Weather Sensor and Data Monitoring (WSDM) Service

This Phase II-E program will have three sub-projects that combined will substantially advance the state of the art for the industry’s understanding of micro-weather and the impact to UAS and advanced aerial mobility operations. The first sub-project for this Phase II-E effort will integrate two disparate networks of sensors for monitoring under ResilienX’s Fault Recovery and Isolation Health Monitoring frameWORK (FRAIHMWORK®). This effort will bridge the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Langley Research Center (LaRC) City Environment Range Testing for Autonomous Integrated Navigation (CERTAIN) Range with the Hampton sensor network, enhancing micro-weather detection for High-Density Vertiplex (HDV) testing between the CERTAIN Range and Longbow’s Vertiport at Fort Monroe. As a part of this effort the ResilienX Team will develop a network integration and cybersecurity plan and expand on the current research being conducted in the Hampton, VA area by ResilienX, TruWeather Solutions, and the Longbow Group. The weather data collected will enable us to test and demonstrate methods to quantify and validate weather data performance standards being drafted under the ASTM F38 UAS Weather Supplemental Data Service Provider (SDSP) Group. The second sub-project is to use the weather sensor instrumentation in Hampton to validate the calibration of the Raytheon Skyler-II weather radar, located in Hampton. This will enable a scalable and real-time calibration monitoring capability of X-Band weather radar systems. Our final sub-project aims to create BEWINDEE (Battery Estimator for Wind Energy Efficiency), given the wind conditions over a route. We will attach small anemometers to two unique, small uncrewed aircraft system (sUAS) platforms to measure the winds during test and commercial flight operations. This data collection will be used to develop algorithms to predict battery usage given a wind forecast to increase safety and efficiency of drone operations.

NASA will find the output of this effort useful in their National Campaign effort around Advanced Aerial Mobility (AAM). The NASA High Density Vertiplex project will be contributed to directly as we instrument and integrate the test corridor. Additionally, capabilities developed, such as BEWINDEE, will directly contribute to NASA System Wide Safety Team’s mission to enable In-time system-wide safety assurance (ISSA) capabilities within the AAM ecosystem. 

Commercial drone operators need solutions for predicting and dealing with low altitude winds. We will give them the tools to understand the impact of winds to their operations as well as third-party validation and performance monitoring of the data they are using to make these safety and efficiency decisions. We plan to create intellectual property that can help operators maximize revenue.

This is a mature technology (TRL 7) — the realistic path in is usually NASA's Technology Transfer Program: licensing an existing NASA patent, or a Space Act Agreement to use NASA facilities/expertise directly. NASA also runs a startup licensing program with no upfront fee for companies formed to commercialize a specific NASA technology.

None of these are guaranteed paths for this specific project — TechPort itself doesn't have an "apply" button. Reaching out to the contact(s) above with a specific question is usually the fastest way to find out what's actually open.