National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Aviation

The Aviation Program Element is one of twelve Elements in the Science Mission Directorate's Applied Sciences Program. NASA and the Applied Sciences Program collaborate with partner organizations to enable and enhance the application of NASA's Earth System science research results to serve national priority policy and management decision support tools. The desired outcome is for partner organizations to use project results, such as prototypes and benchmark reports, to enable expanded use of Earth science products and enhance decision support capabilities.

Image: Data from space-based optical sensors reveal the uneven distribution of worldwide lightning strikes, with color variations indicating the average annual number of lightning flashes per square kilometer. The map includes data obtained from April 1995 to March 2000 from NASA's Optical Transient Detector; and from December 1997 to November 2000 from NASA's Lightning Imaging Sensor (LIS).

This Element focuses on the infusion of quality science observations from NASA Earth science satellite missions and predictions from Earth system science models into Aviation Decision Support Systems (DSS) managed by partner agencies and organizations. As the input to these DSSs becomes more comprehensive and accurate, the decisions made using these systems increase in accuracy and utility. More accurate DSSs lead to improvements in the aviation industry with regard to safety, security, efficiency, and environmental impacts. Weather plays a major role in each of these areas. Weather is a contributing factor in approximately thirty percent of all aviation accidents. Weather forecast models are currently initialized by hourly observations taken at many ground stations, but precise observations of the atmosphere above the ground are sparse and infrequent. Accurate upper air data, from NASA research spacecraft with improved temporal and spatial coverage, is beneficial to aviation meteorologists.

The purpose of the Aviation Program Element is to extend NASA Earth science satellite observations and Earth system science models to support the benchmarking of frequent, densely distributed Earth System science observations to support the National Airspace System (NAS) and address safety, capacity, security, and environmental issues. Observations from spacecraft such as TRMM, QuikSCAT, Terra, Aqua, and Aura support this purpose. Observations from future research missions such as NPP, GPM, and Glory have the potential to add even greater value.

Photo: This true-color image was acquired over Utah on July 23, 2003. The scene shows a dust storm (tan pixels) originating in the western part of Utah and blowing northeastward over Great Salt Lake. The image came from the MODIS instrument on the Aqua satellite. Read more about the Utah Dust Storm

Impacts of weather upon aviation can be substantially mitigated using existing spacecraft weather information. At present, only a small percentage of the available spacecraft observations are used in operational weather forecasting. NASA and its partners are working to bridge the gap between research results and operational solutions that assimilate information obtained by Earth observation satellites. NASA and its partners are working to make sure that information available from instruments on current and future spacecraft research missions are verified and validated for infusion into operational forecasting techniques in a more timely fashion. To this end, the Aviation program element partners with the NASA Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate as well as several Federal organizations, including the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), the Office of the Federal Coordinator for Meteorology (OFCM), and the National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA).

To address aviation issues, the Science Mission Directorate partnership with the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate currently includes the Aviation Safety Program and the Airspace Systems Program. This partnership will continue through 2011. More broadly, however, the Science Mission Directorate is coordinating with the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) consisting of the Departments of Transportation, Commerce, Defense, Homeland Security, NASA, and the Office of Science and Technology Policy (OSTP). The purpose of the JPDO is to transform the National Airspace System to improve its capacity and safety as required through the year 2025. The JPDO strategy was delivered to Congress as the "Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) Integrated Plan" in December 2004. Learn more about the JPDO and NextGen.