General Aviation Data Management

NASA has recently launched an initiative to rejuvenate the general aviation (GA) industry in the United States by stimulating and coordinating R&D in key technical areas. The central goal of this effort is to create a new generation of GA aircraft which are very easy to fly and as affordable as a luxury automobile. The new NASA general aviation initiative seeks revolutionary improvements in GA aircraft, especially in avionics and other cockpit systems. This proposal for an integrated datalink and data management system provides radical improvements in GA Aircraft data communications and data management, in order to enable a central theme of the GA initiative: improved situational awareness. Situational awareness concepts are enabled by providing access to critical information from the ground, on-board databases and other aircraft. There are three especially important innovations provided by this effort: 1) It designs a GPS-based traffic surveillance sensor, 2) It establishes the first data communications and management standard for GA aircraft, and 3) It develops a process for pre-certifying avionics software components. These innovations enable lower costs, which ensure affordability for GA aircraft. The work is directly related to this subtopic's stated needs for situational awareness, datalink systems and reduced certification costs.