Mission Tools Suite
The NASA Airborne Science Mission Tools Suite (MTS) is a collection of web-based tools to assist with the planning, operations, and overall management of airborne missions. MTS is a product of the NASA Airborne Science Program. Please visit the Program's web site for additional information.
About
The primary objectives of the Mission Tools Suite (MTS) are (a) to support tactical decision-making and distributed team situational awareness during a flight; (b) to facilitate team communication and collaboration throughout the mission lifecycle; and (c) to both consume and produce visualization products that can be viewed in conjunction with the real-time position of aircraft and airborne instrument status data. MTS represents the ground complement to the NASA SensorNet project (see the Airborne Sensor Facility site for additional information), which is developing the airborne networking infrastructure to enable satellite communication of aircraft parameter and instrument data during flight missions. Taken together, the intent of the system is to encourage more responsive and collaborative measurements between instruments on multiple aircraft, satellites, and on the surface in order to increase the scientific value of the measurements, and improve the efficiency and effectiveness of flight missions. MTS is a product of NASA's Airborne Science Program. More information about the MTS and the Airborne Science Program can be found at the Program's website.
Features
The Airborne Science Mission Tools Suite is a collection of web-based tools to help scientist and engineers conduct Airborne Science mission operations. The Mission Tools Suite contains a core set of tools that provide Airborne Science Participants with a host of capabilities:
- remotely monitor real-time aircraft location
- view current and archived flight tracks
- ability to add information overlays from a curated product registry
- customized user workspaces
- team communication and collaboration tools
- integrated single and multi-user chat client
- plotting and graphing
- and more ...
Accounts
Request an MTS account by clicking on the button below. Your affiliation with an Airborne Science Project must be confirmed before an account is created.
If you are interested in having your Airborne Science Project hosted on MTS, please send an email to the Mission Tools Support email account.
Mission Tools Suite for Education
The Mission Tools Suite for Education (MTSE) connects K-12 Classrooms from across the United States and around the world with NASA Airborne Science Program missions during the course of a mission. Students and teachers can track the position of participating aircraft in real-time, view live camera feeds from a high definition camera onboard the aircraft, mission scientists, pilots, and others onboard the aircraft or on the ground. Real-time satellite data products Environmental data from the aircraft Allows students to plot aircraft altitude, speed, temperature, wind speed, etc. in real-time Live text chats between classrooms and Students and teachers can ask questions directly through the website with login information that we provide to them. Multiple classrooms can log in during the same flight (Current record: 352 students in 15 classrooms during one ATTREX flight) Chat scheduling and organization coordinated before and during the flights by NSERC.
Teachers wanting to use MTSE in their classroom should contact Dr. Emily Schaller, e.schaller@nserc.und.edu
Public Tracker
The Airborne Science Program maintains a public tracker so anyone can follow aircraft during a flight mission. Subscribe to the Program's Twitter account to receive alerts when an aircraft is airborne.
Public Asset Tracker