2009 Annual Report - NASA Airborne Science Program

on the UAS community and that it is willing to
take steps to assure that operations can continue
uninterrupted until the backlog is relieved. Staffing
levels are being increase and a full review of the
COA process is underway to help identify ways to
streamline the process, particularly for renewals that
are unchanged from the previous year.
UAS ExCom
This year, NASA was invited to join the newly
formed UAS Executive Committee (UAS ExCom).
The UAS ExCom is a multi-agency Federal executivelevel
committee comprised of the FAA, Department
of Defense (DoD), Department of Homeland
Security (DHS), and NASA. The committee was
formed in recognition of the need for the UAS
operated by each of these agencies to access to
the National Airspace System (NAS) to support
operational, training, and research and development
requirements, and that technical, procedural,
regulatory, and policy solutions are needed to deliver
incremental capabilities leading to routine access.
The primary goals of the UAS ExCom are to
1) Coordinate and align efforts between key
federal government agencies to achieve
routine safe federal public UAS operations
in the national airspace system (NAS).
2) Coordinate and prioritize technical,
procedural, regulatory, and policy solutions
needed to deliver incremental capabilities.
3) Develop a plan to accommodate the larger
stakeholder community, at the appropriate
time.
4) Resolve conflicts between Federal
Government agencies (FAA, DoD, DHS,
and NASA), related to the above goals.
The Associate Administrator of the Aeronautics
Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) is
representing NASA on the UAS ExCom. To
ensure participation from the Science Mission
Directorate (SMD), and thus the Airborne Science
Program, NASA has two representatives on the UAS
ExCom Senior Steering Group (SSG), one from the
Airborne Science Program and one from ARMD.
These individuals work closely with the Associate
Administrator to ensure all of NASA’s UAS interests
are represented appropriately to the ExCom. The
formation of the UAS ExCom is significant in
that it represents a tangible commitment by FAA
senior leadership to address the UAS airspace access
challenge.
Other FAA Activities
The liaison continued to support the FAA UAPO
with important technical studies and rulemaking
activities. The recommendations produced by the
Small UAS Aviation Rule Making Committee (sUAS
ARC), an activity heavily supported by NASA last
year and this, were finalized earlier in the year. The
recommendations are now going through a Safety
Risk Management Panel (SRMP) to be assessed for
safety and NASA is participating in this activity.
Other work includes an ongoing study about using
TCAS on UAS and developing criteria for UAS
contingency planning. NASA also participated
in HUREX, a collaborative decision environment
experiment conducted by MITRE to assess disaster
response (specifically hurricane landfall) by multiple
agencies using UAS.
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