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LANGLEY PROJECTS RECOGNIZED
NASA honors innovations with special awards
A technology designed to reduce
airport delays in bad weather has won recognition at a NASA
conference in Huntsville, Ala.
 A NASA "top ten" list of
aerospace advances for 1999 singled out that project and a number
of other innovations developed at the Langley Research Center in
Hampton, Va.
A Langley-based 757 aircraft
demonstrated Airborne Information for Lateral Spacing (AILS) at
Minneapolis-St. Paul International Airport last fall. The system
expands on existing communication and navigation technology to
allow planes to land safely in bad weather on parallel runways
spaced as close as 2,500 feet apart.
The AILS system was developed with
the help of engineers at the Honeywell Technology Center and the
NASA Ames Research Center.
Langley engineers also received
honors for their work on three other teams: Tu-144 high speed
research, tiltrotor noise abatement and NASA project systems
analysis.
Among the members of the Tu-144
high speed research team is Langley pilot, Rob Rivers. Rivers was
the first westerner to fly the Russian supersonic Tu-144
aircraft.
For the tiltrotor noise abatement
project, engineers demonstrated low noise design concepts in a
Langley wind tunnel and developed operational flight procedures
that reduced engine noise on the ground. Tiltrotor aircraft are
airplanes that take off and land vertically like helicopters, but
whose rotors/engines rotate into a horizontal position for
horizontal flight.
The NASA awards program recognizes
advances in three categories: Global Civil Aviation, Revolutionary
Technology Leaps and Advanced Space Transportation. Ten
subcategories honor nominees whose work represents exceptional
achievements related to health, safety, the environment, cost
reduction and technical innovation.
Other awards from across NASA and
the aerospace industry include those for aviation emissions
reduction, next generation experimental aircraft, low cost access
to space and other categories.
A complete overview of the awards,
details about the research and a full list of the participating
NASA Centers and industry organizations honored is on the Internet
at the "Turning Goals into Reality" web site at: http://tgir.msfc.nasa.gov.
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