Developing a Safe Architecture for a Million-Flight NAS

Added: Sep 30, 2016 4:45 am This notice is provided for information purposes only. NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) awarded a firm-fixed price contract to the Intelligent Automation, Inc., Rockville, MD, for the effort entitled "Developing a Safe Architecture for a Million-Flight NAS". This award results from a competitive selection under the NASA Headquarters released NASA Research Announcement (NRA) NNH15ZEA001N for foundational research in support of the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD), entitled "Research Opportunities in Aeronautics (ROA) 2015", Appendix B.4 Safe Autonomous Systems Operations Project (SASO1), Subtopic 2.2 System Study to Identify ab initio Architecture(s) to Meet the Needs of Future Airspace Operations Targeted for 2035 and Beyond.

The Safe Autonomous System Operations (SASO) Project seeks to maintain a highly efficient, predictable, agile, scalable, safe, and affordable airspace operations system while supporting global competitiveness and domestic viability by innovation in technology and business models to manage airspace operations. The project develops concepts, algorithms, technologies, and architectures to safely meet future National Airspace System (NAS) needs in the ATM+3 time horizon to enable airspace operations of greater complexity, density, scalability, mobility, efficiency, and affordability by justifiable combination of automation and autonomy.

This effort will develop an architectural method for describing a future National Airspace System (NAS) that can handle an unlimited number of flights. The method uses standard techniques to develop and elucidate requirements, determine Pareto-optimal tradeoff curves, perform sensitivity analysis, and compute safety and performance margins. The project will initially populate the method with a sector-less airspace design, where a safety margin of one incident every one billion flights (or less) is maintained through management of airspace density. The proposed architecture applies to all altitudes and all aircraft types, including small unmanned aircraft systems (UAS), large UAS, traditional commercial aircraft, general aviation, lighter-than-airships, space launches and re-entries, orbiting vehicles, and personal aircraft.