of inter- est to NASA in a space-like environment by testing them on board commercial suborbital launch vehicles, reduced-gravity parabolic air- craft flights, and high-altitude balloons.
Building a flight heritage enables these tech- nologies to be more readily included in future NASA projects and to stimulate the growth of the U.S. commercial spaceflight industry. The selectees’ experiments included fluids and heat transfer testing, sample retrieval technology, robotics, oxygen generation technology, radia- tion measurements and testing of new facilities for experiments in the relevant environment provided by the flight vehicles.
December 16, 2016
The ER-2 provides unique platform for airborne research at altitudes above 70,000 feet. In 2016, NASA used the aircraft to measure aerosols in Earth’s atmosphere.
NASA photograph
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