NASA formally delivered new technologies designed to help pilots in the Alaskan wilderness make better flight decisions, especially when disconnected from the Internet, telephone, flight services and other data sources. Peter Worden, director of NASA’s Ames Research Center at Moffett Field, Calif., and the facility’s aeronautics director, Thomas Edwards, met with Alaskan officials on October 6 to detail the system known as Traffic and Atmospheric Information for General Aviation (Taiga), a collection of open-source algorithms, concepts and data.
NASA developed the satellite-based communication system to allow customized regional data to be downloaded for use on a mobile device such as an iPad. While the agency’s mobile software application is only conceptual at present, it includes full 3-D terrain visualization. In a recent test at Ames, data from a satellite-based messaging system was successfully received on the satellite receiver and viewed on the concept version of the mobile app while in flight.
NASA also developed a method for tightly bundling the data to be transmitted, thereby cutting the cost of satellite data transmission using this technology. It believes the next step in Taiga development is for Alaska’s engineers to create an app that meets the specific needs of the state’s pilots.