Blue Marble Awards Program Recognizes Excellence Demonstrated in Environmental and Energy Management in Support of NASA’S Mis- Sion

National Aeronautics and Space Administration

BLUE

2017 MARBLE AWARDS

NASA PROGRAM April 4, 2017 • Houston, Texas

April 4, 2017 1 April 4, 2017 Welcome to NASA’s 2017 Blue Marble Awards Ceremony! Environmental Management Division (EMD) of the NASA Headquar- ters Office of Strategic Infrastructure (OSI) is pleased to announce the 2017 recipients of the NASA Blue Marble Awards. The Blue Marble Awards Program recognizes excellence demonstrated in environmental and energy management in support of NASA’s mission. It is a pleasure to host the 2017 NASA Blue Marble Awards Cere- mony in conjunction with the 2017 NASA Environmental Conference. We thank the Johnson Space Center for hosting us this evening. This ceremony program highlights the environmental leadership and creativity demonstrated by the six award recipients. The six awardees— one individual and five teams—will each be presenting an overview of their accomplishments during the 2014–2016 award period. Each team will receive a Blue Marble—a glass globe with the team name engraved on it. Each team member will receive a certificate signed by us and by NASA’s Acting Administrator Robert Lightfoot as well as a NASA environmental token. Please join us in congratulating the 2017 award winners! We also wish to acknowledge all the individuals and groups who were nominated and thank them for their contribution to NASA’s environmental stewardship and mission success. Nominations should also be considered for external environmental award programs. We thank Tina Norwood, who has served as the Blue Marble Awards coordinator since 2006, the five Headquarters judges who served on the selection committee, as well as Merrilee Fellows for serving as our official photographer this evening.

Calvin Williams Mike A. McNeill Associate Administrator Acting Director Office of Strategic Infrastructure (OSI) Environmental Management Division NASA Headquarters NASA Headquarters

2 NASA Blue Marble Awards Ceremony 2017 NASA Blue Marble Awards Ceremony

Today we honor the six recipients of the 2017 Blue Marble Awards. This Blue Marble Awards Ceremony Program showcases their accomplishments; one individual, two Center teams, a Center team that serves all of NASA, a team with members from four Centers and multiple partners, and lastly, a Headquarters team with worldwide participation and accomplishment.

Introduction. �� 4

Award Recipients

Steve Slaten . �� 6 Innovative Solutions to Successfully Remediate NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory Groundwater, Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), CA

Stormwater Management—Proactive and Green Solutions for NASA Langley’s Next 100 Years �� 8 Langley Research Center (LaRC), VA

Kennedy Data Center Consolidation (KDCC) Team. �� 11 Kennedy Space Center (KSC), FL

NASA Environmental Tracking System (NETS) . �� 14 Development and Maintenance Team, Glenn Research Center (GRC), OH

Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) Project Team. �� 18 Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD), Headquarters, DC

International Space Apps Challenge Team. �� 22 Office of the Chief Communications Officer, Headquarters, DC

Closing Remarks �� 26

April 2017 3 Introduction

The NASA Environment and Energy Award Program recognizes NASA civil service employees, contract personnel, and industry partners who demonstrate environmental leadership while carrying out NASA’s mission. It was approved as an official NASA awards program in 2005, with the first call for nominations made in 2006. A list of past winners is available on the Blue Marble Web site at https://www.nasa.gov/feature/ blue-marble-awards. These honorary, non-monetary awards are referred to as theBlue Marble Awards. This NASA awards program contributes to NASA’s mission by: 1) raising internal awareness of the important role employees and contractors play in enabling environmentally sound mission success; 2) providing a NASA-wide approach to meeting specific employee recognition requirements in the greening the Government series of Executive Orders; and 3) leading to increased participation of NASA individuals and teams in important external award programs. Programs and Projects nominated for NASA’s Blue Marble Awards should also be nominated for The White House GreenGov Awards or the Department of Energy’s Federal Energy and Water Management Awards.

The NASA Blue Marble Awards are divided into three categories:

Category I: NASA Environmental Quality Award This award recognizes individual or team accomplishments made in greening the Government, environmental management, conservation, environmental remediation, or environmental communication. Category II: NASA Excellence in Energy or Water Management Award This award recognizes individual or team accomplishments made in energy efficiency, water conservation, or renewable energy. Category III: NASA EMD Director’s Environment and Energy Award This award is presented by Mike McNeill, Acting Director of the En- vironmental Management Division (EMD, in recognition of excep- tional leadership and professionalism demonstrated by an individual or team in implementing NASA’s mission and vision of “understand- ing and protecting the home planet” and “improving the quality of life on Earth.”

4 NASA Blue Marble Awards Ceremony EMD manages the Blue Marble Awards Program on Behalf of the Headquarters Office of Strategic Infrastructure (OSI). This management included the formation of the Selection Committee for 2017. The judges represent the mission directorates and the Office of Equal Opportunity. They used an electronic scoring system developed for this awards program to review and rank each nomination. The rank- ings include five equally weighted factors, assigned a value from 0–20 points, for a maximum of 100 points. The five factors are:

1. Impact to Mission – This includes cost savings reported and risk reduction resulting from the program or project being nominated. 2. Scope of Impact – This factor considers if the program or project being nominated had/has a Center-wide, national, or global reach. 3. Scalability/Extensibility – This factor considers if or how well the program or project being nominated can be applied and extended to future uses. 4. Ingenuity/Creativity/Leadership – This factor considers if the program or project is/was outside the scope of the normal job duties of the individual or team. 5. Teamwork/Collaboration – This factor considers the collaboration used by the individual or group to complete the program or project being nominated.

A sincere thanks the five Headquarters judges who served on the 2017 Selection Committee:

Mariel M. Borowitz, Ph.D. Linda S. Wenneberger, Ph.D. Science Mission Directorate (SMD) IPA Chemical Engineer and Program Manager Associate Professor of International Affairs, Environmental Management Division, Georgia Institute of Technology OSI

Rebecca D. Doroshenk Erik B. Holmes Program Analyst Acting Deputy Director, Strategic Office of Diversity and Equal Planning and Integration, Opportunity Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) Detail Elizabeth R. Walker Associate Chief, Mission Engineering and Systems Analysis Division, Equal Employment Specialist Goddard Space Flight Center, MD Office of Diversity and Equal Opportunity

April 4, 2017 5 Category III NASA EMD Director’s Environment and Energy Award — Individual ………………………………………………………… Steve Slaten Innovative Solutions to Successfully Remediate NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) Groundwater

Steve Slaten manages the Comprehensive Environmental Response, Compensa- tion, and Liability Act (CERCLA) Program at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Labora- tory (JPL) in Pasadena, CA. He had inherited an environmental remediation program that had years of investigations and data but few cleanup measures in place. There was recent and current litigation and significant community concern about NASA’s impact on the safety of local drinking water. The water supply for thousands of customers had been shut down due to the presence of chemicals, which had been blamed on JPL. Slaten spearheaded a unique, collaborative new approach: to remediate groundwater contamination offsite in partnership with the local water purveyors. He recognized that offsite cleanup meant less direct NASA control over the cleanup, and would necessitate intense cooperation with water purveyors and permitting agencies. Slaten understood from his previous Federal cleanup experience that this new approach would require extensive public outreach to gain community acceptance. This new approach required agreement, collaboration, and cooperation among several local water purveyors and involved complicated regulatory oversight by a combination of Federal (e.g., EPA) and state agencies. Since this new cleanup approach was offsite it became clear that requirements for permits in a complex and active environmental climate with multiple entities would be involved. Moreover, one of the offsite elements would require some aspects occur in the Hahamongna Watershed, a major public open space where much public resis- tance was anticipated. Further, the effort occurred within the atmosphere of a legal claim filed against NASA by the City of Pasadena. Therefore, obtaining an agreement to construct the Pasadena plant was tied to the lawsuit. With NASA Management Office (NMO) counsel concurrence, Slaten employed creative negotiation to reach an agreement with the city resulted in eliminating the legal claim and moving forward with the cleanup. In addition, utilizing existing infrastructure owned by local water purveyors (e.g., pipelines, wells, property) saved NASA over $10 million compared to the original approach. Slaten was successful in gaining regulatory agreement for completion of this important cleanup. At the same time, he implemented key initiatives to reduce water use and increase the use of renewable resources, including energy optimization through reduced pumping requirements, innovative contracting initiatives, recycling 95 percent of the waste generated during construction of Pasadena’s treatment plant, using native, drought-tolerant plant species to land-

6 NASA Blue Marble Awards Ceremony scape the new treatment plant, and recycling plant wastewater. He also cham- pioned the installation of a 564 kW rooftop PV system in May 2011 at the Windsor Reservoir facility adjacent to the Monk Hill Treatment System. These efforts were presented at multiple conferences and are documented on the EPA’s CLU-In Web site (https://clu-in.org/greenremediation/profiles/nasajpl). A critical aspect to finalizing the overall cleanup and moving toward a final Record of Decision was defining the full extent of travel and impact of chemicals from JPL. The chemicals emanating from JPL were not the only ones found at the site, indicating that contaminents had traveled to the basin from multiple sources. Other water suppliers and operators alleged that the contaminants were solely from JPL. Slaten directed a forensic-based, multiple- tools approach to discerning whether the chemicals from JPL matched those detected in the other wells. The scientific, peer-reviewed study determined that other sources, and not JPL, were in fact the sources of contamination. (See https://jplwater.nasa.gov/Docs/NAS710422.HTM; this work was also published in the Environmental Forensics journal and Slaten was the primary author.) The city has continued to seek ways to force the Federal Government to fund the cleanup of wells where JPL/Caltech is not responsible. Fortunately, Slaten ’s good working relationships have ensured that those claims—played out in the local press—do not affect the daily relationships necessary to accomplish his overall objective of removing the contamination for which JPL has accepted responsibility. Slaten ’s work is supported by NMO management, who give him the freedom to think creatively and to propose solutions that will fulfill NASA’s commitment to be a good neighbor. He wishes to acknowledge the support he has received from many, including risk communication and community outreach support from Merrilee Fellows and the Focus Group, Inc. He currently works for Marcus Watkins, NMO Director, who nominated Slaten for this award.

Left: Steve Slaten celebrates potable water from JPL’s Remediation System.

Right: Flanked by NASA and local officials, Slaten celebrates the ground-breaking of the new remediation system.

April 4, 2017 7 Category I

NASA Environmental Quality Award —Team ………………………………………………………… Stormwater Management—Proactive and Green Solutions for NASA Langley’s Next 100 Years Langley Research Center (LaRC), VA

Team Members Kristen Poultney, Team Lead Peter Van Dyke, NASA Phil Mcginnis, NASA Ingrid Carlberg, NASA Ande Remington, Straughan Environmental Caroline Diehl, Straughan Environmental Tonya Kiefer, Straughan Environmental

Recognized for implementing a robust, innovative, and cost-effective stormwater management program that ensures the future sustainability of NASA LaRC as it enters another 100 years of supporting NASA’s mission.

The Langley Research Center (LaRC) Water Program is managed by environmental office team members located within the Center Opera- tions Directorate (COD) at NASA LaRC. The following describes how the team implements the main elements of the program and highlights their many accomplishments. Streamlining Permit Review and Sampling Requirements As a result of the team’s demonstrated commitment and diligence in man- aging the Center’s Water Program, LaRC has been granted authority by the Virginia Department of Environmental Quality (DEQ) to administer its own stormwater management program and is the first Federal facility in Virginia to have DEQ-approved stormwater and erosion and sediment controls annual standards and specifications. Having the authority to administer the program in-house greatly streamlines the review and permitting process and minimizes schedule delays for major construction projects. The team has also streamlined its industrial stormwater permit sampling requirements by utilizing detailed Geographic Information Systems (GIS) data to group outfalls with similar locations and discharge characteristics. This proactive streamlining approach results in significant savings for

8 NASA Blue Marble Awards Ceremony LaRC, as previous permit sampling costs averaged $14,000 per year and the revised permit sampling cost is $1,200 per year. Reviewing and Inspecting Projects and Facility Operations In order to ensure stormwater permit compliance, the team utilizes several processes to inspect and review the Center’s projects and facility operations. The Environmental Project Planning Form (LF461) is a Web-based system used by the team to review projects for environmental impacts. In FY16, team members reviewed 154 projects through the LF461 process and 80 of those projects had potential water quality– related considerations. The issues were avoided or mitigated through the projects by following the compliance and BMP requirements. The team also performs frequent inspections across LaRC. In FY16, 421 outfall inspections and 81 Construction of Facilities (CoF) inspections were performed by team personnel. Additionally, team members perform at least 40 annual multimedia facility environmental audits to inspect facilities and their operations for potential water quality issues. Developing and Utilizing Highly Effective Management Tools The team has been very proactive in developing and utilizing highly effective tools to assist in stormwater management at the Center. LaRC’s Impervious Surface Tool is a Web-based application that provides maps and reports on impervious surfaces throughout the Center. This information is extremely useful for project planning and assisting the team in developing stormwater management practices. LaRC’s Flood Impact Analysis Tool is utilized by the team and Center, as well as local communities, to make informed decisions on project siting, avoiding potential flood-prone areas, and minimizing impacts from climate change. Implementing Low Impact Development and Best Management Practices The team continually focuses on implementing innovative Low Impact Development (LID) and Best Management Practice (BMP) initiatives. Since 2011, 16 LID practices have been implemented or installed to include: five bioretention areas treating a mix of impervious and pervious surfaces, seven bioswales and extensive pervious pavement usage treating parking lot runoff, 13.5 acres of impervious areas removed and converted to green space, four tree-box filters to treat street runoff, and the LEED-Platinum Headquarters building’s green roof. The team also applies BMPs to prevent potential pollutants from reaching local waterways. Over the last four years, 495-cubic yards of

April 4, 2017 9 sediment was collected from street sweeping and 83 tons of debris was cleaned from catch basins and ditches. In addition, in January 2016, a 1-acre area was reforested with 466 hardwood tree seedlings, converting this area from a maintained grassy area to a forested space. Due to both past and future LID and BMP endeavors, LaRC is projected to meet the hefty Chesapeake Bay Total Maximum Daily Load (TMDL) pollutant reduction requirements 10 years ahead of the permit-required compliance schedule. Aggressively Promoting Outreach and Education Team members use the Center’s main employee Web portal as well as internal and external Environmental Program Web sites and frequently post blog articles on stormwater management to the Web sites. There were 20 blog posts related to water quality added to LaRC’s public environmental Web site in FY16, with a total of 1,857 visitors (“hits”). The team also provides stormwater management training to targeted audi- ences throughout the year and actively seeks Center personnel involve- ment in developing and implementing green practices and BMPs at the Center. Examples include having volunteers assist in planting trees for reforestation projects and helping with shoreline restoration projects.

Left: Ande Remington (left) and Peter Van Dyke show how it’s done—one tree at a time.

Right: Langley’s Stormwater Management Team plants trees to make green roofs.

10 NASA Blue Marble Awards Ceremony Category II NASA Excellence in Energy and Water Management Award — Team ………………………………………………………… Kennedy Data Center Consolidation (KDCC) Kennedy Space Center (KSC), FL

Team Members

Anthony Anania, Lead Joseph Cardamone, Technik Bryan Banks, NASA Steven Ochs, Technik Grant Stoddard, NASA Mark Pugh, Technik David Sumner, NASA Diane Smith, Technik David Ungar, NASA Smita Solanky, Technik Matthew Zbin, NASA Traci Robinson, NASA (retired)

A 2010 Federal mandate urged agencies to reduce the overall energy and real estate footprint of their data centers. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) formed the Kennedy Data Center Consolidation (KDCC) team to review KSC’s servers and data centers for consolidation to reduce cost, increase security, and increase efficiency. The team identified need for a new data center to be constructed; the Kennedy Data Center (KDC) became operational in early 2016. The KDC is approximately 16,000 square feet, with a 5,000-square- foot computer space. It is a Leadership in Energy and Environmental Design- (LEED-) Certified Silver Facility and has replaced approximately 45,000 square feet of data centers and information technology (IT) support. The KDC is currently saving NASA more than $430,000 annually in facility power and $390,000 annually in decommissioned and excessed server power (as compared to 2010 power numbers). The savings will continue to increase as other data centers are consolidated, such as $88,000 in annual savings anticipated in 2017 as the data centers currently located in the Launch Control Center (LCC) and the Neil Armstrong Operations and Checkout (O&C) buildings are migrated to the new KDC. Vision The KDCC vision is to position the KSC Office of the CIO as the sole IT service provider for all of KSC, including commercial contractors and tenants, and to reduce the number of local data centers to one. The KDCC scope spans the KSC campus and specific buildings at Cape

April 4, 2017 11 Canaveral Air Force Station that contain NASA IT assets. All future tenants will be required to use the KDC as the IT service provider. The KDCC project objectives are to:

• incrementally consolidate data centers and IT assets across the KSC campus; • return vacated facility space for reassignment to new programmatic and commercial tenants or closure, as appropriate; • promote the use of green IT by reducing KSC’s overall energy consumption; • reduce the operations and maintenance costs of data center hardware, software, and operations via more efficient utilization, sharing, and provisioning of the KDC, its systems, and the support personnel; • improve KSC’s ability and timeliness to become better aligned and compliant with Federal and Agency IT mandates and policies; • shift IT investments to more efficient, modem, and virtualized/ leveraged computing platforms and technologies via technology retirement and/or refreshment of out-of-date server equipment; • provide a more reliable and secure IT environment; and • save NASA and KSC funds to reapply to the core mission of launch facilities and specific flight programs.

Teamwork/Collaboration In order to accomplish the task of locating more than 3,000 individual servers at 57 different buildings in more than 300 different rooms, subject matter experts from the Information Technology and Communica- tions Services and the Spaceport Integration and Services directorates formed a team. Business cases were developed to address the challenges of combining five large data centers and multiple scientific and engineering laboratories performing development and test activities. The team solicited assistance from members of the KSC Energy Work- ing Group that was conducting facility energy audits, providing input needed to determine if an existing facility could absorb the combined IT functions. In addition to power and air-conditioning challenges, concerns about space, floor loading weight, fire systems, and physical security were also addressed. Data center design experts confirmed that no current facility could meet the requirements and that a new facility was required.

12 NASA Blue Marble Awards Ceremony The new facility is a LEED-Certified Silver facility that employs fan wall technology (no raised floor) and is Uptime Institute Tier 3–rated for the electrical portion of the facility and Tier 2 for the mechanical systems. This means the building has many redundant and concurrently maintainable infrastructure to ensure true uptime 24/7/365 operations, meeting the current needs of KSC, as well as those of future customers. The KDCC team proudly showcases the success of their teamwork in meeting Agency goals to consolidate data centers to achieve cost savings, energy consumption reductions, optimize space utilization, and improve IT asset utilization by promoting green IT, cloud computing, and virtualization.

Above left: Officials at the October 2015 Kennedy Data Center ribbon-cutting ceremony

Above right: Exterior of the Kennedy Data Center

Kennedy Data Center Interior

April 4, 2017 13 Category III NASA EMD Director’s Environment and Energy Award — Team

………………………………………………………… NASA Environmental Tracking System (NETS) Development and Maintenance Team Glenn Research Center (GRC), OH

Team Members Mark Schoppet, Team Lead, NASA Tariqul Islam, Database Administrator* Joseph G. Homan, Task Lead* Kyli E. Paul, Programmer* Ronald Coulter, Programmer* Robert Purgason, Programmer* Robert Dibacco, Programmer* Michael Taich, System Administrator* Bella M. Fallner, Administrator Coordinator* * = Team Member is a contractor with PACE IV.

The NASA Environmental Tracking System (NETS) is an Agency-wide Web-based application developed and hosted at Glenn Research Center (GRC). NETS allows NASA to: • establish a logical Agency database of environmental information; • improve data quality through single source data entry, standardized data, and adherence to specific validation criteria; • reduce staff time required to collate, convert, and summarize the data; and • minimize turnaround for submission of data from NASA Centers.

Impact to Mission NETS has a major impact across the Agency in the area of environmental reporting. In the Environmental Compliance and Restoration (ECR) program, NETS is a critical tool covering estimation, budget- ing, and funding requests of cleanup requirements totaling over $1.3 billion and a budget of $75 million per year. The NETS Unfunded Environmental Liabilities (UEL) screen under the ECR module allows the Agency CFO to provide estimates of UEL that are audited and reported in the Agency’s annual financial statement. The ECR UEL module incorporates industry standard data to produce accurate,

14 NASA Blue Marble Awards Ceremony highly customizable estimates. It provides a single environment for data entry, review, reporting, and archiving. In 2014, NETS automated the manual review form, eliminating the need for reviewers and Restora- tion Project Managers (RPMs) to manually print and sign paper forms. Thanks to improvements like these, the Agency has enjoyed clean audits for the last four UEL reviews. Scope of Impact NETS was initiated in 1997 as a means for the Environmental Man- agement Division (EMD) at Headquarters to obtain Center input for a data call in response to Executive Order 12856 (Federal Compliance with Right-To-Know Laws and Pollution Prevention Requirements). The client-serve application has evolved into a Web-based application with 450 users across the Agency. NETS is the central repository for internal and external recurring data calls across all areas of environmental reporting, supporting the following areas:

• Cultural Resource Management (CRM) • Energy and Water • Environmental Compliance and Restoration (ECR) • Environmental and Energy Functional Review (EEFR) • Environmental Functional Review (EFR) • National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) • Ozone Depleting and Global Warming Substances (ODGWS) • Recycling and Sustainable Acquisition (RSA)

Scalability/Extensibility The NETS Team readily customizes modules to incorporate the ever- changing requirements of NASA’s environmental communities of practice. Several recent examples include: • enhancing the NETS ECR module to automate the ECR funding approval process; NETS now autogenerates e-mails and tracks funding requests between Headquarters and the Center/facilities, including linking SAP financial data to track commitment, obliga- tions, and costs; • integrating with the Institutional GIS Portal at Stennis Space Cen- ter to link satellite imagery and site information to NETS users on restoration projects and cultural resources, etc., while supporting environmental planning, tracking, and reporting; and

April 4, 2017 15 • integrating with SAP with regard to real property information; the NETS developers worked with SAP subject matter experts to develop a batch process to keep real property data synchronized between NETS and SAP.

These enhancements are possible due to the NETS Team staying current with ever-changing IT best practices, including the development of Application Programming Interfaces (APIs). APIs create automated methods for other systems to programmatically retrieve data from NETS. This allows NASA’s environmental management community to have access to critical decision-making data from multiple systems without duplication of data. Another enhancement was incorporating single sign-on using the eAuth tool, making the system more secure while concurrently facilitating user access. Ingenuity/Creativity/Leadership The NETS Team has been successful at keeping the site modern and responsive while staying within budgetary constraints. This has meant keeping current with Web development technologies, such as iDash- boards, that were integrated into NETS. The iDashboards allows data from any of the modules to be presented externally. This software tool is used by NASA’s Energy Managers to meet numerous reporting requirements, such as:

• Annual Energy Management Data Report • Goal Subject Facilities Energy Intensity Reduction • Energy Savings Performance Contracts (ESPCs) and Utility En- ergy Service Contracts (UESCs) • Metering Progress for Electricity, Natural Gas, and Steam

The NETS Team works directly with stakeholders to continuously enhance NETS. Services include defining requirements for new and changing functionality, gathering feedback, providing training, conducting verification and validation tests, conducting briefings, as well as maintaining a help desk to provide users real-time support by e-mail and phone.

16 NASA Blue Marble Awards Ceremony Screenshot of the iDashboard from the NETS Energy Module.

Screenshot of the NETS ECR review form.

The GIS Interface provides NETS managers access to site details.

April 4, 2017 17 Category III NASA Director’s Environment and Energy Award — Team

………………………………………………………… Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) Project Team Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD), Headquarters Team Members Fayette S. Collier, Ph.D., Mehdi R. Khorrami, LaRC Lead, LaRC John C. Lin, Ph.D., LaRC Gaudy M. Bezos-O’Connor, Craig L. Nickol, LaRC Deputy, LaRC R. Lee Noble, LaRC Mark Mangelsdorf, AFRC Emilie J. Siochi, LaRC Thomas K. Rigney,AFRC Russell H. Thomas, Ph.D.,LaRC Kevin D. James, ARC Anthony E. Washburn, LaRC Mark L. Celestina, Ph.D., GRC Rhett W. Jeffries, Ph.D.,FAA * Richard DeLoof, GRC James Skalecky, FAA* William J. Haller, GRC John Kinney, General Electric Aviation Christopher E. Hughes, GRC Dimitri Mavris, Ph.D., Chi Ming-Lee, GRC Georgia Tech** Kenneth L. Suder, Ph.D., GRC Katherine G. Schwartz, Ph.D., Dale E. Vanzante, Ph.D., GRC Georgia Tech** Rachael Buckman, LaRC Jimmy Tai, Ph.D., Georgia Tech** Pamela A. Davis, LaRC Stephen Kramer, Ph.D., Pratt and Whitney Hamilton Fernandez, LaRC Wesley Lord, Ph.D., Jeffrey D. Flamm, LaRC Pratt and Whitney Steven B. Harris, LaRC John T. Bonet, The Boeing Company Dawn C. Jegley, LaRC Jeanne C. Yu, The Boeing Company * FAA = Federal Aviation Administration ** Georgia Tech = Georgia Institute of Technology, Aerospace Systems Design Laboratory

As the air transportation system continues to expand globally, so do the greenhouse gases emissions, nitrogen oxides (NOx), water vapor, and par- ticulates the system generates. These environmental impacts from aviation are in conflict with the ever-increasing awareness of the need to reduce the human impact on the environment, with a particular and heightened focus on global climate change. NASA’s Aeronautic Research Mission Directorate

18 NASA Blue Marble Awards Ceremony (ARMD) created the Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) Project to aggressively tackle goals of lowering emissions and fuel burn to reduce these impacts while concurrently decreasing noise. The resulting green aviation can save commercial airline industry billions of dollars. The ERA Project was formulated in 2009 as part of ARMD’s Integrated Systems Research Program. Uniquely structured as a public-private partnership, the ERA Project had a finite life of 6 years, a fixed NASA budget of $420 million, and a negotiated total partner cost share of $230 million. NASA’s aviation research Centers (Armstrong, Ames, Glenn, and Langley) partnered with aviation industry leaders (Boeing, Pratt and Whitney, General Electric, and Gulfstream); environmentally focused Federal labs (the Federal Aviation Administration, Air Force Research Laboratory, and Arnold Engineering and Development Center); and leading aviation academic institutions (Georgia Tech, Virginia Tech, Caltech, Renssalaer Polytechnic Institute, the University of Arizona, and the University of Michigan) to create the 1,000-strong ERA team. The project addressed the feasibility, benefits, and technical risk of advanced commercial transport vehicle concepts and enabling technologies to reduce aviation’s impact on the environment. The ERA team focused on the goal of simultaneous achievement of 50 percent fuel burn reduction relative to a 2005 best-in-class aircraft; 75 percent Landing and Take-Off (LTO) NOx below Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (CAEP) 6 and 70 percent Cruise NOx emissions reduction; and 42 Effective Perceived Noise in decibels (EPNdB) below Stage 4 certification level community noise reduction. The first phase of the ERA Project matured 30 airframe and engine technologies from Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 1 to 4. Phase 2 focused on a down-selected set of these technologies to be tested as Integrated Technology Demonstrations (ITDs). The ERA team leveraged ground-based engine system testbeds, large-scale composite structures labs, research aircraft, and wind tunnel facilities to mature the ITD technologies to a TRL of 5 and 6. Overcoming a wide range of complex hurdles, numerous ERA technologies were matured to TRL 6 this process involved building smaller tails to reduce weight and drag; creating new composite materials to make more damage-resistant structures; changing the wing shape to so that the flaps extend more efficiently; improving turbine engine parts to increase aerodynamic efficiency and fuel burn; improving jet engine

April 4, 2017 19 combustor design to reduce overall pollution; advancing fan design to improve propulsion, reduce fuel burn, and reduce jet engine noise; and creating new designs to reduce noise from wing flaps and landing gear. Since integrating the ERA technologies onto aircraft testbeds is cost- prohibitive, they were analyzed through demonstration-by-analysis. This enabled technology performance testing using fleet model tools to conduct carbon footprint and community noise reduction assessments. The vehicle-, airframe/propulsion system-, and technology-level assessments showed that the very aggressive green aviation metrics were feasible. Specifically, the ERA team demonstrated by analysis the significant progress toward the simultaneous achievements of reducing fuel burn by 47 percent; LTO NOx emissions by 79 percent to CAEP 6 and Cruise NOx by 83 percent; and community noise by 40.7 EPNdB below Stage 4. The following performance reductions were achieved:

• aircraft drag by 20.2 percent • aircraft weight by 24.5 percent • engine specific fuel consumption by 13.5 percent • engine noise by 29.2 EPNdB • engine NOx emissions by 80.6 percent • aircraft noise by 12.5 percent (compared to current standards)

The ERA technologies are broadly applicable to many airline seat classes in the fleet, and if adopted by the aircraft and engine companies, they will provide broad-based benefits by reducing community noise around airports and by reducing the carbon footprint of aviation. Local air quality will also be improved due to reduced LTO NOx emissions, even in the face of increasing numbers of flights at most airports. The economic savings to the U.S. airlines could amount to $255 billion in operational savings between 2025 and 2050 through 85 billion gallons of fuel saved—a reduction that would represent significant progress toward carbon neutrality. Concurrently with reducing jet fuel usage, entry into service of the ERA lTD technologies on the aviation fleet would result in an 80 percent footprint reduction in community noise of 65dB EPNdB by 2050. The ERA team showcased their green initiatives at conferences, in publications, and on the Internet (see https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasa-research-could-save-commercial- airlines-billions-in-new-era-of-aviation).

20 NASA Blue Marble Awards Ceremony ERA’s public-private partnership strategy has been a catalyst and role model for accelerating high-pay-off technologies to the marketplace, thereby creating a national focus on reducing aviation environmental impacts. Through the New Aviation Horizons Initiative, NASA plans on conducting environmentally focused X-plane demonstrations to continue the maturation of green technology innovations to further reduce the carbon footprint of aviation.

This is a line graph of a jet fuel usage forecast, which is based on the insertion of NASA’s ERA ITD technologies into the aviation fleet.

This graphic shows the 2050 community noise reduction forecast, which is based on the insertion of NASA’s ERA ITD technologies into the aviation fleet.

April 4, 2017 21 Category I

NASA Environmental Quality Award, Communications — Team ………………………………………………………… The International Space Apps Challenge Office of the Chief Information Officer, Headquarters

Team Members Renee P. Wynn, Lead James G. Mantovani, NASA Terry Jackson, NASA David J. Miranda, NASA John Sprague, NASA Daniel Anthony O’Neil, NASA Beth Beck, NASA Tony Springer, NASA Jason Duley, NASA Michelle Thaller, NASA Eldora Valentine, NASA Matthew Cechini* Stacey Brooks, NASA Kevin A. Ward* Neal Newman, NASA Kristen Weaver* Margaret Roberts, NASA Ashutosh S. Limaye, NASA Katey Metroth, SecondMuse Elizabeth MacDonald, NASA Blake Garcia, SecondMuse Caley Burke, NASA Elyssa Dole, SecondMuse Mike Conroy, NASA Ben Slavin, SecondMuse Thomas L. Jordan, NASA Nick Hudkins, SecondMuse Lin Chambers, NASA Shobhana Gupta, NASA David M. Richwine, NASA Sam Scimemi, NASA John H. Keiling, NASA Chris E. Baker, NASA Pamela Clark, NASA JPL Douglas A. Craig, NASA Emily Law, NASA JPL John R. Allen, NASA Charles K. Thompson,NASA JPL Lawrence A. Friedl, NASA Liz Ward** Gladys M. Henderson, NASA

* = Team member is a contractor with Science Systems and Applications ** = Team member is with Christopher Newport University

22 NASA Blue Marble Awards Ceremony The International Space Apps Challenge is a 48-hour international open innovation incubator and hackathon that unleashes NASA’s data to problem solvers across the globe. The annual event brings together experts and general environmental and space enthusiasts to address the challenges we face on Earth and in space. The 2016 challenge resulted in an international mass collaboration involving over 15,000 participants in 170 cities from 61 countries, producing more than 1,300 innovative projects. Through social media, the event reached 25 million people over the course of the weekend! Initiated in 2012, NASA’s International Space Apps Challenge encourages innovation, creativity, and collaborative problem-solving. NASA and its partners put out challenges relating to their current work for which planetary and space enthusiasts can develop innovative solutions. The challenge provides an idea sandbox for mission personnel to test challenge concepts through citizen engagement, with the potential to reduce risk or save funding by testing ideas prior to a formal procurement investment. NASA funds the top-level global organizing team, but the local organizers raise funds to provide the venue, food, Wi-Fi, equipment, and media outreach. Space Apps is recognized as a foreign relations vehicle for the United States. NASA works closely with the Department of State to provide embassy support to local organizers and hosts in communities around the world. NASA receives reports from these embassies detailing their participation in Space Apps. Members of the public leverage NASA datasets and tools to craft innovative software, hardware, and data visualization projects to address challenge concepts. Each local event selects local project awards and nominates two projects for global awards and one project for a People’s Choice award. NASA subject matter experts narrow the global nominees down to five finalists in each of the award categories, which are given to a panel of NASA executives to select the final five global awardees. Global winners are invited to watch launches from Kennedy Space Center, FL. While NASA may never use the actual code or prototype from a winning project, the idea behind it may be instrumental in shifting or shaping new ways for NASA to approach mission goals. Challenge categories vary each year and have included Earth, asteroids, human space flight, robotics, space technology, Journey to Mars, and the Solar System and Beyond. The Earth challenge category is the most popular each year. In 2016, over 200 projects were created for Earth-related topics (see https://2016. spaceappschallenge.org). Examples include:

Aircheck, the most popular project, tasks participants with developing an app or platform to crowd-source information for comparing changes in environmental factors, such as temperature, relative humidity, and air pollution, with the occurrence of symptoms of allergies and respiratory diseases. It received over 100 solutions from 67 different event locations.

April 4, 2017 23 CROPP (Cultures Risks Observation and Prevention Platform) is a user- friendly platform to help farmers monitor their lands by giving them real-time info about risks that could threaten their crops.

Earth Care notifies you in real time when your friends are in the vicinity of a natural disaster, big or small, across the country and around the globe.

Prism is a mobile-friendly app that uses NASA EOSDIS aerosol optical depth imagery over a map with pins marking the locations of users who reported elevated symptoms indicative of respiratory illness.

SocialEyes Forest is a social mobile and Web application that provides a social network for forest preservation with crowdsourced geo-referenced records of environmental threats shared in real time.

Clean Water Mapping uses a GPS tracker through crowd sourcing to locate or identify locally available water resources.

Leafo3 is a mobile app created to determine foliar damage caused by tropo- spheric ozone. NASA continues to grow this challenge to use the talent and skill of passionate volunteers from around the planet to advance space exploration and improve the quality of life on Earth. We congratulate the International Space Apps Challenge Team on their global environmental education and stewardship!

24 NASA Blue Marble Awards Ceremony Above left: High school students Rasha Al-Khateeb and Maram Abu Hussein participat- ing in the Space Apps Challenge in Amman, Jordan. Above right: Participants work on their Space Apps Challenge projects.

April 4, 2017 25 Closing Remarks

A list of Blue Marble Award recipients (2006–2017) is available on the Blue Marble Web site at https://www.nasa.gov/feature/blue-marble-awards. This public site includes copies of ceremony programs providing a summary of individual and team accomplishments. Additional information, including all of the nominations submitted as well as trending data are available internally at https://teams.share.nasa.gov/HQ/emd/bluemarbles/about. The 2019 Blue Marble Awards call for nominations will be made in September 2018. The call will be posted on the Environmental Management Division’s Web site, and Center Award Coordinators will be notified. Individuals and teams can be nominated using NASA Form #1714. For information on the program, contact: Tina Borghild Norwood Blue Marble Awards Coordinator 202-358-7324 [email protected]

26 NASA Blue Marble Awards Ceremony NASA BLUE MARBLE AWARDS

Environmental Stewardship and Innovation Enabling Mission Success

AWARDS

NASA 2017 PROGRAM April 2017

April 4, 2017 27 NASA Agency Honor

2010 Awards