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Vexcel Corp.*, a recipient of Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program* funding from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, has been acquired by Microsoft Corporation as part of its Virtual Earth™ business unit. Vexcel’s many technologies, including a wireless sensor network technology developed under the STTR funding, will help the computing giant produce rich, dynamic sets of imagery and data that will be integrated into the new Live™ Search: Maps* service, which is driven by the Virtual Earth geospatial data platform. Microsoft recognized the value of Vexcel’s 20-year history in imagery, photogrammetry, and remote sensing technology and particularly its pool of talented and experienced employees. The wireless sensor network technology will aid in the high-speed handling of data that is critical to the project’s success. Additionally, the new technology will have significant impact in many areas of Earth sciences field research.

Benefits of Technology Transfer

• Scientists and researchers will be able to acquire and analyze data remotely using the STTR-funded wireless sensor network technology.
  
  
• The technology will contribute real-time information to Microsoft’s Live Search geographic search engine with many “information telepresence” applications. For example, firefighters could rapidly locate and track the spread of forest fires, and air traffic control could divert trans-Pacific flights away from ash plumes emanating from erupting Aleutian volcanoes.
  
  
• The technology’s broad applications can contribute significantly toward NASA’s efforts in both Earth sciences and interplanetary exploration.

About Vexcel Corporation

A worldwide leader in photogrammetry, imagery, and remote sensing technologies, Vexcel was founded in 1985 with headquarters in Boulder, Colorado and offices in Austria, Canada, the Netherlands, and the United Kingdom. Vexcel brings to Microsoft extensive experience in two-dimensional and three-dimensional imagery that will enable rich sets of aerial and street-side imagery to be delivered in a much easier and timely fashion. Vexcel’s people and technology will also play a central role in enabling Microsoft’s Virtual Earth platform to support dynamic contributions of information from consumers, businesses, governments, and others to strengthen the overall platform and its applications in the future.

Technology Origins

This technology takes NASA a step closer toward fulfilling needs for real-time recovery of remote sensor data. The wireless sensor network nodes or microservers that Vexcel developed under the STTR contracts work similarly to a wireless office network, relaying information between devices. However, instead of linking computers down the hall, the interconnected microservers can be many kilometers from one another.  These devices were originally designed for seismology on remote glaciers and ice streams in Alaska, Greenland, and Antarctica, acquiring, storing, and relaying data wirelessly between ground sensors. This technology enables three deployment concepts: First, a researcher in the field can establish a “managed network” of microservers and rapidly see the data streams (recovered wirelessly) on a field computer. This rapid feedback would permit the researcher to reconfigure the network for different purposes over the course of a field campaign. Second, through careful power management the microservers can dwell unsupervised in the field for up to two years, collecting tremendous amounts of data at a research location. The third concept is the exciting potential to deploy a microserver network that works in synchrony with robotic explorers (e.g., providing ground truth validation for satellites, supporting rovers as they traverse the local environment). Managed networks of remote "microservers" that relay data unsupervised for up to two years can drastically reduce the costs of field instrumentation and data recovery.

Finding a New Use

While they were originally developed to relay data from remote locations for NASA’s Earth sciences research, these microservers will help enable Microsoft’s Virtual Earth project to bring real-time imagery and other types of searchable data to the fingertips of Internet users everywhere. Microsoft needed the ability to gather real-time geospatial data (i.e., information connected to specific geographical locations) in order to provide users not only text data and maps from searches but also imagery including a bird’s-eye view and three-dimensional pictures. Vexcel’s Dr. Robert Fatland says, “The Virtual Earth geospatial data platform is moving towards a vision expressed as ‘browsing the physical Earth,’ enabling people to better understand their environments.”

The Transfer Process

STTR is a highly competitive three-phase program that reserves a specific percentage of federal R&D funding for award to small businesses in partnership with nonprofit research institutions to move ideas from the laboratory to the marketplace, to foster high-tech economic development, and to address the technological needs of the federal government. Vexcel had partnered with Pennsylvania State University to develop the microserver technology under STTR Program awards from NASA Goddard Space Flight Center in 2002 (Phase 1) and 2004 (Phase 2). A commercial version was then developed during Phase 3. Vexcel's acquisition by Microsoft Corp. was announced on May 3, 2006.

Looking Ahead

Beyond the original STTR-funded research and the Virtual Earth platform, the technology has much broader goals. As Dr. Fatland explains, “Data from the field has historically been hard won, but two revolutions during the past half century have shattered the coarse granularity of painstaking observation. First, remote sensing has broken the spatial sampling density barrier. And now wireless sensor networks give us ground truth at any desired sampling frequency in near real time. Commensurate with these technologies, the climate change crisis has arrived with a host of other needs for ‘more and better’ data delivered rapidly. My objective in working on smart sensor networks is to provide multiple real-time environmental information streams for a variety of uses but primarily geoscience research and education. Other important applications include health monitoring, disaster mitigation, civil infrastructure support, and many more. In fact, sensor networks are important because they are applicable to any situation where we benefit from extension of our senses into a larger environment.”

In addition to further internal R&D supported by Microsoft, the technology continues to be developed by Vexcel researchers under funding from NASA’s Earth Science Technology Office’s Advanced Information Systems Technology* program. Working under the acronym SEAMONSTER* (South East Alaska Monitoring Network for Science, Telecommunications, Education, and Research), the project supports collaborative environmental science with near-real-time recovery of large volumes of environmental data. The initial geographic focus is at Alaska’s Lemon Glacier and Lemon Creek watershed near Juneau where the technology is being used to relay data about the glacier’s effect on the hydrochemistry of Lemon Creek. Future expansion is planned in the Juneau Icefield and the coastal marine environment of the Alexander Archipelago.

This innovative sensor network technology may play a significant role in global climate research as well as many other Earth science–related monitoring projects. In addition to these applications, Vexcel researchers are designing SEAMONSTER to be a powerful learning and teaching tool both through its construction and in planning for its future operation.

Contact

Innovative Partnerships Program Office
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center
Phone: (301) 286-2642
E-mail: techtransfer@gsfc.nasa.gov