1. Stay Calm And Observe 

At 9:30 PM HST 12/20/2020, Kīlauea reawakened with a spectacular eruption at the summit caldera, Halema'uma'u. This is the first summit eruption of Kīlauea since 2008.

Twitter

USGS Volcanoes🌋 on Twitter

“Video from W rim of the caldera just before midnight. As of December 21 at 1:30 a.m. HST, the growing lava lake has almost reached the leve

From USGS Volcanoes Twitter: Red spots are the approximate locations of vents feeding lava flowing into the bottom of Halema‘uma‘u crater. The water lake has been replaced with a growing lava lake. The easternmost vent is currently exhibiting fountains up to approximately 50 m (164 ft) high.

Webcams to watch the eruption.

All images from the USGS Volcanoes Twitter and the Hawai'i Volcanoes National Park Twitter.

This is just too cute!

Kitten And Owlet Become Best Friends And Nap Buddies

This is a ‘Thank you’. Inspired by the countless stories sent to me by shelter workers and volunteers.  

This is beautiful. It makes me think of my own animals that have passed. I miss them.

[Sequel to “Little Fish”]

A new pet to “replace” the old one can be a difficult experience. But you can’t replace old friends. You can always make new friends though :) Webtoons | instagram

A very beautiful and patient puppy

slush puppy

I found this very interesting.

Setting the Standards for Unmanned Aircraft

From advanced wing designs, through the hypersonic frontier, and onward into the era of composite structures, electronic flight controls, and energy efficient flight, our engineers and researchers have led the way in virtually every aeronautic development. And since 2011, aeronautical innovators from around the country have been working on our Unmanned Aircraft Systems integration in the National Airspace System, or UAS in the NAS, project.  

This project was a new type of undertaking that worked to identify, develop, and test the technologies and procedures that will make it possible for unmanned aircraft systems to have routine access to airspace occupied by human piloted aircraft. Since the start, the goal of this unified team was to provide vital research findings through simulations and flight tests to support the development and validation of detect and avoid and command and control technologies necessary for integrating UAS into the NAS.  

That interest moved into full-scale testing and evaluation to determine how to best integrate unmanned vehicles into the national airspace and how to come up with standards moving forward. Normally, 44,000 flights safely take off and land here in the U.S., totaling more than 16 million flights per year. With the inclusion of millions of new types of unmanned aircraft, this integration needs to be seamless in order to keep the flying public safe.

Working hand-in-hand, teams collaborated to better understand how these UAS’s would travel in the national airspace by using NASA-developed software in combination with flight tests. Much of this work is centered squarely on technology called detect and avoid.  One of the primary safety concerns with these new systems is the inability of remote operators to see and avoid other aircraft.  Because unmanned aircraft literally do not have a pilot on board, we have developed concepts allowing safe operation within the national airspace.  

In order to better understand how all the systems work together, our team flew a series of tests to gather data to inform the development of minimum operational performance standards for detect and avoid alerting guidance. Over the course of this testing, we gathered an enormous amount of data allowing safe integration for unmanned aircraft into the national airspace. As unmanned aircraft are becoming more ubiquitous in our world - safety, reliability, and proven research must coexist.

Every day new use case scenarios and research opportunities arise based around the hard work accomplished by this incredible workforce. Only time will tell how these new technologies and innovations will shape our world.

Want to learn the many ways that NASA is with you when you fly? Visit nasa.gov/aeronautics.



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Stargate SG-1 Meme: six relationships [5/6] Janet & Sam

Sisters in Arms: Two strong women and officers in a male-centered Air Force that became best friends. 

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You just have to love Rodney. Lol