NASA's Aviation Safety Initiatives

Air Safety Week, Oct 27, 2008

NASA on Oct. 21-23 held its second annual Aviation Safety Technical Conference in Denver, CO, providing government, industry and academics the latest information on the U.S. space agency's four-part Aviation Safety Program.

The bulk of the three-day event was comprised of parallel sessions detailing activities ongoing within each of the four projects in the Aviation Safety Program. Presenters included both NASA researchers and university/industry partners.

NASA's Aviation Safety Program is providing fundamental research while also addressing the challenges created by Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen). The nation's future National Airspace System will include significant increases in air traffic, continued operation of legacy aircraft, increased reliance on automation, introduction of new vehicle types and increased operating complexity.

"The Aviation Safety Program seeks to provide increasing capabilities to predict and prevent safety issues, to monitor for them in-flight and mitigate against them should they occur, to analyze and design them out of complex system behaviors, and to constantly analyze designs and operational data for potential hazards," says NASA.

The Aviation Safety Program includes four projects:

Aircraft Aging and Durability (AAD) is developing advanced diagnostic and prognostic capabilities for detection and mitigation of aging-related hazards, and to decrease the susceptibility of current and next generation aircraft on onboard systems to premature deterioration. The project is looking at how advanced materials, fabrication techniques and structural configurations can lead to revolutionary aircraft types.

Integrated Intelligent Flight Deck (IIFD) is working on tools, methods, principles, guidelines, and technologies for revolutionary flight deck systems. In doing so, IIFD seeks to expand our ability to predict and create the comprehensive set of technologies and procedures for crew training demanded by NextGen. Current projections for NextGen operations prescribe an increased use of automation.

Integrated Resilient Aircraft Control (IRAC). The goal is to conduct research to advance our ability to model and prevent loss of control in flight. Taking into account the advanced automation and autonomy capabilities envisioned by NextGen, research is pursuing methods to enable an aircraft to automatically detect, mitigate, and safely recover from an 'upset' condition that could lead to loss of control. The research seeks to better understand causes of upset flight conditions, including icing and structural degradation.

Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) is conducting research to advance the state of highly integrated and complex flight critical health management technologies and systems. These technologies will enable nearly continuous onboard awareness of vehicle health. Improved safety and reliability will be achieved by onboard systems capable of performing self-diagnostics and self-correcting of anomalies that could otherwise go unattended until a critical failure occurs.

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