NASA begins work on four new astrophysics missions

NASA has selected proposals for four missions that would study cosmic explosions and the debris they leave behind, as well as monitor how nearby stellar flares may affect the atmospheres of orbiting planets.

Following detailed evaluations, the agency intends to select two proposals in 2021 to be the next astrophysics missions under the Explorers Program. The selected missions will be targeted for launch in 2025.

"From studying stars and planets outside our solar system to seeking answers to the largest cosmic mysteries, I look forward to the breakthrough science from these modest size missions,” said Thomas Zurbuchen, associate administrator of the agency's Science Mission Directorate in Washington, D.C.

Two astrophysics Small Explorer (SMEX) missions and two Missions of Opportunity (MO) proposals were competitively selected.

Excluding the cost of launch, SMEX mission costs are capped at $145 million each, and MO costs are capped at $75 million each.

Each SMEX proposal will receive $2 million to conduct a nine-month mission concept study. The selected proposals are:

The Extreme-ultraviolet Stellar Characterization for Atmospheric Physics and Evolution (ESCAPE) Mission

• ESCAPE would study nearby stars, watching for rapid, strong ultraviolet flares. It aims to determine how likely such flares are to strip the atmosphere from a rocky planet orbiting the star, affecting conditions for habitability.
• Principal investigator: Kevin France at the University of Colorado at Boulder.

The Compton Spectrometer and Imager (COSI)

• COSI would scan our Milky Way galaxy, measuring gamma rays from radioactive elements produced during stellar explosions to map the recent history of star death and element production. It would also measure polarization, to improve our understanding of how distant energetic cosmic explosions produce gamma rays.
• Principal investigator: John Tomsick at the University of California, Berkeley.

MO proposals will each receive $500,000 to conduct a nine-month implementation concept study. The selected proposals are:

The Gravitational-wave Ultraviolet Counterpart Imager Mission

• The Gravitational-wave Ultraviolet Counterpart Imager consists of two independent small satellites, each scanning the sky in a different ultraviolet band. It would detect the light from hot gas in the explosion that follows a burst of gravitational waves caused by merging neutron stars or a neutron star merging with a black hole. Between these events, the mission would map the sky in ultraviolet light, finding other bright objects such as exploding stars.
• Principal investigator: Stephen (Brad) Cenko at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

LEAP – A LargE Area burst Polarimeter

• Mounted on the International Space Station, LEAP would study the energetic jets launched during the explosive death of a massive star, or the merger of compact objects such as neutron stars. LEAP's measurements of polarization in gamma-ray bursts could distinguish between competing theories for the nature of the jets, which move out at close to the speed of light. LEAP would complement NASA's Imaging X-ray Polarimetry Explorer, scheduled to launch in 2021.
• Principal investigator: Mark McConnell at the University of New Hampshire in Durham.

NASA selects SpaceX to launch ocean research satellite

NASA has selected SpaceX of Hawthorne, Calif., to provide launch services for the agency’s PACE mission. PACE stands for Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem.

The PACE mission represents the nation’s next great investment in understanding and protecting our home planet. The mission will provide global ocean color, cloud, and aerosol data that will provide unprecedented insights into oceanographic and atmospheric responses to Earth’s changing climate. PACE will help scientists investigate the diversity of organisms fueling marine food webs and the U.S. economy, and deliver advanced data products to reduce uncertainties in global climate models and improve our interdisciplinary understanding of the Earth system.

The total cost for NASA to launch PACE is approximately $80.4 million, which includes the launch service and other mission related costs. The PACE mission currently is targeted to launch in December 2022 on a Falcon 9 Full Thrust rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida.

The PACE mission is managed at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md.

Temporary flight restriction planned for rocket launch from Virginia

Drone operators are being urged to exercise caution if using their aircraft to view the Antares rocket launch and avoid flying over the public and NASA Wallops Flight Facility property in Virginia on Sunday.

Drones, also called unmanned aerial systems, should stay clear of Wallops Flight Facility, the marsh areas between Wallops Island and the mainland and the Atlantic Ocean east of Wallops Island. A Temporary Flight Restriction and other Special Use Airspace will be activated by the Federal Aviation Administration.  Fines and penalties are applicable and will be enforced, NASA said in a notice posted on their website.

“There will be several thousand people in the area viewing the launch,” the agency said. “Public safety is paramount and drones should not be flown over crowds. The Wallops Range is committed to making sure that the viewing public is safe and that drones do not pose a threat to the success and safety of launch operations.”

The Northrop Grumman Antares rocket will launch at 5:39 p.m. EST from the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport at NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility.

The launch may be visible, weather permitting, to residents throughout the mid-Atlantic region and possibly the East Coast of the United States.

This will be Northrop Grumman’s 13th commercial resupply services mission to deliver NASA science investigations, supplies and equipment to the International Space Station.

An estimated 6,000 tons of “space junk” orbits Earth each day

At the United Nations Geneva Meeting in 2019, the President and Co-Founder of BlockchainArmy, Erol User, urged all institutions, governments, as well as private sector corporations to join in the initiative called S.O.S, short for Save Our Space. The initiative is an effort to organize a space waste management system.

In his speech at the meeting in Switzerland, Dec. 14, Erol User said that now is the time for everyone to begin cooperating "to guarantee economically vital spaceflight" to facilitate innovative service offerings for the citizens along with future space developments. Continuing further, he stated that we need to keep up the dream of future exploration while also combining continual technological development and environmental awareness.

Not much needs to be said when it comes to how attracted humans have been towards space since the beginning of time. It has always been a very exciting element and has attracted several explorations through spacecraft, rockets, satellites, etc. The intentional or accidental explosion of space objects, flecks of paint from space objects, residual elements from space missions, etc., all end up floating at very high speed (some 18,000 miles per hour) in an orbit that surrounds our earth called "Low Earth Orbit" or LEO. For instance, the deliberate destruction of the Chinese Fengyun-1C spacecraft in 2007 and the accidental collision of an American and a Russian spacecraft in 2009 are two of the main reasons why LEO is turning into a space garbage orbit. These two incidents have dominated LEO's space debris levels by approximately 70 percent.

Over the years, these leftover space objects have contributed to space junk or space debris. Space debris is a growing issue for humankind today, which can have its claws dug deep into the future generations.

Space debris is environmentally bad as we are leaving unnatural objects in space. Eventually, the satellites will need to come down into the earth's atmosphere, which poses a high possibility of them burning into flames. A much worse scenario is dealing with the leftover fuel in those satellites leading them to explode in earth's atmosphere.

For simple purposes such as communication and weather reports, manmade satellites are orbiting earth in geostationary orbit, which is 35,000 kilometers above the planet. These satellites are usually blasted into a "graveyard orbit” when they reach the end of their service life, which is around 36,000 km above earth. In the past, the blasting episodes were less and manageable, but with growing technology, space pollution is only becoming a burdening issue. Researchers from Australia are currently monitoring approximately 29,000 pieces of space junk.

One company looking into the space debris problem is Electro Optic Systems of Australia. The company's Chief Executive and Technical Director Professor Craig Smith is trying to come up with a "high-powered, high-precision laser," according to reports. This laser is under developed at the Space Environment Research Centre. The ambition is to push space junk out of the way and prevent collisions with other satellites. Another use of the laser is to destroy space junk eventually. The laser is expected to be fully functional in three years.

“It is a serious issue. We have oceans and rivers, and we pollute them until they become almost unusable. We have done exactly the same with space. We have left junk everywhere,” Smith said. An approximation from NASA says there is 6,000 tons of space debris orbiting in the LEO.

Honeywell awarded contract to support production of NASA's Orion spacecraft

Honeywell has been awarded a contract by Lockheed Martin to support production of NASA's Orion spacecraft fleet for the upcoming Artemis missions, which will send humans back to the moon for the first time since 1972. The contract to supply key components of the Orion crew module and service module will be managed and performed out of Honeywell's facility in Clearwater, Fla. Some work will also be conducted at the company's facilities in Glendale, Ariz. and Puerto Rico.

Honeywell will provide 14 products for Artemis missions III through V, including both hardware and software, to support NASA's lunar missions. NASA awarded Lockheed Martin a long-term multi-billion-dollar production contract for the Orion spacecraft, aimed to meet the space agency's anticipated needs into the 2030s.

Working in collaboration with the Orion team over the next decade, Honeywell will support Lockheed Martin and its partners through the development and production of essential guidance and navigation systems, command data handling, and display and control products.

Video: NASA test Starliner spacecraft at White Sands Missile Range

NASA and Boeing will test a pad abort system on the CST-100 Starliner spacecraft on Monday from Launch Complex 32 at White Sands Missile Range in New Mexico.

The test is scheduled for 9 a.m. EST (7 a.m. MST) with a three-hour test window.

Boeing's Pad Abort Test is part of NASA's Commercial Crew Program. The goal of the program is to provide safe, reliable and cost-effective transportation to and from the International Space Station.

The test on Monday is designed to verify that each of Starliner's systems will function not only separately, but in concert, to protect astronauts by carrying them safely away from the launch pad in the unlikely event of an emergency prior to liftoff. During the test, Starliner's four launch abort engines and several orbital maneuvering and altitude control thrusters will fire, pushing the spacecraft approximately one mile high and one mile north of the test stand.

The spacecraft's crew module will use parachutes with landing airbags to touch down at White Sands Missile Range. It will be recovered and brought back to Launch Complex 32 for evaluation and analysis.

Virginia rocket launch may be visible in Chesapeake Bay region

Several space technologies will be put to the test with the launch of a suborbital rocket at 8 p.m. EDT on Thursday from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia.

Called Suborbital Technology Experiment Carrier-8 or SubTec-8, the launch is designed to test new technologies to improve the capability of conducting suborbital science missions. Some of these technologies also may be applied to orbital spacecraft. The launch may be visible in the Chesapeake Bay region.

SubTec-8 will fly on a Terrier-Improved Malemute sounding rocket and is predicted to reach an altitude of 128 miles before descending by parachute and landing in the Atlantic Ocean. The first SubTec launch occurred in 2005.

SubTec-8 technologies include distributed payload communications that will allow multipoint measurements for scientists to study multiple regions in space simultaneously; a low cost star tracker for assisting in pointing the rocket when taking astronomical observations; and a high data rate encoder that will provide the ability to transmit data from the rocket to the ground four times faster than currently available.

NASA celebrates 20th anniversary of the Chandra X-ray Observatory

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center and the U.S. Space & Rocket Center in Alabama are celebrating the 20th anniversary of the Chandra X-ray Observatory -- the world's most powerful X-ray telescope.

Since its launch on July 23, 1999, Chandra has been NASA's flagship mission for X-ray astronomy. Astronomers around the world use Chandra's X-ray vision to explore cosmic mysteries -- from distant galaxies and an expanding universe to black holes, dark energy and supernovas.

The potential for Electrified Aircraft Propulsion

NASA will lead a meeting next month that will perform a market assessment of U.S. industry leaders regarding the potential for electrified aircraft to include electric drive train, power distribution, and energy storage concepts to be used, in whole or in part, as primary propulsion for fixed-wing passenger-carrying transport aircraft.

The Industry Day meeting, scheduled for Dec. 6, will be held at the Logistics Management Institute in Tysons, Va. The event is being organized by the Associate Director for Flight Strategy, Integrated Aviation System Program at NASA Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va. There will be up to eight one-hour briefing slots allocated to the industrial base during the meeting.

Cygnus cargo ship on its way to space station after launch from Virginia

Northrop Grumman's Cygnus spacecraft is on its way to the International Space Station with about 7,400 pounds of cargo after launching at 4:01 a.m. EST Saturday from NASA's Wallops Flight Facility on Virginia's Eastern Shore.

The spacecraft launched on an Antares 230 Rocket from the Virginia Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport's Pad 0A at Wallops on the company's 10th cargo delivery flight, and is scheduled to arrive at the orbital laboratory on Monday. Expedition 57 astronauts Serena Auñón-Chancellor of NASA and Alexander Gerst of ESA (European Space Agency) will use the space station's robotic arm to grapple Cygnus.

This resupply mission will support dozens of new and existing investigations as Expeditions 57 and 58 contribute to some 250 science and research studies. Highlights from the new experiments include a demonstration of 3D printing and recycling technology and simulating the creation of celestial bodies from stardust.

The Cygnus spacecraft will remain at the space station until February before its destructive reentry into Earth's atmosphere, disposing of several thousand pounds of trash. This is the seventh flight of an enhanced Cygnus spacecraft, and the fourth using Northrop Grumman's upgraded Antares 230 launch vehicle featuring new RD-181 engines that provide increased performance and flexibility.

The spacecraft for this mission is named in honor of astronaut John Young. Young was selected for NASA's second astronaut class and flew during the Gemini, Apollo and Space Shuttle programs. He walked on the Moon during Apollo 16 in 1972 and commanded the first space shuttle mission in 1981. Young passed away in January.

NASA interested in strong commercial satellite-servicing industry in orbit

NASA is working on several projects to mature satellite servicing crosscutting technologies, including Restore-L, a technology demonstration project to utilize a robotic spacecraft to refuel an operational client. Other missions include the Robotic Refueling Mission 3 (RRM3) – which is developing technologies for cryogen – and Raven – a technology demonstration of state-of-the-art relative navigation capabilities.

These projects allow NASA to check important items off of its technology checklist to put humans closer to lunar exploration. NASA plans to infuse Satellite Servicing Projects Division (SSPD)-derived technologies and capabilities to meet the agency’s objectives for science and exploration. Candidate applications for individual satellite servicing capabilities could include on-orbit manufacturing and assembly, propellant depots, observatory servicing, and active orbital debris removal. NASA anticipates that SSPD-derived technologies and capabilities will help unlock numerous new and perhaps unforeseen opportunities in both commercial and government arenas.

In parallel with the development of satellite servicing technologies and the execution of various missions to prove these technologies, NASA is transferring satellite servicing technologies to interested domestic U.S. commercial entities to accelerate the commercial in-orbit robotic satellite servicing industry, as well as to help ensure the serviceability of future satellites. NASA is interested in a strong domestic, commercial satellite-servicing industry that could potentially provide the U.S. government with cost-effective operations.

NASA is hosting a series of industry day meetings to receive data from major SSPD project reviews. The initial industry day was held April 19, 2017, the second industry day was Jan. 30, 2018, the upcoming industry day is scheduled for Dec. 6 at Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md. “This industry day encourages additional transfer of technology being developed by the SSPD,” NASA said in a Special Notice document released Tuesday. “The derived capabilities would facilitate servicing of spacecraft, plus ensure that future spacecraft can be easily serviced.” Future industry days will be held as additional technology progress is made.

All systems are go for NASA's next launch to the Red Planet

The early-morning liftoff on Saturday of the Mars InSight lander will mark the first time in history an interplanetary launch will originate from the West Coast. InSight will launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, Space Launch Complex 3E in California.

InSight, which stands for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport, will launch aboard a United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. InSight will study the deep interior of Mars to learn how all rocky planets formed, including Earth and its Moon. The lander's instruments include a seismometer to detect marsquakes, and a probe that will monitor the flow of heat from the planet's interior.

The Atlas V rocket will carry the spacecraft over the Channel Islands just off the California Coast and continue climbing out over the Pacific. The rocket will reach orbit about 13 minutes after launch, when the rocket is about 1,200 miles (1,900 kilometers) northwest of Isabella Island, Ecuador.

Getting a Mars mission flying requires a great many milestones. Among those still to come are the official start of the countdown to launch -- which comes on Saturday at 1:14 a.m. EDT. A little over an hour later, at about 2:30 a.m. EDT, the 260-foot-tall (80-meter) Mobile Service Tower -- a structure that has been protecting the Atlas V launch vehicle and its InSight payload during their vertical assembly -- will begin a 20-minute long, 250-foot (about 80-meter) roll away from the Atlas.

InSight's landing on Mars is planned for Nov. 26, around 3 p.m. EST.

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in Pasadena, Calif., manages InSight for NASA's Science Mission Directorate. InSight is part of NASA's Discovery Program, managed by the agency's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala. The InSight spacecraft, including cruise stage and lander, was built and tested by Lockheed Martin Space in Denver, Colo. NASA's Launch Services Program at the agency's Kennedy Space Center in Florida provides launch management. United Launch Alliance of Centennial, Colo., is NASA's launch service provider of the Atlas V rocket. A number of European partners, including France's Centre National d'Études Spatiales (CNES) and the German Aerospace Center (DLR), are supporting the InSight mission. In particular, CNES provided the Seismic Experiment for Interior Structure instrument, with significant contributions from the Max Planck Institute for Solar Systems Research. DLR provided the Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package instrument.

Video: First interplanetary mission launch from West Coast

Insight, NASA's next Mars explorer, has arrived at Vandenberg Air Force Base in California. The spacecraft is called InSight - short for Interior Exploration using Seismic Investigations, Geodesy and Heat Transport - and it's being tested, fueled and encapsulated for launch aboard the powerful United Launch Alliance Atlas V rocket. The upcoming liftoff will mark the first time an interplanetary mission has launched from the West Coast.

Video: Building NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope

“Into the Unknown” tells the story of the building of NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope – a revolutionary observatory, 100 times more powerful and the scientific successor to the Hubble Telescope. Webb will reveal a universe we have never seen before and is poised to answer questions that have intrigued us for thousands of years. “Into the Unknown” offers an in-depth look at one of the most daring scientific missions ever attempted.

Keeping an eye on Earth's water cycle, ice sheets and crust from space

A pair of spacecraft that will observe our planet's ever-changing water cycle, ice sheets and crust are in final preparations for launch from California no earlier than May 19. The Gravity Recovery and Climate Experiment Follow-On (GRACE-FO) mission, a partnership between NASA and the German Research Centre for Geosciences, will take over where the first GRACE mission left off when it completed its 15-year mission in 2017.

GRACE-FO will continue monitoring monthly changes in the distribution of mass within and among Earth's atmosphere, oceans, land and ice sheets, as well as within the solid Earth itself. These data will provide unique insights into Earth's changing climate, Earth system processes and even the impacts of some human activities, and will have far-reaching benefits to society, such as improving water resource management.

"Water is critical to every aspect of life on Earth -- for health, for agriculture, for maintaining our way of living," said Michael Watkins, GRACE-FO science lead and director of NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California. "You can't manage it well until you can measure it. GRACE-FO provides a unique way to measure water in many of its phases, allowing us to manage water resources more effectively."

Like GRACE, the first mission, GRACE-FO will use an innovative technique to observe something that can't be seen directly from space. It uses the weight of water to measure its movement -- even water hidden far below Earth's surface. GRACE-FO will do this by very precisely measuring the changes in the shape of Earth's gravity field caused by the movement of massive amounts of water, ice and solid Earth.

"When water is underground, it's impossible to directly observe from space. There's no picture you can take or radar you can bounce off the surface to measure changes in that deep water," said Watkins. "But it has mass, and GRACE-FO is almost the only way we have of observing it on large scales. Similarly, tracking changes in the total mass of the polar ice sheets is also very difficult, but GRACE-FO essentially puts a 'scale' under them to track their changes over time."

Like its predecessors, the two identical GRACE-FO satellites will function as a single instrument. The satellites will orbit Earth about 137 miles (220 kilometers) apart, at an initial altitude of about 305 miles (490 kilometers). Each satellite continually sends microwave signals to the other to accurately measure changes in the distance between them. As they fly over a massive Earth feature, such as a mountain range or underground aquifer, the gravitational pull of that feature tugs on the satellites, changing the distance separating them. By tracking changes in their separation distance with incredible accuracy -- to less than the thickness of a human hair -- the satellites are able to map these regional gravity changes.

GRACE-FO will be launched into orbit with five Iridium NEXT communications satellites on a commercially procured SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket from Vandenberg Air Force Base in California.

Video: Satellite imagery highlights changes in US forests

Annual maps of the lower-48 United States produced from satellite data illustrate dynamic changes in U.S. forests from 1986-2010. Logging and hurricanes play a significant role in the Southeast, and fires and insect invasion damage forest canopy in the West.

Trees are one of the world's best absorbers of atmospheric carbon dioxide, a greenhouse gas. Understanding how trees and forests change through time is one of the first steps to understanding how active they are in pulling carbon dioxide out of the atmosphere, which is of profound interest to scientists monitoring climate change.

Developed for the North American Forest Dynamics study, scientists combined 25 years of satellite data from the joint U.S. Geological Survey/NASA Landsat satellite program with information from the U.S. Forest Service to highlight where forest canopy was disturbed.

Study looks at commercialization of low Earth orbit

In May, NASA will be releasing a NASA Research Announcement (NRA) for low Earth orbit (LEO) commercialization, according to contract documents released Tuesday.

The purpose of this NRA is to inform NASA's strategy for enabling the commercialization of human spaceflight in LEO and meeting NASA's long-term LEO needs. The NRA will solicit industry concepts, business plans and viability for habitable platforms, whether using the International Space Station (ISS) or free-flying, that would enable a commercial marketplace in LEO where NASA is one of many customers. Additionally, the study seeks industry input on the role of government and evolution of ISS in the roadmap to commercialization of LEO.

NASA anticipates awarding multiple four-month, fixed priced contracts, up to $1 million per award. Participation is open to U.S. organizations, including industry, educational institutions, and nonprofit institutions, the agency said in documents.

A Pre-Proposal Conference to discuss the study objectives and proposal instructions with prospective respondents is planned for May 1 in the Gilruth Center at Johnson Space Center, Houston, Texas.

Rocket launch from Virginia will light up mid-Atlantic coast

The morning skies along the mid-Atlantic coast will light up with luminescent clouds as NASA tests a new system that supports science studies of the ionosphere and aurora with a sounding rocket launch June 29 from the Wallops Flight Facility on the eastern shore of Virginia.

During the flight of a two-stage Terrier-Improved Malemute sounding rocket at 4:15 a.m. EDT, ten canisters about the size of a soft drink can will be deployed in the air.

The canisters will deploy between four and five minutes after launch. Blue-green and red vapor forming artificial clouds should be visible. These clouds or vapor tracers allow scientists on the ground to visually track particle motions in space.

The development of the multi-canister or ampule ejection system will allow scientists to gather information over a much larger area than previously allowed when deploying the vapor just from the main payload.

Ground cameras will be stationed at Wallops and in Duck, N.C., to view the vapor tracers. Clear skies are preferred, but not required, at both sites for the launch to occur.

The vapor tracers are formed through the interaction of barium, strontium and cupric-oxide. The tracers will be released at altitudes 96 to 124 miles high and pose absolutely no hazard to residents along the mid-Atlantic coast.

The vapor tracers could be visible from New York to North Carolina and westward to Charlottesville, Va.

The total flight time for the mission is expected to be about eight minutes. The payload will land in the Atlantic Ocean about 90 miles from Wallops Island and will not be recovered.

Video: New unmanned aircraft runway in Virginia

Virginia Governor Terry McAuliffe visited NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility May 18 for a ribbon-cutting on a new Unmanned Aerial Systems runway, a $5.8 million state-funded project officially known as the Mid-Atlantic Regional Spaceport’s Unmanned Aircraft Systems Airfield.

Following the ribbon-cutting ceremony, McAuliffe boarded an Aurora Centaur, an optionally piloted aircraft that can be operated remotely from a ground control station, and flew in the plane over Wallops Island, Va.

“This new facility at Wallops provides government and commercial users with a runway under restricted airspace on a secure federal facility – discreetness that is of high interest for research and development,” Virginia Transportation Secretary Aubrey Layne said.

Additional details about the runway:

• The runway is 3,000 feet long and 75 feet wide.
• Its concrete pad measures 130 feet by 120 feet and is rated to 5,000 psi for Vertical Take Off and Landing operations.
• The airfield is surrounded by 75 square nautical miles of restricted airspace that is available 24 hours a day, seven days a week to unlimited altitude.
• The Virginia Department of Transportation managed construction of the $5.8 million, state-funded project.
• A 90-foot-by-50-foot hangar with a 70-foot-tall rollup door, lab space, communications and broadband connectivity will be under construction this summer.

NASA orders avionics and autopilot upgrade for research aircraft

NASA's Armstrong Flight Research Center operates a Beechcraft B200 aircraft, tail number N801NA, serial number BB-1164. The current avionics and autopilot suite, a critical aircraft system that projects rely on for accuracy, on the aircraft has been problematic for reliable operation and have been known to cause issues during research flight campaigns. Additionally, the aircraft needs RVSM capability, ADS-B In/Out, and TCAS/TAWS capabilities. “These are requirements for future projects, and they need to be addressed,” NASA officials said in contract documents released Wednesday.

The avionics and autopilot upgrade to N801NA will include:

• G1000 Platinum Package with Synthetic Vision, including RVSM capabilities. Includes standby ADI, airspeed indicators and altimeter. Headset compatible, tie-in to audio panel.
• Weather Radar upgrade (GWX-70).
• ADS-B In/Out upgrade.
• TCAS/TAWS upgrade, replace Skywatch 497 with Garmin GTW 825.
• ADF compatible (currently ADF-60, upgrade to ADF-60A for compatibility with G1000).
• Tie in the existing UHF radio to the G1000 suite.
• Update the current DME-40s and Radio Altimeter (not compatible with G1000) to a DME-42 and Garmin Radio Altimeter and tie-in to G1000 package.
• Retain the existing equipment that was removed to keep as spares for other B200 aircraft.

The work necessary to complete the avionics and autopilot upgrades shall be completed at a contractor’s facility.

All work should be completed within 20 business days of the arrival of N801NA to the contractor.