DIP Workshop Series 2: DIP for Service Providers

Workshop Series: What It’s About

The Digital Information Platform (DIP) workshop series intends to provide a deeper dive and a closer look at some of the core features being developed by the DIP sub-project under ATM-X.

These workshops will give insight into DIP development, technology, and assumptions as well as providing a forum for engaging with the DIP team to pose questions and provide feedback on proposed designs. Engagement with the broader aviation community is a critical component to success of the DIP sub-project!

There will be several workshops within this series spanning a variety of topics. Participants are encouraged to sign up for any workshop topics they feel they could contribute to or provide feedback on.

Please keep an eye on the DIP homepage, under the upcoming events section, for future announcements of additional workshop topics!

Workshop #2: DIP for Service Providers

This workshop will cover topics related to Service Providers. Participants will get a look at how the DIP architecture supports the onboarding process as well as how NASA services are planned to be made available via the platform.

The DIP for Service Providers is intended to cover how DIP was envisioned with regards to the following:

• Onboarding​
• Announcement for Collaborative Opportunity, Space Act Agreements
  • Interconnection Security Agreements & Authentication​
• Catalog Service Capabilities​
• Service Registration, Discovery & Try it now feature​
• API Requirements, Service Specifications​
• NASA Services and Access Points​
• Machine Learning Services​
  • Data Access APIs​
  • Streaming Fuser Data​
  • S3 Bucket​
• Data Requirements for Service Providers

Who Should Register?

Participants interested in partnering with DIP and registering their service with the DIP platform are highly encouraged to attend this workshop. This is a unique opportunity for the aviation community to provide feedback and input on how this platform is structured to meet your needs.

Data and service consumers as well as data and service providers are encouraged to attend this workshop to provide their feedback and input for DIP development.

Participants looking to gain insight into upcoming DIP demonstrations or to learn more about DIP are encouraged to attend this workshop.

Agenda

• Onboarding​
• Catalog Service Capabilities​
• API Requirements, Service Specifications​
• NASA Services and Access Points​
• Data Requirements for Service Providers

Resources

• Presentation slides
• Session Recording
• Request materials via email (arc-dip-ext@mail.nasa.gov)

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NASA to Gather In-Flight Imagery of Commercial Test Capsule Re-Entry

A NASA team specializing in collecting imagery-based engineering datasets from spacecraft during launch and reentry is supporting a European aerospace company’s upcoming mission to return a subscale demonstration capsule from space.

NASA’s Scientifically Calibrated In-Flight Imagery (SCIFLI) team supports a broad range of mission needs across the agency, including Artemis, science missions like OSIRIS-REx (Origins, Spectral Interpretation, Resource Identification, and Security – Regolith Explorer), and NASA’s Commercial Crew Program. The SCIFLI team also supports other commercial space efforts, helping to develop and strengthen public-private partnerships as NASA works to advance exploration, further cooperation, and open space to more science, people, and opportunities.

Later this month, SCIFLI intends to gather data on The Exploration Company’s Mission Possible capsule as it returns to Earth following the launch on a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. One of the key instruments SCIFLI will employ is a spectrometer detects light radiating from the capsule’s surface, which researchers can use to determine the surface temperature of the spacecraft. Traditionally, much of this data comes from advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics modeling of what happens when objects of various sizes, shapes, and materials enter different atmospheres, such as those on Earth, Mars, or Venus.

“While very powerful, there is still some uncertainty in these Computational Fluid Dynamics models. Real-world measurements made by the SCIFLI team help NASA researchers refine their models, meaning better performance for sustained flight, higher safety margins for crew returning from the Moon or Mars, or landing more mass safely while exploring other planets,” said Carey Scott, SCIFLI capability lead at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

The SCIFLI team will be staged in Hawaii and will fly aboard an agency Gulfstream III aircraft during the re-entry of Mission Possible over the Pacific Ocean.

“The data will provide The Exploration Company with a little bit of redundancy and a different perspective — a decoupled data package, if you will — from their onboard sensors,” said Scott.

From the Gulfstream, SCIFLI will have the spectrometer and an ultra-high-definition telescope trained on Mission Possible. The observation may be challenging since the team will be tracking the capsule against the bright daytime sky. Researchers expect to be able to acquire the capsule shortly after entry interface, the point at roughly 200,000 feet, where the atmosphere becomes thick enough to begin interacting with a capsule, producing compressive effects such as heating, a shock layer, and the emission of photons, or light.

Real-world measurements made by the SCIFLI team help NASA researchers refine their models, meaning better performance for sustained flight, higher safety margins for crew returning from the Moon or Mars, or landing more mass safely while exploring other planets.

Carey Scott

SCIFLI Capability Lead

In addition to spectrometer data on Mission Possible’s thermal protection system, SCIFLI will capture imagery of the parachute system opening. First, a small drogue chute deploys to slow the capsule from supersonic to subsonic, followed by the deployment of a main parachute. Lastly, cloud-cover permitting, the team plans to image splashdown in the Pacific, which will help a recovery vessel reach the capsule as quickly as possible.

If flying over the ocean and capturing imagery of a small capsule as it zips through the atmosphere during the day sounds difficult, it is. But this mission, like all SCIFLI’s assignments, has been carefully modeled, choreographed, and rehearsed in the months and weeks leading up to the mission. There will even be a full-dress rehearsal in the days just before launch.

Not that there aren’t always a few anxious moments right as the entry interface is imminent and the team is looking out for its target. According to Scott, once the target is acquired, the SCIFLI team has its procedures nailed down to a — pardon the pun — science.

“We rehearse, and we rehearse, and we rehearse until it’s almost memorized,” he said.

The Exploration Company, headquartered in Munich, Germany, and Bordeaux,

France, enlisted NASA’s support through a reimbursable Space Act Agreement and will use SCIFLI data to advance future capsule designs.

“Working with NASA on this mission has been a real highlight for our team. It shows what’s possible when people from different parts of the world come together with a shared goal,” said Najwa Naimy, chief program officer at The Exploration Company. “What the SCIFLI team is doing to spot and track our capsule in broad daylight, over the open ocean, is incredibly impressive. We’re learning from each other, building trust, and making real progress together.”

NASA Langley is known for its expertise in engineering, characterizing, and developing spacecraft systems for entry, descent, and landing. The Gulfstream III aircraft is operated by the Flight Operations Directorate at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in Edwards, California.

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DIP Workshop Series 3: DIP for Consumers

Workshop Series: What It’s About

The Digital Information Platform (DIP) workshop series intends to provide a deeper dive and a closer look at some of the core features being developed by the DIP sub-project under ATM-X.

These workshops will give insight into DIP development, technology, and assumptions as well as providing a forum for engaging with the DIP team to pose questions and provide feedback on proposed designs. Engagement with the broader aviation community is a critical component to success of the DIP sub-project!

There will be several workshops within this series spanning a variety of topics. Participants are encouraged to sign up for any workshop topics they feel they could contribute to or provide feedback on.

Please keep an eye on the DIP homepage, under the upcoming events section, for future announcements of additional workshop topics!

Workshop #3: DIP for Flight Operators and Consumers

This workshop will cover topics related to Service Providers. Participants will get a look at how the DIP architecture supports the onboarding process as well as how NASA services are planned to be made available via the platform.

The DIP for Service Providers is intended to cover how DIP was envisioned with regards to the following:

• Consumer Onboarding
• How to find and invoke services
• Showcase Demos
  • Data integration services
  • Data analytics using ML/AI technologies
  • Progression of CDDR capabilities
• Performance Metrics
• Tech Dev Plan and Schedule updates
• Q/A

Who Should Register?

Participants interested in partnering with DIP and consuming services from the DIP platform are highly encouraged to attend this workshop. This is a unique opportunity for the aviation community to provide feedback and input on how this platform is structured to meet your needs.

Data and service consumers as well as data and service providers are encouraged to attend this workshop to provide their feedback and input for DIP development.

Participants looking to gain insight into upcoming DIP demonstrations or to learn more about DIP are encouraged to attend this workshop.

Resources

• Presentation slides
• Session Recording
• Request materials via email (arc-dip-ext@mail.nasa.gov)

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Career Exploration: Using Ingenuity and Innovation to Create ‘Memory Metals’

Othmane Benafan is a NASA engineer whose work is literally reshaping how we use aerospace materials — he creates metals that can shape shift. Benafan, a materials research engineer at NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland, creates metals called shape memory alloys that are custom-made to solve some of the most pressing challenges of space exploration and aviation.

“A shape memory alloy starts off just like any other metal, except it has this wonderful property: it can remember shapes,” Benafan says. “You can bend it, you can deform it out of shape, and once you heat it, it returns to its shape.”

An alloy is a metal that’s created by combining two or more metallic elements. Shape memory alloys are functional metals. Unlike structural metals, which are fixed metal shapes used for construction or holding heavy objects, functional metals are valued for unique properties that enable them to carry out specific actions.

NASA often needs materials with special capabilities for use in aircraft and spacecraft components, spacesuits, and hardware designed for low-Earth orbit, the Moon, or Mars. But sometimes, the ideal material doesn’t exist. That’s where engineers like Benafan come in.

“We have requirements, and we come up with new materials to fulfill that function,” he said. The whole process begins with pen and paper, theories, and research to determine exactly what properties are needed and how those properties might be created. Then he and his teammates are ready to start making a new metal.

“It’s like a cooking show,” Benafan says. “We collect all the ingredients — in my case, the metals would be elements from the periodic table, like nickel, titanium, gold, copper, etc. — and we mix them together in quantities that satisfy the formula we came up with. And then we cook it.”

These elemental ingredients are melted in a container called a crucible, then poured into the required shape, such as a cylinder, plate, or tube. From there, it’s subjected to temperatures and pressures that shape and train the metal to change the way its atoms are arranged every time it’s heated or cooled.

Shape memory alloys created by Benafan and his colleagues have already proven useful in several applications. For example, the Shape Memory Alloy Reconfigurable Technology Vortex Generator (SMART VG) being tested on Boeing aircraft uses the torque generated by a heat-induced twisting motion to raise and lower a small, narrow piece of hardware installed on aircraft wings, resulting in reduced drag during cruise conditions. In space, the 2018 Advanced eLectrical Bus (ALBus) CubeSat technology demonstration mission included the use of a shape memory alloy to deploy the small satellite’s solar arrays and antennas. And Glenn’s Shape Memory Alloy Rock Splitters technology benefits mining and geothermal applications on Earth by breaking apart rocks without harming the surrounding environment. The shape memory alloy device is wrapped in a heater and inserted into a predrilled hole in the rock, and when the heater is activated, the alloy expands, creating intense pressure that drives the rock apart.

Benafan’s fascination with shape memory alloys started after he immigrated to the United States from Morocco at age 19. He began attending night classes at the Valencia Community College (now Valencia College), then went on to graduate from the University of Central Florida in Orlando. A professor did a demonstration on shape memory alloys and that changed Benafan’s life forever. Now, Benafan enjoys helping others understand related topics.
 
“Outside of work, one of the things I like to do most is make technology approachable to someone who may be interested but may not be experienced with it just yet. I do a lot of community outreach through camps or lectures in schools,” he said.
 
He believes a mentality of curiosity and a willingness to fail and learn are essential for aspiring engineers and encourages others to pursue their ideas and keep trying.

“You know, we grow up with that mindset of falling and standing up and trying again, and that same thing applies here,” Benafan said. “The idea is to be a problem solver. What are you trying to contribute? What problem do you want to solve to help humanity, to help Earth?”

To learn more about the wide variety of exciting and unexpected jobs at NASA, check out the Surprisingly STEM video series.

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