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Garner, Larry

Publications and source records attributed to Garner, Larry.

Failure Analysis and Products in a Model-Based Environment

The work presented in this paper describes an approach, including a methodology and tools, which allows system engineers to capture failure-related information in a model and generate automatically key failure analysis products: the Failure Modes, Effects and Criticality Analysis (FMECA) and the Fault Tree Analysis (FTA). The work has been developed by Tietronix Software, Inc. and the NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and the resulting auto-generated artifacts shown in this paper demonstrate the ability to obtain powerful reliability and fault management products in a model-based environment.

Castet, Jean-Francois↗

Effort to Accelerate MBSE Adoption and Usage at JSC

This paper describes the authors' experience in adopting Model Based System Engineering (MBSE) at the NASA/Johnson Space Center (JSC). Since 2009, NASA/JSC has been applying MBSE using the Systems Modeling Language (SysML) to a number of advanced projects. Models integrate views of the system from multiple perspectives, capturing the system design information for multiple stakeholders. This method has allowed engineers to better control changes, improve traceability from requirements to design and manage the numerous interactions between components. As the project progresses, the models become the official source of information and used by multiple stakeholders. Three major types of challenges that hamper the adoption of the MBSE technology are described. These challenges are addressed by a multipronged approach that includes educating the main stakeholders, implementing an organizational infrastructure that supports the adoption effort, defining a set of modeling guidelines to help engineers in their modeling effort, providing a toolset that support the generation of valuable products, and providing a library of reusable models. JSC project case studies are presented to illustrate how the proposed approach has been successfully applied.

Wang, Lui↗

AMO EXPRESS: A Command and Control Experiment for Crew Autonomy Onboard the International Space Station

NASA is investigating a range of future human spaceflight missions, including both Mars-distance and Near Earth Object (NEO) targets. Of significant importance for these missions is the balance between crew autonomy and vehicle automation. As distance from Earth results in increasing communication delays, future crews need both the capability and authority to independently make decisions. However, small crews cannot take on all functions performed by ground today, and so vehicles must be more automated to reduce the crew workload for such missions. NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Program funded Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project conducted an autonomous command and control experiment on-board the International Space Station that demonstrated single action intelligent procedures for crew command and control. The target problem was to enable crew initialization of a facility class rack with power and thermal interfaces, and involving core and payload command and telemetry processing, without support from ground controllers. This autonomous operations capability is enabling in scenarios such as initialization of a medical facility to respond to a crew medical emergency, and representative of other spacecraft autonomy challenges. The experiment was conducted using the Expedite the Processing of Experiments for Space Station (EXPRESS) rack 7, which was located in the Port 2 location within the U.S Laboratory onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Activation and deactivation of this facility is time consuming and operationally intensive, requiring coordination of three flight control positions, 47 nominal steps, 57 commands, 276 telemetry checks, and coordination of multiple ISS systems (both core and payload). Utilization of Draper Laboratory's Timeliner software, deployed on-board the ISS within the Command and Control (C&C) computers and the Payload computers, allowed development of the automated procedures specific to ISS without having to certify and employ novel software for procedure development and execution. The procedures contained the ground procedure logic and actions as possible to include fault detection and recovery capabilities. The autonomous operations concept includes a reduction of the amount of data a crew operator is required to verify during activation or de-activation, as well as integration of procedure execution status and relevant data in a single integrated display. During execution, the auto-procedures (via Timerliner) provide a step-by-step messaging paradigm and a high-level status upon termination. This messaging and high-level status is the only data generated for operator display. To enhance situational awareness of the operator, the Web-based Procedure Display (WebPD) provides a novel approach to the issues of procedure display and execution tracking. WebPD is a web based application that serves as the user interface for electronic procedure execution. It incorporates several aspects of the HTML5 standard. Procedures are written in a dialect of XML called Procedure Representation Language (PRL). WebPD tracks execution status in the procedure or procedures being displayed. WebPD aggregates and simplifies the auto-sequence execution status information, and formatted to be easily followed and understood by an operator who is not dedicated to actively monitoring the task. WebPD also provides an integrated data and control interface to pause or halt the execution in order to provide a check point of operation and to examine progress before starting the next sequence of activities. For this demonstration, the procedure was initiated and monitored from the ground. As the Timeliner sequences executed, their high-level execution status was written to PLMDM memory. This memory is read and downlinked via Ku-Band at a 1 Hz rate. The data containing the high-level execution status is de-commutated on the ground, and rebroadcast for WebPD consumption. A future demonstration will be performed onboard, with ISS astronauts initiating the operations instead of ground controllers. The AMO EXPRESS experiment demonstrated activation and de-activation of EXPRESS rack 7, providing the capability of future single button activations and deactivations of facility class racks. The experiment achieved numerous technical and operations 'firsts' for the ISS

Stetson, Howard K.↗

AMO EXPRESS: A Command and Control Experiment for Crew Autonomy

NASA is investigating a range of future human spaceflight missions, including both Mars-distance and Near Earth Object (NEO) targets. Of significant importance for these missions is the balance between crew autonomy and vehicle automation. As distance from Earth results in increasing communication delays, future crews need both the capability and authority to independently make decisions. However, small crews cannot take on all functions performed by ground today, and so vehicles must be more automated to reduce the crew workload for such missions. NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Program funded Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project conducted an autonomous command and control demonstration of intelligent procedures to automatically initialize a rack onboard the International Space Station (ISS) with power and thermal interfaces, and involving core and payload command and telemetry processing, without support from ground controllers. This autonomous operations capability is enabling in scenarios such as a crew medical emergency, and representative of other spacecraft autonomy challenges. The experiment was conducted using the Expedite the Processing of Experiments for Space Station (EXPRESS) rack 7, which was located in the Port 2 location within the U.S Laboratory onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Activation and deactivation of this facility is time consuming and operationally intensive, requiring coordination of three flight control positions, 47 nominal steps, 57 commands, 276 telemetry checks, and coordination of multiple ISS systems (both core and payload). The autonomous operations concept includes a reduction of the amount of data a crew operator is required to verify during activation or de-activation, as well as integration of procedure execution status and relevant data in a single integrated display. During execution, the auto-procedures provide a step-by-step messaging paradigm and a high level status upon termination. This messaging and high level status is the only data generated for operator display. To enhance situational awareness of the operator, the Web-based Procedure Display (WebPD) provides a novel approach to the issues of procedure display and execution tracking. For this demonstration, the procedure was initiated and monitored from the ground. As the Timeliner sequences executed, their high level execution status was transmitted to ground, for WebPD consumption.

Stetson, Howard K.↗

AMO EXPRESS: A Command and Control Experiment for Crew Autonomy Onboard the International Space Station

NASA is investigating a range of future human spaceflight missions, including both Mars-distance and Near Earth Object (NEO) targets. Of significant importance for these missions is the balance between crew autonomy and vehicle automation. As distance from Earth results in increasing communication delays, future crews need both the capability and authority to independently make decisions. However, small crews cannot take on all functions performed by ground today, and so vehicles must be more automated to reduce the crew workload for such missions.NASAs Advanced Exploration Systems Program funded Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project conducted an autonomous command and control experiment on-board the International Space Station that demonstrated single action intelligent procedures for crew command and control. The target problem was to enable crew initialization of a facility class rack with power and thermal interfaces, and involving core and payload command and telemetry processing, without support from ground controllers. This autonomous operations capability is enabling in scenarios such as initialization of a medical facility to respond to a crew medical emergency, and representative of other spacecraft autonomy challenges. The experiment was conducted using the Expedite the Processing of Experiments for Space Station (EXPRESS) rack 7, which was located in the Port 2 location within the U.S Laboratory onboard the International Space Station (ISS).

Autonomous Mission Operations↗

AMO EXPRESS: A Command and Control Experiment for Crew Autonomy Onboard the International Space Station

NASA is investigating a range of future human spaceflight missions, including both Mars-distance and Near Earth Object (NEO) targets. Of significant importance for these missions is the balance between crew autonomy and vehicle automation. As distance from Earth results in increasing communication delays, future crews need both the capability and authority to independently make decisions. However, small crews cannot take on all functions performed by ground today, and so vehicles must be more automated to reduce the crew workload for such missions. NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Program funded Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project conducted an autonomous command and control experiment on-board the International Space Station that demonstrated single action intelligent procedures for crew command and control. The target problem was to enable crew initialization of a facility class rack with power and thermal interfaces, and involving core and payload command and telemetry processing, without support from ground controllers. This autonomous operations capability is enabling in scenarios such as initialization of a medical facility to respond to a crew medical emergency, and representative of other spacecraft autonomy challenges. The experiment was conducted using the Expedite the Processing of Experiments for Space Station (EXPRESS) rack 7, which was located in the Port 2 location within the U.S Laboratory onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Activation and deactivation of this facility is time consuming and operationally intensive, requiring coordination of three flight control positions, 47 nominal steps, 57 commands, 276 telemetry checks, and coordination of multiple ISS systems (both core and payload). Utilization of Draper Laboratory's Timeliner software, deployed on-board the ISS within the Command and Control (C&C) computers and the Payload computers, allowed development of the automated procedures specific to ISS without having to certify and employ novel software for procedure development and execution. The procedures contained the ground procedure logic and actions as possible to include fault detection and recovery capabilities.

Stetson, Howard K.↗

AMO EXPRESS: A Command and Control Experiment for Crew Autonomy Onboard the International Space Station

The Autonomous Mission Operations project is investigating crew autonomy capabilities and tools for deep space missions. Team members at Ames Research Center, Johnson Space Center and Marshall Space Flight Center are using their experience with ISS Payload operations and TIMELINER to: move earth based command and control assets to on-board for crew access; safely merge core and payload command procedures; give the crew single action intelligent operations; and investigate crew interface requirements.

Cornelius, Randy↗

Advanced Caution and Warning System, Final Report - 2011

The work described in this report is a continuation of the ACAWS work funded in fiscal year (FY) 2010 under the Exploration Technology Development Program (ETDP), Integrated Systems Health Management (ISHM) project. In FY 2010, we developed requirements for an ACAWS system and vetted the requirements with potential users via a concept demonstration system. In FY 2011, we developed a working prototype of aspects of that concept, with placeholders for technologies to be fully developed in future phases of the project. The objective is to develop general capability to assist operators with system health monitoring and failure diagnosis. Moreover, ACAWS was integrated with the Discrete Controls (DC) task of the Autonomous Systems and Avionics (ASA) project. The primary objective of DC is to demonstrate an electronic and interactive procedure display environment and multiple levels of automation (automatic execution by computer, execution by computer if the operator consents, and manual execution by the operator).

Spirkovska, Lilly↗