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NASA NTRS2009

Lunar Mapping and Modeling Project

Noble, Sarah K.↗

NASA NTRS2009

UH-60 Airloads Program Tutorial

From the fall of 1993 to late winter of 1994, NASA Ames and the U.S. Army flew a flight test program using a UH-60A helicopter with extensive instrumentation on the rotor and blades, including 242 pressure transducers. Over this period, approximately 30 flights were made, and data were obtained in level flight, maneuver, ascents, and descents. Coordinated acoustic measurements were obtained with a ground-acoustic array in cooperation with NASA Langley, and in-flight acoustic measurements with a YO-3A aircraft. NASA has sponsored the creation of a "tutorial' which covers the depth and breadth of the flight test program with a mixture of text and graphics. The primary purpose of this tutorial is to introduce the student to what is known about rotor aerodynamics based on the UH-60A measurements. The tutorial will also be useful to anyone interested in helicopters who would like to have more detailed knowledge about helicopter aerodynamics.

Bousman, William G.↗

NASA NTRS2009

Workshop Report on Virtual Worlds and Immersive Environments

The workshop revolved around three framing ideas or scenarios about the evolution of virtual environments: 1. Remote exploration: The ability to create high fidelity environments rendered from external data or models such that exploration, design and analysis that is truly interoperable with the physical world can take place within them. 2. We all get to go: The ability to engage anyone in being a part of or contributing to an experience (such as a space mission), no matter their training or location. It is the creation of a new paradigm for education, outreach, and the conduct of science in society that is truly participatory. 3. Become the data: A vision of a future where boundaries between the physical and the virtual have ceased to be meaningful. What would this future look like? Is this plausible? Is it desirable? Why and why not?

Langhoff, Stephanie R.↗

NASA NTRS2009

Medical Devices Assess, Treat Balance Disorders

You may have heard the phrase as difficult as walking and chewing gum as a joking way of referring to something that is not difficult at all. Just walking, however, is not all that simple physiologically speaking. Even standing upright is an undertaking requiring the complex cooperation of multiple motor and sensory systems including vision, the inner ear, somatosensation (sensation from the skin), and proprioception (the sense of the body s parts in relation to each other). The compromised performance of any of these elements can lead to a balance disorder, which in some form affects nearly half of Americans at least once in their lifetimes, from the elderly, to those with neurological or vestibular (inner ear) dysfunction, to athletes with musculoskeletal injuries, to astronauts returning from space. Readjusting to Earth s gravity has a significant impact on an astronaut s ability to balance, a result of the brain switching to a different "model" for interpreting sensory input in normal gravity versus weightlessness. While acclimating, astronauts can experience headaches, motion sickness, and problems with perception. To help ease the transition and study the effects of weightlessness on the body, NASA has conducted many investigations into post-flight balance control, realizing this research can help treat patients with balance disorders on Earth as well. In the 1960s, the NASA-sponsored Man Vehicle Laboratory at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) studied the effects of prolonged space flight on astronauts. The lab s work intrigued MIT doctoral candidate Lewis Nashner, who began conducting NASA-funded research on human movement and balance under the supervision of Dr. Larry Young in the MIT Department of Aeronautics and Astronautics. In 1982, Nashner s work resulted in a noninvasive clinical technique for assessing the cooperative systems that allow the body to balance, commonly referred to as computerized dynamic posturography (CDP). CDP employs a series of dynamic protocols to isolate and assess balance function deficiencies. The technology was based on Nashner s novel, engineering-inspired concept of balance as an adaptable collaboration between multiple sensory and motor systems. CDP proved useful not only for examining astronauts, but for anyone suffering from balance problems. Today, CDP is the standard medical tool for objectively evaluating balance control.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS2009

Lunar Mapping and Modeling Project

The Lunar Mapping and Modeling Project (LMMP) has been created to manage the development of a suite of lunar mapping and modeling products that support the Constellation Program (CxP) and other lunar exploration activities, including the planning, design, development, test and operations associated with lunar sortie missions, crewed and robotic operations on the surface, and the establishment of a lunar outpost. The information provided through LMMP will assist CxP in: planning tasks in the areas of landing site evaluation and selection, design and placement of landers and other stationary assets, design of rovers and other mobile assets, developing terrain-relative navigation (TRN) capabilities, and assessment and planning of science traverses. The project draws on expertise from several NASA and non-NASA organizations (MSFC, ARC, GSFC, JPL, CRREL US Army Cold Regions Research and Engineering Laboratory, and the USGS). LMMP will utilize data predominately from the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter, but also historical and international lunar mission data (e.g. Apollo, Lunar Orbiter, Kaguya, Chandrayaan-1), as available and appropriate, to meet Constellation s data needs. LMMP will provide access to this data through a single intuitive and easy to use NASA portal that transparently accesses appropriately sanctioned portions of the widely dispersed and distributed collections of lunar data, products and tools. Two visualization systems are being developed, a web-based system called Lunar Mapper, and a desktop client, ILIADS, which will be downloadable from the LMMP portal. LMMP will provide such products as local and regional imagery and DEMs, hazard assessment maps, lighting and gravity models, and resource maps. We are working closely with the LRO team to prevent duplication of efforts and to ensure the highest quality data products. While Constellation is our primary customer, LMMP is striving to be as useful as possible to the lunar science community, the lunar commercial community, the lunar education and public outreach (E/PO) community, and anyone else interested in accessing or utilizing lunar data. A beta version of the portal and visualization systems is expected to be released in late 2009, with a version 1 release planned for early 2011.

Noble, Sarah K.↗

NASA NTRS2010

Commercial Spacewalking: Designing an EVA Qualification Program for Space Tourism

In the near future, accessibility to space will be opened to anyone with the means and the desire to experience the weightlessness of microgravity, and to look out upon both the curvature of the Earth and the blackness of space, from the protected, shirt-sleeved environment of a commercial spacecraft. Initial forays will be short-duration, suborbital flights, but the experience and expertise of half a century of spaceflight will soon produce commercial vehicles capable of achieving low Earth orbit. Even with the commercial space industry still in its infancy, and manned orbital flight a number of years away, there is little doubt that there will one day be a feasible and viable market for those courageous enough to venture outside the vehicle and into the void, wearing nothing but a spacesuit, armed with nothing but preflight training. What that Extravehicular Activity (EVA) preflight training entails, however, is something that has yet to be defined. A number of significant factors will influence the composition of a commercial EVA training program, but a fundamental question remains: 'what minimum training guidelines must be met to ensure a safe and successful commercial spacewalk?' Utilizing the experience gained through the development of NASA's Skills program - designed to qualify NASA and International Partner astronauts for EVA aboard the International Space Station - this paper identifies the attributes and training objectives essential to the safe conduct of an EVA, and attempts to conceptually design a comprehensive training methodology meant to represent an acceptable qualification standard.

Gast, Matthew A.↗

NASA NTRS2010

Making Games Not Work: Paradoxes Embedded in Game-Based Training and Concepts for Overcoming Them

An interest in game-based training solutions is natural. All one has to do is watch someone fully engaged in a modern game to see the potential of harnessing that attention for training. However, the reality of game-based training has not fully satisfied these expectations. This paper explains two paradoxes that must be overcome for games to support training. These paradoxes are a result of the realities of the basic human condition clashing with the requirements of learning theory. 80th paradoxes arise from the concept of "engagement" that is central to games. The first comes from a more robust definition of engagement, which is the condition of Flow or Optimal Experience. Flow is the state game developers want to see in users. One aspect of Flow is loss of sense of self as the individual becomes immersed in the experience. The paradox arises because this loss of self directly contradicts the learning requirement of self-reflection. The second paradox comes from theories of play, which state in part that play requires a level of individual freedom. The contradiction arises when game-based play must be harnessed to an organizational training program or regimen. The paper will discuss these paradoxes in the context of an effort to design a game-based training modality to train combat medics and will close with a review of compensating strategies identified by the designers. The paper will provide information important to anyone interested in conceptualizing and designing game-based training.

Jones, Phillip N.↗

NASA NTRS2010

A Chess-Like Game for Teaching Engineering Students to Solve Large System of Simultaneous Linear Equations

Solving large (and sparse) system of simultaneous linear equations has been (and continues to be) a major challenging problem for many real-world engineering/science applications [1-2]. For many practical/large-scale problems, the sparse, Symmetrical and Positive Definite (SPD) system of linear equations can be conveniently represented in matrix notation as [A] {x} = {b} , where the square coefficient matrix [A] and the Right-Hand-Side (RHS) vector {b} are known. The unknown solution vector {x} can be efficiently solved by the following step-by-step procedures [1-2]: Reordering phase, Matrix Factorization phase, Forward solution phase, and Backward solution phase. In this research work, a Game-Based Learning (GBL) approach has been developed to help engineering students to understand crucial details about matrix reordering and factorization phases. A "chess-like" game has been developed and can be played by either a single player, or two players. Through this "chess-like" open-ended game, the players/learners will not only understand the key concepts involved in reordering algorithms (based on existing algorithms), but also have the opportunities to "discover new algorithms" which are better than existing algorithms. Implementing the proposed "chess-like" game for matrix reordering and factorization phases can be enhanced by FLASH [3] computer environments, where computer simulation with animated human voice, sound effects, visual/graphical/colorful displays of matrix tables, score (or monetary) awards for the best game players, etc. can all be exploited. Preliminary demonstrations of the developed GBL approach can be viewed by anyone who has access to the internet web-site [4]!

Nguyen, Duc T.↗

NASA NTRS2010

Designing and Implementing an OVERFLOW Reader for ParaView and Comparing Performance Between Central Processing Units and Graphical Processing Units

In the Applied Aerosciences and CFD branch at Johnson Space Center, computational simulations are run that face many challenges. Two of which are the ability to customize software for specialized needs and the need to run simulations as fast as possible. There are many different tools that are used for running these simulations and each one has its own pros and cons. Once these simulations are run, there needs to be software capable of visualizing the results in an appealing manner. Some of this software is called open source, meaning that anyone can edit the source code to make modifications and distribute it to all other users in a future release. This is very useful, especially in this branch where many different tools are being used. File readers can be written to load any file format into a program, to ease the bridging from one tool to another. Programming such a reader requires knowledge of the file format that is being read as well as the equations necessary to obtain the derived values after loading. When running these CFD simulations, extremely large files are being loaded and having values being calculated. These simulations usually take a few hours to complete, even on the fastest machines. Graphics processing units (GPUs) are usually used to load the graphics for computers; however, in recent years, GPUs are being used for more generic applications because of the speed of these processors. Applications run on GPUs have been known to run up to forty times faster than they would on normal central processing units (CPUs). If these CFD programs are extended to run on GPUs, the amount of time they would require to complete would be much less. This would allow more simulations to be run in the same amount of time and possibly perform more complex computations.

Chawner, David M.↗

NASA NTRS2010

Lunar Regolith Simulant User's Guide

Based on primary characteristics, currently or recently available lunar regolith simulants are discussed from the perspective of potential experimental uses. The characteristics used are inherent properties of the material rather than their responses to behavioral (geomechanical, physiochemical, etc.) tests. We define these inherent or primary properties to be particle composition, particle size distribution, particle shape distribution, and bulk density. Comparable information about lunar materials is also provided. It is strongly emphasized that anyone considering either choosing or using a simulant should contact one of the members of the simulant program listed at the end of this document.

Schrader, C. M.↗

NASA NTRS2010

What if Things Get Worse? Really Grand Challenges for Modeling and Simulation in a Risky and Complex World or Modeling and Simulation for the "Greater Good"?

Today Modeling and Simulation-- ---as an important practice or industry or area of expertise ----- is at a complex crossroad - a sort of cyber-highway--where these complexities meet-technical, economic, environmental, geopolitical and cultural. They may converge or collide. Let's not kid ourselves. It is all too much for anyone person or organization Malcolm Gladwell said it. "We have constructed a world in which the potential for high tech catastrophe is embedded in the fabric of everyday life." We are surrounded by problems that scream at us from our television, Internet and social networks along with billboards and protest signs. We face not just high tech catastrophes but, also, landslides, earthquakes, tornados, floods and hurricanes and large-scale criminality. Evil, war, famine and pestilence have not gone away. It is all too much to think about. My friend, George Peabody, who taught me everything I know about power said that addressing such issues requires that we constantly build our network, information resources and the credibility and visibility of our work. That is how we will build the power of simulation so it can change the world --even maybe, save it. We need all the help we can get and give one another because our human early warning systems appear to be out of kilter. We seem to have trouble imagining how small failings can continue to lead to catastrophic disaster. Think about O-rings and blowout preventers. One is reminded of the old nursery rhyme, "For want of a nail, a shoe was lost! for want of a shoe the horse was lost! for want of a rider the battle was lost and so the kingdom fell." Although the investigation will take more time for real answers, it is worrisome that a rig worker reported to the BBC that-- weeks before the explosion of Deep Ocean Horizon. -he identified a leak in the oil rig's safety equipment -the Control Pod of the blowout preventer which has giant shears designed to cut and seal off the well's main pipe. With both electronics and hydraulics, these are effectively the brains of the blowout preventer. No one fixed it, he alleges, they just shut it down and relied on the other control pod -an act deemed unacceptable by petroleum expert, Tad Patzek, at the University of Texas. The US Congress has identified numerous other problems with the blowout preventer, including design problems and unexpected modifications.

Fifrey, Priscilla↗

NASA NTRS2010

Conformance Testing: Measurement Decision Rules

The goal of a Quality Management System (QMS) as specified in ISO 9001 and AS9100 is to provide assurance to the customer that end products meet specifications. Measuring devices, often called measuring and test equipment (MTE), are used to provide the evidence of product conformity to specified requirements. Unfortunately, processes that employ MTE can become a weak link to the overall QMS if proper attention is not given to the measurement process design, capability, and implementation. Documented "decision rules" establish the requirements to ensure measurement processes provide the measurement data that supports the needs of the QMS. Measurement data are used to make the decisions that impact all areas of technology. Whether measurements support research, design, production, or maintenance, ensuring the data supports the decision is crucial. Measurement data quality can be critical to the resulting consequences of measurement-based decisions. Historically, most industries required simplistic, one-size-fits-all decision rules for measurements. One-size-fits-all rules in some cases are not rigorous enough to provide adequate measurement results, while in other cases are overly conservative and too costly to implement. Ideally, decision rules should be rigorous enough to match the criticality of the parameter being measured, while being flexible enough to be cost effective. The goal of a decision rule is to ensure that measurement processes provide data with a sufficient level of quality to support the decisions being made - no more, no less. This paper discusses the basic concepts of providing measurement-based evidence that end products meet specifications. Although relevant to all measurement-based conformance tests, the target audience is the MTE end-user, which is anyone using MTE other than calibration service providers. Topics include measurement fundamentals, the associated decision risks, verifying conformance to specifications, and basic measurement decisions rules.

Mimbs, Scott M.↗

NASA NTRS2011

Project Management Meets Change Management - A Success Story. Focus Area: Tech Perspectives TI012SN

Utilizing the concepts and terminology from Project Management, the process of planning and executing a Change Management (CM) Infrastructure improvement project is described. The primary audience for this presentation includes both experienced and relatively new CM administrators and their managers. It also includes anyone with an interest in the application of project management knowledge to CM administration. There are several benefits: the complexity of the CM tool technology is more manageable, CM administrators get to use project management knowledge to complete a project (not "firefighting"), improve relations with your customers (that means developers and managers), and get the opportunity to do it again.

Hall, Wayne↗

NASA NTRS2011

AstroBetter: A Blog and Wiki for Professional Astronomers

AstroBetter.com is a multi-contributor blog and wiki website designed for information sharing among professional astronomers. The goal of the site is to increase the productivity of astronomers by creating a centralized location for tips and tools of our multifaceted trade. Our content includes topics related to data reduction and analysis, general computing, writing papers and proposals, giving talks, teaching, career planning, productivity, organization, and diversity and equity in science and education. While we have several contributors, the site is intended to be community driven and we encourage everyone to publish to the wiki, submit guest posts, suggest post ideas, and to comment on blog entries. One of our primary goals is to consolidate and reduce the transient nature of the astronomy community's collective knowledge base by having an active wiki. Currently, the most common way to share astro-centric tools and tips that are not appropriate for a published paper, is to put them on an individual's website. However, the average astronomer's website will have at least four different addresses over the course of their career and only the site owner can edit the content. As a result, information on personal websites goes stale very quickly and deal links to such sites abound. It is our hope that community maintained wikis, such as the one hosted on AstroBetter, will gradually replace the personal website. In this poster we introduce the contributors to AstroBetter, show statistics about our current readership, give excerpts of some of our most popular posts and wiki entries, and show how anyone can add or edit content on the wiki. The goal of this poster is to spread the work about AstroBetter and increase our community of readers and wiki editors, because together, we can AstroBetter.

Rigby, Jane↗

NASA NTRS2011

Integrated Graphics Operations and Analysis Lab Development of Advanced Computer Graphics Algorithms

The focus of this project is to aid the IGOAL in researching and implementing algorithms for advanced computer graphics. First, this project focused on porting the current International Space Station (ISS) Xbox experience to the web. Previously, the ISS interior fly-around education and outreach experience only ran on an Xbox 360. One of the desires was to take this experience and make it into something that can be put on NASA s educational site for anyone to be able to access. The current code works in the Unity game engine which does have cross platform capability but is not 100% compatible. The tasks for an intern to complete this portion consisted of gaining familiarity with Unity and the current ISS Xbox code, porting the Xbox code to the web as is, and modifying the code to work well as a web application. In addition, a procedurally generated cloud algorithm will be developed. Currently, the clouds used in AGEA animations and the Xbox experiences are a texture map. The desire is to create a procedurally generated cloud algorithm to provide dynamically generated clouds for both AGEA animations and the Xbox experiences. This task consists of gaining familiarity with AGEA and the plug-in interface, developing the algorithm, creating an AGEA plug-in to implement the algorithm inside AGEA, and creating a Unity script to implement the algorithm for the Xbox. This portion of the project was unable to be completed in the time frame of the internship; however, the IGOAL will continue to work on it in the future.

Wheaton, Ira M.↗

NASA NTRS2003

Earthly Considerations on Mars

When it came time to contact my research subjects on the Orbiter and Lander projects, I made it clear that I wasn't interested in finger pointing and I wasn't looking to blame anyone for failures. I explained that I was studying the strategic design of each project, i. e., the grouping, linking and alignment of the project. I wanted to look at the political environment to see how the goals and interests of stakeholders affected the outcomes, and I wanted to understand the working culture of each project.

Shaw, Robert J.↗

NASA NTRS2011

Cable Tester Box

Cables are very important electrical devices that carry power and signals across multiple instruments. Any fault in a cable can easily result in a catastrophic outcome. Therefore, verifying that all cables are built to spec is a very important part of Electrical Integration Procedures. Currently, there are two methods used in lab for verifying cable connectivity. (1) Using a Break-Out Box and an ohmmeter this method is time-consuming but effective for custom cables and (2) Commercial Automated Cable Tester Boxes this method is fast, but to test custom cables often requires pre-programmed configuration files, and cables used on spacecraft are often uniquely designed for specific purposes. The idea is to develop a semi-automatic continuity tester that reduces human effort in cable testing, speeds up the electrical integration process, and ensures system safety. The JPL-Cable Tester Box is developed to check every single possible electrical connection in a cable in parallel. This system indicates connectivity through LED (light emitting diode) circuits. Users can choose to test any pin/shell (test node) with a single push of a button, and any other nodes that are shorted to the test node, even if they are in the same connector, will light up with the test node. The JPL-Cable Tester Boxes offers the following advantages: 1. Easy to use: The architecture is simple enough that it only takes 5 minutes for anyone to learn how operate the Cable Tester Box. No pre-programming and calibration are required, since this box only checks continuity. 2. Fast: The cable tester box checks all the possible electrical connections in parallel at a push of a button. If a cable normally takes half an hour to test, using the Cable Tester Box will improve the speed to as little as 60 seconds to complete. 3. Versatile: Multiple cable tester boxes can be used together. As long as all the boxes share the same electrical potential, any number of connectors can be tested together.

Lee, Jason H.↗

NASA NTRS2012

The Next Landsat Satellite: The Landsat Data Continuity Mission

The Landsat program is one of the longest running satellite programs for Earth observations from space. The program was initiated by the launch of Landsat 1 in 1972. Since then a series of six more Landsat satellites were launched and at least one of those satellites has been in operations at all times to continuously collect images of the global land surface. The Department of Interior (DOI) U.S. Geological Survey (USGS) preserves data collected by all of the Landsat satellites at their Earth Resources Observation and Science (EROS) Center in Sioux Falls, South Dakota. This 40-year data archive provides an unmatched record of the Earth's land surface that has undergone dramatic changes in recent decades due to the increasing pressure of a growing population and advancing technologies. EROS provides the ability for anyone to search the archive and order digital Landsat images over the internet for free. The Landsat data are a public resource for observing, characterizing, monitoring, trending, and predicting land use change over time providing an invaluable tool for those addressing the profound consequences of those changes to society. The most recent launch of a Landsat satellite occurred in 1999 when Landsat 7 was placed in orbit. While Landsat 7 remains in operation, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the DOI/ USGS are building its successor satellite system currently called the Landsat Data Continuity Mission (LDCM). NASA has the lead for building and launching the satellite that will carry two Earth-viewing instruments, the Operational Land Imager (OLI) and the Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS). The OLI will take images that measure the amount of sunlight reflected by the land surface at nine wavelengths of light with three of those wavelengths beyond the range of human vision. T1RS will collect coincident images that measure light emitted by the land surface as a function of surface temperature at two longer wavelengths well beyond the range of human vision. The DOI/USGS is developing the ground system that will command and control the LDCM satellite in orbit and manage the OLI and TIRS data transmitted by the satellite. DOI/USGS will thus operate the satellite and collect, archive, and distribute the image data as part of the EROS archive. DOI/USGS has committed to renaming LDCM as Landsat 8 following launch. By either name the satellite and its sensors will extend the 40-year archive with images sufficiently consistent with data from earlier Landsat satellites to allow multi-decadal, broad-area studies of our dynamic landscapes. The next Landsat satellite and ground system are on schedule for a January, 2013 launch.

Rons, James R.↗