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By NASA
Dr. Annie Meier (second from left) and her team inside the Applied Chemistry Lab at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida began supplementing their normal workload in mid-2023 with efforts to improve the lab’s sustainable practices. In 2024, the laboratory became the first at NASA to receive certification from the non-profit My Green Lab for its efforts in sustainability.NASA/Kim Shiflett NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida has a long record of achievements in sustainability and recently added another to the list when the spaceport’s Applied Chemistry Lab became the first in the agency to be certified for its environmentally conscious practices.
The My Green Lab Certification recognizes sustainability best practices in research facilities around the world. The certification program run by My Green Lab, a non-profit dedicated to creating a culture of sustainability through science, is considered a key measure of progress towards a zero-carbon future by the United Nations Race to Zero campaign.
“When I heard our lab achieved certification, I was so happy,” said Dr. Annie Meier, one of the laboratory’s chemical engineers. “It meant we could now make a conscious effort to share these green practices with all who work in our lab. We even added them to our training materials for new and incoming members in the lab.”
The lab performs research and technology development for a wide range of chemistry and engineering-related applications to solve the unique operational needs of NASA and outside partners. The lab primarily focuses on in-situ resource utilization and addressing technology gaps related to lunar and Martian sustainability. The lab’s scientists also provide expertise in the fields of logistics reduction, plasma science, hypergolic fuels, analytical instrumentation, and gas analysis.
While sustainability has long been a focus of the lab, the journey to the certification began when Riley Yager, a doctoral student from University of Alabama at Birmingham – where Meier was a technical monitor – shared her knowledge of the program after pursuing green lab practices at her university.
“I work as a sustainability ambassador at my university, so I knew of this program,” Yager said. “Sustainable practices are something woven into my everyday life, so naturally I wanted to bring those practices into my lab environments.”
After learning about the program from Yager and discovering the many other academic institutions and companies certified globally, Meier submitted a proposal to NASA and obtained funding to pursue certification for the Applied Chemistry Lab.
After a kickoff event hosted by My Green Lab in April 2023, the lab’s path to certification began with a self-assessment survey, in which members of the lab answered a series of questions about their practices in areas such as cold storage, green chemistry, infrastructure energy, resource management, waste reduction, and water. My Green Lab collected and analyzed the answers, providing a baseline assessment and recommendations to improve the lab’s sustainable practices.
“We took their initial survey and learned we had lots of room for improvements as a lab,” Meier said. “Then I worked with a few interns over the summer to spearhead the ‘green team’ to implement changes and get momentum from the entire lab.”
The lab began with minimizing purchases by improving efficiencies during the inventory process. The team also performed a waste audit of all seven of its laboratories. They adopted nitrile glove and pipette tip box recycling, reviewed the “12 principles of green chemistry” with the lab members, and installed stickers and signage about what can and cannot be unplugged to save energy. Additionally, they installed low-flow aerators on the lab tap sinks to reduce flow, and the lab now uses a recycling sink to save on water or solvents for cleaning parts.
As luck would have it, Yager ended up working at the Applied Chemistry Lab on a NASA fellowship and became a member of the green team.
“It was really fun to see that come full circle,” Meier said. “Almost all members of the lab, from our fellows to most senior members, used their self-motivation to get on the sustainability train.”
The green team continued to grow as the lab implemented changes to become more sustainable. Just over six months after the kickoff event, they completed another assessment survey. With possible certification levels of bronze, silver, gold, platinum, and green – the level that adheres closest to My Green Lab’s highest standards – the ACL was certified green, marking the first time any NASA center obtained a My Green Lab Certification.
“Our lab is looking to sustain these green practices and achieve the same status when we are reassessed in the future,” Meier said. “This effort could be a wonderful catalyst to inspire other work groups to lean towards more ‘green’ practices at the frontline in our laboratories.”
The NASA Kennedy lab joined over 2,500 labs in a range of sectors that received the My Green Lab certification. Maintaining the distinction will require recertification every two years.
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By NASA
4 min read
Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater)
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits in its run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, firing up its engine for the first time. These engine-run tests start at low power and allow the X-59 team to verify the aircraft’s systems are working together while powered by its own engine. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.NASA/Carla Thomas NASA’s Quesst mission marked a major milestone with the start of tests on the engine that will power the quiet supersonic X-59 experimental aircraft.
These engine-run tests, which began Oct. 30, allow the X-59 team to verify the aircraft’s systems are working together while powered by its own engine. In previous tests, the X-59 used external sources for power. The engine-run tests set the stage for the next phase of the experimental aircraft’s progress toward flight.
The X-59 team is conducting the engine-run tests in phases. In this first phase, the engine rotated at a relatively low speed without ignition to check for leaks and ensure all systems are communicating properly. The team then fueled the aircraft and began testing the engine at low power, with the goal of verifying that it and other aircraft systems operate without anomalies or leaks while on engine power.
Lockheed Martin test pilot Dan Canin sits in the cockpit of NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft in a run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California prior to its first engine run. These engine-run tests featured the X-59 powered by its own engine, whereas in previous tests, the aircraft depended on external sources for power. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.NASA/Carla Thomas “The first phase of the engine tests was really a warmup to make sure that everything looked good prior to running the engine,” said Jay Brandon, NASA’s X-59 chief engineer. “Then we moved to the actual first engine start. That took the engine out of the preservation mode that it had been in since installation on the aircraft. It was the first check to see that it was operating properly and that all the systems it impacted – hydraulics, electrical system, environmental control systems, etc. – seemed to be working.”
The X-59 will generate a quieter thump rather than a loud boom while flying faster than the speed of sound. The aircraft is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which will gather data on how people perceive these thumps, providing regulators with information that could help lift current bans on commercial supersonic flight over land.
The engine, a modified F414-GE-100, packs 22,000 pounds of thrust, which will enable the X-59 to achieve the desired cruising speed of Mach 1.4 (925 miles per hour) at an altitude of approximately 55,000 feet. It sits in a nontraditional spot – atop the aircraft — to aid in making the X-59 quieter.
Engine runs are part of a series of integrated ground tests needed to ensure safe flight and successful achievement of mission goals. Because of the challenges involved with reaching this critical phase of testing, the X-59’s first flight is now expected in early 2025. The team will continue progressing through critical ground tests and address any technical issues discovered with this one-of-a-kind, experimental aircraft. The X-59 team will have a more specific first flight date as these tests are successfully completed.
The testing is taking place at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California. During later phases, the team will test the aircraft at high power with rapid throttle changes, followed by simulating the conditions of an actual flight.
NASA’s X-59 quiet supersonic research aircraft sits in its run stall at Lockheed Martin’s Skunk Works facility in Palmdale, California, prior to its first engine run. Engine runs are part of a series of integrated ground tests needed to ensure safe flight and successful achievement of mission goals. The X-59 is the centerpiece of NASA’s Quesst mission, which seeks to solve one of the major barriers to supersonic flight over land by making sonic booms quieter.NASA/Carla Thomas “The success of these runs will be the start of the culmination of the last eight years of my career,” said Paul Dees, NASA’s deputy propulsion lead for the X-59. “This isn’t the end of the excitement but a small steppingstone to the beginning. It’s like the first note of a symphony, where years of teamwork behind the scenes are now being put to the test to prove our efforts have been effective, and the notes will continue to play a harmonious song to flight.”
After the engine runs, the X-59 team will move to aluminum bird testing, where data will be fed to the aircraft under both normal and failure conditions. The team will then proceed with a series of taxi tests, where the aircraft will be put in motion on the ground. These tests will be followed by final preparations for first flight.
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Last Updated Nov 06, 2024 EditorLillian GipsonContactMatt Kamletmatthew.r.kamlet@nasa.gov Related Terms
Aeronautics Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate Ames Research Center Armstrong Flight Research Center Glenn Research Center Langley Research Center Low Boom Flight Demonstrator Quesst (X-59) Quesst: The Vehicle Supersonic Flight View the full article
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By NASA
5 min read
30 Years On, NASA’s Wind Is a Windfall for Studying our Neighborhood in Space
An artist’s concept of NASA’s Wind spacecraft outside of Earth’s magnetosphere. NASA Picture it: 1994. The first World Wide Web conference took place in Geneva, the first Chunnel train traveled under the English Channel, and just three years after the end of the Cold War, the first Russian instrument on a U.S. spacecraft launched into deep space from Cape Canaveral. The mission to study the solar wind, aptly named Wind, held promise for heliophysicists and astrophysicists around the world to investigate basic plasma processes in the solar wind barreling toward Earth —key information for helping us understand and potentially mitigate the space weather environment surrounding our home planet.
Thirty years later, Wind continues to deliver on that promise from about a million miles away at the first Earth-Sun Lagrange Point (L1). This location is gravitationally balanced between Earth and the Sun, providing excellent fuel economy that requires mere puffs of thrust to stay in place.
According to Lynn Wilson, who is the Wind project scientist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, fuel is only one indicator of Wind’s life expectancy, however. “Based on fuel alone, Wind can continue flying until 2074,” he said. “On the other hand, its ability to return data hinges on the last surviving digital tape recorder onboard.”
An artist’s concept shows a closeup of the Wind spacecraft. NASA Wind launched with two digital tape recorders to record data from all the instruments on the spacecraft and provide reports on the spacecraft’s thermal conditions, orientation, and overall health. Each recorder has two tape decks, A and B, which Wilson affectionately refers to as “fancy eight-tracks.”
After six years of service, the first digital tape recorder failed in 2000 along with its two tape decks, forcing mission operators to switch to the second one. Tape Deck A on that one started showing signs of wear in 2016, so the mission operators now use Tape Deck B as the primary deck, with A as a backup.
“They built redundancy into the digital tape recorder system by building two of them, but you can never predict how technology will perform when it’s a million miles away, bathing in ionizing radiation,” said Wilson. “We’re fortunate that after 30 years, we still have two functioning tape decks.”
Wind launched on Nov. 1, 1994, on a Delta IV rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station in Florida. NASA Bonus Science
When Wind launched on Nov. 1, 1994, nobody could have possibly predicted that exactly 30 years later, NASA would be kicking off “Bonus Science” month in the Heliophysics Big Year. Beyond the mission’s incredible track record of mesmerizing discoveries about the solar wind — some detailed on its 25th anniversary — Wind continues to deliver with bonus science abound.
Opportunity and Collaborative Discovery
Along its circuitous journey to L1, Wind dipped in and out of Earth’s magnetosphere more than 65 times, capturing the largest whistler wave — a low-frequency radio wave racing across Earth’s magnetic field — ever recorded in Earth’s Van Allen radiation belts. Wind also traveled ahead of and behind Earth — about 150 times our planet’s diameter in both directions, informing potential future missions that would operate in those areas with extreme exposure to the solar wind. It even took a side quest to the Moon, cruising through the lunar wake, a shadow devoid of solar wind on the far side of the Moon.
Later, from its permanent home at L1, Wind was among several corroborating spacecraft that helped confirm what scientists believe is the brightest gamma-ray burst to occur since the dawn of human civilization. The burst, GRB 221009A, was first detected by NASA’s Fermi Gamma-ray Space Telescope in October 2022. Although not in its primary science objectives, Wind carries two bonus instruments designed to observe gamma-ray bursts that helped scientists confirm the burst’s origin in the Sagitta constellation.
Academic Inspiration
More than 7,200 research papers have been published using Wind data, and the mission has supported more than 100 graduate and post-graduate degrees.
Wilson was one of those degree candidates. When Wind launched, Wilson was in sixth grade, on the football, baseball, and wrestling teams, with spare time spent playing video games and reading science fiction. He had a knack for science and considered becoming a medical doctor or an engineer before committing to his love of physics, which ultimately led to his current position as Wind’s project scientist. While pursuing his doctorate, he worked with Adam Szabo who was the Wind project scientist at NASA Goddard at the time and used Wind data to study interplanetary collisionless shock waves. Szabo eventually hired Wilson to work on the Wind mission team at Goddard.
Also in sixth grade at the time, Joe Westlake, NASA Heliophysics division director,was into soccer and music, and was a voracious reader consumed with Tolkein’s stories about Middle Earth. Now he leads the NASA office that manages Wind.
“It’s amazing to think that Lynn Wilson and I were in middle school, and the original mission designers and scientists have long since retired,” said Westlake. “When a mission makes it to 30 years, you can’t help but be inspired by the role it has played not only in scientific discovery, but in the careers of multiple generations of scientists.”
By Erin Mahoney
NASA Headquarters, Washington
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Last Updated Nov 01, 2024 Related Terms
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By NASA
President John F. Kennedy’s national commitment to land a man on the Moon and return him safely to the Earth before the end of the decade posed multiple challenges, among them how to train astronauts to land on the Moon, a place with no atmosphere and one-sixth the gravity on Earth. The Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV) and its successor the Lunar Landing Training Vehicle (LLTV) provided the training tool to simulate the final 200 feet of the descent to the lunar surface. The ungainly aircraft made its first flight on Oct. 30, 1964, at NASA’s Flight Research Center (FRC), now NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center (AFRC) in California. The Apollo astronauts who completed landings on the Moon attributed their successes largely to training in these vehicles.
The first Lunar Landing Research Vehicle silhouetted against the rising sun on the dry lakebed at Edwards Air Force Base in California’s Mojave Desert.
In December 1961, NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C., received an unsolicited proposal from Bell Aerosystems in Buffalo, New York, for a design of a flying simulator to train astronauts on landing a spacecraft on the Moon. Bell’s approach, using their design merged with concepts developed at NASA’s FRC, won approval and the space agency funded the design and construction of two Lunar Landing Research Vehicles (LLRV). At the time of the proposal, NASA had not yet chosen the method for getting to and landing on the Moon, but once NASA decided on Lunar Orbit Rendezvous in July 1962, the Lunar Module’s (LM) flying characteristics matched Bell’s proposed design closely enough that the LLRV served as an excellent trainer.
Two views of the first Lunar Landing Research Vehicle shortly after its arrival and prior to assembly at the Flight Research Center, now NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, in California.
Bell Aerosystems delivered the LLRV-1 to FRC on April 8, 1964, where it made history as the first pure fly-by-wire aircraft to fly in Earth’s atmosphere. Its design relied exclusively on an interface with three analog computers to convert the pilot’s movements to signals transmitted by wire and to execute his commands. The open-framed LLRV used a downward pointing turbofan engine to counteract five-sixths of the vehicle’s weight to simulate lunar gravity, two rockets provided thrust for the descent and horizontal translation, and 16 LM-like thrusters provided three-axis attitude control. The astronauts could thus simulate maneuvering and landing on the lunar surface while still on Earth. The LLRV pilot could use an aircraft-style ejection seat to escape from the vehicle in case of loss of control.
Left: The Lunar Landing Research Vehicle-1 (LLRV-1) during an engine test at NASA’s Flight Research Center (FRC), now NASA’s Armstrong Fight Research Center, in California’s Mojave Desert. Right: NASA chief test pilot Joseph “Joe” A. Walker, left, demonstrates the features of LLRV-1 to President Lyndon B. Johnson during his visit to FRC.
Engineers conducted numerous tests to prepare the LLRV for its first flight. During one of the engine tests, the thrust generated was higher than anticipated, lifting crew chief Raymond White and the LLRV about a foot off the ground before White could shut off the engines. On June 19, during an official visit to FRC, President Lyndon B. Johnson inspected the LLRV featured on a static display. The Secret Service would not allow the President to sit in the LLRV’s cockpit out of an overabundance of caution since the pyrotechnics were installed, but not yet armed, in the ejection seat. Following a Preflight Readiness Review held Aug. 13 and 14, managers cleared the LLRV for its first flight.
Left: NASA chief test pilot Joseph “Joe” A. Walker during the first flight of the Lunar Landing Research Vehicle (LLRV). Right: Walker shortly after the first LLRV flight.
In the early morning of Oct. 30, 1964, FRC chief pilot Joseph “Joe” A. Walker arrived at Edwards Air Force Base’s (AFB) South Base to attempt the first flight of the LLRV. Walker, a winner of both the Collier Trophy and the Harmon International Trophy, had flown nearly all experimental aircraft at Edwards including 25 flights in the X-15 rocket plane. On two of his X-15 flights, Walker earned astronaut wings by flying higher than 62 miles, the unofficial boundary between the Earth’s atmosphere and space. After strapping into the LLRV’s ejection seat, Walker ran through the preflight checklist before advancing the throttle to begin the first flight. The vehicle rose 10 feet in the air, Walker performed a few small maneuvers and then made a soft landing after having flown for 56 seconds. He lifted off again, performed some more maneuvers, and landed again after another 56 seconds. On his third flight, the vehicle’s electronics shifted into backup mode and he landed the craft after only 29 seconds. Walker seemed satisfied with how the LLRV handled on its first flights.
Left: Lunar Landing Research Vehicle-2 (LLRV-2) during one of its six flights at the Flight Research Center, now NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center, in California in January 1967. Right: NASA astronaut Neil A. Armstrong with LLRV-1 at Ellington Air Force Base in March 1967.
Walker took LLRV-1 aloft again on Nov. 16 and eventually completed 35 test flights with the vehicle. Test pilots Donald “Don” L. Mallick, who completed the first simulated lunar landing profile flight during the LLRV’s 35th flight on Sept. 8, 1965, and Emil E. “Jack” Kluever, who made his first flight on Dec. 13, 1965, joined Walker to test the unique aircraft. Joseph S. “Joe” Algranti and Harold E. “Bud” Ream, pilots at the Manned Spacecraft Center (MSC), now NASA’s Johnson Space Center (JSC) in Houston, travelled to FRC to begin training flights with the LLRV in August 1966. Workers at FRC assembled the second vehicle, LLRV-2, during the latter half of 1966. In December 1966, after 198 flights workers transferred LLRV-1 to Ellington AFB near MSC for the convenience of astronaut training, and LLRV-2 followed in January 1967 after completing six test flights at FRC. The second LLRV made no further flights, partly because the three Lunar Landing Training Vehicles (LLTVs), more advanced models that better simulated the LM’s flying characteristics, began to arrive at Ellington in October 1967. Neil A. Armstrong completed the first astronaut flights aboard LLRV-1 on Mar. 23, 1967, and flew 21 flights before ejecting from the vehicle on May 6, 1968, seconds before it crashed. He later completed his lunar landing certification flights using LLTV-2 in June 1969, one month before peforming the actual feat on the Moon.
Left: Apollo 11 Commander Neil A. Armstrong prepares to fly a lunar landing profile in Lunar Landing Training Vehicle-2 (LLTV-2) in June 1969. Middle: Apollo 12 Commander Charles “Pete” Conrad prepares to fly LLTV-2 in July 1969. Right: Apollo 14 Commander Alan B. Shepard flies LLTV-3 in December 1970.
All Apollo Moon landing mission commanders and their backups completed their lunar landing certifications using the LLTV, and all the commanders attributed their successful landings to having trained in the LLTV. Apollo 8 astronaut William A. Anders, who along with Armstrong completed some of the early LLRV test flights, called the training vehicle “a much unsung hero of the Apollo program.” During the flight readiness review in January 1970 to clear LLTV-3 for astronaut flights, Apollo 11 Commander Armstrong and Apollo 12 Commander Charles “Pete” Conrad, who had by then each completed manual landings on the Moon, spoke positively of the LLTV’s role in their training. Armstrong’s overall impression of the LLTV: “All the pilots … thought it was an extremely important part of their preparation for the lunar landing attempt,” adding “It was a contrary machine, and a risky machine, but a very useful one.” Conrad emphasized that were he “to go back to the Moon again on another flight, I personally would want to fly the LLTV again as close to flight time as possible.” During the Apollo 12 technical debriefs, Conrad stated the “the LLTV is an excellent training vehicle for the final phases. I think it’s almost essential. I feel it really gave me the confidence that I needed.” During the postflight debriefs, Apollo 14 Commander Alan B. Shepard stated that he “did feel that the LLTV contributed to my overall ability to fly the LM during the landing.”
Left: Apollo 15 Commander David R. Scott flies Lunar Landing Training Vehicle-3 (LLTV-3) in June 1971. Middle: Apollo 16 Commander John W. Young prepares to fly LLTV-3 in March 1972. Right: Apollo 17 Commander Eugene A. Cernan prepares for a flight aboard LLTV-3 in October 1972.
David R. Scott, Apollo 15 commander, stated in the final mission report that “the combination of visual simulations and LLTV flying provided excellent training for the actual lunar landing. Comfort and confidence existed throughout this phase.” In the Apollo 15 postflight debrief, Scott stated that he “felt very comfortable flying the vehicle (LM) manually, because of the training in the LLTV, and there was no question in my mind that I could put it down where I wanted to. I guess I can’t say enough about that training. I think the LLTV is an excellent simulation of the vehicle.” Apollo 16 Commander John W. Young offered perhaps the greatest praise for the vehicle just moments after landing on the lunar surface: “Just like flying the LLTV. Piece of cake.” Young reiterated during the postflight debriefs that “from 200 feet on down, I never looked in the cockpit. It was just like flying the LLTV.” Apollo 17 Commander Eugene A. Cernan stated in the postflight debrief that “the most significant part of the final phases from 500 feet down, … was that it was extremely comfortable flying the bird. I contribute (sic) that primarily to the LLTV flying operations.”
Left: Workers move Lunar Landing Research Vehicle-2 from NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center for display at the Air Force Test Flight Museum at Edwards Air Force Base. Right: Lunar Landing Training Vehicle-3 on display outside the Teague Auditorium at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.
In addition to playing a critical role in the Moon landing program, these early research and test vehicles aided in the development of digital fly-by-wire technology for future aircraft. LLRV-2 is on display at the Air Force Flight Test Museum at Edwards AFB (on loan from AFRC). Visitors can view LLTV-3 suspended from the ceiling in the lobby of the Teague Auditorium at JSC.
The monograph Unconventional, Contrary, and Ugly: The Lunar Landing Research Vehicle provides an excellent and detailed history of the LLRV.
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By NASA
Dr. Nipa Phojanamongkolkij does not always do things the traditional way. As a systems engineer (SE) at Langley Research Center working closely with the Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate, Nipa pushes boundaries and draws connections where few others would think to look. When she envisioned a way to use ChatGPT to help SE teams working on the Advanced Air Mobility Mission, she presented her initial idea to her team wondering, “Is this crazy?” Her idea evolved into a successful prototype, which is now used for air traffic management in the Airspace Operations and Safety Program. She has also leveraged natural language programming and NASA’s database of lessons learned to create a bot for flagging potential risks and mitigations in real time. Nipa’s journey in becoming the digital transformer she is today involves her ability to combine engineering principles and business outcomes with creative, human-centered approaches.
Nipa received an MS and PhD in industrial and systems engineering from Arizona State University after moving to the United States from Bangkok, Thailand, where she received her BS degree in electronics engineering. She joined NASA 15 years ago after honing her data analysis and process improvement skills in the business sector at Pepsi Corporation. Her previous experience molded her focus on demonstrating benefit and return on investment. In addition to a business-oriented mindset, Nipa credits much of her success at NASA to her abilities as an active listener, which helps her understand customer needs and address paint points.
One cross-cutting challenge Nipa noticed within the agency’s approach to SE was the issue of silos, particularly in handling requirements and research data. Many engineers stored information in documents on individual computers or SharePoint folders, making it difficult to share data and draw connections across missions, directorates, and centers. As a systems engineer, Nipa and her team work to pull these disparate elements into a connected digital format using methodology called model-based systems engineering (MBSE). “You can think of it like a gigantic database where you have everything connected—a table of research papers, a table of requirements, and a table of concept of operations documents,” she says.
However, using and leveraging this system requires specialized knowledge of the MBSE discipline and modeling language. To centralize system concept, architecture, and requirement data while democratizing access to it, Nipa conceived a way to leverage ChatGPT as an intermediary between the user and database. In fiscal year 2023, she received funding for her idea as a Digital Transformation Prototype Test, “Requirement Discovery Using Embedded Knowledge Graph with ChatGPT.” Nipa and her team developed a web-based dashboard that translates user questions into database queries and turns the database responses back into readable answers for the user. Nipa and her team curated the research used to create the database, reducing the chances of AI hallucination and misinformation. Using ChatGPT as a translator, general users benefitted from the system without needing to know how to formulate graph database queries.
Requirement creation through this system was seven times faster than traditional processes and yielded results comparable to those created by subject matter experts. In some cases, the approach even resulted in more creative requirements than human-generated ones. Nipa’s prototype allowed SEs to more efficiently analyze connections between existing requirements, predict new connections, and generate new requirements, streamlining critical processes for her team. The approach could benefit SEs across NASA centers, directorates, and missions and holds exciting potential for other use cases, such as generating candidate requirements and analyzing project risk. According to NASA Digital Engineering Lead Terry Hill, “The future of engineering is understanding how to do it from a data-centric perspective. Enabling the use of new and evolving technologies like artificial intelligence, machine learning, and large language models will aid our engineers to accomplish greater things and augment our workforce.”
Nipa and her team were recognized for their innovative work, receiving a Systems Engineering Technical Excellence Award (SETEA) in 2024 under the “Advancement of SE” category. Nipa’s out-of-the-box thinking has also positioned her as a trailblazer amongst her peers. “Nipa was ahead of everyone in terms of understanding what Digital Transformation is,” says Ian Levitt, Concepts Team Manager at Langley Research Center and co-lead on the Requirement Discovery Prototype Test. “She is extremely smart as well as practical, which is a rare combination. She has wonderful insights and helps me see more clearly what I am trying to do.” As a leader in the Digital Transformation community, Nipa recognizes the importance of collaboration, noting that her transformative work would not have been successful without her team. Their trust is what makes her ideas possible, along with Digital Transformation’s willingness to take chances on innovative, cutting-edge ideas. “They’re at the forefront of technology, so they’re receptive to high-risk projects,” she says. “That’s why I enjoy working with the Digital Transformation team.”
In turn, Nipa is excited to continue building community and momentum around transformation initiatives. Her team’s work inspired one group at Johnson Space Center to replicate their requirement discovery approach, and she has received multiple inquiries for demos on their prototype. Seeing how her work inspires and impacts others at the agency is one way she measures success. Whether she is connecting data sources or people, Nipa continues to push toward a more unified NASA, exemplifying what it means to be a digital transformer.
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