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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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NASA NTRS2023

Bacillus Subtilis Engineered for Aerospace Medicine: A Platform for Off-Planet Production of Pharmaceutical Peptides

Biologics, such as pharmaceutical peptides, have notoriously short shelf lives, insufficient for long-duration space flight missions to the Moon or Mars. To enable the sustainable presence of humans on the Moon or Mars, we must develop methods for on-site production of pharmaceutical peptides in space, a concept we call the Astropharmacy. Here, we present a proof-of-concept for the first step needed: a low-mass system for pharmaceutical production designed to be stable in space. To demonstrate feasibility, we engineered strains of the space-hardy spore-forming bacterium, Bacillus subtilis, to secrete two pharmaceutical peptides important for astronaut health: teriparatide (an anabolic agent for combating osteoporosis) and filgrastim (an effective countermeasure for radiation-induced neutropenia). We found that the secretion peptides from the walM and yoqH genes of B. subtilis worked well for secreting teriparatide and filgrastim, respectively. In consideration of the Translational Research Institute for Space Health (TRISH) challenge to produce a dose equivalent in 24 h, dried spores of our engineered strains were used to produce 1 dose equivalent of teriparatide from a 2 mL culture and 1 dose equivalent of filgrastim from 52 mL of culture in 24 h. Further optimization of strain growth conditions, expression conditions, and promoter sequences should allow for higher production rates to be achieved. These strains provide the template for future optimization efforts and address the first step in the Astropharmacy, capable of on-site production, purification, and processing of biopharmaceutical compounds in platforms amenable for use in space.

Alec Vallota-Eastman↗
NASA NTRS1995

Portable Computer Technology (PCT) Research and Development Program Phase 2

The subject of this project report, focused on: (1) Design and development of two Advanced Portable Workstation 2 (APW 2) units. These units incorporate advanced technology features such as a low power Pentium processor, a high resolution color display, National Television Standards Committee (NTSC) video handling capabilities, a Personal Computer Memory Card International Association (PCMCIA) interface, and Small Computer System Interface (SCSI) and ethernet interfaces. (2) Use these units to integrate and demonstrate advanced wireless network and portable video capabilities. (3) Qualification of the APW 2 systems for use in specific experiments aboard the Mir Space Station. A major objective of the PCT Phase 2 program was to help guide future choices in computing platforms and techniques for meeting National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) mission objectives. The focus being on the development of optimal configurations of computing hardware, software applications, and network technologies for use on NASA missions.

Castillo, Michael↗
NASA NTRS2014

In-Situ and Remote-Sensing Data Fusion Using Machine Learning Techniques to Infer Urban and Fire Related Pollution Plumes

Airmass type characterization is key in understanding the relative contribution of various emission sources to atmospheric composition and air quality and can be useful in bottom-up model validation and emission inventories. However, classification of pollution plumes from space is often not trivial. Sub-orbital campaigns, such as SEAC4RS (Studies of Emissions, Atmospheric Composition, Clouds and Climate Coupling by Regional Surveys) give us a unique opportunity to study atmospheric composition in detail, by using a vast suite of in-situ instruments for the detection of trace gases and aerosols. These measurements allow identification of spatial and temporal atmospheric composition changes due to various pollution plumes resulting from urban, biogenic and smoke emissions. Nevertheless, to transfer the knowledge gathered from such campaigns into a global spatial and temporal context, there is a need to develop workflow that can be applicable to measurements from space. In this work we rely on sub-orbital in-situ and total column remote sensing measurements of various pollution plumes taken aboard the NASA DC-8 during 2013 SEAC4RS campaign, linking them through a neural-network (NN) algorithm to allow inference of pollution plume types by input of columnar aerosol and trace-gas measurements. In particular, we use the 4STAR (Spectrometer for Sky-Scanning, Sun-Tracking Atmospheric Research) airborne measurements of wavelength dependent aerosol optical depth (AOD), particle size proxies, O3, NO2 and water vapor to classify different pollution plumes. Our method relies on assigning a-priori ground-truth labeling to the various plumes, which include urban pollution, different fire types (i.e. forest and agriculture) and fire stage (i.e. fresh and aged) using cluster analysis of aerosol and trace-gases in-situ and auxiliary (e.g. trajectory) data and the training of a NN scheme to fit the best prediction parameters using 4STAR measurements as input. We explore our misclassification rates as related to our ground-truth labels, and with multi-layered pollution plume cases. The next step in our analysis is to optimize parameter selection for a scheme that can be applied to space-borne aerosol and trace-gas observation platforms such as OMI, and future geostationary satellites such as TEMPO and GEO-CAPE.

Neural-network↗
NASA NTRS2018

Development of a 50 mK - 10 K Flight-Worthy Vibration-Free Continuous Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigerator

The cryogenics and fluids branch at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is currently developing a flight-worthy vibration-free 50 mK to 10 K Continous Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigerator (CADR) that will potentially serve as the cooling scheme for future space flight missions such as OST, LUVOIR, and other flagship missions. This 7 stage CADR will lift 6 microW of heat at its lowest stage and reject heat to a temperature platform at 10 K. A single stage 4 - 10 K flight-worthy ADR unit was recently demonstrated with an optimized cycle time of 132 seconds and a heat lift of ~13 mW at 4 K. We discuss the development progress and details of its desing in this presentation.

ADR↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

SimUAM: A Comprehensive Microsimulation Toolchain to Evaluate the Impact of Urban Air Mobility in Metropolitan Areas

Over the past several years, Urban Air Mobility (UAM) has galvanized enthusiasm from investors and researchers, marrying expertise in aircraft design, transportation, logistics, artificial intelligence, battery chemistry, and broader policymaking. However, two significant questions remain unexplored: (1) What is the value of UAM in a region’s transportation network? and (2) How can UAM be effectively deployed to realize and maximize this value to all stakeholders, including riders and local economies? To adequately understand the value proposition of UAM for metropolitan areas, the authors develop a holistic multi-modal toolchain, SimUAM, to model and simulate UAM and its impacts on travel behavior. This toolchain has several components: (1) Microsimulation Analysis for Network Traffic Assignment (MANTA): A fast, high-fidelity regional-scale traffic microsimulator, (2) VertiSim: Agranular, discrete-event vertiport and pedestrian simulator, (3) Flexible Engine for Fast-time Evaluation of Flight Environments (Fe3): A high-fidelity, trajectory-based aerial microsimulation. SimUAM, rooted in granular, GPU-based microsimulation, models millions of trips and their movements in the street network and in the air, producing interpretable and actionable performance metrics for UAM designs and deployments. Once the ground-air interface is modeled, the authors find that the market for UAM decreases across all network designs relative to models with static assumptions about transfer times. However, significant improvements can be made to balance the demand and optimize the networks for transfer time, likely increasing the number of benefited trips. The modularity, extensibility, and speed of the platform will allow for rapid scenario planning and sensitivity analysis, effectively acting as a detailed performance assessment tool.

urban air mobility↗
NASA NTRS1998

Fuzzy Adaptive Control for Intelligent Autonomous Space Exploration Problems

The principal objective of the research reported here is the re-design, analysis and optimization of our newly developed neural network fuzzy adaptive controller model for complex processes capable of learning fuzzy control rules using process data and improving its control through on-line adaption. The learned improvement is according to a performance objective function that provides evaluative feedback; this performance objective is broadly defined to meet long-range goals over time. Although fuzzy control had proven effective for complex, nonlinear, imprecisely-defined processes for which standard models and controls are either inefficient, impractical or cannot be derived, the state of the art prior to our work showed that procedures for deriving fuzzy control, however, were mostly ad hoc heuristics. The learning ability of neural networks was exploited to systematically derive fuzzy control and permit on-line adaption and in the process optimize control. The operation of neural networks integrates very naturally with fuzzy logic. The neural networks which were designed and tested using simulation software and simulated data, followed by realistic industrial data were reconfigured for application on several platforms as well as for the employment of improved algorithms. The statistical procedures of the learning process were investigated and evaluated with standard statistical procedures (such as ANOVA, graphical analysis of residuals, etc.). The computational advantage of dynamic programming-like methods of optimal control was used to permit on-line fuzzy adaptive control. Tests for the consistency, completeness and interaction of the control rules were applied. Comparisons to other methods and controllers were made so as to identify the major advantages of the resulting controller model. Several specific modifications and extensions were made to the original controller. Additional modifications and explorations have been proposed for further study. Some of these are in progress in our laboratory while others await additional support. All of these enhancements will improve the attractiveness of the controller as an effective tool for the on line control of an array of complex process environments.

Esogbue, Augustine O.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Safe and Optimal Techniques Enabling Recovery, Integrity, and Assurance

There is a trend in the aviation industry to go from federated to integrated computing systems. Combining a number of traditional stand-alone federated systems into an integrated common platform (called Integrated Modular Avionics, IMA) has the benefit of increased power efficiency, reduced support hardware, and reduced cabling. However, changing from federated to integrated has a significant impact on the system architecture and hence the process of how avionic systems are to be analyzed. Traditional approaches to safety analysis become inefficient when functional boundaries can no longer be assumed for failure independence and fault isolation. In this report, we describe a tool that we developed to accelerate the safety engineer's ability to perform safety analysis of IMA systems through modeling, as well as optimize the system engineer's ability to develop a system through architecture synthesis. This work was the result of a three-year research effort called SOTERIA (Safe and Optimal Techniques Enabling Recovery, Integrity, and Assurance). We developed a compositional modeling language that supports rapid development, modification, and evaluation of architectures. The modeling language is structured such that the end-user defines a library of components with information on component reliability, connectivity, and fault propagation logic. The system model is built by instantiating the components from the library, connecting the components, and identifying the top-level faults of interest. Our tool is compositional in that the end-user only needs to define safety aspects at the component level. The tool takes the model and automatically synthesizes both the qualitative and quantitative safety analyses. We go further by allowing users to describe system information such as components to use in an architecture and their connection compatibility and automatically synthesize an architecture that meets the top-level probability target adhering to end-user specified constraints. This capability allows users to rapidly explore a design space..

Siu, Kit Y.↗
NASA NTRS2006

Implementing Scientific Simulation Codes Highly Tailored for Vector Architectures Using Custom Configurable Computing Machines

The motivation for this work comes from an observation that amidst the push for Massively Parallel (MP) solutions to high-end computing problems such as numerical physical simulations, large amounts of legacy code exist that are highly optimized for vector supercomputers. Because re-hosting legacy code often requires a complete re-write of the original code, which can be a very long and expensive effort, this work examines the potential to exploit reconfigurable computing machines in place of a vector supercomputer to implement an essentially unmodified legacy source code. Custom and reconfigurable computing resources could be used to emulate an original application's target platform to the extent required to achieve high performance. To arrive at an architecture that delivers the desired performance subject to limited resources involves solving a multi-variable optimization problem with constraints. Prior research in the area of reconfigurable computing has demonstrated that designing an optimum hardware implementation of a given application under hardware resource constraints is an NP-complete problem. The premise of the approach is that the general issue of applying reconfigurable computing resources to the implementation of an application, maximizing the performance of the computation subject to physical resource constraints, can be made a tractable problem by assuming a computational paradigm, such as vector processing. This research contributes a formulation of the problem and a methodology to design a reconfigurable vector processing implementation of a given application that satisfies a performance metric. A generic, parametric, architectural framework for vector processing implemented in reconfigurable logic is developed as a target for a scheduling/mapping algorithm that maps an input computation to a given instance of the architecture. This algorithm is integrated with an optimization framework to arrive at a specification of the architecture parameters that attempts to minimize execution time, while staying within resource constraints. The flexibility of using a custom reconfigurable implementation is exploited in a unique manner to leverage the lessons learned in vector supercomputer development. The vector processing framework is tailored to the application, with variable parameters that are fixed in traditional vector processing. Benchmark data that demonstrates the functionality and utility of the approach is presented. The benchmark data includes an identified bottleneck in a real case study example vector code, the NASA Langley Terminal Area Simulation System (TASS) application.

Rutishauser, David↗
NASA NTRS1978

The ISEE 1 and 2 Medium Energy Particles Experiment

The Medium Energy Particles Experiment (MEPE) on board ISEE 1 and 2 consists of the WIM instrument on ISEE 1 and the KED instrument on ISEE 2. Both instruments employ solid-state detectors and magnetic analysis to measure the angular, energy, and intensity distributions of protons (ions) above 24 keV and electrons above 20 keV. The WIM instrument also includes a composition measurement employing Delta E-by-E and time-of-flight techniques. Three-parameter analysis is performed above 250 keV/nucleon, and single parameter analysis is performed above 125 keV/nucleon for helium through oxygen. Three-dimensional angular distributions are obtained through the use of a scan platform in the WIM instrument and multiple detector heads in the KED instrument. A variety of operational modes are used to optimize data collection from both instruments. Resolutions up to 128 channels in energy, 192 samples over the unit sphere in angle, and 0.095 sec in time are available.

Williams, D. J.↗
NASA NTRS1981

Materials experiment carrier concepts definition study. Volume 1: Executive summary, part 2

The materials experiment carrier (MEC) is an optimized carrier for near term and advanced materials processing in space (MPS) research and commercial payloads. When coupled with the space platform (SP), the MEC can provide the extended duration, high power and low acceleration environment the MPS payload typically requires. The lowest cost, technically reasonable first step MEC that meets the MPS program missions objectives with minimum programmatic risks is defined. The effectiveness of the initial MEC/space platform idea for accommodating high priority, multidiscipline, R&D and commercial MPS payloads, and conducting MPS payload oprations at affordable funding and acceptable productivity levels is demonstrated.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2004

Weight Optimization of Active Thermal Management Using a Novel Heat Pump

Efficient lightweight power generation and thermal management are two important aspects for space applications. Weight is added to the space platforms due to the inherent weight of the onboard power generation equipment and the additional weight of the required thermal management systems. Thermal management of spacecraft relies on rejection of heat via radiation, a process that can result in large radiator mass, depending upon the heat rejection temperature. For some missions, it is advantageous to incorporate an active thermal management system, allowing the heat rejection temperature to be greater than the load temperature. This allows a reduction of radiator mass at the expense of additional system complexity. A particular type of active thermal management system is based on a thermodynamic cycle, developed by the authors, called the Solar Integrated Thermal Management and Power (SITMAP) cycle. This system has been a focus of the authors research program in the recent past (see Fig. 1). One implementation of the system requires no moving parts, which decreases the vibration level and enhances reliability. Compression of the refrigerant working fluid is accomplished in this scheme via an ejector.

Lear, William E.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Smart Crop Farming Systems for Artemis Exploration Missions

Space crop production systems that mitigate risks of crew poor performance or illness due to inadequate food and nutrition are needed during manned Artemis exploration missions beyond LEO. Prototype farms must be designed for deployment on ISS and tested in manned platforms: Gateway, lunar habitats, and Mars trans-hab spacecraft in preparation for human missions to Mars. Food production must be optimal and safe for human consumption. Thus, plant growth facilities (i.e. Veggie and APH) can be enhanced with imaging systems (including hyperspectral, multispectral, lidar, and fluorescence imaging systems) for nondestructive monitoring of plant health, stress and assessing food safety. Databases of crop responses to stress obtained during ground studies can be used to develop novel artificial intelligence (AI) algorithms for optimizing crop production (i.e. environmental settings during growth) and for detecting crop indices that ensure food safety. Future farming systems should be sustainable and smart. Novel adaptive AI algorithms requiring limited data sets for calibration are needed for reducing crew intervention during plant cultivation except for maintenance and harvesting events. Eventually, AI driven control systems that include autonomous planting, growing, and harvesting as well as periodic sanitization need evaluation for supplementing crew diets with fresh produce during future Mars exploration missions.

O Monje↗
NASA NTRS2012

Simulation Framework to Estimate the Performance of CO2 and O2 Sensing from Space and Airborne Platforms for the ASCENDS Mission Requirements Analysis

The Active Sensing of CO2 Emissions over Nights Days and Seasons (ASCENDS) mission recommended by the NRC Decadal Survey has a desired accuracy of 0.3% in carbon dioxide mixing ratio (XCO2) retrievals requiring careful selection and optimization of the instrument parameters. NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) is investigating 1.57 micron carbon dioxide as well as the 1.26-1.27 micron oxygen bands for our proposed ASCENDS mission requirements investigation. Simulation studies are underway for these bands to select optimum instrument parameters. The simulations are based on a multi-wavelength lidar modeling framework being developed at NASA LaRC to predict the performance of CO2 and O2 sensing from space and airborne platforms. The modeling framework consists of a lidar simulation module and a line-by-line calculation component with interchangeable lineshape routines to test the performance of alternative lineshape models in the simulations. As an option the line-by-line radiative transfer model (LBLRTM) program may also be used for line-by-line calculations. The modeling framework is being used to perform error analysis, establish optimum measurement wavelengths as well as to identify the best lineshape models to be used in CO2 and O2 retrievals. Several additional programs for HITRAN database management and related simulations are planned to be included in the framework. The description of the modeling framework with selected results of the simulation studies for CO2 and O2 sensing is presented in this paper.

Plitau, Denis↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Thinking Big and Broad About Isolation and Confinement Analogs: A Community Panel Discussion

As crewed spaceflight missions are set to explore greater distances from Earth and fly longer durations than ever before, we must expand our understanding of the impacts of prolonged isolation and confinement on the health, performance, and well-being of astronauts. In combination with flight research, ground-based analogs that simulate key mission conditions like the social and physical isolation associated with distance from Earth are essential research platforms for characterizing risk and developing validated and feasible countermeasures that support future crews and ground support teams. With several isolation and confinement analogs currently operating, and even more in development, there is great opportunity for a collaborative global analog environment to complement and optimize research efforts. The Research Operations and Integration team will moderate a panel discussion among analog operators and scientists who utilize isolation and confinement analogs. The focus of discussion will be the potential for strategic coordination, portability, and harmonization of science across different platforms; and identifying the valuable similarities and differences among isolation analogs as well as existing gaps within the analog community. A Q&A session will follow with attendees encouraged to ask questions and join in the discussion.

Reanna Elise Whiting↗
NASA NTRS1993

An optimization-based integrated controls-structures design methodology for flexible space structures

An approach for an optimization-based integrated controls-structures design is presented for a class of flexible spacecraft that require fine attitude pointing and vibration suppression. The integrated design problem is posed in the form of simultaneous optimization of both structural and control design variables. The approach is demonstrated by application to the integrated design of a generic space platform and to a model of a ground-based flexible structure. The numerical results obtained indicate that the integrated design approach can yield spacecraft designs that have substantially superior performance over a conventional design wherein the structural and control designs are performed sequentially. For example, a 40-percent reduction in the pointing error is observed along with a slight reduction in mass, or an almost twofold increase in the controlled performance is indicated with more than a 5-percent reduction in the overall mass of the spacecraft (a reduction of hundreds of kilograms).

Maghami, Peiman G.↗
NASA NTRS2008

Toward Optimal Transport Networks

Strictly evolutionary approaches to improving the air transport system a highly complex network of interacting systems no longer suffice in the face of demand that is projected to double or triple in the near future. Thus evolutionary approaches should be augmented with active design methods. The ability to actively design, optimize and control a system presupposes the existence of predictive modeling and reasonably well-defined functional dependences between the controllable variables of the system and objective and constraint functions for optimization. Following recent advances in the studies of the effects of network topology structure on dynamics, we investigate the performance of dynamic processes on transport networks as a function of the first nontrivial eigenvalue of the network's Laplacian, which, in turn, is a function of the network s connectivity and modularity. The last two characteristics can be controlled and tuned via optimization. We consider design optimization problem formulations. We have developed a flexible simulation of network topology coupled with flows on the network for use as a platform for computational experiments.

Alexandrov, Natalia↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Enabling a Voice Management System for Space Applications

The sustainable missions beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) envisioned for NASA’s Artemis program will require autonomous capabilities. Moreover, Artemis mission crews will need a means to efficiently interact with a spacecraft’s autonomous systems. This interaction can be facilitated by voice and speech communications because voice-based controls enable users to interact hands- and eyes-free, allowing the user to better focus on critical tasks. The goal of our project was to explore the knowledge and technology needed to successfully design effective Voice User Interfaces (VUIs) for autonomous systems utilizing Human Centered Design (HCD) principles. The focus of the human factors’ aspect of engineering, pays close attention to psychological and physiological principles in the development of autonomous crew operation systems. A main objective was to understand how a crew member, through voice interaction, could efficiently and intuitively communicate with a notional autonomous vehicle system manager. This project was a part of the NASA Moon to Mars eXploration Systems and Habitation (M2M X-Hab) 2020 Academic Innovation Challenge. The work from the BLiSS Team, at the University of Michigan, resulted in the design of a system persona, Diego, to which an astronaut may quickly build trust with autonomous systems, to alleviate known stressors on mental health expected during long duration space missions. Optimal software to facilitate integration of the system persona into a reference Lunar orbiting Gateway station was defined. Additionally, a Speech to Text (STT) system and a Graphical User Interface (GUI) that could be implemented in future missions was developed on an Internet of Things (IOT) platform. The Voice User Interface (VUI) design for the M2M X-Hab 2020 project leveraged previous technology developed by the BLiSS team to incorporate a voice-based interface into NASA’s Platform for Autonomous Systems (NPAS) software. This required technologies to convert voice to text, conduct semantic interpretations, and convert responses from the autonomous system to text and to speech; additionally, the spacecraft background noise environment was assessed, a noise mitigation technique was developed, and a relatable personality for the autonomous system was developed in order to facilitate human-like conversations. The success of our effort was largely due to the diversity of the team that included expertise in Space Systems Engineering, Human Computer Interaction, Aerospace Engineering, Computer Science, Biomedical Engineering, and Applied Physics. The diverse perspectives fostered elaborate discussions, resulting in the conception of three main subsystems: (1) User-System, (2) NPAS-System, and (3) Environment-System. The VUI was unique and had to be efficient and intuitive. For this project, 5 subteams were formed, each with a separate objective, Voice Design team, Background Noise Mitigation team, Software Integration team and Graphical User Interface team. The BLiSS team crafted a personality for the VUI to enable human-like conversation and drive user adoption and trust. User surveys were completed and used to help determine the required VUI system personality traits by capturing perspectives and expectations of prospective “Artemis Generation Astronauts”. To further simulate human-like conversations, the system had to be able to quickly interpret user speech and be able to integrate with NASA’s NPAS platform for quick and reliable information transfer. The outcomes of our research were: (1) a working prototype user interface, that is compatible with NASA’s NPAS platform; (2) software that demonstrates the ability of the VUI system to interpret user requests and respond appropriately; (3) the capability to implement fully expanded conversations between user and system using intuitive communication in four request categories; and (4) software and hardware recommendations that optimize the system’s ability to operate in a noisy environment. Our research has laid the foundation for the development of VUI’s for autonomy, and provides a baseline for future VUI developments.

Voice user interface↗
NASA NTRS2014

An Optimizing Space Data-Communications Scheduling Method and Algorithm with Interference Mitigation, Generalized for a Broad Class of Optimization Problems

NASA's space data-communications infrastructure-the Space Network and the Ground Network-provide scheduled (as well as some limited types of unscheduled) data-communications services to user spacecraft. The Space Network operates several orbiting geostationary platforms (the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS)), each with its own servicedelivery antennas onboard. The Ground Network operates service-delivery antennas at ground stations located around the world. Together, these networks enable data transfer between user spacecraft and their mission control centers on Earth. Scheduling data-communications events for spacecraft that use the NASA communications infrastructure-the relay satellites and the ground stations-can be accomplished today with software having an operational heritage dating from the 1980s or earlier. An implementation of the scheduling methods and algorithms disclosed and formally specified herein will produce globally optimized schedules with not only optimized service delivery by the space data-communications infrastructure but also optimized satisfaction of all user requirements and prescribed constraints, including radio frequency interference (RFI) constraints. Evolutionary algorithms, a class of probabilistic strategies for searching large solution spaces, is the essential technology invoked and exploited in this disclosure. Also disclosed are secondary methods and algorithms for optimizing the execution efficiency of the schedule-generation algorithms themselves. The scheduling methods and algorithms as presented are adaptable to accommodate the complexity of scheduling the civilian and/or military data-communications infrastructure within the expected range of future users and space- or ground-based service-delivery assets. Finally, the problem itself, and the methods and algorithms, are generalized and specified formally. The generalized methods and algorithms are applicable to a very broad class of combinatorial-optimization problems that encompasses, among many others, the problem of generating optimal space-data communications schedules.

ground stations↗