NASA has developed a new technology to help deliver information to pilots flying in remote areas of Alaska without access to navigation aids and communications. The project, called Traffic and Atmospheric Information for General Aviation (TAIGA), can provide a pilot with customized data sets that can be downloaded quickly via satellite and plugged into a mobile application. For example, the system can send pilots a dataset that shows the altitude of nearby terrain via color, with terrain higher than the airplane’s altitude marked in red. “Each data broadcast will go only to the areas that are appropriate for those data,” said Joseph Rios, TAIGA engineer at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California. “Once a pilot receives a data broadcast, it will be available for viewing on their iPad.”
Since sending data via satellite can be expensive, NASA also developed a method for tightly bundling the data to be transmitted, thereby decreasing the cost of satellite transmission. The next step in development of the TAIGA concept will be for engineers with the State of Alaska to take the NASA concept and develop it into an app that meets the specific needs of Alaskan pilots. Alaskan officials hope to distribute a prototype app to general aviation pilots for testing early next year.
