Mosaic ATM has been awarded a NASA Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) contract to develop the Resilient Operations Service for Advanced Air Mobility (ROSA), a new software capability designed to help Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) stakeholders safely manage off-nominal events and operational disruptions.
As AAM operations scale, operators will need effective ways to respond when conditions deviate from the original plan. Weather, communications disruptions, infrastructure constraints, vehicle issues, airspace conditions, and other unexpected events can require rapid coordination across multiple stakeholders. ROSA is being developed to support this decision-making process by helping users detect, assess, coordinate, and execute safe responses to operational disruptions.
The system is intended to support AAM operators, fleet managers, vertiport operators, airspace managers, and other stakeholders involved in increasingly complex and interconnected operations.
NASA’s Advanced Air Mobility research is helping develop and evaluate the technologies, data, and operational concepts needed to safely integrate emerging aircraft and new operations into the National Airspace System.
Supporting Resilient AAM Operations
ROSA will bring together multiple technologies and data sources to create a more complete picture of an evolving operational situation. Planned capabilities include communications frequency monitoring, digital twins, and fused data sources that can help identify disruptions and evaluate potential responses.
When an off-nominal event is detected, ROSA will consider multiple mitigation strategies and assess their feasibility, safety implications, and potential operational performance impacts before recommending possible solutions.
Rather than simply alerting users that a disruption has occurred, the goal is to provide stakeholders with actionable decision support that helps them understand their options, anticipate downstream impacts, and coordinate an appropriate response.
This challenge becomes increasingly important as AAM moves toward larger-scale operations involving interconnected aircraft, operators, infrastructure, communications systems, and airspace services.
Building on Mosaic ATM Research
ROSA builds upon technologies developed through previous Mosaic ATM research and SBIR efforts.
One foundation is Mosaic ATM’s Toolkit for UAS Communications Management (TUCM). As demonstrated through Mosaic ATM’s low-altitude communications flight testing, TUCM research has explored communications availability for future AAM operations, including the use of machine learning to predict signal path loss and support more informed communications planning.
ROSA will also leverage Mosaic ATM’s Cloud Flight Management System (Cloud FMS). Cloud FMS creates cloud-based representations of aircraft flight-management capabilities that can support trajectory planning, coordination, and distributed decision-making.
In January 2025, Mosaic ATM demonstrated the technology during a NASA-sponsored live flight trial in which Cloud FMS instances served as digital twins of participating aircraft systems. The demonstration explored decentralized, rule-based aircraft sequencing and spacing without relying on centralized control. Read more about the Cloud FMS Digital Flight demonstration.
ROSA will combine capabilities from these technologies with additional services developed as part of the new NASA effort.
The project also complements Mosaic ATM’s previous work on contingency planning for Advanced Air Mobility, which explored software and AI approaches for evaluating disruptions, operational constraints, alternative courses of action, and coordinated responses in increasingly automated airspace environments.
From Disruption Detection to Coordinated Response
The combination of these technologies will allow ROSA to explore a broader approach to operational resilience.
A disruption to one part of an AAM operation can affect multiple systems and stakeholders. A communications issue, for example, may influence the feasibility of a planned route, while a vertiport or airspace constraint may require changes to multiple aircraft or schedules.
ROSA is intended to help users understand these relationships. By combining information from multiple sources and assessing potential mitigation strategies, the system can evaluate not only whether a response is possible, but also how that response may affect safety and overall system performance.
That capability could become increasingly valuable as future operations move toward greater levels of automation and coordination.
Advancing AAM Resilience
Resilience will be an important component of safe and scalable Advanced Air Mobility. Future operations may involve numerous aircraft, fleet operators, vertiports, service providers, and airspace stakeholders working within a shared operating environment.
NASA’s AAM research is helping government and industry explore the technologies and operational concepts necessary to support this evolving ecosystem. Through the NASA Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business Technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) program, small businesses develop and mature innovative technologies that support NASA missions and address emerging aerospace challenges.
ROSA will contribute to that effort by investigating how future AAM systems can move beyond simply detecting disruptions to understanding their operational consequences and identifying coordinated responses.
Through ROSA, Mosaic ATM will continue its work with NASA to advance the technologies and operational concepts needed to enable safe, scalable, and resilient Advanced Air Mobility operations.
