The Flight Proposer

The "flight proposer" computer program makes it easier for mission scientists to plan flights during field experiments.

Forecast meteorological fields of interest are displayed as horizontal maps on which a tentative flight plan can be drawn using the computer's mouse. As waypoints are added to the flight path, their vital statistics (latitude, longitude, and so forth) are displayed in a text window.

Also displayed are maps of meteorological forecast data on vertical cross-sections along the flight track. These plots of data as a function of pressure-altitude and time are called "curtain plots" (imagine a giant curtain hung along the latitudes and longitudes traversed by the aircraft).

The mission scientist can use this tool to create a proposed flight plan in which the aircraft's path (including any maneuvers such as dives) can be aimed at areas of the atmosphere whose examination is likely to return the greatest scientific value. The flight plan also avoids obvious violations of aircraft operational constraints. The plan is presented to the pilot and operations crew, who draw up the actual flight plan they file with the local aviation authorities.

Here is a screen dump of the program in use:

(The full image is 130K bytes.)

The horizontal map in the upper right-hand of the screen displays a false-color image of modified potential vorticity on the 460 Kelvin isentropic surface. Overlaid on this are contours of the altitude of this surface (in kilofeet). The colored hatched areas indicate restricted airspace of various kinds. The white circles indicate distances from the aircraft takeoff point (NASA Ames Research in Moffett Field, California), and the thick white lines are the flight track down the west coast and back.

The curtain plot in the lower right hand of the screen shows modified potential vorticity overlaid with red contours of potential vorticity. The thick white lines show the vertical position of the aircraft; there is a dive planned for the middle of the flight.

Other windows show a plot of the solar zenith angle along the flight path (a crucial variable to know when doing photochemistry), a list of waypoints, and the main menu of the program.

The flight proposer was designed by L. R. Lait, P. A. Newman, and P. Guimaraes, and was implemented by P. Guimaraes. It runs on Unix workstations and was written in the language IDL (Interactive Data Language, sold by Research Systems Inc. of Boulder, Colorado). It relies heavily on the scientific computing environment set up for Code 916.

The Goddard Flight Proposer Program