2008 Annual Report - NASA Airborne Science Program

B-200 High Spectral Resolution Lidar were
successfully transferred in-flight from the B-
200 to the P-3.
After the completion of ARCTAS, RTMM
provided mission monitoring capabilities
to the NASA Soil Moisture Active Passive
(SMAP) science team in support flights of
the NASA P-3 and Twin Otter for the SMAP
Validation Experiment (SMAPVEX). In a
very short time, the RTMM was adapted for
the SMAPVEX flights (e.g., added regional
NEXRAD and MODIS total precipitable
water products subsetted over the mid-
Atlantic). RTMM supported 11 flight days
during the period from 29 September to 13
October 2008.
Waypoint Planning Tool (WPT)
The RTMM team’s extensive experience
in NASA airborne field campaigns taught
us a lot about the needs and requirements
of mission scientists for planning and
conducting missions. One of the outgrowths
of deploying RTMM in the field was the
recognition that mission scientists needed
a better way to plan an aircraft mission in
situ. Planning an airborne mission requires
data, information and knowledge from a wide
variety of sources. Information about the
desired direction, speed and altitude of the
plane, loiter times, predictive satellite overpass
times, current and fore-casted weather data,
background maps, and flight restricted areas
are some of the parameters that need to be
factored in when making a flight plan.
The RTMM team developed a planning tool
that integrates all of these parameters and
combines them with a simple point-and-click
user interface to enable a mission scientist to
quickly and efficiently plan and edit a flight
plan. The scientist selects the aircraft and
takeoff times for the mission being planned,
and then uses a mouse to select the various
legs of the flight. The software automatically
calculates flight leg and cumulative distances
and times. Individual legs can be edited for
location, aircraft speed, altitude and delay
times, etc. They can be altered graphically
by grabbing a midpoint or endpoint and
“rubber banding” them to a new location.
Alternatively, the flight legs can be edited
in an “Excel-like” spreadsheet by entering
specific values in an individual row and/
or columns. Figure 39 (p. 91) depicts a
hypothetical flight plan for the P-3 that is
flying “figure 4s” through a tropical storm.
Note the individual flight leg information
displayed in the spreadsheet listing. Upon
completion of the flight waypoints definition,
the result is easily sent directly to the RTMM
for display and integration with the full set of
monitoring features.
92