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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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At least 307 records · Page 17
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2026

PV Operations Software Transparency: A PVMAC Industry Snapshot

The rapid growth of photovoltaic (PV) deployment has increased reliance on software platforms for monitoring, workflow automation, diagnostics, and performance analytics. As these tools play a central role in asset management and operations and maintenance (O&M), greater transparency in methodologies, data handling, and validation practices benefits the broader PV ecosystem. To better understand current practices and identify opportunities for improved clarity and interoperability, 24 software providers contributed detailed responses through the PV O&M Analytics Collaborative (PVMAC) initiative, the first structured questionnaire of its kind in the industry, covering onboarding, interoperability, data quality, diagnostics, AI/ML, and other operational categories. These providers represent over 1.1 TW of solar assets under management. The analysis shows broad adoption of digital twins, AI/ML, and API integrations, but also highlights challenges in onboarding processes, inconsistent definitions and methodologies, variability in key performance indicator (KPI) calculations, and limited independent validation. Greater standardization, clearer documentation, and stronger validation frameworks could improve transparency, comparability, and trust across PV operations software platforms.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS1991

Transportable Applications Environment (TAE) Plus - A NASA productivity tool used to develop graphical user interfaces

The Transportable Applications Environment (TAE) Plus, developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, is an advanced portable user interface development environment which simplifies the process of creating and managing complex application graphical user interfaces (GUIs), supports prototyping, allows applications to be oported easily between different platforms, and encourages appropriate levels of user interface consistency between applications. This paper discusses the capabilities of the TAE Plus tool, and how it makes the job of designing and developing GUIs easier for the application developers. The paper also explains how tools like TAE Plus provide for reusability and ensure reliability of UI software components, as well as how they aid in the reduction of development and maintenance costs.

Szczur, Martha R.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Development of an Intelligent Hypertext Manual for the Space Shuttle Hazardous Gas Detection System

The Intelligent Hypertext Manual (IHM) for the Hazardous Gas Detection System (HGDS) of the Space Shuttle is described as an example of an integrated knowledge system. The IHM is described in terms of its design as a system for facilitating the interpretation of real-time data regarding hazardous gases and their successful and timely detection. Hypermedia technology is employed that incorporates text, video, and sound, and the architecture of the IHM integrated knowledge system is based on knowledge elements, a basic user interface, and integrated application software. Knowledge organization enhances the retrieval of documents for launch commit criteria, operations and maintenance requirements, flight-measurement location, and hypermedia incorporation. The integration of computer and AI technologies for the HGDS IHM demonstrates the potential for enhancing efficiency in aerospace operations with aerospace data that are easy to retrieve.

Lo, Ching F.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Automation and hypermedia technology applications

This paper represents a progress report on HyLite (Hypermedia Library technology): a research and development activity to produce a versatile system as part of NASA's technology thrusts in automation, information sciences, and communications. HyLite can be used as a system or tool to facilitate the creation and maintenance of large distributed electronic libraries. The contents of such a library may be software components, hardware parts or designs, scientific data sets or databases, configuration management information, etc. Proliferation of computer use has made the diversity and quantity of information too large for any single user to sort, process, and utilize effectively. In response to this information deluge, we have created HyLite to enable the user to process relevant information into a more efficient organization for presentation, retrieval, and readability. To accomplish this end, we have incorporated various AI techniques into the HyLite hypermedia engine to facilitate parameters and properties of the system. The proposed techniques include intelligent searching tools for the libraries, intelligent retrievals, and navigational assistance based on user histories. HyLite itself is based on an earlier project, the Encyclopedia of Software Components (ESC) which used hypermedia to facilitate and encourage software reuse.

Jupin, Joseph H.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Overview of the Telescience Testbed Program

The NASA's Telescience Testbed Program (TTP) conducted by the Ames Research Center is described with particular attention to the objectives, the approach used to achieve these objectives, and the expected benefits of the program. The goal of the TTP is to gain operational experience for the Space Station Freedom and the Earth Observing System programs, using ground testbeds, and to define the information and communication systems requirements for the development and operation of these programs. The results of TTP are expected to include the requirements for the remote coaching, command and control, monitoring and maintenance, payload design, and operations management. In addition, requirements for technologies such as workstations, software, video, automation, data management, and networking will be defined.

Rasmussen, Daryl N.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) proposed dual-use technology investment program in intelligent robots

This paper presents an overview of the proposed Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) precompetitive, dual-use technology investment project in robotics. New robotic technology in advanced robots, which can recognize and respond to their environments and to spoken human supervision so as to perform a variety of combined mobility and manipulation tasks in various sectors, is an obejective of this work. In the U.S. economy, such robots offer the benefits of improved global competitiveness in a critical industrial sector; improved productivity by the end users of these robots; a growing robotics industry that produces jobs and profits; lower cost health care delivery with quality improvements; and, as these 'intelligent' robots become acceptable throughout society, an increase in the standard of living for everyone. In space, such robots will provide improved safety, reliability, and productivity as Space Station evolves, and will enable human space exploration (by human/robot teams). The proposed effort consists of partnerships between manufacturers, universities, and JSC to develop working production prototypes of these robots by leveraging current development by both sides. Currently targeted applications are in the manufacturing, health care, services, and construction sectors of the U.S. economy and in the inspection, servicing, maintenance, and repair aspects of space exploration. But the focus is on the generic software architecture and standardized interfaces for custom modules tailored for the various applications allowing end users to customize a robot as PC users customize PC's. Production prototypes would be completed in 5 years under this proposal.

Erikson, Jon D.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Changes and challenges in the Software Engineering Laboratory

Since 1976, the Software Engineering Laboratory (SEL) has been dedicated to understanding and improving the way in which one NASA organization, the Flight Dynamics Division (FDD), develops, maintains, and manages complex flight dynamics systems. The SEL is composed of three member organizations: NASA/GSFC, the University of Maryland, and Computer Sciences Corporation. During the past 18 years, the SEL's overall goal has remained the same: to improve the FDD's software products and processes in a measured manner. This requires that each development and maintenance effort be viewed, in part, as a SEL experiment which examines a specific technology or builds a model of interest for use on subsequent efforts. The SEL has undertaken many technology studies while developing operational support systems for numerous NASA spacecraft missions.

Pajerski, Rose↗
NASA NTRS1994

Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) proposed dual-use technology investment program in intelligent robotics

This paper presents an overview of the proposed Lyndon B. Johnson Space Center (JSC) precompetitive, dual-use technology investment project in robotics. New robotic technology in advanced robots, which can recognize and respond to their environments and to spoken human supervision so as to perform a variety of combined mobility and manipulation tasks in various sectors, is an objective of this work. In the U.S. economy, such robots offer the benefits of improved global competitiveness in a critical industrial sector; improved productivity by the end users of these robots; a growing robotics industry that produces jobs and profits; lower cost health care delivery with quality improvements; and, as these 'intelligent' robots become acceptable throughout society, an increase in the standard of living for everyone. In space, such robots will provide improved safety, reliability, and productivity as Space Station evolves, and will enable human space exploration (by human/robot teams). The proposed effort consists of partnerships between manufacturers, universities, and JSC to develop working production prototypes of these robots by leveraging current development by both sides. Currently targeted applications are in the manufacturing, health care, services, and construction sectors of the U.S. economy and in the inspection, servicing, maintenance, and repair aspects of space exploration. But the focus is on the generic software architecture and standardized interfaces for custom modules tailored for the various applications allowing end users to customize a robot as PC users customize PC's. Production prototypes would be completed in 5 years under this proposal.

Erickson, Jon D.↗
NASA NTRS1998

Operational processing and cloud boundary detection from micro pulse lidar data

Micro Pulse Lidar (MPL) was developed at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) as the result of research on space-borne lidar techniques. It was designed to provide continuous, unattended observations of all significant atmospheric cloud and aerosol structure with a rugged, compact system design and the benefit of eye safety (Spinhirne 1993). The significant eye safety feature is achieved by using low pulse energies and high pulse repetition rates compared to standard lidar systems. MPL systems use a diode pumped 10 microj, 2500 Hz doubled Nd:YLF laser. In addition, a solid state Geiger mode avalanche photo diode (GAPD) photon counting detector is used allowing for quantum efficiencies approaching 70%. Other design features have previously been noted by Spinhirne (1995). Though a commercially available instrument, with nearly 20 systems operating around the world, the most extensive MPL work has come from those operated by the Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) (Stokes and Schwartz 1994) program. The diverse ability of the instrument relating to the measurement of basic cloud macrophysical structure and both cloud and aerosol radiative properties well suits the ARM research philosophy. MPL data can be used to yield many parameters including cloud boundary heights to the limit of signal attenuation, cloud scattering cross sections and optical thicknesses, planetary boundary layer heights and aerosol scattering profiles, including those into the stratosphere in nighttime cases (Hlavka et al 1996). System vertical resolution ranges from 30 m to 300 m (i.e. high and low resolution respectively) depending on system design. The lidar research group at GSFC plays an advisory role in the operation, calibration and maintenance of NASA and ARM owned MPL systems. Over the past three years, processing software and system correction techniques have been developed in anticipation of the increasing population of systems amongst the community. Datasets produced by three ARM-owned systems have served as the basis for this development. With two operating at the southern Great Plains Cloud and Radiation Testbed Site (SGP CART) since December 1993 and another at the Manus Island Atmospheric Radiation and Cloud Station (TWP ARCS) location in the tropical western Pacific since February 1997, the ARM archive contains over 4 years of observations. In addition, high resolution systems planning to come on-line at the North Slope, AK CART shortly with another scheduled to follow at the TWP ARCS-II will diversify this archive with more extensive observations.

Campbell, James R.↗
NASA NTRS2006

Comprehensive Environmental Informatics System (CEIS) Integrating Crew and Vehicle Environmental Health

Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) systems have been pursued as highly integrated systems that include smart sensors, diagnostic and prognostics software for assessments of real-time and life-cycle vehicle health information. Inclusive to such a system is the requirement to monitor the environmental health within the vehicle and the occupants of the vehicle. In this regard an enterprise approach to informatics is used to develop a methodology entitled, Comprehensive Environmental Informatics System (CEIS). The hardware and software technologies integrated into this system will be embedded in the vehicle subsystems, and maintenance operations, to provide both real-time and life-cycle health information of the environment within the vehicle cabin and of its occupants. This comprehensive information database will enable informed decision making and logistics management. One key element of the CEIS is interoperability for data acquisition and archive between environment and human system monitoring. With comprehensive components the data acquired in this system will use model based reasoning systems for subsystem and system level managers, advanced on-board and ground-based mission and maintenance planners to assess system functionality. Knowledge databases of the vehicle health state will be continuously updated and reported for critical failure modes, and routinely updated and reported for life cycle condition trending. Sufficient intelligence, including evidence-based engineering practices which are analogous to evidencebased medicine practices, will be included in the CEIS to result in more rapid recognition of off-nominal operation to enable quicker corrective actions. This will result from better information (rather than just data) for improved crew/operator situational awareness, which will produce significant vehicle and crew safety improvements, as well as increasing the chance for mission success, future mission planning as well as training. Other benefits include improved reliability, increase safety in operations and cost of operations. The cost benefits stem from significantly reduced processing and operations manpower, predictive maintenance for systems and subjects. The improvements in vehicle functionality and cost will result from increased prognostic and diagnostic capability due to the detailed total human exploration system health knowledge from CEIS. A collateral benefit is that there will be closer observations of the vehicle occupants as wrist watch sized devices are worn for continuous health monitoring. Additional database acquisition will stem from activities in countermeasure practices to ensure peak performance capability by occupants of the vehicle. The CEIS will provide data from advanced sensing technologies and informatics modeling which will be useful in problem troubleshooting, and improving NASA s awareness of systems during operation.

Nall, Mark E.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Status of SPCA-ANL Software Development, Software Quality Assurance, and Application (FY2025)

SPCA-ANL is a simulation tool used to perform deterministic analyses of sodium spray and pool fires. Development of the SPCA-II (Spray Pool Combustion Analysis) code began in the mid- 1980s as part of the Clinch River Breeder Reactor (CRBR) Project. At that time, development of SPCA-II, which was led by Rockwell International, was focused on treatment of large-scale sodium spray, stream, and pool fires that were anticipated to be prototypic of the steam generator building cells in CRBR. Under more recent DOE NE programmatic activities, the SPCA-II code was recovered from existing literature and underwent minor modifications to generate a stable executable. This recovered version of the code was not formally released. As part of the Versatile Test Reactor (VTR) Project in the 2010s, the SPCA-II code underwent key modifications to improve stability, address modeling deficiencies, improve consistency between the code manual and software, and address numerous bugs. At this point, SPCA-II was renamed SPCA-ANL. Given that SPCA-II served as the original basis for SPCA-ANL, both codes share an integrated history. Following termination of the VTR Project, the DOE NE Fast Reactor Program resumed support of the software with the goal of building and maintaining software infrastructure that can enable commercial-grade dedication of SPCA-ANL by an end user. Version 1.0, the first external release of SPCA-ANL, was generated in June 2024. This report summarizes the development and maintenance activities completed for SPCAANL in FY2025. This year’s work was focused on improving quality and usability of the code. The provisional Software Quality Assurance (SQA) program has been established and was used to test the procedures for infrastructure improvements, code development, bug fixes, and code releases, as described in the following sections of this report. A code Version 1.0.1 was released in FY25, as described in Chapter 4.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS1989

Expanding the domain of a prototype expert system with an eye on future maintenance - The FIESTA case study

The methods by which an expert system architecture can support such key elements of domain expansion and maintenance as knowledge acquisition, representation, addition, and modification, are presently illustrated by the Fault Isolation Expert System for TDRSS Applications (FIESTA). FIESTA highlights such similarities between conventional software engineering and expert system development as the benefits that accrue to loose coupling, modularity, and documentation. A major difference, however, is the set of opportunities afforded automated end-user maintenance by expert system technology.

Happell, Nadine↗
NASA NTRS1993

VMPLOT: A versatile analysis tool for mission operations

VMPLOT is a versatile analysis tool designed by the Magellan Spacecraft Team to graphically display engineering data used to support mission operations. While there is nothing revolutionary or innovative about graphical data analysis tools, VMPLOT has some distinguishing features that set it apart from other custom or commercially available software packages. These features include the ability to utilize time in a Universal Time Coordinated (UTC) or Spacecraft Clock (SCLK) format as an enumerated data type, the ability to automatically scale both axes based on the data to be displayed (including time), the ability to combine data from different files, and the ability to utilize the program either interactively or in batch mode, thereby enhancing automation. Another important feature of VMPLOT not visible to the user is the software engineering philosophies utilized. A layered approach was used to isolate program functionality to different layers. This was done to increase program portability to different platforms and to ease maintenance and enhancements due to changing requirements. The functionality of the unique features of VMPLOT as well as highlighting the algorithms that make these features possible are described. The software engineering philosophies used in the creation of the software tool are also summarized.

Bucher, Allen W.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Concept of a programmable maintenance processor applicable to multiprocessing systems

A programmable maintenance processor concept applicable to multiprocessing systems has been developed at the NASA Ames Research Center's Dryden Flight Research Facility. This stand-alone-processor is intended to provide support for system and application software testing as well as hardware diagnostics. An initial machanization has been incorporated into the extended aircraft interrogation and display system (XAIDS) which is multiprocessing general-purpose ground support equipment. The XAIDS maintenance processor has independent terminal and printer interfaces and a dedicated magnetic bubble memory that stores system test sequences entered from the terminal. This report describes the hardware and software embodied in this processor and shows a typical application in the check-out of a new XAIDS.

Glover, Richard D.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Improving a data-acquisition software system with abstract data type components

Abstract data types and object-oriented design are active research areas in computer science and software engineering. Much of the interest is aimed at new software development. Abstract data type packages developed for a discontinued software project were used to improve a real-time data-acquisition system under maintenance. The result saved effort and contributed to a significant improvement in the performance, maintainability, and reliability of the Goldstone Solar System Radar Data Acquisition System.

Howard, S. D.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Using Intelligent Simulation to Enhance Human Performance in Aircraft Maintenance

Human factors research and development investigates the capabilities and limitations of the human within a system. Of the many variables affecting human performance in the aviation maintenance system, training is among the most important. The advent of advanced technology hardware and software has created intelligent training simulations. This paper describes one advanced technology training system under development for the Federal Aviation Administration.

Aging Aircraft↗
NASA NTRS2002

Photogrammetry Methodology Development for Gossamer Spacecraft Structures

Photogrammetry--the science of calculating 3D object coordinates from images--is a flexible and robust approach for measuring the static and dynamic characteristics of future ultra-lightweight and inflatable space structures (a.k.a., Gossamer structures), such as large membrane reflectors, solar sails, and thin-film solar arrays. Shape and dynamic measurements are required to validate new structural modeling techniques and corresponding analytical models for these unconventional systems. This paper summarizes experiences at NASA Langley Research Center over the past three years to develop or adapt photogrammetry methods for the specific problem of measuring Gossamer space structures. Turnkey industrial photogrammetry systems were not considered a cost-effective choice for this basic research effort because of their high purchase and maintenance costs. Instead, this research uses mainly off-the-shelf digital-camera and software technologies that are affordable to most organizations and provide acceptable accuracy.

Pappa, Richard S.↗