Volume 04 | May 2019
NAMS Highlights - May 2019
The Latest News from the NASA Academic Mission Services Program
ATD-2 Completes Human-In-The-Loop Simulation
The ATD-2 team completed the Assessment of Ramp Times #4 (ART-4) Human in the Loop (HITL) simulation at NASA Ames’ Future Flight Center (FFC), a 360-degree air traffic control tower simulator. The objectives of the ART-4 HITL were to evaluate the impacts of various goals on Ramp operations at the Dallas-Fort Worth (DFW) airport and to test new ATD-2 tools and features before field deployment at DFW. USRA was a key contributor of the tools and features being evaluated and provided operational support to users and simulation staff during the ART-4 HITL and the previous ART-3 HITL that concluded in March 2019.
Pictured above: DFW Ramp Controller at FFC

Integrated Demand Management (IDM) Team Awarded Best Paper for AIAA Aviation

The Aviation Systems Division (Code AF) 2018 “Best Paper” Award was presented to the Integrated Demand Management (IDM) team for their AIAA AVIATION 2018 paper titled, "Using an Automated Air Traffic Simulation Capability for a Parametric Study in Traffic Flow Management." The paper was written by Dr. Heather Arneson (NASA) and IDM team co-authors including Antony Evans (Crown Consulting) and Jinhua Li (USRA). The paper was selected by AF supervisors and the Office of the Ames’ Chief Scientist from conference papers submitted between July 2017 and June 2018. Dr. Arneson highlighted the IDM team’s unique research to improve air traffic management in an Ames Center-wide Seminar, “Using strategic delay to reduce overall delay in commercial aviation”, held on Wednesday, May 1 st  at the N201 Auditorium.

Abstract:
In commercial aviation, flight delays result when the capacity of critical resources, such as airspace or airports, is insufficient to meet demand. Better matching between demand and available capacity can lead to efficiency improvements, with increased throughput, reduced delays, and more efficient flight trajectories. Mismatches in demand and capacity can be addressed by strategically using departure and airborne delays, as well as pre-departure and airborne reroutes, to manage access to the constrained resources. However, because of uncertainties in both demand and capacity (e.g., due to weather), such matching can be difficult. This presentation will describe simulation experiments performed to quantify the impact of uncertainty in departure time on the resulting tactical delay required to ensure that the capacities of constrained resources are not exceeded.
Pictured above: Dr. Heather Arneson (NASA) presenting at NASA Ames Center-wide Seminar

Photo credit: Dominic Hart, NASA Ames Research Center
Innovation Labs Celebrates Earth Day
On April 26, 2019, Innovation Labs celebrated Earth Day at the NASA Ames Conference Center. The event was a success and an opportunity for USRA, NASA Ames, Foothill College, and Healthy Climate Alliance colleagues to discuss various environmental topics. The celebration consisted of a student poster session and discussions on lessons learned from earth observations, our changing environment and human impacts, as well as looking forward with academic, government and industry perspectives. The event was a collaborative effort organized by the team that consisted of Dr. Wenonah Vercoutere, Director Innovation Labs, NASA; Dr. David Bell, Director, USRA; Dr. Jessica Snyder, Research Engineer, USRA; Saba Hussain, Program Manager, Collaborations; USRA, Susan Dekom, Program Specialist; USRA, Robert Cormia, Faculty, Foothill College; Dr. Lori Silverman, Director, Science Learning Institute at Foothill College; Peter Fiekowsky, Healthy Climate Alliance and Erica Dodds, Executive Director, Healthy Climate Alliance.
Pictured above: Innovation Labs celebrating Earth Day at NASA Ames Conference Center
University Engagement and Student Highlights
U.S. Army and USRA Participates in Technology Demonstration at University of Texas, El Paso Student UAV Design Competition Week

The University of Texas at El Paso hosted the U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command’s (CCDC) inaugural student unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) design competition on April 23-24, 2019, at the Sun Bowl Stadium in El Paso, Texas. The competition challenges undergraduate students from historically black colleges and universities and other minority serving institutions to develop solutions to real-world technical challenges faced by U.S. Army researchers. A demonstration of both flight control and manned-unmanned teaming technologies were presented by the Aviation Development Directorate – Ames (Code Y) Human-Systems Interface technical area led by Ernie Moralez and the USRA NAMS Task Lead Nathan Mielcarek. This technology demonstration was one of several being demonstrated by CCDC in the exposition area of the stadium and consisted of a combination of the RIPTIDE, MUSIM, and SCORCH software which are developed and maintained by the NAMS Aeroflightdynamics Technical Area software team.
Pictured above: USRA Software Engineer Nathan Mielcarek (right) demonstrating the US Army Manned-Unmanned Teaming simulation system at the University of Texas El Paso for a UAV student competition
Aeroflightdynamics Collaborator Sung Hyeok Cho, Cal Poly Pomona Presents at Vertical Flight Society's Annual Forum
Sung Hyeok Cho, an undergraduate student at the California State Polytechnic University, Pomona (Cal Poly Pomona) was sponsored by the US Army Aviation Development Directorate (ADD) under the NAMS R&D Student Program, recently presented a paper titled “Hover/Low Speed Dynamics Model Identification of a Coaxial Tricopter in Hover using Joint Input-Output Technique” during the Vertical Flight Society’s Annual Forum held May 13-16, 2019 in Philadelphia, PA. The student used Joint Input-Output technique recently developed by the Scientists of US Army ADD and USRA in conjunction with the CIFER (Comprehensive Response from FrEquency Response) software package. The Y6 tricopter from 3DR that Sung Hyeok worked on is shown in the Figure below.

Sung Hyeok is also the main author of the paper titled “System Identification and Controller Optimization of a Coaxial Quadrotor UAV in Hover” that was supported by the USRA grant and presented during the AIAA SciTech Forum held January 7-11, 2019 in San Diego, CA. 

Sung Hyeok who just graduated with a B.S. degree in Aerospace Engineering will be participating in the NAMS R&D Student Program as an intern at ADD in summer of 2019. He plans to pursue his studies for Master’s degree in Aerospace Engineering at Cal Poly Pomona starting fall of 2019, and will continue to be associated with ADD/USRA through the curriculum development collaboration for flight control.
Pictured above: Instrumented Y6 Tricopter being prepared for flight test

Pictured above: Sung Cho at VFS Annual Forum
R&D Collaborations for Airborne Science: Cal-Poly SLO Students Visit Palmdale for Systems Requirement Review
The CubeSat Technology for Airborne Science Team took a trip to Palmdale to visit NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) on May 10th, 2019. They met the NASA-USRA Airborne Science members at Palmdale and were given a tour of the instrumentation shop. Jeff Myers (USRA), Caitlin Barnes (USRA) and Dennis Gearhart (USRA) gave the team a tour of the hangar, the team was able to see the bays of the ER-2, this was very helpful in moving forward with the design process. They also got to see some of the other aircrafts that the NASA Airborne Science Program utilizes and get a better understanding of the large scope of science-data collection that these aircraft help NASA generate. The team later presented to the ER-2 management team about their design and gained valuable information about what possible issues their design may have, as well as clarification on what the pertinent analysis for their structure entails. The entire team at Cal Poly has benefitted immensely from this trip and are thankful for all the people at NASA AFRC that took time out of their day to make this trip such a valuable experience for the student and faculty members.
Pictured above:    The California Polytechnic State University (Cal-Poly) Team - Alexandria Pompeii, Bailey Garret,, Gabe Musen, Aviv Maish, and Jennifer Vang
Pictured above:    Sofia in the hangar!
Awards
Dr. Davide Venturelli Receives USRA President’s Award
Congratulations to Dr. Davide Venturelli (RIACS) on receiving the USRA President’s Award. The awardees were recognized during a dinner ceremony in Washington, D.C. on April 24, 2019. His outstanding contributions to USRA in the management of science operations at the Quantum Artificial Intelligence Laboratory(QuAIL) has enabled research engagements with more than 40 separate organizations on quantum physics, quantum algorithm development, and quantum applications, resulting in more than 70 publications on these topics. Dr. Venturelli also sets a standard of excellence in research and fundraising, authoring or co-authoring seven papers on quantum computing in the past year alone, and contributing substantially to proposals on quantum information sciences to non-NASA sponsors. He also serves the professional community as an editor of two new journals on quantum computing (Quantum Machine Intelligence and Advanced Quantum Technologies); contributes energetically to public outreach; and, along with a colleague at Cornell University, was co-inventor on a recent quantum computing-related patent application.
Pictured above: Dr. Jeffrey Isaacson, USRA President and CEO and Dr. Davide Venturelli, Senior Scientist 
Pictured above: Dr. Davide Venturelli at USRA Award Dinner
Welcome New Hires and Interns!
New Hires for May 2019
Sarah Youlton, Software Engineer
Priyank Pradeep, Aerospace Engineer

USRA Welcomes NAMS R&D Summer Students!
Submit NAMS Updates:

Website:  NAMS News Submission

Submittal Date : News submission form for NASA Academic Mission Services (NAMS) Newsletter. Please submit submission form by the 15th of the month to be featured in the monthly newsletter. 

For more information on requesting interns through the NAMS Student R&D Program , please email  NAMS-studentRD@usra.edu