Engineering topics
Mauldin, Jeff
Publications and source records attributed to Mauldin, Jeff.
Data Services for Visualization and Analysis - ASC Level II Milestone (7186)
A new in transit Data Service is presented and compared to the traditional file-based workflow and the newly refactored in situ Catalyst workflow. Each workflow is enabled by the IOSS mesh interface equipped with data management layers for Exodus and CGNS (file-based), Catalyst (in situ), and FAODEL (in transit). FAODEL is a distributed object store that can transmit data across MPI allocations. Catalyst is a Para View-based visualization capability developed as part of the CSSE Data Services effort. The workflows considered here take SPARC data into Catalyst for visualization post-processing. Although still in unoptimized form, we show that the in transit approach is a viable alternative to file-based and in situ workflows and offers several advantages to both simulation and post-processing developers. Since IOSS is a mature interface with wide adoption across Sandia and externally, each workflow can be reconfigured to use different simulations that generate mesh data and post-processing tools that consume it.
Spacecraft Dormancy Autonomy Analysis for a Crewed Martian Mission
Current concepts of operations for human exploration of Mars center on the staged deployment of spacecraft, logistics, and crew. Though most studies focus on the needs for human occupation of the spacecraft and habitats, these resources will spend most of their lifetime unoccupied. As such, it is important to identify the operational state of the unoccupied spacecraft or habitat, as well as to design the systems to enable the appropriate level of autonomy. Key goals for this study include providing a realistic assessment of what "dormancy" entails for human spacecraft, exploring gaps in state-of-the-art for autonomy in human spacecraft design, providing recommendations for investments in autonomous systems technology development, and developing architectural requirements for spacecraft that must be autonomous during dormant operations. The mission that was chosen is based on a crewed mission to Mars. In particular, this study focuses on the time that the spacecraft that carried humans to Mars spends dormant in Martian orbit while the crew carries out a surface mission. Communications constraints are assumed to be severe, with limited bandwidth and limited ability to send commands and receive telemetry. The assumptions made as part of this mission have close parallels with mission scenarios envisioned for dormant cis-lunar habitats that are stepping-stones to Mars missions. As such, the data in this report is expected to be broadly applicable to all dormant deep space human spacecraft.