Dec 17 2015
From The Space Library
Challenge is On to Design Sky for All
The history of aviation is rich with innovations from citizen inventors, and NASA is looking to the public to continue that tradition by contributing new ideas for the future of air travel.
Sky for All: Air Mobility for 2035 and Beyond is a $15,000 challenge to develop ideas for technologies that could be part of a clean-slate, revolutionary design and concept of operations for the airspace of the future. The challenge, which is administered by HeroX, opens Dec. 21, and participants may pre-register now. The deadline for submissions is Feb. 26, 2016.
The design challenge, sponsored by NASA’s Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD), asks potential solvers to think outside the current air traffic management system box, and consider how to manage crowded skies, autonomous operations and cyber security of the system.
“Twenty years from now, people may be surprised about the number and kind of vehicles sharing the skies,” said Parimal Kopardekar, ARMD’s Safe Autonomous Operations Systems (SASO) project manager. “We anticipate there will be personal air vehicles, passenger jets, and unmanned aircraft of various sizes and speeds flying at a variety of altitudes, as well as commercial space launches, spacecraft and even stationary objects like wind turbines.”
What the team wants from the public is new ideas – perhaps something researchers haven't thought of yet that could help revolutionize how traffic is managed in the airspace. Among the factors NASA wants participants to consider is how to design a robust system that can scale up to full capacity under normal operations and scale back to equally safe reduced capacity under poor conditions, like bad weather. Ideas may also consider autonomous adaptation of the system, and protection from possible cyber security attacks.
“Because of the complexity of designing a system that is expected to handle 10 million crewed and uncrewed aircraft in the skies, we are looking for innovative ideas from the public that enhance the work NASA researchers are doing right now,” said Natalia Alexandrov, lead of the Ab Initio Design for Autonomous Airspace Operations, a foundational research element in ARMD’s SASO Project.
NASA is asking innovators to disregard current transportation infrastructure and constraints. Submissions should include a full description of the design, including safety features and an explanation of how the new air transportation system would interact with others forms of transportation, including ground and sea.
“I am so proud that HeroX and NASA are partnering on this exciting challenge,” said Peter Diamandis, chairman and chief executive officer of XPRIZE and co-founder of HeroX. “Incentive prizes have played an incredible historical role in shaping the aerospace industry ranging from the Orteig Prize to the Ansari XPRIZE. I can’t wait to see the breakthrough ideas that will result from the NASA Sky for All Challenge.”
The Sky for All challenge is managed by NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI). CoECI was established with support from the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy to assist NASA and other federal agencies in using new tools – such as challenges – to solve tough, mission-critical problems. The Center launches challenges under the umbrella of the NASA Tournament Lab and offers a variety of open innovation platforms that engage the crowdsourcing community in challenges to create the most innovative, efficient and optimal solutions for specific, real world challenges.
NASA’s LADEE Mission Shows the Force of Meteoroid Strikes on Lunar Exosphere
Physical processes such as meteoroid stream impacts, the bombardment of helium and hydrogen particles from the sun, thermal absorption, and space weathering constantly modify the moon’s surface as they work within the lunar exosphere. NASA’s Lunar Atmosphere and Dust Environment Explorer, or LADEE, spacecraft observed an increase in exospheric gases when the rain of meteoroid impacts increases during a stream. These interplanetary grains can hit the lunar surface at speeds exceeding 21 miles (34 kilometers) per second, releasing immense heat, and vaporizing part of the soil and meteoroids themselves.
Within this vapor are sodium and potassium gases. LADEE’s Ultraviolet Visible Spectrometer (UVS) instrument measured levels of sodium and potassium around the moon every 12 hours for more than five months. These frequent readings revealed a dynamic rise of gas levels in the exosphere as meteor streams bombarded the moon, with the concentrations of both elements returning to normal background levels after the stream passed. Interestingly, the time it took to return to “normal” was dramatically different for the two gases, with potassium returning to its pre-shower state within days, while sodium took several months.
The findings are being presented at this week’s meeting of the American Geophysical Union in San Francisco and appear in the journal Science. Researchers will incorporate these observations into exosphere models of the moon and similar bodies to help NASA unravel the mysteries of how our solar system originated and is changing over time.
“To understand the moon’s exosphere requires insight into the processes controlling it, including the interaction of meteoroid showers as well as solar wind bombardment and ultraviolet radiation of the surface,” said Anthony Colaprete, researcher at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, California, and principal investigator of the UVS instrument. “Understanding how these processes modify the exosphere allows researchers to infer its original state. Since these processes are ubiquitous across the solar system, knowledge gained by examining the moon’s exosphere can be applied to a range of other bodies, granting us greater insight into their evolution through time.”
A majority of bodies in the solar system are small and are considered “airless,” with exospheres in place of dense atmospheres. Our moon, icy moons within our solar system, the planet Mercury, asteroids and even Pluto are examples of small bodies with known exospheres that start from their surface – surface-boundary exospheres. Larger bodies, such as Earth, also have tenuous exospheres as the outermost layer of their atmospheres.
Our moon can act as a nearby laboratory for learning more about both the soil composition and the processes active in the atmospheres across our solar system and beyond.
“These observations enable us to constrain the physical processes that contribute to the lunar exosphere,” said Menelaos Sarantos of NASA’s Goddard Spaceflight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and the University of Maryland, Baltimore County, and co-author of the paper. “We’re using these findings to build new exosphere models of how the space environment interacts with the surfaces of airless bodies, which we can use to better predict the processes and behaviors around similar bodies.”
LADEE was launched in September 2013 and orbited the moon for about six months. The robotic mission orbited the moon to gather detailed information about the lunar atmosphere, conditions near the surface, and environmental influences on lunar dust. Ames was responsible for the LADEE spacecraft design, development, testing and mission operations, in addition to managing the overall mission.
Release 15-34 International Instrument Delivered for NASA’s 2016 Asteroid Sample Return Mission
A sophisticated laser-based mapping instrument has arrived at Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver for integration onto NASA’s Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, Security-Regolith Explorer (OSIRIS-REx) spacecraft.
The OSIRIS-REx Laser Altimeter (OLA), contributed by the Canadian Space Agency (CSA), will create 3-D maps of asteroid Bennu to help the mission team select a sample collection site.
"The OSIRIS-REx Project has worked very closely with our partner CSA and their contractor MDA to get this critical instrument delivered to the spacecraft contractor's facility,” said Mike Donnelly, OSIRIS-REx project manager from NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. “We are very pleased with the performance of the instrument and look forward to its contribution to our mission."
OLA is an advanced LIDAR (Light Detecting and Ranging) system that will scan the entire surface of the asteroid to create a highly accurate, 3-D shape model of Bennu. This will provide mission scientists with fundamental data on the asteroid’s shape, topography (distribution of boulders, rocks and other surface features), surface processes and evolution. An accurate shape model will also be an important tool for navigators as they maneuver the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft around the 500-meter-wide (0.3-mile-wide) asteroid. In exchange for providing the OLA instrument, CSA will receive a portion of the returned asteroid sample for study by Canadian scientists.
“OLA will measure the shape and topography of Bennu to a much higher fidelity and with much greater efficiency than any planetary science mission has achieved,” said Michael Daly, OLA instrument lead at York University, Toronto. “This information is essential to understanding the evolution and current state of the asteroid. It also provides invaluable information in aid of retrieving a sample of Bennu for return to Earth.”
After launch in September 2016, the OSIRIS-REx spacecraft will travel to the near-Earth asteroid Bennu and bring at least a 60-gram (2.1-ounce) sample back to Earth for study. Scientists expect that Bennu may hold clues to the origin of the solar system and the source of water and organic molecules that may have made their way to Earth. OSIRIS-REx’s investigation will also inform future efforts to develop a mission to mitigate an asteroid impact on Earth, should one be required.
"The data received from OLA will be key to determining a safe sample site on Bennu,” said Dante Lauretta, principal investigator for OSIRIS-REx at the University of Arizona, Tucson. “This instrument is a valuable addition to the spacecraft, and I appreciate our Canadian partners' hard work and contribution to the OSIRIS-REx mission.”
The laser altimeter was built for CSA by MacDonald, Dettwiler and Associates Ltd. (MDA) and its partner, Optech. OSIRIS-REx is scheduled to ship from Lockheed Martin’s facility to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center, Florida in May 2016, where it will undergo final preparations for launch.
NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, provides overall mission management, systems engineering and safety and mission assurance for OSIRIS-REx. Dante Lauretta is the mission's principal investigator at the University of Arizona. Lockheed Martin Space Systems in Denver is building the spacecraft. OSIRIS-REx is the third mission in NASA's New Frontiers Program. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, manages New Frontiers for the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington.
