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Airborne Science Program: Technology

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Welcome To Airborne Science Program


New technologies are important for improving collection of data for earth scientists from airborne platforms, and ensuring that suborbital platforms are integrated into earth observing system of systems approach.

TECHNOLOGY

TECHNOLOGY
PARTNERSHIPS
COMMUNICATIONS AND TELEMETRY
SENSORS




TECHNOLOGY

Earth Science Capabilities Demonstration Project (ESCD)

ESCD is a broadly focused jointly-funded collaboration between NASA's Aeronautics and Science Mission Directorates. ESCD targets maturation of UAV capabilities so that they can eventually be used routinely for suborbital Earth observation and in situ sensing applications. The project seeks to develop, integrate, and demonstrate in flight a progressively maturing set of capabilities that make unpiloted atmospheric vehicles useful and valuable for suborbital Earth science activities.



PARTNERSHIPS

NASA/NOAA/DOE - http://uav.noaa.gov/uav_workshop/

Civil UAV Assessment - http://www.nasa.gov/centers/dryden/research/
civuav/civ_uav_index.html

Past Workshops
Date Location Proceedings
July 26-27, 2005 Monterey, CA Land Management and Coastal Zone Dynamics Workshop
July 6-7, 2005 Herndon, VA Homeland Security Workshop
April 26-28, 2005 Akron, Oh http://www.innovation labs.com/uav3/
Dec 2004 Boulder, Ca http://www.fsl.noaa.gov/ uav_workshop/
Aug 2004 La Jolla, Ca http://www.fsl.noaa.gov/ uav_workshop/uav_workshop2/
July 2004 Arlington, Va http://geo.arc.nasa.gov/ uav-suborbital/



COMMUNICATIONS AND TELEMETRY

Among the needs of the Earth science customer base is flexible and affordable operations and communications with globally deployed instruments and the unpiloted vehicles that carry these instruments. The Over-the-Horizon Networks (OTH) component of ESCD is interested in maturing affordable, disruption tolerant, and network-centric communications components as well as the application-layer tools and services that accelerate the emergence of flexible and useful capabilities enabling greater productivity for researchers with science instruments on UAVs.
The overall goal is to develop sustainable capabilities for global-reach Earth science activities in a network-distributed fashion. In alignment with the overall vision for a future global Earth Observation systems-of-systems, our target is establishing a core capability by 2010 that will facilitate emergence and productive use of intelligent observation instruments and suborbital platforms.


SENSORS

The ASTL is located at the NASA Ames University-Affiliated Research Center, and is run in collaboration with the University of California at Santa Cruz. It is engaged in enabling and performing airborne measurements for the NASA science community. It has functions for technology development, science support, sensor operations and calibration, and is actively developing standard interfaces and protocols for the cross-platform portability of NASA airborne instrumentation.

The ASTL also operates several facility assets for the SSP, including standalone precision navigation systems (Applanix POV-AV IMU/DGPS units), Cirrus/DCS digital tracking cameras, and telemetry and aircraft navigation data interface hardware. This utility hardware is available for use by authorized SMD investigators. The lab also operates the MODIS and ASTER Airborne Simulators (MAS and MASTER) for the EOS program, which are made available to other NASA scientists by prior arrangement.

The Data Processing team provides sensor data reduction, analysis and mission support. The Sensor Operations team provides support for airborne sensor operations and remote deployments. The ASTL Calibration Laboratory is a community resource that is co-funded by the Suborbital Science and EOS programs. It performs NIST-traceable spectral and radiometric characterizations of remote sensing instruments. New capabilities added this year included a transfer radiometer for calibrating radiometric sources, and a high-temperature cavity blackbody. The lab also provides portable radiance sources (integrating spheres) and an ASD spectrometer to support field experiments.

The Sensor Calibration Laboratory Is Responsible for the Characterization of Earth-Viewing Sensor Systems In Support of EOS Investigations.






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