Airspace Operations Lab @ NASA Ames

The aviation industry is expanding operations into higher airspace that has been traditionally used by scientific and military vehicles. In the U.S., increasing utilization of the Upper Class E (UCE) airspace, defined to be at or above 60,000 feet, necessitates a paradigm shift in Air Traffic Management (ATM) to accommodate the diverse range of vehicles and missions, including Uncrewed Aircraft Systems (UAS), High-Altitude Platform Stations (HAPSs), and very-high speed aircraft, such as supersonics and hypersonics. To address these challenges, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) have collaborated on the development of Upper Class E Traffic Management (ETM), which promotes a community-based, cooperative approach, where operators are responsible for coordinating and managing their own operations with the Cooperative Operating Practices (COPs), established by the industry community and under the regulatory / operational authority of the FAA. The ETM concept has been developed over the years with a series of workshops and focused studies, culminating in a demonstration of ETM operations at NASA in a simulated environment, with active participation from the industry partners. The partners successfully connected their ETM Client software to the NASA's ETM Service Supplier (ESS) by submitting and updating their operational intents (OIs) and their positions from remote locations and modifying their intents in response to strategic conflicts caused by overlapping OI volumes with another vehicle. A series of scenarios were presented to the industry partners as a step-by-step sequence of operational procedures, decision points, and necessary operator actions for the submission of their OIs and strategic conflict negotiation strategies. Associated COPs were presented, discussed, and refined based on their feedback. The partners were actively engaged throughout the process and provided valuable feedback on the OI submission and negotiation processes. Visualizing operations and role playing these processes from the operator's perspective allowed them to provide detailed feedback and brainstorm potential improvements to operational procedures and COPs.