On Thursday November 7, NASA Ames Research Center held it’s 2019 Honor Awards ceremony in Mountain View, California. Twenty-nine Metis employees at Ames were members of three different teams receiving group achievement awards:
The NASA Aviation Safety Reporting System team was recognized for important contributions to the safety of the National Transportation System through the identification and analysis of emerging safety threats. Metis employs all of the ASRS aviation safety analysts who review and triage over 100,000 voluntarily-submitted safety reports every year to identify emerging safety threats, as well as writing monthly editions of Callback, an aviation newsletter with over 30,000 subscribers.
The SimLabs Lunar Lander Demo team was honored for outstanding performance developing and building a lunar lander simulation utilizing the NASA Ames Vertical Motion Simulator in only 30 days. Metis employees were members of the team who were challenged to build up a lunar lander cab to fly in motion under pilot control – a task that would usually take several months as it involved developing a lunar lander math model, developing lunar visual scenery for out-the-window pilot cues, preparing hand controllers and pedals for navigation, moving the simulator to the VMS and then integrating and testing all systems. This daunting task was performed within the schedule constraints and resulted in a successful demonstration to NASA Administrator Jim Bridenstine.
Finally, as members of the NASA UAS-NAS (Unmanned Aircraft Systems Integration into the National Airspace System) team, Metis software engineers helped advance the Airborne Collision Avoidance System (ACAS) capability. The team successfully completed implementation, testing and integration of the latest version of ACAS into a Human-in-the-Loop simulation.
“Our employees at NASA Ames have the opportunity to work collaboratively on teams addressing significant challenges in aviation and space systems,” said Metis CEO Joy Colucci. “We are proud of their dedication to the NASA mission and happy to see their work recognized with these awards.”