Word: radar
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With the gouge issue off the radar for now, NASA turned its attention to the next blip on the screen: Hurricane Dean, now pounding the islands of the Caribbean and drag-racing Endeavour toward the Gulf - right under the shuttle's landing-day flight path...
...current air traffic control system in the U.S. uses radar technology from the 1950s that makes for inefficient routes and dangerous conditions during storms. Planes must fly a specific flight path so that they can be guided by air traffic control centers stationed on the ground. One cross-country flight, for example, could pass over two dozen air traffic control centers. Radar also takes up to 36 seconds to get an accurate read on a plane's position...
...NextGen, rather than radar, uses satellite technology to give the real-time position of a plane. That gives planes more flexibility to leave the designated flight path - or "highways in the sky," as Blakey calls them - and chart their own routes that are either more direct or that dodge a storm system. The end result is that flights on average would be shorter and fewer planes would have to be delayed or canceled because of bad weather...
...Fellows, the radar's project manager, says the upgrades are in line with getting any complicated vessel ready for action, pointing out that the Navy takes a year to "shake down" - or test - a new ship to work out all the kinks. "When you go out and shoot a rifle, you have to go out and calibrate it to make sure its tuned and performing how you want it to," says Fellows. "Is it perfect yet? No. That's why we continue to work with it." As far as the MDA is concerned, SBX is an evolving layer...
...When - and at what cost - the Sea-Based X-Band radar will finally be up and running in Alaska is hard to say. Right now, the target date is early next year, but to Col. Fellows, pinning these answers down is beside the point. Sitting in his hotel room watching the white dome near the Pearl Harbor memorial put the system's goals in perspective. "People in Hawaii understand SBX because that's what we're trying to do - prevent something from attacking us without forewarning," Fellows says. "If we had been able to stop that, history would have been...