National Aeronautics and Space Administration

www.nasa.gov

AOSP Newsletter

Airspace Operations and Safety Program (AOSP)

JAN-MAR 2021 | Quarter 2

System-Wide Safety Receives 

Approval to Begin 

New Technical Challenge

3

Boeing Using SWS-Developed 

Tools and Processes to Explore 

Safety of Use Cases

10
2 AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021

AOSP IN THE NEWS

NASA Sets Stage for Future 

Flights, Auditions of Advanced 

Air Mobility Technologies

NASA’s Ames Research Center in 

California (1/26) reports “the Air 

Traffic Management Exploration, 

or ATM-X, team is providing the 

virtual environment for third-party 

airspace service providers to rehearse 

their technology capabilities and 

ensure future Advanced Air Mobility 

vehicles or electric-powered vertical 

takeoff and landing vehicles can 

safely integrate with existing and 

future air traffic. The goal of the 

ATM-X project is to accelerate the 

development of software that is 

robust and integrated enough to 

increase automation...”

Elroy Air Teams with 

NASA to Test Autonomous 

Aerial Logistics

Aviation Week (1/29) reports 

“autonomous cargo aircraft startup 

Elroy Air has joined NASA’s 

Advanced Air Mobility National 

Campaign project and will 

exchange information leading up 

to flight tests in 2022. Elroy is 

developing the Chaparral hybridelectric vertical-takeoff-and-landing 

(eVTOL) vehicle, which is designed 

to carry...”

Fit2Fly Aims to Make Future 

Drones Safe and Reliable

NASA Aeronautics (2/02) reports “as 

more industries within and outside 

the aviation community become 

interested in using drones to provide 

services, the question of safety is 

paramount. These businesses must 

prove their aircraft won’t fall out of 

the sky, so people feel comfortable 

with them carrying important 

cargo like packages, emergency 

supplies, and even people. The gulf 

we’re trying to address is how we 

can get appropriate levels of safety 

and reliability from these new 

systems when they are so different 

from traditional aircraft, said 

Garry Qualls, co-lead researcher on 

Fit2Fly at NASA’s Langley Research 

Center in Virginia. Qualls and his 

colleagues envision a system in which 

individual drones are able to detect 

any technical issues by themselves.”
AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021 3

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

System-Wide Safety 

Receives Approval to Begin 

New Technical Challenge

POC: MISTY DAVIES

On Jan. 14, the System Wide 

Safety (SWS) project received 

approval to begin a new Technical 

Challenge (TC) for the TC-5 Safety 

Demonstrator (SD) Series. The goal 

for the SD series is to develop and 

demonstrate an In-Time Aviation 

Safety Management System and 

deliver recommended requirements 

and evidence to regulators and 

industry standards committees. 

Misty Davies and Kyle Ellis gave a 

clear and concise presentation that 

was well received by the Directorate 

Program Management Council 

and the ARMD leadership team. 

ATD-2 Begins Dissemination of 

Daily TOS Activity Reports to 

Field Demonstration Partners

POC: DIVYA BHADORIA

On Jan. 14, the Airspace 

Technology Demonstration 2 

(ATD-2) team launched the daily 

dissemination of Trajectory Option 

Set (TOS) activity reports for the 

FAA and field demo partner airlines, 

including American Airlines 

and Envoy Air at Dallas Fort 

Worth International Airport and 

Southwest Airlines at Dallas Love 

Field Airport. The content for the 

reports has been in development 

for several months, incorporating 

feedback from field demonstration 

partners through biweekly meetings, 

tabletop exercises, and reviews 

of initial prototypes. The reports 

contain airline-specific details of 

the previous day’s TOS activity 

for impacted flights based on data 

computed by the ATD-2 system on 

departure flights in Dallas’s airspace. 

Additionally, the reports summarize 

cost-saving alternate routes 

suggested by ATD-2 to meet the 

demand-capacity imbalance in the 

D10 TRACON boundary arising 

from restrictions such as departure 

fix closures and Miles-in-Trail. The 

reports also provide estimated 

benefits at carrier, fleet, airport and 

system-wide levels associated with 

each TOS route. The field demo 

partners are eager to use the TOS 

Activity Reports to further their 

understanding of TOS benefits 

and continue to offer feedback 

to improve the ATD-2 system. 

SWS Participates in Flight 

Safety Foundation’s 

Emergency Response 

Workshops

POC: MISTY DAVIES AND KYLE ELLIS

NASA’s System-Wide Safety (SWS) 

project participated in the Flight 

Safety Foundation’s series of workshops in January, which focused 

on responding to emergencies like 

wildfires and using unmanned aircraft systems (UAS). NASA and the 

Flight Safety Foundation are developing Disaster Monitoring for First 

Responder (DMFR) UAS scenarios 

as part of NASA’s concept of operations for In-Time System-Wide 

Safety Assurance (ISSA). The Flight 

Safety Foundation hosted a series of 

three workshops intended to build 

risk frameworks, establish mitigations and services, and highlight 

gaps, benefits, and functions of ISSA 

for all DMFR scenarios. Workshop 

topics delivered were “Natural Disasters” on Jan. 20, “Wildfire Firefighting” on Jan. 22, and “Medical 

Delivery” on Jan. 25. According to 

Kyle Ellis, “the Flight Safety Foundation is contracted by us to engage 

the disaster/emergency response 

community across the globe to help 

build out our use cases for the Safety 

Demonstrator series and to establish 

community needs and buy-in from 

the industry at large.” Charts created 

by Ellis for the ARMD Technical 

Seminar on the In-Time Aviation 

Safety Management System were featured during the workshops. NASA’s 

attendees were active in the breakout 

sessions that discussed hazards, risk 

levels, ISSA’s steps to monitor/assess/

mitigate risk, and related services. 

Participants included Misty Davies, 

Kyle Ellis, Samantha Infeld, John 

Koelling, Parimal Kopardekar, Paul 

Krois, Robert Mah, Natasha Neogi, 

Lance Prinzel, and Laura Bass. Participating organizations in the workshops included NASA, the Flight 

Safety Foundation, Airbus, Amazon, 

Boeing, DJI, GlobalMedic, Hyundai, 
4 AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

the International Association of Fire 

Chiefs, Médecins Sans Frontières, 

Porter County SAR, Rockwell Collins, Swiss FOCA, Transport Canada, 

UNICEF, the University of Michigan, Volansi, WeRobotics, and York 

County Fire in Virginia. 

NASA/FAA Quarterly 

Meeting on ATM-X 

POC: MIKE MADSON AND ROXANA CORZO

Becky Hooey, program director of 

NASA’s Aviation Safety Reporting 

Systems (ASRS), participated in the 

Unmanned Aircraft Safety Team 

(UAST) plenary meeting on Oct. 

15. The UAST is a government/

industry group chartered in 2016 

to develop consensus-based and 

data-driven safety enhancements 

for unmanned aircraft systems 

(UAS) and operations. The team 

consists of more than 75 leaders 

representing organizations that 

span the UAS community from 

the FAA, NASA, and industry. 

Hooey described her team’s 

work to enhance ASRS to enable 

better reporting of UAS incidents, 

including the development of 

a UAS-specific report form and 

augmentation of the existing 

ASRS taxonomy. The UAS-specific 

reporting capability is scheduled 

to launch in early 2021 and is 

expected to yield a rich data source 

that can be used by the FAA, 

NASA, industry, and academia 

to identify safety-relevant trends 

and incident precursors. This effort 

is extending an existing safety 

capability to include UAS and is 

represented jointly by Hooey and 

Steve Young, who is also a member 

of the UAST. 

NASA, Boeing, and FAATC 

Conduct Collaborative AAM 

Ecosystem Tabletop 

POC: IAN LEVITT

On Jan. 29, the Air Traffic 

Management Exploration (ATM-X) 

project’s Urban Air Mobility (UAM) 

sub-project participated in a virtual 

meeting with the FAA William J. 

Hughes Technical Center (FAATC) 

Trajectory-Based Operations team, 

along with members of Boeing, as 

part of the Atlantic City Advanced 

Air Mobility (AAM) Use Case 

Exercise Two. The tabletop exercise 

supported detailed discussion on 

UAM cargo air vehicle operational 

use cases in the Atlantic City urban 

environment. It was organized 

by NASA, Boeing, and the FAA 

under an Inter-Agency Agreement 

Annex and a Collaborative Research 

and Development Agreement. A 

walkthrough of the phases of flight 

Illustrations from AAM Ecosystem Tabletop
AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021 

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

for a range of operational use cases 

was conducted. The goal was to 

develop use cases of increasing 

complexity and tempo, identify risks 

and laboratory gaps, and leverage 

the results for performance and 

safety analysis of AAM. Atlantic 

City International Airport use cases 

will be used to drive laboratory 

integration between the FAATC 

and NASA, as well as the FAATC 

and related laboratory assets from 

Boeing to support future research, 

development, testing, and evaluation 

of emerging operational concepts and 

technologies. A follow-on activity 

will be scheduled to complete the 

activity. An artifact will be developed 

to capture Use Case Exercise Two 

discussions and outcomes. 

ATM-X UAM Sub-Project 

Delivers Software Releases 

POC: SPENCER MONHEIM

On Jan. 29, the Air Traffic 

Management Exploration (ATM-X) 

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) subproject delivered the first software 

release to the Advanced Air 

Mobility High Density Vertiplex 

(HDV) sub-project as part of a 

collaborative effort between the 

them. The software deliverable, 

was comprised of airspace system 

components developed for, and 

operationally tested in, the UAM 

X-3 Airspace Simulation sub-project 

and the National Campaign Dry 

Run Build-2 flight test. UAM will 

continue delivering software releases 

to HDV after major milestones such 

as the X-4 simulation. 

SWS Presents at Strategy 

Planning Meeting between 

NASA Aeronautics 

and the FAATC

POC: MISTY DAVIES AND KYLE ELLIS

On Feb. 2, the System-Wide Safety 

(SWS) project participated in a 

strategic planning meeting with the 

William J. Hughes FAA Technical 

Center (FAATC) hosted by center 

director Shelly Yak. In support of this 

activity, SWS presented the In-Time 

Aviation Safety Management System 

(IASMS) concept and Machine 

Learning/Artificial Intelligence (ML/

AI) certification research efforts. 

Several topics were discussed, and the 

primary focus was sharing research 

being conducted in the Airspace 

Operations and Safety Program 

(AOSP), Advanced Air Vehicles 

Program, and work being done 

at the FAATC. In addition, there 

were discussions on the facilities 

and resources the FAA has available. 

NASA presentations described the 

focus on building towards the FAA’s 

2035 vision, what the 2045 vision 

of the National Airspace System 

may be, and work being conducted 

to that end. Information exchanged 

between NASA and the FAA 

outlined collaboration opportunities 

and the means to develop digital 

information exchanges that enable 

coordinated research across research 

and development stakeholders. 

This information is relevant to 

SWS’s IASMS, ATM-X’s Digital 

Information Platform, Digital Mesh 

Technology and Applications, and 

data fabric research efforts by others 

in NASA Aeronautics. The meeting 

was organized with the following 

topics: (1) Current and Potential 

Collaborations Overview; (2) Vehicle 

Technologies; (3) Big Data Analytics 

(ML/AI and Integrated data); and (4) 

Safety and Certification Technologies. 

SWS presented IASMS and ML/

AI assurance methods, and AOSP 

director Akbar Sultan discussed 

cybersecurity. There was general 

consensus that several areas for 

potential collaboration exist, and 

NASA Aeronautics program directors 

and Shelly Yak of the FAATC will 

continue discussions on them.

SWS Researchers 

Released a New Turbofan 

Engine Degradation 

Simulation Data Set 

POC: CHETAN KULKARNI

On Feb. 2, System-Wide Safety 

(SWS) researcher Chetan Kulkarni 

of the Diagnostics and Prognostics 

Group and the Prognostics Center 

of Excellence, along with external 

partners Olga Fink of ETH 

Zurich, Kai Goebel of PARC, and 

Manuel Arias Chao released a new 

Turbofan Engine Degradation 

Simulation data set. The data set 

5
6 AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

was generated with the Commercial 

Modular Aero-Propulsion System 

Simulation (C-MAPSS) dynamic 

model. A previous engine 

degradation data set has 65,000+ 

downloads and more than 30 

publications comparing different 

fault diagnostics and prognostics 

algorithms. The generation of 

data-driven prognostics models 

requires significant run-to-failure 

data. The newly released dataset 

provides synthetic run-to-failure 

degradation trajectories of a 

small fleet comprising of nine 

turbofan engines with unknown 

and different initial health 

conditions. Real flight conditions 

as recorded onboard a commercial 

jet were taken as input to the 

C-MAPSS model. The diversity 

of perspectives from the interorganization team supported the 

creation of a robust and complete 

data set incorporating a diverse set 

of failure modes relevant to the 

broader prognostics and health 

management community. The 

damage propagation modelling 

used for the generation of this 

synthetic data set builds on the 

modeling strategy from previous 

work done within the group. 

The released data set is available 

as data set #17 at: https://ti.arc.

nasa.gov/tech/dash/groups/pcoe/

prognostic-data-repository/

NASA Deploys New 

Capabilities for ATD-2 Phase 

3 Field Demonstration

POC: ERIC CHEVALLEY

On Feb. 3, the Airspace Technology 

Demonstration 2 (ATD-2) team 

deployed a new version of the Phase 

3 Integrated Arrival Departure 

Surface (IADS) system. ATD-2 

Phase 3 is focused on developing 

and demonstrating technology 

for collaborative rerouting of 

departing flights to reduce delays 

and improve operational efficiency. 

The collaborative rerouting is 

enabled by the digital exchange of 

candidate Trajectory Option Sets 

between airline flight operators 

and air traffic controllers. Seven 

different airline and air traffic control 

facilities in the North Texas region 

are participating in the ATD-2 Phase 

3 field demonstration. This latest 

IADS software version (v5.11.3) 

introduces new features and data 

intended to promote greater system 

use and provide more operational 

benefits when the Phase 3 system 

is formally evaluated during the 

stormy season of 2021, beginning in 

April. Two key enhancements have 

been implemented, including new 

data elements, providing estimates 

of a flight’s arrival delay at the 

destination airport for both the filed 

route and alternate routing options. 

The predicted arrival delay will help 

Example of the new “IN” (aircraft gate arrival time) delay information
AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021 

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

participating airlines better assess 

how much delay they may be able 

to recover at the destination airport 

by flying alternative TOS routes (see 

illustration below). The new data 

indicates potential delay savings with 

regards to both system delay and 

the airline schedule, thus providing 

additional support to airline’s tactical 

operational decisions. This is the 

first time that the ATD-2 system 

provides gate-to-gate predictions for 

a set of routes to field demonstration 

partners. New logic was added 

to enable a more agile reroute 

approval process by air traffic control 

personnel, reducing user workload 

as well as ensuring more accurate 

data collection. This third release 

in the IADS 5.11 series included 

65 modifications. All three of the 

5.11 software releases (with over 200 

modifications) are enhancements 

based on lessons learned from 

operational and shadow testing, and 

feedback from users since summer 

2020. The maturation of the software 

has been made possible through close 

engagement between the ATD2 team and field demonstration 

partners. Recent months have shown 

a significant increase in TOS reroute 

submissions by airlines and TOS 

reroute approvals by air traffic control. 

Field demonstration partners have 

come up with innovative ways to use 

the tools and make decisions that 

benefit both airlines and air traffic 

control operations. The ATD-2 team 

continues to actively monitor field 

activities, engage with users, and 

analyze data that has been collected. 

ATD-2 Briefs Stakeholder 

Community

POC: JEREMY COUPE AND MIRNA JOHNSON

The Airspace Technology 

Demonstration 2 (ATD-2) team 

conducted several briefings to their 

FAA stakeholders this past quarter. 

The first meeting was held on Jan. 

15. The ATD-2 team briefed the 

FAA’s Flow Evaluation Team (FET) 

and Surface Collaborative Decision 

Making Team (SCT), and provided 

updates on the ATD-2 Phase 3 

Field Evaluation in the North Texas 

metroplex. Highlights of the Phase 

3 Field Evaluation include new 

emerging use cases that leverage the 

Trajectory Option Set and analysis 

of predicted benefits associated with 

an event that occurred on Dec. 30, 

2020, driven by heavy terminal 

restrictions in response to an adverse 

weather scenario. During a fourhour period on Dec. 30, the east 

departure gate was restricted to a 

single departure fix and the flow was 

subject to an additional ten miles-intrail, passing back significant delay 

to the surfaces of both Dallas Fort 

Worth International Airport and 

Dallas Love Field. While the east 

departure gate was restricted, the 

north departure gate was unrestricted, 

and flights travelling northeast could 

reroute through the north gate with 

little delay while incurring only a 

slight increase to the overall flight 

time. During this event, the ATD2 Phase 3 system recommended 53 

flights for Trajectory Option Set 

reroutes with an average predicted 

delay savings of 38.7 minutes to 

the individual rerouted flight, and 

an average predicted system-level 

Metroplex savings of 85.8 minutes. 

ATD-2 also updated the FET and 

SCT teams on the Machine Learning 

(ML) Airport Surface Model that 

is under development in a parallel 

effort to the Phase 3 Field Evaluation. 

The ML Airport Surface Model was 

designed to be a scalable replacement 

for the capabilities provided by 

NASA’s Surface Trajectory Based 

Operations (STBO) subsystem which 

is a component of the fielded Phase 

3 system. The STBO system relies 

heavily upon detailed adaptation 

that defines the physical constraints 

and subject matter expert knowledge 

encoded in decision trees and creates 

a costly bottleneck to scaling the 

Phase 3 system across the National 

Aircraft System. ATD-2 is working 

to complete the initial build of the 

adaptation-free ML Airport Surface 

Model before the Stormy 2021 season 

to allow for a shadow evaluation 

against the traditional STBO 

system. In addition, the Air Traffic 

Management Exploration project’s 

Digital Information Platform (DIP) 

sub-project provided a briefing on 

the DIP concept to facilitate the 

continued collaboration between 

NASA and the FAA. DIP was 

7
8 AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

represented by Mirna Johnson, DIP 

sub-project manager, and is leading 

up the project formulation. Johnson 

introduced the FET and SCT to the 

high-level goals and scope of the DIP 

sub-project and began a conversation 

focused on how DIP can maintain 

the momentum fostered by ATD-2. 

On Feb. 18, a second meeting was 

held with the Systems Wide Information Management (SWIM) IndustryFAA Team (SWIFT) community’s 

thirteenth meeting. SWIFT was 

established by the FAA in response to 

requests from industry and provides a 

venue where participants can engage 

and learn about National Airspace 

System SWIM data and information 

services along with other SWIM services to improve system integration, 

automation, system interoperability, 

and communication networks. Again, 

the ATD-2 and DIP teams conducted presentations to the SWIFT 

team, which were well received by the 

SWIFT community. The audience of 

more than 200 attendees was highly 

engaged and actively asked questions 

about both the ML Airport Surface 

Model and about future opportunities to collaborate with DIP. NASA 

looks forward to continued collaboration with the SWIFT community. 

SWS Engages with Industry 

Through AAM Crosscutting 

Working Group 

POC: KYLE ELLIS

On Feb. 18, the NASA Aeronautics 

Research Institute hosted the In-Time 

System-Wide Safety Assurance/InTime Aviation Safety Management 

System Concept of Operations 

(ConOps) follow-up discussion for 

the NASA Advanced Air Mobility 

Crosscutting Working Group. The 

Crosscutting Working Group focuses 

on providing guidance, standards, 

and requirements for key elements 

that pertain to safety, security, 

autonomy, affordability, the National 

Campaign, and the Urban Air 

Mobility Community Concept of 

Operations. The meeting included 

panelists Peter Sachs of the FAA, Eric 

Watson of Zipline, Andrew Carter 

of Resilience, Ella Atkins of the 

University of Michigan, and Peter 

Shannon of Radius Capital. The 

audience interactively participated 

with the panelists. In addition, Kyle 

Ellis from the System-Wide Safety 

project described the In-Time 

Aviation Safety Management System 

vision for a safe National Airspace 

System, emphasizing the importance 

of data. To view the recording and 

learn more, visit https://nari.arc.nasa.

gov/aam-portal/crosscutting. 

UAS Traffic Management 

Technical Interchange Meeting 

POC: JAEWOO JUNG

On Feb. 23, NASA hosted a oneday Unmanned Aircraft Systems 

(UAS) Traffic Management 

Technical Interchange Meeting 

(UTM TIM) to share insights on 

the research conducted and the 

lessons-learned in UTM. For this 

virtual event, approximately 900 

participants around the globe 

registered in advance, and during 

the livestream, there were more 

than 1650 playbacks. Playbacks refer 

to the number of times a viewer 

starts watching the YouTube live 

video. During the peak viewing 

time of 7:30–8:30am Pacific time, 

375 concurrent viewers watched 

presentations on the UTM project 

overview, history, and concept and 

use cases. The meeting featured 16 

different speakers, including NASA 

and FAA leadership, with 11 indepth technical presentations. In 

addition, a panel of experts internal 

and external to NASA discussed the 

global impact of UTM. Materials 

from the meeting are available 

at https://nari.arc.nasa.gov/

utm2021tim

NASA and FAATC Complete 

Initial Network Testing 

POC: RONALD MADDOX

On Feb. 24, the Air Traffic 

Operations Laboratory (ATOL) at 

NASA’s Langley Research Center 

in Virginia completed low-level 

network interconnection testing 

with the FAA William J. Hughes 

Technical Center to enable joint 

testing and Advanced Air Mobility 

(AAM) research. This work is 

being conducted through a NASA/

FAA inter-agency agreement 

and is funded by the Air Traffic 

Management Exploration Urban 

Air Mobility sub-project. In the 

coming weeks, additional testing 

will demonstrate the sharing of 
AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021 9

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

simulation state data between 

systems used to evaluate NASA’s 

AAM concepts in the ATOL with 

the FAA’s air traffic control and 

flight simulator laboratories at 

the FAATC. Connectivity with 

FAA baseline systems facilitates 

NASA’s development of AAM 

simulators and tools while also 

enabling the FAA to expand the 

Trajectory Based Options Integrated 

Test Environment, advancing its 

test readiness capabilities. This 

integration positions both NASA 

and the FAA to lead research related 

to emerging and future airspace 

concepts and technologies. 

Joint Management Plan 

Established Between ATM-X/

UAM and AAM/National 

Campaign

POC: KEVIN WITZBERGER AND SHIVANJLI SHARMA

On Feb. 24, a key baseline 

management document to formalize 

the collaboration between teams 

within NASA Aeronautics was 

established in support of the 

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) 

National Campaign (NC). The Joint 

Management Plan (JMP) details 

the unique collaboration needed 

to ensure an integrated vehicle and 

airspace operational environment for 

the NC series, involving extensive 

efforts by two projects within two 

programs: the Integrated Aviation 

Systems Program’s AAM NC subproject and the Airspace Operations 

and Safety Program’s Air Traffic 

Management Exploration Urban 

Air Mobility (UAM) sub-project. 

The JMP defines processes and 

establishes a joint approach for 

managing requirements, risks, 

schedule, and reviews. Specifically, 

the JMP will guide technical 

teams across programs in sharing 

requirements while also facilitating 

bidirectional software deliveries 

needed for the simulation and flight 

test infrastructure environments. 

This collaboration will enable testing 

of future operational constructs 

with the delivery of UAM airspace 

components for flight testing, as 

well as consistent data collection 

frameworks for simulation and flight 

activities. Through this collaboration, 

the sub-projects will work together 

to benefit their respective objectives 

in support of NASA Aeronautics’ 

vision to make possible a safe, 

economically sustainable AAM 

transportation system. 

SWS Year Two Meeting 

of NASA Research 

Agreement Topic 1 

POC: NATASHA NEOGI AND PAUL MINER

On Mar. 2-3, the System-Wide 

Safety project conducted the Year 

Two meeting of NASA Research 

Agreement Topic 1: “Assuring 

Increasing Autonomous Systems 

with Non-Traditional HumanMachine Roles.” Presentations were 

made by two awarded grantees. 

On Mar. 2, the first team, led by 

Principal Investigator (PI) Amy 

Pritchett of Pennsylvania State 

University, presented on the topic of 

“Assuring Increasingly Autonomous 

Capabilities with Novel Delegations 

of Authority and Responsibility.” 

Co-PI Cody Fleming of Iowa State 

University presented work related 

to an extended safety methodology. 

The presentations included a summary of past accomplishments from 

Year One, modeling and simulation 

results in the work models that 

compute formalism, and theory and 

examples in the Safety Modelling 

and Analysis framework. The second 

team was led by PI Jennifer Davis 

of Collins Aerospace, who presented 

work related to the “Assured Human 

Machine Interaction for Increasingly 

Autonomous Systems (AHMIIAS).” 

Subcontractors of Team 2 are co-PI 

Siddhartha Bhattacharyya of the 

Florida Institute of Technology and 

Co-PI Randolph Jones of Soar Technologies. On Mar. 3, the Collins 

Aerospace team presented a safety 

assessment approach (a project status 

including accomplishments, findings, 

work in progress), a scoped Concept 

of Operations and relevant examples, 

and a framework and techniques for 

conducting safety assessments.

SWS Invited to Present on 

Assurance of Autonomy to 

NITRD’s SPSQ Working Group 

POC: MISTY DAVIES

On Mar. 4, Misty Davies of the 

System-Wide Safety (SWS) project 

gave an invited presentation on 

SWS’s Assurance of Autonomy 

effort to the Networking and 

Information Technology Research 
10 AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

and Development (NITRD) 

Software Productivity, Sustainability 

and Quality (SPSQ) Interagency 

Working Group. The presentation 

gave an overview of the overall 

goals and timeline for the NASA 

technical challenge and highlighted 

recent successes and the related 

publications for the effort. SPSQ 

members were very interested in the 

advancements to the state of the 

art and details of the collaboration 

between SWS and DARPA’s 

Assured Autonomy effort. 

Kickoff Meeting for InTime Learning-Based 

Safety Management for 

AAM/UAM Operations

POC: STEVE YOUNG

On Mar. 8, kickoff meeting was 

held to summarize and review plans 

for a new cooperative research 

agreement with a team from 

George Washington University, 

MIT-Lincoln Labs, Vanderbilt, 

and the University of Texas. 

This agreement results from a 

NASA Research Announcement 

solicitation, and all planned work 

complements ongoing research in 

the System-Wide Safety (SWS) 

project. During the meeting, it was 

discussed how to best collaborate 

over the term of the effort. The 

three-year research activity will 

encompass the design, development, 

and demonstration of an in-time 

learning-based aviation safety 

management system (ILASMS) for 

scalable heterogeneous advanced 

Urban Air Mobility operations. 

The proposed innovations 

include: (1) an integrated safety 

management system architecture 

spanning onboard systems, ground 

control stations, and cloud-based 

services; (2) data-driven learningbased detection, assessment and 

prediction of anomalies, trends, 

and mission risks; (3) verifiable 

automated operational mitigation 

for resilience and scalability; 

and (4) closed-loop interfaces 

between detection/prediction and 

mitigation with safety guarantees 

for mitigation in the presence 

of imperfections and possible 

detection errors that may be 

introduced by learning-based 

approaches. System validation and 

demonstrations will use relevant 

scenarios during both simulations 

and sub-scale flight tests. 

Boeing Using SWS-Developed 

Tools and Processes to 

Explore Safety of Use Cases

POC: MISTY DAVIES

On Mar. 11, Boeing highlighted 

a collaboration with NASA to 

FAA technical experts in which the 

company is using System-Wide 

Safety project-developed tools and 

processes to explore the safety of 

Boeing-developed autonomy use 

cases. Boeing presented current 

results to FAA attendees and 

showed how NASA-developed tools 

could automatically find defects 

and increase the confidence in 

the behavior of highly automated 

systems. FAA technical experts 

included George Romanski, FAA 

Chief Scientific Advisor for Aircraft 

Computer Software; Rick May, FAA 

expert on aircraft certification; Robert 

Jones, Lead for the Flight Control 

Technical Community Research 

Group; and Mike Vukas of the FAA 

Policy and Innovation Division. 

ATM-X-CTM/ETM Team 

Continue Meetings 

with Stakeholders 

POC: JAEWOO JUNG

The Air Traffic Management 

Exploration project’s Collaborative 

Traffic Management/Upper E 

Airspace Traffic Management (CTM/

ETM) team held several stakeholder 

meetings this past quarter. The first 

meeting was held on Feb. 3 with 

the FAA’s NextGen ETM team 

and was a dedicated meeting with 

Boom – one of the leading companies 

in the supersonic transport arena. 

Joining the discussion from Boom 

was a certification and airworthiness 

expert and a company pilot with 

background as a US Air Force test 

pilot. The intent of the meeting 

was to gain a better understanding 

of Boom’s operational plans and 

vehicle characteristics as part of the 

ETM team’s efforts in developing its 

concept and preparing for modeling 

and simulation work aimed at 

integrating supersonic operations 

into a cooperative ETM environment. 
AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021 11

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

The discussion covered various aspects 

of intended operations, operating 

characteristics, and considerations for 

planning and airspace management. 

The meeting was also an opportunity 

for the Boom team to share their 

research and simulation needs and ask 

the NASA and FAA teams for more 

details on planned work in ETM and 

its potential impacts and outcomes. 

Follow up meetings are planned with 

Boom and additional feedback is 

expected to help inform NASA and 

FAA teams’ ETM engineering and 

research efforts. 

The next meeting was held Mar. 12 

and again included representatives 

from the FAA and industry. This 

meeting was the first in a series 

of meetings to discuss and further 

develop ETM concepts. More 

than 60 industry representatives 

participated, including those from 

commercial supersonic transport 

(Boom and Aerion), fixed-wing 

HALE (Swift, AeroVironment, 

Airbus, Aurora), airships and 

balloons (SCEYE, Loon, Aloft 

Research), and government partners 

such as the Department of Defense. 

During this meeting, topics covered 

included community activities such 

as planned stratospheric test flights 

of SCEYE’s airship platform and 

the US Army Zephyr program; 

industry responses to NASA and the 

FAA’s ETM information request; 

the introduction of a lexicon to 

capture the ETM community’s 

proposed Upper Class E “rules of the 

road;” and Cooperative Operating 

Practices. The needs and constraints 

for supersonic flights, including the 

potential impact of shockwaves from 

supersonic operations on balloons 

and high aspect-ratio aircraft (e.g., 

solar-powered flying wings), were also 

introduced for further investigation 

and discussion. NASA and the FAA’s 

modeling and simulation progress 

were also presented. The next ETM 

meeting is tentatively scheduled for 

May 2021. 

SWS Researchers Continue 

Collaboration Efforts with 

American Airlines

POC: MISTY DAVIES, LANCE PRINZEL

AND JOHN KOELLING

System-Wide Safety (SWS) and 

American Airlines have been working 

together to address identified needs 

arising from COVID-19. Five NASA/

American Airlines teams were formed 

to collaboratively address these needs. 

One of these teams has been working 

with the airline to examine safety 

events in preflight and pushback 

phases. On Jan. 11, American 

Airlines invited SWS researchers to 

contribute an article to the company’s 

pilot magazine, Safety Preflight. 

Steve Casner, Chad Stephens, and 

Kaitlyn Fox (SWS Communications 

Lead) co-authored the article with 

contributions from Lance Prinzel and 

Daniel Kiggins (SWS airline pilot 

subject-matter expert). As part of a 

larger multi-part mitigation strategy, 

the article helps bring increased 

awareness of the problem to pilots. 

The article is scheduled to appear 

in the February 2021 edition of the 

magazine. As a follow-on activity, 

the team collaborated with the 

joint American Airlines/Allied Pilot 

Association Flight Aviation Safety 

Action Program team to address 

safety issues in a series of articles for 

Safety Preflight. Three articles were 

recently published in the January/

(L-R) American Airlines pilots watching the SWS-created required training video that Dan Kiggins, 

American Airlines pilot and NASA SME, and Steve Casner, NASA Senior Research Psychologist, helped 

to develop.
12 AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

February issue and the March issue. 

The articles showcase the beneficial 

collaboration between NASA and 

American Airlines, especially with 

regards to flight safety. The articles are 

titled “The Impact of Covid-19 on 

American Airlines Operations: A New 

Perspective on Some Old Problems,” 

“Improving Aviation Together: NASA 

and American Airlines Collaboration,” 

and “Is the Last Inflight Rest Break 

Really the Best?”

On Mar. 17, American Airlines’ 

Director of Training reached out 

to the SWS team to help address 

an identified issue that their pilots 

were experiencing. As part of the 

collaboration, the teams worked 

together to produce a six-minute 

human factors video that will be 

shown to more than 13,000 pilots 

during recurrency training. The 

training video focuses on the effects 

of distraction on safety, and how 

NASA and American Airlines are 

collaborating to mitigate distraction 

on the flight deck. Chad Stephens, 

NASA Research Scientist; Lance 

Prinzel, SWS Senior Technical 

Advisor; and Kaitlyn Fox coordinated 

with Steve Casner and Daniel 

Kiggins to develop a script and shoot 

the footage remotely. This project 

was a collaborative effort involving 

the Media Solutions Branch and 

Public Affairs at NASA’s Langley 

Research Center in Virginia and 

Public Affairs at NASA Headquarters 

in Washington. The feedback from 

American Airlines regarding the 

production has been overwhelmingly 

positive. After showing the film, the 

airline’s Director of Training gave 

feedback that the video is “the most 

popular part of the training class.”

National Campaign 

Initiates Dry Run Build #2 

UAM Surrogate Flights

POC: SHIVANJLI SHARMA AND KEVIN WITZBERGER

The Advanced Air Mobility project’s 

National Campaign (NC) sub-project 

initiated Dry Run Build #2 flight 

activities on Mar. 6, marking the 

start of a two-week flight test window 

during which the NC Flight Test 

Infrastructure was tested along with 

exercising the data collection system, 

scenarios, and test techniques needed 

for future flights. The Build #2 flight 

tests were conducted in cooperation 

with representatives from the FAA 

and utilized a Flight Research Inc. 

OH-58C helicopter acting as a 

representative Urban Air Mobility 

(UAM) vehicle at NASA’s Armstrong 

Flight Research Center in California. 

The Build #2 flight test was focused 

on capturing foundational vehicle 

and operational data (including test 

points around flight maneuvers and 

vehicle characteristics expected by 

UAM vehicles), UAM approaches 

and departures from heliport and 

vertiport infrastructures, and flights 

designed to simulate future UAM 

missions – as well as preflight 

planning, ground operations, flight 

operations, and contingencies. 

The NC Flight Test Infrastructure 

includes real-time Automatic 

Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast 

(ADS-B) inputs to inform an 

airspace component provided by 

the UAM sub-project to represent a 

future, third-party airspace provider. 

Data collection systems included a 

differential GPS, instrumentation 

onboard the vehicle, and 

instrumentation provided by the FAA 

Flight Inspection Airborne Processor 

Application. The Build #2 UAM 

Surrogate Flights provided baseline 

data needed to support evolutions in 

vehicle, infrastructure, and airspace 

requirements that will enable the 

advent of UAM in the National 

Airspace System. In addition, a virtual 

VIP Day was held on Mar. 19 that 

showcased an early version of airspace 

tools that the UAM sub-project 

is developing to derive airspace 

requirements. Spencer Monheim of 

NASA’s Ames Research Center in 

California presented an overview of 

the airspace system used and how it 

fits into the research plans that will 

ultimately result in requirements for 

future UAM operations.

ATM-X and UTM Projects 

Meet with FAA to Discuss 

Future RTT Plans

POC: JAEWOO JUNG

NASA and FAA Unmanned Aircraft 

Systems Traffic Management (UTM) 

Research Transition Team (RTT) 

representatives met to discuss 

handing off the UTM RTT work 

from the UTM project to the Air 
AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021 13

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

Traffic Management Exploration 

project on Mar. 22. The meeting 

set the stage for future discussions 

that will be used to scope continued 

collaboration activities. UTM 

pioneered the service-based 

architecture complementing the 

FAA’s air traffic management system 

for enabling new entrants operations. 

Future discussion will help ensure 

NASA’s awareness of the FAA’s UTM 

implementation plans and further 

use of the UTM-inspired eXtensible 

Traffic Management for enabling 

new airspace applications such as 

Urban Air Mobility and Upper Class 

E operations.

DIP Request for Information 

Now Open for Stakeholder 

Participation 

POC: MIRNA JOHNSON

On Mar. 23, the Air Traffic 

Management Exploration project 

opened the NASA Digital 

Information Platform (DIP) for 

stakeholder participation through 

the release of a Request for 

Information (RFI) and a website 

enabling stakeholders to learn more 

about DIP information sessions and 

collaborative opportunities. The 

objective of the RFI is to learn more 

about stakeholder needs and receive 

concept feedback of DIP. The RFI 

also expresses the project’s approach 

to engaging stakeholders in future 

demonstrations. DIP is interested in 

potential partnerships to help guide 

the development of the concept 

as well as potential partnerships 

for collaborative demonstrations 

with NASA. The DIP subproject is focused on designing, 

developing, and demonstrating a 

digital data ecosystem to accelerate 

transformation of the National 

Airspace System through cohesive 

decision making. The cloud-based 

platform will allow easy access 

to aviation-related data based on 

stakeholder-informed requirements. 

Stakeholders are encouraged to 

register on the newly available website 

to learn more about DIP. There is 

also an option for the community 

to submit a response to the RFI to 

enable NASA to better define a 

collaboration strategy and identify 

community needs and goals. Link: 

https://nari.arc.nasa.gov/atmx-dip

DARPA ARCOS Principal 

Investigator Meeting 

POC: PAUL MINER, MALLORY GRAYDON

AND NATASHA NEOGI

On Mar. 23, Mallory Graydon, 

Natasha Neogi, and Paul Miner 

participated in the virtual principal 

investigator meeting for DARPA’s 

Automated Rapid Certification of 

Software (ARCOS) Program. The 

purpose was to kick off the second 

assessment phase for Technical Area 

1, “Evidence Generation.” The 

meeting consisted of updates from 

GrammaTech, Lockheed Martin, 

SRI, GE, and Boeing on their work 

to date and expectations for the next 

assessment phase. Graydon, Neogi, 

and Miner are part of the government 

subject matter expert review panel 

supporting DARPA’s evaluation of 

the ARCOS Program results.

PAAV Market Study Final 

Briefing and System 

Model Training 

POC: ROBERT FONG

The Pathfinding for Airspace with 

Autonomous Vehicles (PAAV) 

sub-project within the Air Traffic 

Management Exploration (ATM-X) 

project held their final market 

study briefing from the Logistics 

Management Institute (LMI) on Mar. 

3. With more than 30 interviews, 

this briefing engaged with NASA, 

the FAA, industry participants, and 

stakeholders. The purpose of the 

study was to help the ATM-X project 

develop an understanding of the 

markets, risks, and opportunities for 

developing increasingly automated 

air cargo vehicles in the National 

Airspace System. 

The PAAV sub-project will 

continue to coordinate with LMI to 

incorporate the feedback received 

during the briefing in order to draft 

a final report by April 2021. As a 

follow-on activity, on Mar. 24, the 

PAAV team initiated a market study 

through LMI to provide information 

on the forecasted market, risks, and 

opportunities associated with the 

integration of unmanned cargo 

vehicles in the National Airspace 
14 AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

System. To support this study, a 

systems dynamics model was 

developed to explore the effects of 

various input parameters on this 

emerging operational segment. This 

model uses market drivers, innovative 

business and operational models, and 

technology game changers such as 

autonomy and using conservative, 

expected, and aggressive assumptions 

for near-term (2025–2030) and 

mid-term (2030–2035) operations. 

The model captures the behavior 

and impacts of key stakeholders 

such as the air cargo industry, 

aircraft manufacturers, NASA, FAA, 

shippers, the public, and elements 

of the national transportation 

system infrastructure. The PAAV 

team completed training on this 

model to understand adjustments to 

parameters that can be made in the 

model to reflect emerging responses 

and permit PAAV to fine tune the 

forecasted market for adoption of 

unmanned cargo vehicle operations 

and guide investment strategies. 

NASA and DLR Explore 

Collaboration Efforts 

POC: HANBONG LEE AND TAUMI DANIELS

In September 2020, NASA began 

a collaborative effort with the 

German Aerospace Center (DLR) 

under the Air Traffic Management 

Exploration (ATM-X) project to 

explore topics related to the development of a future airspace system 

that enables a diverse set of operations, including thin-haul aircraft, 

various Unmanned Aircraft Systems, 

Urban Air Mobility (UAM), and 

supersonic transport in a scalable, 

flexible, and resilient manner – 

ensuring safety and security for 

both existing and new users. As 

part of this collaborative effort, a 

joint team for the UAM network 

task under the UAM foundational 

research work package is responsible for developing the necessary 

knowledge to identify the advantages and disadvantages of different 

UAM network designs, network 

scheduling algorithms, and UAM 

demand prediction models. Since 

the kickoff meeting in September, 

the UAM network task team has 

discussed the concepts of the 

network design and management 

and exchanged related information 

during monthly meetings. At the 

most recent meeting in February 

2021, NASA and DLR chose Dallas 

and Hamburg, respectively, as the 

target metropolitan areas for collaborative study. This collaboration 

will continue to engage in technical 

discussions on which topics for 

the coming year include common 

assumptions, requirements, 

congestion control approaches, and 

performance metrics. Reference 

scenarios for these selected cities 

will be developed and used in 

simulations to evaluate the performance of different network designs 

under various conditions. As a 

related activity, ATM-X researchers 

participated in a semi-annual review 

with DLR on Mar. 25. Ian Levitt 

presented an overview of UAM 

research. John Foster, Hanbong 

Lee, Hok Ng, Kee Palopo, and Jerry 

Smith presented results from their 

research along with their respective 

DLR partners. This collaboration 

with DLR is a five-year effort 

with seven tasks or work packages 

defined and staffed by NASA and 

DLR researchers. Each of the 

teams is working towards annual 

milestones for their respective tasks. 

These tasks include UAM demand 

analysis, network analysis, impacts 

analysis, flight performance, and 

testbed and Remote Component 

Environment (RCE) integration. 

RCE is the DLR equivalent of 

Testbed. Other tasks that are scheduled for a future review include 

digital trajectory negotiation and 

integrated flow management.

ATM-X Continues DIP 

Briefings to Stakeholders 

POC: MIRNA JOHNSON

The Air Traffic Management 

Exploration (ATM-X) project’s 

Digital Information Platform (DIP) 

sub-project conducted numerous 

briefings to stakeholders this past 

quarter. On Feb. 8, the team 

presented to Airlines for America’s 

Air Traffic Management Council. 

The presentation introduced the 

vision and objectives to Airlines for 

America. The ATM-X team shared 

the motivation for the project 

and how previous research from 

Airspace Technology Demonstra-
AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021 15

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

tion 2 provided formulation 

input towards an architecture that 

allows high re-use of solutions. 

An invitation was extended to 

continue collaboration between 

airlines and NASA to inform 

operational needs and prioritize 

benefits to demonstrate. Collaborative demonstrations are planned 

throughout the DIP project cycle 

and operator validation will be 

valuable to guide partners in the 

airspace services to be developed on 

DIP. A follow-on session was held 

for the FAA’s NextGen Integration 

Working Group Committee on Feb. 

25, and then with Delta Airlines on 

Mar. 25. The plan is to continue 

socializing DIP up to airlines 

and the FAA’s NextGen Advisory 

Committee, as NASA is interested 

in obtaining feedback on the 

concept and capturing the measurable benefits it could bring. This is 

expected to be one of many sessions 

to dive deeper into the data and 

services needs of the community. 

Kickoff Meeting for Pervasive 

Run-Time Monitoring of 

Emerging Hazards for UAM 

POC: EVAN DILL

On Mar. 25, a kickoff meeting 

was held to summarize and review 

plans for a new cooperative research 

agreement with a team from 

Virginia Commonwealth University 

and the National Institute 

of Standards and Technology. 

The agreement results from a 

NASA Research Announcement 

solicitation. The three-year research 

activity encompasses the design, 

development, and demonstration 

of a pervasive run-time monitor 

for the detection and assessment 

of emerging hazards associate with 

heterogeneous advanced Urban 

Air Mobility operations. The 

proposed innovations include: (1) 

a multi-level run-time verification 

and monitoring capability for 

hazard detection; (2) a hierarchical 

embedded run-time assurance 

monitor to evaluate flight control 

system health; and (3) a contextdependent monitoring capability 

derived from data-driven learningbased techniques for the prediction 

of anomalies, trends, and mission 

risks. System validation and 

demonstrations will use relevant 

scenarios during both simulations 

and sub-scale flight tests. This 

planned work complements 

ongoing research in the SystemWide Safety project and during the 

kickoff meeting it was discussed 

how to best collaborate over the 

term of the effort. 

System-Wide Safety Hosts 

Certification Panel on 

Autonomous Systems 

POC: AARON DUTLE AND GUILLAUME BRAT

On Mar. 30, as part of the Research 

Transition Team Verification 

and Validation subgroup, the 

System-Wide Safety (SWS) project 

hosted a third installment of the 

Certification Talks series with a 

panel of experts on autonomy 

and safety assurance/certification. 

The safety of the increasingly 

autonomous systems and future 

paths to their certification were 

discussed with a group of experts 

from NASA, the FAA, and the 

Air Force Research Laboratory 

(AFRL). Designs for the next 

generation of aircraft – whether 

large cargo, urban air mobility, or 

small package delivery – invariably 

include increasing levels of aircraft 

autonomy. The assembled panel of 

experts discussed how the safety of 

these systems can be assured, as well 

as future paths to their certification. 

Aaron Dutle hosted a group of 

panelists virtually to discuss these 

issues. Panelists included Kathy 

Abbott, the FAA’s Chief Scientific 

and Technical Advisor for Flight 

Deck Human Factors; Natalia 

Alexandrov, Principal Investigator 

in the Autonomous Integrated 

Systems Research Branch at 

NASA’s Langley Research Center in 

Virginia; Laura Humphrey, Senior 

Research Engineer in the AFRL 

Aerospace Systems Directorate; 

Kerianne Hobbs, Run Time 

Assurance Research Lead of the 

AFRL Autonomous Capabilities 

Team; and Wes Ryan, who was 

with the FAA for 18 years, most 

recently as Manager of Research 

and Development for the Aircraft 

Certification Service, before joining 

the NASA Aeronautics Research 

Institute on Mar. 1. 
16 AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

NASA and FAA Kick Off 

Upper Class E Traffic 

Management RTT

POC: JAEWOO JUNG

Members of NASA and the Upper 

Class E Traffic Management (ETM) 

Research Transition Team (RTT) 

held their initial kickoff meeting 

virtually on Mar. 23. The RTT 

provides a structured forum for 

researchers and implementers to 

work together constructively on 

a continuing basis, and ensures 

that planned research results 

will be utilized to enable the 

implementation of NextGen air 

navigation services concepts. It also 

provides a forum for the inclusion 

of all NASA and FAA stakeholders 

in the planning and conduct 

of research by the RTTs and 

utilization of its outcomes. At the 

kick-off meeting, NASA and FAA 

team members were introduced and 

briefed on previously completed 

ETM activities, such as two 

tabletop exercises in 2019 and 

subsequent meetings with ETM 

community. NASA and FAA 

working group leads also presented 

their Upper Class E cooperative 

operations concept analysis and 

simulations effort. The team 

will meet again in April 2021 to 

continue conversations on the 

planned research activities.

xTM Participates in DMTA 

RTT xTM-ATC Working 

Group Kickoff Meeting

POC: PAUL LEE

The Air Traffic Management 

Exploration eXtensible Traffic 

Management (xTM) sub-project 

xTM-ATC interactions team 

participated in the xTM-ATC 

Working Group kickoff meeting 

on Mar. 30. This working group is 

part of the Digital Mesh Technology 

and Applications (DMTA) Research 

Transition Team focusing on 

exploration, development, and 

evaluation of common methods 

for interaction between traditional 

air traffic control and xTM traffic 

management concepts such as 

Unmanned Aircraft Systems Traffic 

Management (UTM), small UTM, 

and ETM. At the kickoff meeting, 

the working group discussed the 

current and ongoing work at 

FAA and NASA on the topic of 

xTM-ATC interoperability. Sherry 

Magyarits of the FAA and her team 

presented their current analysis 

of xTM framework, services, and 

information requirements across 

different new entrant domains such 

as Urban Air Mobility, UTM and 

ETM. Paul Lee, NASA xTM-ATC 

interactions task lead, presented task 

objectives including identifying use 

cases for xTM-ATC interactions 

across multiple xTM domains 

and developing associated roles/

responsibilities, procedures, and 

information exchange requirements 

for the interactions. Both NASA 

and the FAA agreed that there was a 

significant synergy between the two 

tasks and discussed possible methods 

for close coordination in the future 

on their respective projects. 

Connection for Copilot 

Runtime Verification 

Framework Accepted 

for Release 

POC: MISTY DAVIES AND ALWYN GOODLOE

The project Connector for Copilot 

Runtime Verification Framework 

(LAR-19874-1), also known as 

Ogma, was approved for opensource release on Mar. 31. This 

ten-month effort was led by 

Alwyn Goodloe and Ivan Perez of 

NASA’s Langley Research Center 

in Virginia in close collaboration 

with Dimitra Giannakopoulou and 

Tom Pressburger of NASA’s Ames 

Research Center in California, and 

Anastasia Mavridou of KBR, and 

engineers from Collins Aerospace. 

Ultra-critical systems require highlevel assurance, which cannot always 

be guaranteed in compile time. 

The use of runtime verification 

enables monitoring these systems in 

runtime to detect property violations 
AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021 17

TECHNICAL AND PROGRAMMATIC HIGHLIGHTS

early and limit their potential 

consequences. Ogma is a tool that 

facilitates writing runtime monitors 

in existing high-level languages. It 

does so by taking files produced by 

Formal Requirements Elicitation 

Tool and JKind’s Lustre (used by 

Collins Aerospace) and transforming 

them into hard real-time C code. 

Part of this work was described in 

the joint paper “From Requirements 

to Autonomous Flight” by Dutle et 

al., Second Workshop on Formal 

Methods for Autonomous Systems. 

The paper describes NASA’s 

toolchain and how it can be used 

in combination with Independent 

and Configurable Architecture for 

Reliable Operations of Unmanned 

Systems, a software architecture 

for safety-centric autonomous 

unmanned aircraft applications built 

on top of NASA’s core Flight System. 
18 AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021

RECOGNITION

Global ADS-B Standards 

Document Published in 

the US and Europe

POC: AARON DUTLE

The third revision of the global 

Automatic Dependent SurveillanceBroadcast (ADS-B) standards 

document has been published in 

the US and Europe. The document 

caps over five years of work by the 

Combined Surveillance Committee, 

which is composed of RTCA special 

committees 186 and 209 and the 

EUROCAE Working Groups 49 

and 51, and includes significant 

contributions by NASA. NASA’s 

contribution includes updates to the 

requirements for Compact Position 

Reporting (CPR). These updates 

correct errors that were discovered 

by a formal analysis of the algorithm 

performed by the Formal Methods 

Group at NASA’s Langley Research 

Center in Virginia. The group 

also produced a formally verified 

reference implementation of CPR 

that is included in the document’s 

digital supplement. These additions 

are meant to help manufacturers 

to implement the CPR algorithm, 

which is notoriously difficult to do 

reliably. Another NASA contribution 

to the document is a set of new 

requirements for an air/ground 

determination algorithm. Aaron 

Dutle worked with industry partners 

at Garmin and Trig Avionics to 

develop requirements that allow 

an aircraft without a mechanical 

means (e.g. weight-on-wheels switch) 

to determine air or ground status 

for the purpose of broadcasting 

the correct message type. The 

new requirements will provide air 

traffic control with more accurate 

information on the status of general 

aviation aircraft, mitigating a current 

issue with many aircraft broadcasting 

“airborne” messages while actually on 

the ground. The revised document 

was published by RTCA in the 

US as DO-260C on December 

17, 2020 and by EUROCAE in 

Europe as ED-102B on January 

6, 2021: https://www.eurocae.

net/news/posts/2021/january/

ed-102b-mops-for-1090-mhzextended-squitter-ads-b-and-tis-b/.

SWS Human Performance 

and Fatigue Team Contributes 

to Important Pilot Study

POC: NIKUNJ OZA AND ERIN FLYNN-EVANS

A paper entitled “Flight Crew 

Alertness and Sleep Relative to 

Timing of In-flight Rest Periods in 

Long-Haul Flights” was accepted 

on Jan. 11 for Aerospace Medicine 

and Human Performance, a peerreviewed scientific journal in the field 

of aviation and aerospace medicine. 

The paper is a collaboration between 

the System-Wide Safety project’s 

Human Performance and Fatigue 

team and researchers at Washington 

State University who work with 

United Airlines. The article will 

be published in the journal’s 

February 2021 issue. The team 

studied approximately 600 pilots 

at American Airlines and United 

Airlines during long haul flights and 

found that landing pilots have the 

same level of alertness whether they 

take the second rest break or the 

third rest break. This is significant 

because FAA regulations require 

pilots to take the third rest break on 

such flights. The team’s results have 

led to the FAA allowing exceptions 

to this rule, which has been well 

received by pilots. The paper was 

written by Kevin Gregory, B.S.; 

Rhiannon Soriano-Smith, B.A.; 

Amanda Lamp, Ph.D.; Cassie 

Hilditch, Ph.D.; Michael Rempe, 

Ph.D.; Erin Flynn-Evans, Ph.D. 

MPH; and Gregory Belenky, M.D. 

SWS Researchers Received 

Acceptance of Journal Article 

POC: KYLE ELLIS AND LANCE PRINZEL

On Jan. 11, System-Wide Safety 

researchers received final acceptance 

of a journal article for a special 

issue on modern flight decks in the 

International Journal of HumanComputer Interaction journal (to be 

published in the March/April 2021 

issue). The article is titled “HighFidelity Line Operational Simulation 

Evaluation of Synthetic Vision Flight 

Deck Technology for Enhanced 

Unusual Attitude Awareness and 

Recovery” and describes collaborative 

research by NASA and Boeing’s 

examining the efficacy of synthetic 

vision (SV) primary flight displays to 

mitigate precursors of loss-of-control 

in-flight accidents and incidents. The 
AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021 19

RECOGNITION

research was conducted in the Level 

D-rated Boeing 787 Dreamliner fullmotion simulator located at Boeing’s 

Miami training facility. A series of 

unusual attitude recovery scenarios 

and a high-realism line-operational 

simulation scenario (gate-to-gate 

scenario) were employed as methods 

to evaluate the SV display technology. 

The study was conducted in response 

to the Commercial Aviation Safety 

Team’s request to evaluate the 

technology to help mitigate the 

onset of unusual attitude entry due 

to lack of visual references, which 

has implications in many loss-ofcontrol accidents. The SV technology 

presents a virtual analog of the 

outside-world visuals displayed 

on primary flight, navigation, and 

heads-up or head-worn displays. 

The outcome is an advanced 

understanding of the design of 

SV displays and data that informs 

development of Minimum Aviation 

System Performance Standards 

(DO-371) for the intended function 

of Aircraft State Awareness Synthetic 

Vision Systems. The authors are Kyle 

Ellis, Lance Prinzel, Daniel Kiggins, 

Stephanie Nicholas, Kathryn Ballard, 

Renee Lake, and Trey Arthur. 

SWS Participates in the AIAA 

SciTech 2021 Conference

POC: MISTY DAVIES, TERRY MORRIS, KYLE ELLIS

AND KENNETH FREEMAN

System-Wide Safety (SWS) 

researchers were responsible for 

authoring and presenting at least 10 

technical papers during the recent 

AIAA SciTech 2021 Conference. 

Many of the SWS researchers served 

on multiple panels including Misty 

Davies who moderated panels on 

“DevOps for Aerospace Software” 

and “Model-Based Approaches to 

Enabling the Future NAS.” At least 

five researchers also served as session 

chairs and committee chairs during 

the conference. Terry Morris served 

as Director for the Information 

Systems Group, hosting a face-toface meeting involving technical 

committee representatives across 

Intelligent Systems, Human 

Machine Teaming, Digital Avionics, 

and Software, and chaired a plenary 

session on “AI Drone Race I.” Evan 

Dill served as Deputy Technical 

Discipline Chair for Digital 

Avionics and chaired multiple 

sessions. SWS researcher Chetan 

Kulkarni became an AIAA Associate 

Fellow. SWS also presented “A 

Concept of Operations (ConOps) 

of an In-Time Aviation Safety 

Management System (IASMS) 

for Advanced Air Mobility 

(AAM),” as part of an outreach 

effort for IASMS on Jan. 21. 

Kyle Ellis, Paul Krois, John 

Koelling, Lawrence Prinzel, Misty 

Davies, and Robert Mah were the 

authors of the paper and Kyle 

Ellis made the presentation at the 

conference. In addition, Kenneth 

Freeman participated in two panel 

discussions on cybersecurity for 

aerospace and space systems as 

part of the AIAA Cybersecurity 

Working Group. The Aviation 

Cybersecurity Panel focused 

on cybersecurity education for 

the aeronautics domain and 

the Space Cybersecurity Panel 

discussed cybersecurity topics 

for space systems. Freeman 

discussed cybersecurity 

challenges in Urban Air Mobility 

environments and security 

requirements for the remote 

control of science experiments 

on space assets. Both panels 

had members from government, 

industry, and academia. 

Jon Holbrook Presents 

“Resilience Engineering 

+ AAM” at HOP Summit

POC: JON HOLBROOK

Jon Holbrook of System-Wide 

Safety participated in the virtual 

Human & Organizational 

Performance Summit held 

Jan. 12–14. The theme of the 

summit was “learning, sharing, 

and connecting” and the summit 

focused on how to enhance 

organizational processes and 

systems to better understand 

and address risk. Holbrook 

co-presented a technical talk 

titled “Resilience Engineering + 

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM).” 

The talk described paths forward 

to enabling AAM based on 

resilience engineering principles 

that offer innovative approaches 

to develop and design the AAM 

environment and promote 
20 AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021

RECOGNITION

operator and autonomous 

systems resilient performance. 

UAM Technical Lead Heather 

Arneson Participates in 

AUVSI Annual Summit

POC: HEATHER ARNESON

Heather Arneson of Urban Air 

Mobility (UAM) served as an 

invited panelist at the New England 

Chapter of the Association of 

Unmanned Vehicles Systems 

International (AUVSI) Annual 

Summit, held Jan. 13–14. Focusing 

on the potential market for new 

aircraft types entering civil airspace, 

the panel discussed “When Will the 

Market Develop and What Are the 

Catalysts?” Arneson provided an 

overview of the work being done 

within the UAM sub-project of Air 

Traffic Management Exploration, 

discussed barriers to UAM, and 

talked about the research and 

collaborations that NASA has 

engaged in to address these barriers. 

During the Q&A period, Arneson 

responded to questions about 

companies running early-stage UAM 

operations with helicopters. She 

spoke to the benefits of engaging 

in this type of activity but also 

stressed the limitations of helicopter 

operations in realizing a mature 

UAM system. The summit was 

held virtually, and 70 participants 

attended the panel discussion. 

SWS Researcher Evan Dill is 

Significant Contributor to US 

DOT PNT and GPS Report

POC: EVAN DILL

System-Wide Safety researcher 

Evan Dill of NASA’s Langley 

Research Center in Virginia 

provided significant contributions 

to a recently published U.S. 

Department of Transportation 

Complementary Positioning, 

Navigation, and Timing (PNT) 

and GPS Backup Technologies 

Demonstration Report (January 

2021). The 457-page final report 

describes the technology readiness 

level and recommendations for 

resilient PNT technologies that 

could offer complementary services 

in event of GPS disruptions. The 

demonstrations were conducted 

in March 2020 at NASA Langley 

and Joint Base Cape Cod in 

Massachusetts. The results 

are critical to addressing GPS 

vulnerabilities and lack of adequate 

backup PNT capabilities that 

were documented in a 2001 DOT 

report. The report highlighted 

that these issues and concerns have 

increased in scope and exposure to 

public sector reliance for critical 

infrastructure, emergency services, 

consumer and business processes, 

and automated systems. The 

findings indicate that the best 

strategy for achieving resilient 

service is to pursue multiple 

technologies to promote diversity 

in the PNT functions that support 

transportation and other critical 

infrastructure sectors in urban, 

rural, and maritime areas to include 

current and emerging aerospace 

operations. More information 

and the report can be found here: 

https://www.transportation.gov/pnt/

gps-backupcomplementary-pntdemonstration

Alwyn Goodloe Attends 

the Machine Learning in 

Certified Systems Workshop 

POC: ALWYN GOODLOE

On Jan. 15-16, Alwyn Goodloe 

virtually attended the Machine 

Learning (ML) in Certified 

Systems Workshop organized by 

the Dependable, Certifiable and 

Explainable Artificial Intelligence 

for Critical Systems Project – a 

French and Canadian collaboration. 

The organizers did an excellent job 

of bringing together ML/statistics 

experts with verification expertise 

from around the world. The 

presentations began with a high-level 

talk by Guillaume Soudain of the 

European Union Aviation Safety 

Agency on its vision of certification 

issues surrounding ML. He outlined 

the major known issues in achieving 

trustworthy high-assurance ML 

such as lack of predictability, poor 

guarantees related to generalization, 

bias and variance in the models, 

and lack of robustness. The speaker 

was clear that before flight critical 
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RECOGNITION

systems are certified, extensive 

experience with support systems is 

needed first.

Although ML systems are “trained” 

on a large data sets, their utility 

comes from the ability to generalize 

to input they have been trained 

on. Sebastian Gerchinovitz of 

the Institute of Technology Saint 

Exupéry gave an introduction to 

the mathematics involved, and 

difficulties in, characterizing mathematical bounds on the accuracy 

of generalization. Two technical 

talks focused on statistical issues in 

ML. Daniel Roy of the University 

of Toronto gave a talk on the role 

data plays in understanding the 

generalization properties of learning 

algorithms. Aaditya Ramdas of 

Carnegie Mellon University gave a 

talk on quantifying uncertainty for 

black-box classifiers. The second 

day provided two talks on abstract 

interpretation in a general introduction to the concept and how it is 

used in aerospace. The first talk, by 

Martin Vechev of the Eidgenössische Technische Hochschule in 

Zürich, focused on recent work 

that applies abstract interpretation 

to check a well-known robustness 

property of neural networks. The 

second talk was by Mioara Joldes 

of the Laboratoire d’Analyse et 

d’Architecture des Systèmes in 

Toulouse on numerical analysis 

issues that arise in ML optimization. 

SWS Researcher Engages in 

Newly Formed Flight Safety 

Foundation Working Group

POC: JON HOLBROOK

On Jan. 18, Jon Holbrook of the 

System-Wide Safety project engaged 

in a newly formed Flight Safety 

Foundation (FSF) Working Group 

(WG) on Safety-II. The goals of 

the FSF Safety-II WG are to: (a) 

formulate and align along some 

basic principles; (b) facilitate the 

networking and cooperation; and 

(c) enable the elaboration of joint 

knowledge resources. Holbrook 

currently leads the System-Wide 

Safety Human Contributions 

to Safety team, which is focused 

on research to apply resilience 

engineering and new safety thinking 

(Safety-II) concepts, principles, and 

practices to inform present and 

emerging aviation operations safety 

and autonomous systems design. 

ATM-X Uniform Control 

for VTOL Aircraft - 2021 

Autonomous VTOL 

Technical Meeting 

POC: JACOB COOK AND IRENE GREGORY

On Jan. 27, Jacob Cook of NASA’s 

Langley Research Center in Virginia 

presented a paper he co-authored 

with Irene Gregory entitled “A 

Robust Uniform Control Approach 

for VTOL Aircraft” at the Ninth 

Biennial Autonomous Vertical TakeOff and Landing (VTOL) Technical 

Meeting. The paper details recent 

work towards enabling safe flight for 

Urban Air Mobility (UAM)-class 

vehicles at NASA Langley under 

the UAM sub-project in support 

of developing separation standards 

for Advanced Air Mobility. The 

paper also builds on related research 

conducted in collaboration with 

the Transformational Tools and 

Technologies project’s Resilient 

Autonomy (TTT-RA) Autonomous 

Systems (AS) sub-project, published 

as part of the 2021 AIAA SciTech 

Forum (“Examination of Unified 

Control Approaches Incorporating 

Generalized Control Allocation”). 

The presentation was given 

during a session dedicated to 

Flight Dynamics, Controls, and 

Simulation of VTOL aircraft with 

approximately 70 live participants, 

and generated much interest. 

Holbrook Participates 

at British Airline Pilots 

Association Webinar

POC: JON HOLBROOK

On Feb. 1–2, Jon Holbrook 

of System-Wide Safety (SWS) 

participated as an invited virtual 

speaker and panelist for “Building 

Learning Airlines for Safety 

Improvement,” a webinar hosted by 

the British Airline Pilots Association. 

The goal of the event was to discuss 

the theory, practice, and regulation 

behind building “learning airlines” 

for safety improvement. Holbrook 
22 AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021

RECOGNITION

discussed the SWS project team’s 

work focused on systematically 

collecting, analyzing, and learning 

from safety-producing behaviors in 

a presentation titled “How Safety 

Thinking Impacts Safety Learning: 

Creating Opportunities to Learn.” 

More than 200 attendees participated 

in each day of the webinar. 

SWS Participation in SAE S-18 

Standardization Activities

POC: MISTY DAVIES AND MALLORY GRAYDON

On Feb. 1-5, Mallory Graydon 

participated virtually in the 

quarterly meeting for SAE 

International’s S-18 Committee. 

The SAE S-18 is updating and 

drafting several aerospacerelated documents and standards 

including: (a) the ARP4754B safety 

management standard; (b) the 

ARP4761A hazard analysis standard; 

(c) the AIR7209 paper on safety 

principles for aerospace vehicles and 

systems; (d) the AIR7121 paper 

on the applicability of existing 

development assurance and system 

safety practices to unmanned 

aircraft systems; (e) the AIR6276 

paper on the use of modeling 

and tools for aircraft systems 

development assurance; and (f) the 

AIR6276 paper on the use of the 

Systems Theoretic Process Analysis 

(STPA) in aerospace applications. 

Related link: https://www.sae.

org/works/committeeHome.

do?comtID=TEAS18

ATM-X Presentation at Aerial 

Connectivity Joint Activity 

POC: RAFAEL APAZA

On Feb. 3, Davis Hackenberg of 

the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) 

Mission Integration Office and 

Rafael Apaza of NASA’s Glenn 

Research Center in Cleveland gave a 

presentation on AAM and the NASA 

Announcement of Collaborative 

Opportunity, CNS Annex at the 

Aerial Connectivity Joint Activity 

(ACJA) monthly meeting. The 

ACJA forum promotes information 

exchanges between the aviation 

and cellular communications 

communities and synchronizes 

contributions between the existing 

Standard Development Organizations 

of each community. The briefing 

objective was an outreach effort 

to increase AAM and partnership 

opportunities awareness. NASA’s 

presentation introduced AAM and 

focused on wireless communications 

challenges, CNS work plans, and 

described the CNS Annex flight 

testing process. Participants included 

telecommunications service providers, 

communications manufacturing and 

aviation industry representatives.

UAM Technical Leader 

Virtual Visit with Univ. 

of Illinois Aerospace 

Engineering Department 

POC: HEATHER ARNESON

On Feb. 15, Heather Arneson 

was invited by her graduate alma 

mater, University of Illinois at 

Urbana-Champaign, to be the 

guest speaker at the Aerospace 

Engineering Department’s virtual 

seminar. Arneson gave an overview 

of the Urban Air Mobility (UAM) 

sub-project and shared some 

preliminary research results from the 

Airspace Services focus area. More 

than 100 attendees were online for 

her presentation, including faculty 

and students. In addition to the 

seminar, her virtual visit included 

conversations with 11 faculty and 

staff members and a conversation 

with graduate students following the 

seminar. Faculty at the university 

are working on a broad range of 

problems that are highly relevant 

to the UAM work being done at 

NASA. Discussions focused on 

topics in the public domain, such 

as the operation of new vehicles 

designed for UAM in close proximity, 

methods to gather data for prediction 

and modeling of micro-weather in 

urban landscapes, machine learning 

for mission planning, machine 

learning to identify precursors to 

safety events, coordination of safetycritical autonomous systems, and 

verification of cyber-physical systems. 

NASA Ames Honorees in 

the 2020 Federal Employee 

of the Year Awards 

POC: JOSEPH RIOS

On Feb. 18, Joseph Rios was one 

of seven employees from NASA’s 

Ames Research Center in California 
AOSP NEWSLETTER // JAN-MAR 2021 23

RECOGNITION

recognized at the San Francisco 

Federal Executive Board (SFFEB) 

2020 Federal Employee of the Year 

Awards hosted in San Francisco. 

The SFFEB represents 160 agencies 

and 44,500 federal employees in 

the nine-county San Francisco 

metropolitan area. The Federal 

Employee of the Year Awards is 

the San Francisco-area federal 

community’s acknowledgement of 

the extraordinary accomplishments 

of the nominees. Rios won in the 

Science and Technology category for 

leading the technical development 

of a revolutionary approach to 

safely and efficiently integrating a 

new class of aircraft into our skies. 

The system enables a future where 

drones are routinely used for public 

safety, infrastructure inspections, 

agricultural needs, deliveries, 

mapping, and other tasks beneficial 

for society. 

NASA/FAATC Partnership 

Described in ATCA Journal 

of Air Traffic Control 

POC: IAN LEVITT

As part of a recently signed 

Interagency Agreement (IA1-

30149, Annex 3), NASA’s Langley 

Research Center in Virginia and the 

FAA William J. Hughes Technical 

Center (FAATC) are partnering 

to integrate laboratory assets 

and tools to develop Research, 

Development, and Test and 

Evaluation capabilities to evaluate 

emerging Advanced Air Mobility 

(AAM) operational concepts and 

associated technologies. This 

partnership is described in the cover 

story featured in the winter 2020 

edition of the Air Traffic Control 

Association’s Journal of Air Traffic 

Control. The article, entitled “The 

FAA’s Research, Development, Test 

& Evaluation Environment of the 

Future,” highlights how initial 

laboratory integration with NASA 

Langley assets – including the Air 

Traffic Operations Lab, the Urban 

Air Mobility Vehicle Simulation 

(known as the “UAM Flyer”), the 

UAM Mission Planner, and the City 

Environment Range Testing for 

Autonomous Integrated Navigation 

– will expand the FAATC’s baseline 

Trajectory Based Options Integrated 

Test Environment. The FAATC’s 

National Airspace System laboratory 

assets include the Standard 

Terminal Automation Replacement 

System, out-the-window tower 

lab, Unmanned Aircraft Systems 

(UAS) lab, Cockpit Simulation 

Facility, UAS Traffic Management 

(UTM), and real-time and fasttime simulation capabilities. As 

a result of laboratory integration 

between NASA Langley and the 

FAATC, a collaborative Advanced 

Air Mobility Live, Virtual, and 

Constructive Environment with Air 

Traffic Management, UAM, and 

UTM simulation capabilities will be 

established resulting in an increased 

level of readiness to conduct future 

National Airspace System concepts. 

AOSP Projects Participate at 

the SAE AeroTech Seminar 

POC: WILLIAM CHAN, NATASHA NEOGI

AND JOHN KOELLING

Two Airspace Operations and Safety 

Program projects participated at 

the SAE AeroTech Seminar on 

Mar. 10. Air Traffic Management 

Exploration conducted a project 

overview, which was moderated by 

the Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) 

Mission Integration Office and 

included project managers from 

AAM, System-Wide Safety (SWS), 

and Revolutionary Vertical Lift 

Technology. SWS also participated in 

the AAM Track with Natasha Neogi 

and John Koelling as panelists. Neogi 

served on the AAM Use Cases and 

Public Acceptance panel. Members 

on the Public Acceptance Panel 

spoke regarding multiple use case 

scenarios such as medical emergency, 

agriculture, and search and rescue. 

Additionally, concerns related to 

safety, community engagement, and 

diversity and inclusion of services 

to persons with disabilities were 

discussed in detail. The AAM 

Ecosystem Alignment Session Panel 

included SWS project manager John 

Koelling, who discussed the diverse 

technology contributions NASA is 

making to the AAM Ecosystem by 

providing an overview on project 

activities and key innovations across 

NASA that will make AAM a reality. 

The session highlighted technology 

transfers to standards organizations, 

FAA, and industry. 
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CAS/ATM-X Projects’ 

Donna Gilchrist Honored 

for Black History Month 

POC: WILLIAM CHAN

On Mar. 24, Donna Gilchrist of the 

Convergent Aeronautics Solutions 

and Air Traffic Management 

Exploration projects was honored 

among those featured as part of 

Black History Month on NASA 

Aeronautics’ website. Donna Gilchrist 

works as a scheduler for both projects. 

One of the significant contributions 

Gilchrist made, amongst several 

others, was to provide mentorship to 

students and advise them on how to 

overcome obstacles while pursuing a 

career in STEM. 

Website: https://www.nasa.gov/

aeroresearch/programs/tacp/cas/

donna-gilchrist-honored-for-blackhistory-month
National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Headquarters

300 E. Street, SW

Washington, DC 20024

www.nasa.gov/aeroresearch

www.nasa.gov