Michael Braukus
Headquarters, Washington, DC              September 28, 2000
(Phone:  202/358-1979)

Michael Finneran
Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA
(Phone:  757/864-6124)

RELEASE: C00-m

CONTRACTS AWARDED FOR AIRPORT SURFACE SURVEILLANCE SYSTEMS 

     NASA's Langley Research Center, Hampton, VA, has awarded 
three contracts to two companies for airport surface surveillance 
systems that would help prevent runway accidents. Preventing 
"runway incursions" is a top safety priority of the Federal 
Aviation Administration and the National Transportation Safety 
Board. 

Two Airport Traffic Identification (ATIDS)/ Dynamic Runway 
Occupancy Measurement Systems (DROMS) will be installed at Detroit 
Metro Wayne International Airport and a DROMS will be installed at 
Memphis International Airport as part of NASA's aviation systems 
capacity program.

Sensis Corp., DeWitt, NY, and Rannoch, Corp., Alexandria, VA, have 
each been selected to provide an ATIDS and a DROMS for evaluation 
at Detroit. Sensis has been selected to provide the DROMS at 
Memphis. The value of the contracts is approximately $1.8 million.

The Memphis procurement requires Sensis to deploy a DROMS and 
interface it to the existing Sensis ATIDS at Memphis.

The Detroit contracts require the companies to put the systems in 
operational status for a six-month period to establish and 
validate the capabilities of ATIDS in a "live" environment and to 
expand the runway occupancy database.

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