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NASA NTRS1994

Re-Engineering the Multimission Command System at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory

This paper will discuss the design and implementation of the command software, especially trade-offs and lessons learned from practical operational use in JPL's Advanced Multimission Operations System.The command system provides an advanced multimission environment for secure, concurrent commanding of multiple spacecraft. The lessons learned have resulted in a re-engineering of the command system, especially in its user interface and new automation capabilities. This paper will also discuss new development work including a multimission command database toolkit, a universal command translator for sequencing and real-time commands, and incorporation of telecommand capabilities for new missions.

re-engineering↗
NASA NTRS2017

User Needs and Advances in Space Wireless Sensing and Communications

Decades of space exploration and technology trends for future missions show the need for new approaches in space/planetary sensor networks, observatories, internetworking, and communications/data delivery to Earth. The User Needs to be discussed in this talk includes interviews with several scientists and reviews of mission concepts for the next generation of sensors, observatories, and planetary surface missions. These observatories, sensors are envisioned to operate in extreme environments, with advanced autonomy, whereby sometimes communication to Earth is intermittent and delayed. These sensor nodes require software defined networking capabilities in order to learn and adapt to the environment, collect science data, internetwork, and communicate. Also, some user cases require the level of intelligence to manage network functions (either as a host), mobility, security, and interface data to the physical radio/optical layer. For instance, on a planetary surface, autonomous sensor nodes would create their own ad-hoc network, with some nodes handling communication capabilities between the wireless sensor networks and orbiting relay satellites. A section of this talk will cover the advances in space communication and internetworking to support future space missions. NASA's Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) program continues to evolve with the development of optical communication, a new vision of the integrated network architecture with more capabilities, and the adoption of CCSDS space internetworking protocols. Advances in wireless communications hardware and electronics have enabled software defined networking (DVB-S2, VCM, ACM, DTN, Ad hoc, etc.) protocols for improved wireless communication and network management. Developing technologies to fulfil these user needs for wireless communications and adoption of standardized communication/internetworking protocols will be a huge benefit to future planetary missions, space observatories, and manned missions to other planets.

Kegege, Obadiah↗
NASA NTRS2001

A Space Based Internet Protocol System for Sub-Orbital Tracking and Control

Personnel from the Goddard Space Flight Center Wallops Flight Facility (GSFC/WFF) in Virginia are responsible for the overall management of the NASA Sounding Rocket Program. Payloads are generally in support of NASA's Space Science Enterprise's missions and return a variety of scientific data as well as providing a reasonably economical means of conducting engineering tests for instruments and devices used on satellites and other spacecraft. The fifteen types of sounding rockets used by NASA can carry payloads of various weights to altitudes from 50 km to more than 1,300 km. Launch activities are conducted not only from established missile ranges, but also from remote locations worldwide requiring mobile tracking and command equipment to be transported and set up at considerable expense. The advent of low earth orbit (LEO) commercial communications satellites provides an opportunity to dramatically reduce tracking and control costs of launch vehicles and Unpiloted Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) by reducing or eliminating this ground infrastructure. Additionally, since data transmission is by packetized Internet Protocol (IP), data can be received and commands initiated from practically any location. A low cost Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) system is currently under development for sounding rockets which also has application to UAVs and scientific balloons. Due to relatively low data rate (9600 baud) currently available, the system will first be used to provide GPS data for tracking and vehicle recovery. Range safety requirements for launch vehicles usually stipulate at least two independent tracking sources. Most sounding rockets flown by NASA now carry GPS receivers that output position data via the payload telemetry system to the ground station. The Flight Modem can be configured as a completely separate link thereby eliminating requirement for tracking radar. The system architecture which integrates antennas, GPS receiver, commercial satellite packet data modem, and a single board computer with custom software is described along with the technical challenges and the plan for their resolution. These include antenna development, high Doppler rates, reliability, environmental ruggedness, hand over between satellites and data security. An aggressive test plan is included which in addition to environmental testing measures bit error rate, latency and antenna patterns. Actual flight tests are planned for the near future on aircraft, long duration balloons and sounding rockets and these results as well as the current status of the project are reported.

Bull, Barton↗
NASA NTRS2001

A Space Based Internet Protocol System for Launch Vehicle Tracking and Control

Personnel from the Goddard Space Flight Center Wallops Flight Facility (GSFC/WFF) in Virginia are responsible for the overall management of the NASA Sounding Rocket and Scientific Balloon Programs. Payloads are generally in support of NASA's Space Science Enterprise's missions and return a variety of scientific data as well as providing a reasonably economical means of conducting engineering tests for instruments and devices used on satellites and other spacecraft. Sounding rockets used by NASA can carry payloads of various weights to altitudes from 50 km to more than 1,300 km. Scientific balloons can carry a payload weighing as much as 3,630 Kg to an altitude of 42 km. Launch activities for both are conducted not only from established ranges, but also from remote locations worldwide requiring mobile tracking and command equipment to be transported and set up at considerable expense. The advent of low earth orbit (LEO) commercial communications satellites provides an opportunity to dramatically reduce tracking and control costs of these launch vehicles and Unpiloted Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) by reducing or eliminating this ground infrastructure. Additionally, since data transmission is by packetized Internet Protocol (IP), data can be received and commands initiated from practically any location. A low cost Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) system is currently under development for sounding rockets that also has application to UAVs and scientific balloons. Due to relatively low data rate (9600 baud) currently available, the system will first be used to provide GPS data for tracking and vehicle recovery. Range safety requirements for launch vehicles usually stipulate at least two independent tracking sources. Most sounding rockets flown by NASA now carry GP~ receivers that output position data via the payload telemetry system to the ground station. The Flight Modem can be configured as a completely separate link thereby eliminating the requirement for tracking radar. The system architecture that integrates antennas, GPS receiver, commercial satellite packet data modem, and a single board computer with custom software is described along with the technical challenges and the plan for their resolution. These include antenna development, high Doppler rates, reliability, environmental ruggedness, hand over between satellites, and data security. An aggressive test plan is included which, in addition to environmental testing, measures bit error rate, latency and antenna patterns. Actual launches on a sounding rocket and various aircraft flights have taken place. Flight tests are planned for the near future on aircraft, long duration balloons and sounding rockets. These results, as well as the current status of the project, are reported.

Bull, Barton↗
NASA NTRS2009

Controlling Infrastructure Costs: Right-Sizing the Mission Control Facility

Johnson Space Center's Mission Control Center is a space vehicle, space program agnostic facility. The current operational design is essentially identical to the original facility architecture that was developed and deployed in the mid-90's. In an effort to streamline the support costs of the mission critical facility, the Mission Operations Division (MOD) of Johnson Space Center (JSC) has sponsored an exploratory project to evaluate and inject current state-of-the-practice Information Technology (IT) tools, processes and technology into legacy operations. The general push in the IT industry has been trending towards a data-centric computer infrastructure for the past several years. Organizations facing challenges with facility operations costs are turning to creative solutions combining hardware consolidation, virtualization and remote access to meet and exceed performance, security, and availability requirements. The Operations Technology Facility (OTF) organization at the Johnson Space Center has been chartered to build and evaluate a parallel Mission Control infrastructure, replacing the existing, thick-client distributed computing model and network architecture with a data center model utilizing virtualization to provide the MCC Infrastructure as a Service. The OTF will design a replacement architecture for the Mission Control Facility, leveraging hardware consolidation through the use of blade servers, increasing utilization rates for compute platforms through virtualization while expanding connectivity options through the deployment of secure remote access. The architecture demonstrates the maturity of the technologies generally available in industry today and the ability to successfully abstract the tightly coupled relationship between thick-client software and legacy hardware into a hardware agnostic "Infrastructure as a Service" capability that can scale to meet future requirements of new space programs and spacecraft. This paper discusses the benefits and difficulties that a migration to cloud-based computing philosophies has uncovered when compared to the legacy Mission Control Center architecture. The team consists of system and software engineers with extensive experience with the MCC infrastructure and software currently used to support the International Space Station (ISS) and Space Shuttle program (SSP).

Martin, Keith↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Understanding and Verifying Neural Networks

Deep Neural Networks (DNNs) have gained immense popularity in recent times and have widespread use in applications such as image classification, sentiment analysis, speech recognition and also in safety-critical applications such as autonomous driving. However, they suffer limitations such as lack of explainability and robustness which raise safety and security concerns in their usage. Further, the complex structure and large input spaces of DNNs act as an impediment to thorough verification and testing. The SafeDNN project at the Robust Software Engineering (RSE) group at NASA aims at exploring techniques to ensure that systems that use deep neural networks are safe, robust and interpretable. In this talk, I will be presenting our technique Prophecy that automatically infers formal properties of deep neural network models. The tool extracts patterns based on neuron activations as preconditions that imply certain desirable output properties of the model. I would be highlighting case studies that use Prophecy in obtaining explanations for network decisions, understanding correct and incorrect behavior, providing formal guarantees wrt safety and robustness, and debugging neural network models. We have applied the tool on image classification networks, neural network controllers providing turn advisories in unmanned aircrafts, regression models used for autonomous center-line tracking in aircrafts and neural network object detectors

Deep Neural Networks↗
NASA NTRS2022

A Central Asia Hydrologic Monitoring Dataset for Food and Water Security Applications in Afghanistan

From the Hindu Kush mountains to the Registan Desert, Afghanistan is a diverse landscape where droughts, floods, conflict, and economic market accessibility pose challenges for agricultural livelihoods and food security. The ability to remotely monitor environmental conditions is critical to support decision making for humanitarian assistance. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) Land Data Assimilation System (FLDAS) global and Central Asia data streams provide information on hydrologic states for routine integrated food security analysis. While developed for a specific project, these data are publicly available and useful for other applications that require hydrologic estimates of the water and energy balance. These two data streams are unique because of their suitability for routine monitoring, as well as for being a historical record for computing relative indicators of water availability. The global stream is available at ∼ 1-month latency, and monthly average outputs are on a 10 km grid from 1982–present. The second data stream, Central Asia (21–56°N, 30–100°E), at ∼ 1 d latency, provides daily average outputs on a 1 km grid from 2000–present. This paper describes the configuration of the two FLDAS data streams, background on the software modeling framework, selected meteorological inputs and parameters, and results from previous evaluation studies. We also provide additional analysis of precipitation and snow cover over Afghanistan. We conclude with an example of how these data are used in integrated food security analysis. For use in new and innovative studies that will improve understanding of this region, these data are hosted by U.S. Geological Survey data portals and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The Central Asia data described in this paper can be accessed via the NASA repository at https://doi.org/10.5067/VQ4CD3Y9YC0R (Jacob and Slinski, 2021), and the global data described in this paper can be accessed via the NASA repository at https://doi.org/10.5067/5NHC22T9375G (McNally, 2018).

Amy McNally↗
NASA NTRS2001

The Paperless Solution

REI Systems, Inc. developed a software solution that uses the Internet to eliminate the paperwork typically required to document and manage complex business processes. The data management solution, called Electronic Handbooks (EHBs), is presently used for the entire SBIR program processes at NASA. The EHB-based system is ideal for programs and projects whose users are geographically distributed and are involved in complex management processes and procedures. EHBs provide flexible access control and increased communications while maintaining security for systems of all sizes. Through Internet Protocol- based access, user authentication and user-based access restrictions, role-based access control, and encryption/decryption, EHBs provide the level of security required for confidential data transfer. EHBs contain electronic forms and menus, which can be used in real time to execute the described processes. EHBs use standard word processors that generate ASCII HTML code to set up electronic forms that are viewed within a web browser. EHBs require no end-user software distribution, significantly reducing operating costs. Each interactive handbook simulates a hard-copy version containing chapters with descriptions of participants' roles in the online process.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2000

A Spacebased Ocean Surface Exchange Data Analysis System

Emerging technologies have provided unprecedented opportunities to transform information into knowledge and disseminate them in a much faster, cheaper, and userfriendly mode. We have set up a system to produce and disseminate high level (gridded) ocean surface wind data from the NASA Scatterometer and European Remote Sensing missions. The data system is being expanded to produce real-time gridded ocean surface winds from an improved sensor SeaWinds on the Quikscat Mission. The wind field will be combined with hydrologic parameters from the Tropical Rain Measuring Mission to monitor evolving weather systems and natural hazard in real time. It will form the basis for spacebased Ocean Surface Exchange Data Analysis System (SOSEDAS) which will include the production of ocean surface momentum, heat, and water fluxes needed for interdisciplinary studies of ocean-atmosphere interaction. Various commercial or non-commercial software tools have been compared and selected in terms of their ability in database management, remote data accessing, graphical interface, data quality, storage needs and transfer speed, etc. Issues regarding system security and user authentication, distributed data archiving and accessing, strategy to compress large-volume geophysical and satellite data/image. and increasing transferring speed are being addressed. A simple and easy way to access information and derive knowledge from spacebased data of multiple missions is being provided. The evolving 'knowledge system' will provide relevant infrastructure to address Earth System Science, make inroads in educating an informed populace, and illuminate decision and policy making.

Tang, Wenqing↗
NASA NTRS2005

Software to Manage the Unmanageable

In 1995, NASA s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) contracted Redmond, Washington-based Lucidoc Corporation, to design a technology infrastructure to automate the intersection between policy management and operations management with advanced software that automates document workflow, document status, and uniformity of document layout. JPL had very specific parameters for the software. It expected to store and catalog over 8,000 technical and procedural documents integrated with hundreds of processes. The project ended in 2000, but NASA still uses the resulting highly secure document management system, and Lucidoc has managed to help other organizations, large and small, with integrating document flow and operations management to ensure a compliance-ready culture.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2007

Hybrid Modeling Improves Health and Performance Monitoring

Scientific Monitoring Inc. was awarded a Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) project by NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center to create a new, simplified health-monitoring approach for flight vehicles and flight equipment. The project developed a hybrid physical model concept that provided a structured approach to simplifying complex design models for use in health monitoring, allowing the output or performance of the equipment to be compared to what the design models predicted, so that deterioration or impending failure could be detected before there would be an impact on the equipment's operational capability. Based on the original modeling technology, Scientific Monitoring released I-Trend, a commercial health- and performance-monitoring software product named for its intelligent trending, diagnostics, and prognostics capabilities, as part of the company's complete ICEMS (Intelligent Condition-based Equipment Management System) suite of monitoring and advanced alerting software. I-Trend uses the hybrid physical model to better characterize the nature of health or performance alarms that result in "no fault found" false alarms. Additionally, the use of physical principles helps I-Trend identify problems sooner. I-Trend technology is currently in use in several commercial aviation programs, and the U.S. Air Force recently tapped Scientific Monitoring to develop next-generation engine health-management software for monitoring its fleet of jet engines. Scientific Monitoring has continued the original NASA work, this time under a Phase III SBIR contract with a joint NASA-Pratt & Whitney aviation security program on propulsion-controlled aircraft under missile-damaged aircraft conditions.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2010

Support for Systematic Code Reviews with the SCRUB Tool

SCRUB is a code review tool that supports both large, team-based software development efforts (e.g., for mission software) as well as individual tasks. The tool was developed at JPL to support a new, streamlined code review process that combines human-generated review reports with program-generated review reports from a customizable range of state-of-the-art source code analyzers. The leading commercial tools include Codesonar, Coverity, and Klocwork, each of which can achieve a reasonably low rate of false-positives in the warnings that they generate. The time required to analyze code with these tools can vary greatly. In each case, however, the tools produce results that would be difficult to realize with human code inspections alone. There is little overlap in the results produced by the different analyzers, and each analyzer used generally increases the effectiveness of the overall effort. The SCRUB tool allows all reports to be accessed through a single, uniform interface (see figure) that facilitates brows ing code and reports. Improvements over existing software include significant simplification, and leveraging of a range of commercial, static source code analyzers in a single, uniform framework. The tool runs as a small stand-alone application, avoiding the security problems related to tools based on Web browsers. A developer or reviewer, for instance, must have already obtained access rights to a code base before that code can be browsed and reviewed with the SCRUB tool. The tool cannot open any files or folders to which the user does not already have access. This means that the tool does not need to enforce or administer any additional security policies. The analysis results presented through the SCRUB tool s user interface are always computed off-line, given that, especially for larger projects, this computation can take longer than appropriate for interactive tool use. The recommended code review process that is supported by the SCRUB tool consists of three phases: Code Review, Developer Response, and Closeout Resolution. In the Code Review phase, all tool-based analysis reports are generated, and specific comments from expert code reviewers are entered into the SCRUB tool. In the second phase, Developer Response, the developer is asked to respond to each comment and tool-report that was produced, either agreeing or disagreeing to provide a fix that addresses the issue that was raised. In the third phase, Closeout Resolution, all disagreements are discussed in a meeting of all parties involved, and a resolution is made for all disagreements. The first two phases generally take one week each, and the third phase is concluded in a single closeout meeting.

Holzmann, Gerald J.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Using PHP/MySQL to Manage Potential Mass Impacts

This paper presents a new application using commercially available software to manage mass properties for spaceflight vehicles. PHP/MySQL(PHP: Hypertext Preprocessor and My Structured Query Language) are a web scripting language and a database language commonly used in concert with each other. They open up new opportunities to develop cutting edge mass properties tools, and in particular, tools for the management of potential mass impacts (threats and opportunities). The paper begins by providing an overview of the functions and capabilities of PHP/MySQL. The focus of this paper is on how PHP/MySQL are being used to develop an advanced "web accessible" database system for identifying and managing mass impacts on NASA's Ares I Upper Stage program, managed by the Marshall Space Flight Center. To fully describe this application, examples of the data, search functions, and views are provided to promote, not only the function, but the security, ease of use, simplicity, and eye-appeal of this new application. This paper concludes with an overview of the other potential mass properties applications and tools that could be developed using PHP/MySQL. The premise behind this paper is that PHP/MySQL are software tools that are easy to use and readily available for the development of cutting edge mass properties applications. These tools are capable of providing "real-time" searching and status of an active database, automated report generation, and other capabilities to streamline and enhance mass properties management application. By using PHP/MySQL, proven existing methods for managing mass properties can be adapted to present-day information technology to accelerate mass properties data gathering, analysis, and reporting, allowing mass property management to keep pace with today's fast-pace design and development processes.

Hager, Benjamin I.↗
NASA NTRS2001

TT and C - First TDRSS, Then Commercial GEO and Big LEO and Now through LEO

The advent of low earth orbit (LEO) commercial communications satellites provides an opportunity to dramatically reduce Telemetry Tracking and Control (TT&C) costs of launch vehicles and Unpiloted Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) by reducing or eliminating ground infrastructure. Personnel from the Goddard Space Flight Center Wallops Flight Facility (GSFC/WFF) in Virginia have successfully used commercial GEO & Big LEO communications satellites for Long Duration Balloon flight TT&C. In addition, TDRSS capability for these balloons has been developed by WFF for the Ultra Long Duration Balloons with the first test flight launch in January 2001 for one global circumnavigation at 120,000 feet altitude launched from Alice Springs. Australia. Numerous other low cost applications can new utilize the commercial LEO satellites for TT&C. The Flight Modern became a GSFC/WFF Advanced Range Technology Initiative (ARTI) in an effort to streamline TT&C capability to the user community at low cost. Phase I ground tests of The Flight Modem verified downlink communications quality of service and measured transmission latencies. These tests were completed last year, Phase II consisting of aircraft flight tests provide much of the data presented in this paper. Phase III of the Flight Modern baseline test program is a demonstration of the ruggedized version of the WFF Flight Modem flown on one sounding rocket launched from Sweden. Flights of opportunity have been and are being actively pursued with other centers, ranges and users at universities. The WFF goal is to reduce TT&C costs by providing a low cost COTS Flight Modem with a User Handbook containing system capability and limitation descriptions. Additionally, since data transmission is by packetized Internet Protocol (IP), data can be received and commands initialed from practically any location with no infrastructure. The WFF, like most ranges, has been using GPS receivers on sounding rockets and long duration balloons for several years, The WFF Flight Modem contains a GPS receiver to provide vehicle position for tracking and vehicle recovery. The system architecture which integrates antennas, GPS receiver, commercial satellite packet data modem. and a single board computer with custom software is described and a number of technical challenges are discussed along with the plan for their resolution. These include antenna development, high Doppler rates, reliability, environmental ruggedness, hand over between satellites and data security. An aggressive test plan is included which in addition to environmental Testing measures bit error rate latency and antenna patterns. Additional flight tests are planned far the near future on aircraft, long duration balloons and sounding rockets and these results as well as the current status of the project arc reported. Use of the WFF Flight Modem on small satellites is also being pursued. The LEO satellite constellation altitude above 1400 km is not an obstacle because most spacecraft do not require continuous Communications. The challenge is scheduling where store and forward techniques for command are required and downlink when the communications link allows connection (above 60 percent of the time depending on the satellite altitude). Sophisticated scheduling techniques utilizing 2-line orbital element sets available on the NASA/NORAD Internet site could be implemented for rare special cases. The current 9600 baud rate of the LEO communications link may be increased With special techniques that are planned for development in the WFF Flight Modem project.

Morgan, Dwayne↗
NASA NTRS1990

Development Status: Automation Advanced Development Space Station Freedom Electric Power System

Electric power system automation for Space Station Freedom is intended to operate in a loop. Data from the power system is used for diagnosis and security analysis to generate Operations Management System (OMS) requests, which are sent to an arbiter, which sends a plan to a commander generator connected to the electric power system. This viewgraph presentation profiles automation software for diagnosis, scheduling, and constraint interfaces, and simulation to support automation development. The automation development process is diagrammed, and the process of creating Ada and ART versions of the automation software is described.

Dolce, James L.↗
NASA NTRS2005

Spinoff 2005

Topics covered include: Lighting the Way for Quicker, Safer Healing; Discovering New Drugs on the Cellular Level; Hydrogen Sensors Boost Hybrids; Today s Models Losing Gas?; 3-D Highway in the Sky; Popping a Hole in High-Speed Pursuits; Monitoring Wake Vortices for More Efficient Airports; From Rockets to Racecars; All-Terrain Intelligent Robot Braves Battlefront to Save Lives; Keeping the Air Clean and Safe--An Anthrax Smoke Detector; Lightning Often Strikes Twice; Technology That's Ready and Able to Inspect Those Cables; Secure Networks for First Responders and Special Forces; Space Suit Spins; Cooking Dinner at Home--From the Office; Nanoscale Materials Make for Large-Scale Applications; NASA s Growing Commitment: The Space Garden; Bringing Thunder and Lightning Indoors; Forty-Year-Old Foam Springs Back With New Benefits; Experiments With Small Animals Rarely Go This Well; NASA, the Fisherman's Friend; Crystal-Clear Communication a Sweet-Sounding Success; Inertial Motion-Tracking Technology for Virtual 3-D; Then Why Do They Call Earth the Blue Planet?; Valiant 'Zero-Valent' Effort Restores Contaminated Grounds; Harnessing the Power of the Sun; Water and Air Measures That Make 'PureSense'; Remote Sensing for Farmers and Flood Watching; Pesticide-Free Device a Fatal Attraction for Mosquitoes Making the Most of Waste Energy Washing Away the Worries About Germs Celestial Software Scratches More Than the Surface A Search Engine That's Aware of Your Needs Fault-Detection Tool Has Companies 'Mining' Own Business; Software to Manage the Unmanageable; Tracking Electromagnetic Energy With SQUIDs; Taking the Risk Out of Risk Assessment; Satellite and Ground System Solutions at Your Fingertips; Structural Analysis Made 'NESSUSary'; Software of Seismic Proportions Promotes Enjoyable Learning; Making a Reliable Actuator Faster and More Affordable; Cost-Cutting Powdered Lubricant NASA s Radio Frequency Bolt Monitor: A Lifetime of Spinoffs Going End to End to Deliver High-Speed Data; Advanced Joining Technology: Simple, Strong, and Secure; Big Results From a Smaller Gearbox; Low-Pressure Generator Makes Cleanrooms Cleaner; and The Space Laser Business Model.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1999

Partitioning in Avionics Architectures: Requirements, Mechanisms, and Assurance

Automated aircraft control has traditionally been divided into distinct "functions" that are implemented separately (e.g., autopilot, autothrottle, flight management); each function has its own fault-tolerant computer system, and dependencies among different functions are generally limited to the exchange of sensor and control data. A by-product of this "federated" architecture is that faults are strongly contained within the computer system of the function where they occur and cannot readily propagate to affect the operation of other functions. More modern avionics architectures contemplate supporting multiple functions on a single, shared, fault-tolerant computer system where natural fault containment boundaries are less sharply defined. Partitioning uses appropriate hardware and software mechanisms to restore strong fault containment to such integrated architectures. This report examines the requirements for partitioning, mechanisms for their realization, and issues in providing assurance for partitioning. Because partitioning shares some concerns with computer security, security models are reviewed and compared with the concerns of partitioning.

Rushby, John↗
NASA NTRS2005

A Reliable Service-Oriented Architecture for NASA's Mars Exploration Rover Mission

The Collaborative Information Portal (CIP) was enterprise software developed jointly by the NASA Ames Research Center and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for NASA's highly successful Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission. Both MER and CIP have performed far beyond their original expectations. Mission managers and engineers ran CIP inside the mission control room at JPL, and the scientists ran CIP in their laboratories, homes, and offices. All the users connected securely over the Internet. Since the mission ran on Mars time, CIP displayed the current time in various Mars and Earth time zones, and it presented staffing and event schedules with Martian time scales. Users could send and receive broadcast messages, and they could view and download data and image files generated by the rovers' instruments. CIP had a three-tiered, service-oriented architecture (SOA) based on industry standards, including J2EE and web services, and it integrated commercial off-the-shelf software. A user's interactions with the graphical interface of the CIP client application generated web services requests to the CIP middleware. The middleware accessed the back-end data repositories if necessary and returned results for these requests. The client application could make multiple service requests for a single user action and then present a composition of the results. This happened transparently, and many users did not even realize that they were connecting to a server. CIP performed well and was extremely reliable; it attained better than 99% uptime during the course of the mission. In this paper, we present overviews of the MER mission and of CIP. We show how CIP helped to fulfill some of the mission needs and how people used it. We discuss the criteria for choosing its architecture, and we describe how the developers made the software so reliable. CIP's reliability did not come about by chance, but was the result of several key design decisions. We conclude with some of the important lessons we learned form developing, deploying, and supporting the software.

Mak, Ronald↗