NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center

1
NASA/Goddard Space Flight Centers Wallops
Flight Facility
Federal Laboratory Consortium January 29 2009
2
Location, Location, Location
NASA/ Goddard
D.C. Area Pentagon DARPA Missile Defense
Agency Andrews AFB
Dover AFB
NASA/ Langley
NASA/GSFC (Wallops)
Norfolk Area Atlantic Fleet Oceana Dahlgren Dam
Neck

• Restricted Airspace adjoining Atlantic Ocean
• Centrally Located among many NASA DoD customers

3
Wallops 6000 Acre Campus
Main Base
Wallops Island
4
Wallops Research Carrier Suite
Strategy A carrier for any science
technology validation need
Science Aircraft
Sounding Rockets
Unmanned Aerial Systems
Multi-Payload Ejector
Scientific Balloons
Autonomous Surface Vessels
5
Wallops Mission Activities

• Mission
• Wallops Facility will be a national resource for
  enabling low-cost aeronautic and aerospace-based
  science and technology
• Technical Activities
• Research Carriers
• Sounding Rockets
• Balloons
• Aircraft UAVs
• Small Orbital Carriers
• Engineering Development Technology Validation
• Supporting Sensors, Instruments and Subsystems
• Earth Science Research
• Mission Operations
• Launch Range
• Research Airport
• Orbital Tracking

6
Wallops Research Carriers
7
Sounding Rocket Program

• Typical mission types
• Space Science research
• Technology demonstrations
• DoD targets (reimbursable)
• 20-30 missions/year
• Features
• Apogee altitudes gt1500 km
• Flight times gt20 minutes
• Spacecraft weights gt1300 lbs.
• Allows quick response missions (lt1 yr.)
• 14 launch vehicle configurations
• Uses low-cost surplus military rockets
• Recovery/re-use of flight hardware
• End-to-end in-house capabilities (design,
  fabrication. integration, testing, launch)
• World-wide fixed and mobile launch sites

Black Brant XII
Typical Spacecraft
8
Balloon Program

• Primary mission
• Space Science research
• 15-20 missions/year
• Features
• Balloon volumes up to 60M cubic ft.
• Suspended loads up to 8000 lbs.
• Float altitudes of 100K-160K feet
• Mission durations of gt1 month
• Worldwide mission sites
• Development efforts
• Ultra-Long Duration Balloon
• Trajectory control
• Planetary balloons

Balloon Inflation
Balloon at Float
Balloon Payload
9
Balloon Characteristics
10
Airborne Science Program

• Piloted aircraft UAV flying laboratories
  supporting Earth Science research
• Heavy Lift
• Wallops P-3B
• U of ND DC-8
• Pass-throughs WB57 (JSC), ER-2 (DFRC)
• Contract Aircraft Twin Otter (others pending)
• UAVs AAI/Aerosonde, Aurora
• Research examples
• Atmospheric Chemistry
• Climate Change
• Ice cap beach mapping
• Ocean current biology studies
• Coastal Zone Research
• Natural Disasters
• Hurricane studies volcano eruptions
• Aircraft activities
• Mission planning

NASA P-3 (based at WFF)
NASA DC-8 (based at U of ND)
Twin Otter (contracted)
11
Unmanned Aerial Systems

• WFF UAV Activities
• Science missions
• Operations
• Science-enabling technology development
• NASA investigating UAV contribution to science.
  UAVs offer
• More hazardous flight regimes
• Longer duration missions
• Potentially lower costs
• AAI/Aerosonde partnership
• Demonstrate utility of small UAVs for science
• Establish procedures for science projects
• Execute science missions
• Aurora Flight Sciences partnership
• UAV infrastructure upgrades
• Development demo. of UAV-independent
  science-independent data systems

Aurora GE-80
Aerosonde
Wallops UAS Runway
12
NASA/WFF Opportunities

• Carriers (new flight platforms)
• Rockets (Taurus II, High-Performance Sounding
  Rockets, Other)
• UAV/UASs (huge bilateral interest)
• Micro-satellites (CubeSats, etc.)
• Technology Development and Test
• Advanced Flight Hardware (communications/telemetry
  , flight termination/safety, etc.)
• Sensors (Surveillance, Science, etc.)
• Radar/LIDAR, spectrometers, magnetometers, etc.)
• Services and Infrastructure
• Buildings, runways, range instrumentation
• GIS/mapping
• Mission Planning