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NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Small Satellite Reliability Initiative (SSRI) Knowledge Base Tool: Update and Future Direction

NASA’s Small Satellite Reliability Initiative (SSRI), in conjunction with NASA’s Small Spacecraft Systems Virtual Institute (S3VI), has developed the SSRI Knowledge Base to improve mission confidence for small spacecraft. The SSRI Knowledge Base is a comprehensive and searchable online tool that consolidates and organizes resources, best practices, and lessons learned from previous small satellite missions sponsored by NASA, other government agencies, and academia. This free, publicly available tool is available to the entire SmallSat community at: NASA SSRI Knowledge Base | Explore. The SSRI Knowledge Base provides vetted, high-quality sources of information on elements that are key to successful small satellite missions. These resources include SSRI working group generated documents and presentations in addition to existing guides, publications, standards, software tools, websites, and books. The Knowledge Base is fully searchable, offers downloadable content when possible, and otherwise links to or references content directly from within the tool. All 58 of the planned topic pages that comprise the SSRI Knowledge Base have been recently completed and include over 450 unique resources that are now available for review. Over the past several months significant enhancements to the tool’s capabilities have been developed and implemented. These enhancements consist of the completed baseline content; development of an Application Programming Interface (API); improved user interfaces; scalable and searchable Best Practices and Lessons Learned (BPLL) lists with ratings; and custom website analytics. This presentation and paper will discuss the motivation for and development of the SSRI Knowledge Base, demonstrate the existing tool, and outline plans for further development. The SSRI is a collaborative activity with broad participation from civil, Department of Defense, and both national and international commercial space systems providers and stakeholders. The S3VI is jointly sponsored by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and Science Mission Directorate.

Small Spacecraft↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Small Satellite Reliability Initiative (SSRI) Knowledge Base Tool: Update and Future Direction

Small Spacecraft↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Small Satellite Reliability Initiative (SSRI) Knowledge Base Tool: Use Case Review and Future Functionality and Content Direction

NASA’s Small Satellite Reliability Initiative (SSRI), in conjunction with NASA’s Small Spacecraft Systems Virtual Institute (S3VI), has developed the SSRI Knowledge Base to improve mission confidence for small spacecraft. The SSRI Knowledge Base is a comprehensive and searchable online tool that consolidates and organizes resources, best practices, and lessons learned from previous small satellite missions sponsored by NASA, other government agencies, and academia. This free, publicly available tool is available to the entire SmallSat community at: NASA SSRI Knowledge Base | Explore. The SSRI Knowledge Base provides vetted, high-quality sources of information on elements that are key to successful small satellite missions. These resources include SSRI working group generated documents and presentations in addition to existing guides, publications, standards, software tools, websites, and books. The Knowledge Base is fully searchable, offers downloadable content when possible, and otherwise links to or references content directly from within the tool. All 58 of the planned topic pages that comprise the SSRI Knowledge Base have been recently completed and include over 450 unique resources that are now available for review. Over the past several months significant enhancements to the tool’s capabilities have been developed and implemented. These enhancements consist of the completed baseline content; development of an Application Programming Interface (API); improved user interfaces; scalable and searchable Best Practices and Lessons Learned (BPLL) lists with ratings; and custom website analytics. This presentation and paper will discuss the motivation for and development of the SSRI Knowledge Base, review of potential use case(s), and outline plans for further development and content generation. The SSRI is a collaborative activity with broad participation from civil, Department of Defense, and both national and international commercial space systems providers and stakeholders. The S3VI is jointly sponsored by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate and Science Mission Directorate.

Small Spacecraft↗

NASA NTRS2007

Flight and Integrated Testing: Blazing the Trail for the Ares Launch Vehicles

It has been 30 years since the United States last designed and built a human-rated launch vehicle. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has marshaled unique resources from the government and private sectors that will carry the next generation of astronauts into space safer and more efficiently than ever and send them to the Moon to develop a permanent outpost. NASA's Flight and Integrated Test Office (FITO) located at Marshall Space Flight Center and the Ares I-X Mission Management Office have primary responsibility for developing and conducting critical ground and flight tests for the Ares I and Ares V launch vehicles. These tests will draw upon Saturn and the Space Shuttle experiences, which taught the value of using sound systems engineering practices, while also applying aerospace best practices such as "test as you fly" and other lessons learned. FITO will use a variety of methods to reduce the technical, schedule, and cost risks of flying humans safely aboard a launch vehicle.

Taylor, James L.↗

NASA NTRS2011

Software Development Standard Processes (SDSP)

A JPL-created set of standard processes is to be used throughout the lifecycle of software development. These SDSPs cover a range of activities, from management and engineering activities, to assurance and support activities. These processes must be applied to software tasks per a prescribed set of procedures. JPL s Software Quality Improvement Project is currently working at the behest of the JPL Software Process Owner to ensure that all applicable software tasks follow these procedures. The SDSPs are captured as a set of 22 standards in JPL s software process domain. They were developed in-house at JPL by a number of Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) residing primarily within the Engineering and Science Directorate, but also from the Business Operations Directorate and Safety and Mission Success Directorate. These practices include not only currently performed best practices, but also JPL-desired future practices in key thrust areas like software architecting and software reuse analysis. Additionally, these SDSPs conform to many standards and requirements to which JPL projects are beholden.

Lavin, Milton L.↗

NASA NTRS2022

Bringing Planetary Science Mission Outreach to the Deaf and Blind Communities

Introduction: Technology for enhancing outreach, like 3D printing, and science communication products, such as videos and podcasts, can be utilized within the planetary science community, especially for the engagement and excitement of current or upcoming planetary exploration missions. However, these communication products can also be further enhanced for the benefit of the blind and deaf communities. While such products may already be readily available, such projects are not easily accessible to blind and/or deaf certified educators, which often rely on making their own resources or do not have the funds to provide such resources (e.g., cost of 3D printers or cost of braille books). The planetary science community can have better practices to reach these broader audiences. Best practices can include transcripts from podcasts, transcripts in videos, and large-font captions. Images on websites and social media accounts should also include alt-text descriptive captions. 3D printing can also enhance planetary science for the blind community, through tactile posters, maps, and pamphlets. Planetary data can also be augmented by providing different tactile geological maps (e.g., topography or various datasets), and audio-visual videos freely available for educators. Visual Engagement: Visual engagement consists of several avenues to consider, the three main themes includes: 1) swag; 2) videos; 3) interactive exploration. Swag can include the fun visual take-home materials, such as stickers, posters, bookmarks, etc. Videos can include educational-specific videos (available freely via YouTube or by other educational-specific streaming avenues, such as Nebula or Curiosity Stream), provided they have Closed Captioning (CC). The use of QR codes to such videos or websites can also benefit to being added on swag. Interactive exploration can also be sub-divided by different types of engagement. A popular and still fairly new technology for public engagement is the use of virtual reality (VR). While this has been mainly for martian and lunar surface exploration [1], the deaf communities can benefit from VR through a more extensive look at our solar system and beyond (for example, a VR experience of the flight path, or visual map of the heliosphere/dynamics of our Sun). Audio Engagement: Audio tools can also be a useful avenue of communication, especially for the blind communities. Audio archiving can certainly be transcripts from the video engagements, but also the use of podcasts can also be a benefit. Podcasting can take on two forms: 1) interview engagement; and 2) update engagement. For interviews, scientists can communicate with STEM-specific podcast platforms to make other listener-bases aware of what is going on with a specific mission. For update-type communication, missions may opt to have an archived podcast of news, updates, and the teams involved. The most important aspect of such podcasts would be for the need of complimentary transcripts (including descriptive transcripts if sounds are included), and the limited use of jargon. Research Engagement: There have been several examples of involving the blind and low-vision communities in citizen science, such as through the NASA Heliophysics division. Examples include the NASA PUNCH (Polarimeter to Unify the Corona and Heliosphere) mission led by the Southwest Research Institute [2], which include blind and visually-impaired citizens to assist in the Sun’s coronal rhythms.” Another example is the Eclipse Soundscapes: Citizen Science Project (ES:CSP), which documents observations of acoustical changes of nature and ecosystems during solar eclipse events [3]. Inclusivity: A major theme that is necessary for public engagement is inclusivity and the awareness of reaching broader audiences. Outreach to include hearing/seeing impaired communities are still lacking in the sciences. There are several opportunities that the planetary sciences could take. Other projects that have emerged from the space sciences include adding transcripts to visual engagement [4], and the use of 3D printing for the visually-impaired [5]. References: [1] Olgin, J. (2020) 51st LPSC, Abstract 2137. [2] https://scitechdaily.com/outreach-for-nasa-punch-mission-embraces-ancient-and-modern-sun-watching-theme/ [3] https://science.nasa.gov/science-activation-team/eclipse-soundscapes [4] NASA International Observe the Moon Night (Blind and Deaf Accessible), Youtube Video ( https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=neHCfg0S3-Q) [5] Richardson, J., et al. (2018) AGU Fall Meeting, Abstract ED23F-0963.

C J Ahrens↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The International Space Station, Optical Communications, and Delay Tolerant Networking: Towards A Solar System Internet Architecture

As Delay Tolerant Networking (DTN) matures as a software product its use cases have extended to infrastructural and architectural studies, bringing DTN closer to a widespread, operational technology. While it is known that a DTN can be configured, given complete information about a system of nodes, to provision a system with a complete network capability, what remains is to tackle practical considerations such as scalability, networking best practices, and how to establish service providers. In this paper, we document progress towards a scalable DTN architecture that was tested across multiple organizational and project boundaries; our approach was tested across nodes flying on the International Space Station (ISS) connected to a ground network. The network consists of four main network areas: the ISS, the White Sands Complex (WSC), the Mission Cloud Platform (MCP), and NASA’s Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC). The connections on the ground (WSC, MCP, and HOSC) are straightforward technically, but represent administrative and non-technical challenges that had to be overcome. The connection from the ISS to WSC was realized through a hybrid optical/RF means. In particular, NASA’s Integrated Laser Communications Relay Demonstration (LCRD) can form a relay from lowEarth-orbit (LEO) to the Earth, and was used in conjunction with the LCRD LEO User Modem and Amplifier Terminal (ILLUMA-T) on the ISS to form a link to one of three geographically diverse ground stations. A major goal was to achieve communications while keeping the ISS nodes unaware of ground station choices and scheduling. These disparate links were networked using High-rate DTN (HDTN), which enabled the desired architecture. The network architecture, tests, HDTN performance metrics, and general observations made are all discussed in detail, including a discussion on the successful utilization of the DTN security standard known as DTN Bundle Protocol Security (BPSec). We conclude with suggestions for next steps, and in particular focus on extending this architecture to the Near Space Network (NSN) and the upcoming LunaNet.

Alan Hylton↗

NASA NTRS2002

The Civil Aviation Sector in Lebanon: Institutional Reforms - Part 1

Civil aviation is one of the key contributors to a successful economic system. This has been recognized within Lebanon, which is undertaking developing a new civil aviation strategy encompassing a program of organizational reform, coordinated internationally, to meet the challenges of the new century. Such strategy is vital, as it will provide a coherent vision for the sector, compliment the extensive investments deployed by Lebanon in its aviation infrastructure, and guide future planning and investments. The proposed Civil Aviation Strategy for Lebanon has two major components: (1) institutional reform aiming at creating effective overall legal and regulatory frameworks in-line with current international best practice; and (2) implementation of liberalization measures and open skies policy. This paper aims to: (1) present Lebanon's current institutional arrangements; (2) review the institutional arrangements in key select countries (in order to define current trends in best institutional practice); (3) discuss the proposed institutional reform (which are at the basis of Lebanon's Draft Civil Aviation Reform Law) while showing that they conform with the identified best institutional trends; and (4) outline an implementation plan. The Draft Law has been approved by the Council of Ministers and now awaits Parliamentary endorsement.

Baaj, M. Hadi↗

NASA NTRS2017

NASA's Current Initiative to Improve Operations Planning

As a follow-on to the Technical Capability Assessment Team, in 2015 NASA began seven Agency-wide efforts to seek out opportunities to improve the effectiveness of NASA operations. One of these technical teams is the Mission Operations Planning team, charged with increasing interactions and efficiency for planning of mission activities. That team is chaired by the author with representatives from eight other centers across the Agency. As the strategic architects for the vision of agency-wide ops planning, the team has identified a number of new initiatives and techniques to improve planning, including: breaking down walls within centers which obstruct multi-mission planning; breaking down walls agency-wide which obstruct the sharing of ops planning lessons and capabilities; strengthening the community of practice of ops planning capability developers; establishing best practices for a variety of types of ops planning; defining standards for activity plans and timelines, and plan inputs; and recommending the presence of "multi-mission operations champions" within each center to implement these recommendations into the next decade.

Seal, David↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Cloud-Based Solutions for Monitoring Coastal Ecosystems and Prioritization of Restoration Efforts Across Belize

In recent years the availability of automated change detection algorithms in Google Earth Engine has permitted cloud-based processing of large time series of satellite imagery. Models such as the Continuous Change Detection and Classification (CCDC), CCDC-Spectral Mixture Analysis (CCDC-SMA), and Landsat-based Detection of Trends in Disturbance and Recovery (LandTrendr) allow users to exploit decades of Earth Observations (EO) , leveraging the Landsat archive and data from other sensors to detect disturbance in forest ecosystems. Despite the wide adoption of these methods, robust documentation and growing community of users, little research has explored their use in mangrove environments. Mangroves are dynamic environments subject to changes due to not only the natural migration of mudflats but also coastal erosion, urban expansion, aquaculture practices, etc. This work aims to identify best practices for the application of these models to identify and monitor changes in the Belizean mangroves, which experienced an estimated 5.4% decrease in extent between 1980 and 2017 (Cherrington et al. 2020). Partnering directly with the Belizean Forest Department, our team will develop a replicable, efficient methodology to annually update the country’s mangrove extent employing EO-based change detection. This collaboration supports Belize’s marine conservation and climate resilience efforts, such as its Blue Bond agreement with the Nature Conservancy, building on national processes to monitor these critical ecosystems.

Mangroves↗

NASA NTRS2020

Recommendations on Use of Commercial-Off-The-Shelf (COTS) Electrical, Electronic, and Electromechanical (EEE) Parts for NASA Missions

The NASA Electronic Parts & Packaging Program Manager, requested a NASA Engineering and Safety Center independent assessment to summarize Commercial Crew Program and NASA Centers’ current and best practices, and lessons learned, on use of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) for all mission risk classifications, and provide recommendations that could lead to future NASA Electronic Parts and Packaging Program and/or Agency guidance on COTS parts. This document contains the outcome of the assessment.

Commercial-Off-The-Shelf↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Wikipedia for SmallSats: The SSRI Knowledge Base

The Small Satellite Reliability Initiative (SSRI), in conjunction with NASA’s Small Spacecraft Systems Virtual Institute (S3VI), has developed the SSRI Knowledge Base: a comprehensive, publicly available online tool that aims to improve mission confidence for future small spacecraft. This tool provides vetted, high-quality sources of information on key elements of a successful mission. This content includes best practices and lessons learned from previous missions and Knowledge Base “resources”. These resources include publicly available SSRI-generated content in addition to existing guides, publications, standards, software tools, websites, and books. Acknowledging the constant increase and varied sources of small spacecraft knowledge, along with the value and depth of experience that exists beyond any single development team, the SSRI Knowledge Base is designed to be an open, collaborative platform. User participation is essential to the refinement and growth of this tool. Therefore, users are encouraged to rate resources and to contribute content. The SSRI Knowledge Base is hosted at https://www.nasa.gov/smallsat-institute/ssri-knowledge-base. This webinar will discuss the motivation for and development of the SSRI Knowledge Base, demonstrate the existing tool, and outline plans for further development.

SmallSats↗

NASA NTRS1998

The NPG 7120.5A Electronic Review Process

The use of electronics to review a document is well within the technical realm of today's state-of-the-art workplace. File servers and web site interaction are common tools for many NASA employees. The electronic comment processing described here was developed for the NPG 7120.5A review to augment the existing NASA Online Directives Information System (NODIS). The NODIS system is NASA's official system for formal review, approval and storage of NASA Directives. The electronic review process worked so well that NASA and other agencies may want to consider it as one of our "best practices." It was participatory decision making at its very best, a process that attracted dozens of very good ideas to improve the document as well as the way we can be managing projects far more effectively. The revision of NPG 7120.5A has significant implications for the way all elements of the Agency accomplish program and project management. Therefore, the review of NPG 7120.5A was an Agencywide effort with high visibility, heavy participation and a short schedule. The level of involvement created interest in supplementing the formal NODIS system with a system to collect comments efficiently and to allow the Centers and Codes to review and consolidate their comments into the official system in a short period of time. In addition, the Program Management Council Working Group (PMCWG), responsible for the revision of the document and the disposition of official comments, needed an electronic system to manage the disposition of comments, obtain PMCWG consensus on each disposition, and coordinate the disposition with the appropriate Headquarters Code that had submitted the official comment. The combined NASA and contractor talents and resources provided a system that supplemented the NODIS system and its operating personnel to produce a thorough review and approval of NPG 7120.5A on April 3, 1998, 7.5 months from the start of the process. The original six-month schedule is indicated. All milestones occurred on time, except for completion of comment disposition, which required an additional 30 days. Approval of the document occurred sixteen days after completion of the "Purple Package."

McBrayer, Robert↗

NASA NTRS2007

Strategies for Information Retrieval and Virtual Teaming to Mitigate Risk on NASA's Missions

Following the loss of NASA's Space Shuttle Columbia in 2003, it was determined that problems in the agency's organization created an environment that led to the accident. One component of the proposed solution resulted in the formation of the NASA Engineering Network (NEN), a suite of information retrieval and knowledge sharing tools. This paper describes the implementation of this set of search, portal, content management, and semantic technologies, including a unique meta search capability for data from distributed engineering resources. NEN's communities of practice are formed along engineering disciplines where users leverage their knowledge and best practices to collaborate and take informal learning back to their personal jobs and embed it into the procedures of the agency. These results offer insight into using traditional engineering disciplines for virtual teaming and problem solving.

communities of practices↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Modern Scientific Data Governance Framework

Science has entered the era of Big Data with new challenges related to data governance, stewardship, and management. The existing data governance practices must catch up to ensure proper data management. Existing data governance policies and stewardship best practices tend to be disconnected from operational data management practices and enforcement and mainly exist in well-meaning documents or reports. These governance policies are, at best, partially implemented and rarely monitored or audited. In addition, existing governance policies keep adding additional data management steps that require a human, ‘a data steward’, in the loop, and the cost of data management can no longer scale proportionately with the current and future increased data volume and complexity. The goal for developing an updated data governance framework is to modernize scientific data governance to the reality of Big data and align it with the current technology trends such as cloud computing and AI. The goals of this framework are two folds. One is to ensure thoroughness that the governance adequately covers the entire data life cycle. Two, provide a practical approach that offers a consistent and repeatable process for different projects. Three core principles ground this framework. First, focus on just enough governance and prevent data governance from becoming a roadblock toward the scientific process. Remove any unnecessary processes and steps. Second, automate data management steps where possible. Actively remove steps that require ‘human in the loop’ within the management process to be efficient and scale with increasing data. Third, all the processes should continually be optimized using quantified metrics to streamline the monitoring and auditing workflows.

Rahul Ramachandran↗

NASA NTRS2007

Software Process Assurance for Complex Electronics

Complex Electronics (CE) now perform tasks that were previously handled in software, such as communication protocols. Many methods used to develop software bare a close resemblance to CE development. Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) can have over a million logic gates while system-on-chip (SOC) devices can combine a microprocessor, input and output channels, and sometimes an FPGA for programmability. With this increased intricacy, the possibility of software-like bugs such as incorrect design, logic, and unexpected interactions within the logic is great. With CE devices obscuring the hardware/software boundary, we propose that mature software methodologies may be utilized with slight modifications in the development of these devices. Software Process Assurance for Complex Electronics (SPACE) is a research project that used standardized S/W Assurance/Engineering practices to provide an assurance framework for development activities. Tools such as checklists, best practices and techniques were used to detect missing requirements and bugs earlier in the development cycle creating a development process for CE that was more easily maintained, consistent and configurable based on the device used.

Plastow, Richard A.↗

NASA NTRS2007

Software Process Assurance for Complex Electronics (SPACE)

Complex Electronics (CE) are now programmed to perform tasks that were previously handled in software, such as communication protocols. Many of the methods used to develop software bare a close resemblance to CE development. For instance, Field Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) can have over a million logic gates while system-on-chip (SOC) devices can combine a microprocessor, input and output channels, and sometimes an FPGA for programmability. With this increased intricacy, the possibility of software-like bugs such as incorrect design, logic, and unexpected interactions within the logic is great. Since CE devices are obscuring the hardware/software boundary, we propose that mature software methodologies may be utilized with slight modifications in the development of these devices. Software Process Assurance for Complex Electronics (SPACE) is a research project that looks at using standardized S/W Assurance/Engineering practices to provide an assurance framework for development activities. Tools such as checklists, best practices and techniques can be used to detect missing requirements and bugs earlier in the development cycle creating a development process for CE that will be more easily maintained, consistent and configurable based on the device used.

Plastow, Richard A.↗

NASA NTRS2018

Information Quality Cluster and Usability

The Information Quality Cluster (IQC) of the Federation of Earth Science Information Partners (ESIP) has been active since 2014 with membership from multiple organizations including NASA and NOAA. The purpose of this presentation is to foster collaboration between the IQC and the ESIP Usability Cluster. The IQC's activities are motivated partly by the guidelines on information quality from several federal agencies. The agencies developed the guidelines complying with a request in 2002 from the Office of Management and Budget (OMB). The OMB request resulted from a congressional mandate, namely, Section 515 of the Treasury and General Government Appropriations Act for Fiscal Year 2001 (Public Law 106-554; H.R. 5658). NASA's guidelines, for example, emphasize the need for high information quality indicating the various types of public users of information from NASA's missions and programs. The IQC's vision is to become an authoritative and responsive resource of information and guidance to data providers on how best to implement data quality standards and best practices, so that the implementations comply with the various agencies' guidelines, as well as provide users with the best quality of information possible. The IQC interacts with various national and international organizations and encourages collaboration for exchange of information. The IQC considers four aspects of information quality: Scientific Quality, Product Quality, Stewardship Quality and Service Quality. The IQC has considered several use cases to identify issues in capturing, describing, providing access to, and enabling use of information on quality. Several of these use cases point to issues about the usability of information. Collaboration between the IQC and Usability Cluster will be beneficial for arriving at solutions to such issues.

Remote Sensing; Data Systems; Information Quality;↗