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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 NTRS1992

Survey - Applications of structural optimization methods to fixed wing aircraft and spacecraft

Results of a technical survey of the practical applications of structural optimization methods in the U.S. aerospace industry through 1980s are summarized. One of the most important developments in the 80s is the more widespread acceptance of structural optimization as one of the design tools that support practical structural design. Another significant advance is the development of large software tools for production applications. Attention is also given to the tailoring of the computerized design process to the specific environment of each company. The two most important aspects of this tailoring are seamless and easy-to-use incorporation of structural optimization in the overall aerospace design/production process and multidisciplinary integration aimed at ultimate performance optimization of the final product. Some specific applications discussed include the X-29 forward swept wing demonstrator aircraft, composite wing and vertical tail program, fighter wing redesign evaluations, high speed aircraft design, and space structures.

Miura, Hirokazu↗

NASA NTRS1994

Coordinating complex decision support activities across distributed applications

Knowledge-based technologies have been applied successfully to automate planning and scheduling in many problem domains. Automation of decision support can be increased further by integrating task-specific applications with supporting database systems, and by coordinating interactions between such tools to facilitate collaborative activities. Unfortunately, the technical obstacles that must be overcome to achieve this vision of transparent, cooperative problem-solving are daunting. Intelligent decision support tools are typically developed for standalone use, rely on incompatible, task-specific representational models and application programming interfaces (API's), and run on heterogeneous computing platforms. Getting such applications to interact freely calls for platform independent capabilities for distributed communication, as well as tools for mapping information across disparate representations. Symbiotics is developing a layered set of software tools (called NetWorks! for integrating and coordinating heterogeneous distributed applications. he top layer of tools consists of an extensible set of generic, programmable coordination services. Developers access these services via high-level API's to implement the desired interactions between distributed applications.

Adler, Richard M.↗

NASA NTRS1995

AstroNet: A Tool Set for Simultaneous, Multi-Site Observations of Astronomical Objects

Earth-based, fully automatic "robotic" telescopes have been in routine operation for a number of years. As their number grows and their distribution becomes global, increasing attention is being given to forming networks of various sorts that will allow them, as a group, to make observations 24 hours a day in both hemispheres. We have suggested that telescopes based in space be part of this network. We further suggested that any telescope on this network be capable of asking, almost in real time, that other robotic telescopes perform support observations for them. When a target of opportunity required support observations, the system would determine which telescope(s) in the network would be most appropriate to make the observations and formulate a request to do so. Because the network would be comprised of telescopes located in widely distributed regions, this system would guarantee continuity of observations This report summarizes our efforts under this contract. We proposed to develop a set of data collection and display tools to aid simultaneous observation of astronomical targets from a number of observing sites. We planned to demonstrate the usefulness of this toolset for simultaneous multi-site observation of astronomical targets. Possible candidates or the proposed demonstration included the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE), International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE), and ALEXIS, sounding rocket experiments. Ground-based observatories operated by the University of California, Berkeley, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Fairborn Observatory in Mesa, Arizona were to be used to demonstrate the proposed concept. Although the demonstration was to have involved astronomical investigations, the tools were to have been applicable to a large number of scientific disciplines. The software tools and systems developed as a result of the work were to have been made available to the scientific community.

Chakrabarti, Supriya↗

NASA NTRS2017

Medical Data Architecture Project Capabilities and Design

Mission constraints will challenge the delivery of medical care on a long-term, deep space exploration mission. This type of mission will be restricted in the availability of medical knowledge, skills, procedures and resources to prevent, diagnose, and treat in-flight medical events. Challenges to providing medical care are anticipated, including resource and resupply constraints, delayed communications and no ability for medical evacuation. The Medical Data Architecture (MDA) project will enable medical care capability in this constrained environment. The first version of the system, called "Test Bed 1," includes capabilities for automated data collection, data storage and data retrieval to provide information to the Crew Medical Officer (CMO). Test Bed 1 seeks to establish a data architecture foundation and develop a scalable data management system through modular design and standardized interfaces. In addition, it will demonstrate to stakeholders the potential for an improved, automated, flow of data to and from the medical system over the current methods employed on the International Space Station (ISS). It integrates a set of external devices, software and processes, and a Subjective, Objective, Assessment, and Plan (SOAP) note commonly used by clinicians. Medical data like electrocardiogram plots, heart rate, skin temperature, respiration rate, medications taken, and more are collected from devices and stored in the Electronic Medical Records (EMR) system, and reported to crew and clinician. Devices integrated include the Astroskin biosensor vest and IMED CARDIAX electrocardiogram (ECG) device with INEED MD ECG Glove, and the NASA-developed Medical Dose Tracker application. The system is designed to be operated as a standalone system, and can be deployed in a variety of environments, from a laptop to a data center. The system is primarily composed of open-source software tools, and is designed to be modular, so new capabilities can be added. The software components and integration methods will be discussed.

Data architecture↗

NASA NTRS2011

Techniques and Tools for Estimating Ionospheric Effects in Interferometric and Polarimetric SAR Data

The InSAR Scientific Computing Environment (ISCE) is a flexible, extensible software tool designed for the end-to-end processing and analysis of synthetic aperture radar data. ISCE inherits the core of the ROI_PAC interferometric tool, but contains improvements at all levels of the radar processing chain, including a modular and extensible architecture, new focusing approach, better geocoding of the data, handling of multi-polarization data, radiometric calibration, and estimation and correction of ionospheric effects. In this paper we describe the characteristics of ISCE with emphasis on the ionospheric modules. To detect ionospheric anomalies, ISCE implements the Faraday rotation method using quadpolarimetric images, and the split-spectrum technique using interferometric single-, dual- and quad-polarimetric images. The ability to generate co-registered time series of quad-polarimetric images makes ISCE also an ideal tool to be used for polarimetric-interferometric radar applications.

Ionosphere↗

NASA NTRS2009

General Purpose Data-Driven Monitoring for Space Operations

As modern space propulsion and exploration systems improve in capability and efficiency, their designs are becoming increasingly sophisticated and complex. Determining the health state of these systems, using traditional parameter limit checking, model-based, or rule-based methods, is becoming more difficult as the number of sensors and component interactions grow. Data-driven monitoring techniques have been developed to address these issues by analyzing system operations data to automatically characterize normal system behavior. System health can be monitored by comparing real-time operating data with these nominal characterizations, providing detection of anomalous data signatures indicative of system faults or failures. The Inductive Monitoring System (IMS) is a data-driven system health monitoring software tool that has been successfully applied to several aerospace applications. IMS uses a data mining technique called clustering to analyze archived system data and characterize normal interactions between parameters. The scope of IMS based data-driven monitoring applications continues to expand with current development activities. Successful IMS deployment in the International Space Station (ISS) flight control room to monitor ISS attitude control systems has led to applications in other ISS flight control disciplines, such as thermal control. It has also generated interest in data-driven monitoring capability for Constellation, NASA's program to replace the Space Shuttle with new launch vehicles and spacecraft capable of returning astronauts to the moon, and then on to Mars. Several projects are currently underway to evaluate and mature the IMS technology and complementary tools for use in the Constellation program. These include an experiment on board the Air Force TacSat-3 satellite, and ground systems monitoring for NASA's Ares I-X and Ares I launch vehicles. The TacSat-3 Vehicle System Management (TVSM) project is a software experiment to integrate fault and anomaly detection algorithms and diagnosis tools with executive and adaptive planning functions contained in the flight software on-board the Air Force Research Laboratory TacSat-3 satellite. The TVSM software package will be uploaded after launch to monitor spacecraft subsystems such as power and guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C). It will analyze data in real-time to demonstrate detection of faults and unusual conditions, diagnose problems, and react to threats to spacecraft health and mission goals. The experiment will demonstrate the feasibility and effectiveness of integrated system health management (ISHM) technologies with both ground and on-board experiments.

Iverson, David L.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Machine learning research 1989-90

Multifunctional knowledge bases offer a significant advance in artificial intelligence because they can support numerous expert tasks within a domain. As a result they amortize the costs of building a knowledge base over multiple expert systems and they reduce the brittleness of each system. Due to the inevitable size and complexity of multifunctional knowledge bases, their construction and maintenance require knowledge engineering and acquisition tools that can automatically identify interactions between new and existing knowledge. Furthermore, their use requires software for accessing those portions of the knowledge base that coherently answer questions. Considerable progress was made in developing software for building and accessing multifunctional knowledge bases. A language was developed for representing knowledge, along with software tools for editing and displaying knowledge, a machine learning program for integrating new information into existing knowledge, and a question answering system for accessing the knowledge base.

Porter, Bruce W.↗

NASA NTRS1990

Transition Flight Control Room Automation

The Workstation Prototype Laboratory is currently working on a number of projects which we feel can have a direct impact on ground operations automation. These projects include: The Fuel Cell Monitoring System (FCMS), which will monitor and detect problems with the fuel cells on the Shuttle. FCMS will use a combination of rules (forward/backward) and multi-threaded procedures which run concurrently with the rules, to implement the malfunction algorithms of the EGIL flight controllers. The combination of rule based reasoning and procedural reasoning allows us to more easily map the malfunction algorithms into a real-time system implementation. A graphical computation language (AGCOMPL). AGCOMPL is an experimental prototype to determine the benefits and drawbacks of using a graphical language to design computations (algorithms) to work on Shuttle or Space Station telemetry and trajectory data. The design of a system which will allow a model of an electrical system, including telemetry sensors, to be configured on the screen graphically using previously defined electrical icons. This electrical model would then be used to generate rules and procedures for detecting malfunctions in the electrical components of the model. A generic message management (GMM) system. GMM is being designed as a message management system for real-time applications which send advisory messages to a user. The primary purpose of GMM is to reduce the risk of overloading a user with information when multiple failures occurs and in assisting the developer in devising an explanation facility. The emphasis of our work is to develop practical tools and techniques, while determining the feasibility of a given approach, including identification of appropriate software tools to support research, application and tool building activities.

Welborn, Curtis Ray↗

NASA NTRS2004

A "Kane's Dynamics" Model for the Active Rack Isolation System Part Two: Nonlinear Model Development, Verification, and Simplification

Many microgravity space-science experiments require vibratory acceleration levels that are unachievable without active isolation. The Boeing Corporation's active rack isolation system (ARIS) employs a novel combination of magnetic actuation and mechanical linkages to address these isolation requirements on the International Space Station. Effective model-based vibration isolation requires: (1) An isolation device, (2) an adequate dynamic; i.e., mathematical, model of that isolator, and (3) a suitable, corresponding controller. This Technical Memorandum documents the validation of that high-fidelity dynamic model of ARIS. The verification of this dynamics model was achieved by utilizing two commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) software tools: Deneb's ENVISION(registered trademark), and Online Dynamics Autolev(trademark). ENVISION is a robotics software package developed for the automotive industry that employs three-dimensional computer-aided design models to facilitate both forward and inverse kinematics analyses. Autolev is a DOS-based interpreter designed, in general, to solve vector-based mathematical problems and specifically to solve dynamics problems using Kane's method. The simplification of this model was achieved using the small-angle theorem for the joint angle of the ARIS actuators. This simplification has a profound effect on the overall complexity of the closed-form solution while yielding a closed-form solution easily employed using COTS control hardware.

Beech, G. S.↗

NASA NTRS2003

Managing configuration of ground software applications with glueware

This paper reports on a simple, low-cost effort to streamline the configuration of the uplink software tools.

ground software managing software software configu↗

NASA NTRS1988

An integrated and modular digital modeling approach for the space station electrical power system development

An electrical power system for the Space Station was designed, developed and built. This system provides for electrical power generation, conditioning, storage, and distribution. The initial configuration uses photovoltaic power generation. The power system control is based on a hierarchical architecture to support the requirements of automation. In the preliminary design and technology development phase of the program, various modeling techniques and software tools were evaluated for the purpose of meeting the Space Station power system modeling requirements. Rocketdyne and LeRC jointly selected the EASY5 simulation software, developed by Boeing Computer Services, as a system level modeling tool. The application of the selected analytical modeling approach to represent the entire power system is described. Typical results of model predictions are also summarized. The equipment modeled includes solar arrays, dc to ac converters, resonant inverters, battery storage system, alternator, transmission line, switch gear, and system level microprocessor controls. During the advanced development phase of this program, several models were developed using this approach.

Gombos, Frank J.↗

NASA NTRS1988

An integrated and modular digital modeling approach for the Space Station electrical power system development

Gombos, Frank J.↗

NASA NTRS1985

An Integrated Unix-based CAD System for the Design and Testing of Custom VLSI Chips

A computer aided design (CAD) system that is being used at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for the design of custom and semicustom very large scale integrated (VLSI) chips is described. The system consists of a Digital Equipment Corporation VAX computer with the UNIX operating system and a collection of software tools for the layout, simulation, and verification of microcircuits. Most of these tools were written by the academic community and are, therefore, available to JPL at little or no cost. Some small pieces of software have been written in-house in order to make all the tools interact with each other with a minimal amount of effort on the part of the designer.

Deutsch, L. J.↗

NASA NTRS1977

Software engineering project management - A state-of-the-art report

The management of software engineering projects in the aerospace industry was investigated. The survey assessed such features as contract type, specification preparation techniques, software documentation required by customers, planning and cost-estimating, quality control, the use of advanced program practices, software tools and test procedures, the education levels of project managers, programmers and analysts, work assignment, automatic software monitoring capabilities, design and coding reviews, production times, success rates, and organizational structure of the projects.

Thayer, R. H.↗

NASA NTRS1992

FITS data conversion efforts at the Compton Observatory Science Support Center

The Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) is an active, earth orbiting satellite consisting of four gamma-ray telescopes. Each telescope is maintained by an independent principal investigator (PI) team, and each PI team has devised separate data formats to handle the needs of their particular instrument. As mandated by NASA, the Compton Observatory Science Support Center (COSSC) intends to archive and distribute PI data to the public in FITS (Flexible Image Transport System) format. To accomplish this task, we at COSSC have been developing a set of general purpose software tools that facilitate the transformation of non-FITS formatted data into FITS format. These tools, known as ToFU (To FITS Utilities), serve as the kernel of our CGRO data conversion software. This presentation describes the problems encountered in transcribing large amounts of data into a standard FITS form and the capabilities of the COSSC-built conversion software designed to perform the transformations.

Jennings, D. G.↗

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 NTRS2007

Potential of VIIRS Data for Regional Monitoring of Gypsy Moth Defoliation: Implications for Forest Threat Early Warning System

A NASA RPC (Rapid Prototyping Capability) experiment was conducted to assess the potential of VIIRS (Visible/Infrared Imager/Radiometer Suite) data for monitoring non-native gypsy moth (Lymantria dispar) defoliation of forests. This experiment compares defoliation detection products computed from simulated VIIRS and from MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) time series products as potential inputs to a forest threat EWS (Early Warning System) being developed for the USFS (USDA Forest Service). Gypsy moth causes extensive defoliation of broadleaved forests in the United States and is specifically identified in the Healthy Forest Restoration Act (HFRA) of 2003. The HFRA mandates development of a national forest threat EWS. This system is being built by the USFS and NASA is aiding integration of needed satellite data products into this system, including MODIS products. This RPC experiment enabled the MODIS follow-on, VIIRS, to be evaluated as a data source for EWS forest monitoring products. The experiment included 1) assessment of MODIS-simulated VIIRS NDVI products, and 2) evaluation of gypsy moth defoliation mapping products from MODIS-simulated VIIRS and from MODIS NDVI time series data. This experiment employed MODIS data collected over the approximately 15 million acre mid-Appalachian Highlands during the annual peak defoliation time frame (approximately June 10 through July 27) during 2000-2006. NASA Stennis Application Research Toolbox software was used to produce MODIS-simulated VIIRS data and NASA Stennis Time Series Product Tool software was employed to process MODIS and MODIS-simulated VIIRS time series data scaled to planetary reflectance. MODIS-simulated VIIRS data was assessed through comparison to Hyperion-simulated VIIRS data using data collected during gypsy moth defoliation. Hyperion-simulated MODIS data showed a high correlation with actual MODIS data (NDVI R2 of 0.877 and RMSE of 0.023). MODIS-simulated VIIRS data for the same date showed moderately high correlation with Hyperion-simulated VIIRS data (NDVI R2 of 0.62 and RMSE of 0.035), even though the datasets were collected about a half an hour apart during changing weather conditions. MODIS products (MOD02, MOD09, and MOD13) and MOD02-simulated VIIRS time series data were used to generate defoliation mapping products based on image classification and image differencing change detection techniques. Accuracy of final defoliation mapping products was assessed by image interpreting over 170 randomly sampled locations found on Landsat and ASTER data in conjunction with defoliation map data from the USFS. The MOD02-simulated VIIRS 400-meter NDVI classification produced a similar overall accuracy (87.28 percent with 0.72 Kappa) to the MOD02 250-meter NDVI classification (86.71 percent with 0.71 Kappa). In addition, the VIIRS 400-meter NDVI, MOD02 250-meter NDVI, and MOD02 500-meter NDVI showed good user and producer accuracies for the defoliated forest class (70 percent) and acceptable Kappa values (0.66). MOD02 and MOD02-simulated VIIRS data both showed promise as data sources for regional monitoring of forest disturbance due to insect defoliation.

Spruce, Joseph P.↗

NASA NTRS1998

Virtual Environment Computer Simulations to Support Human Factors Engineering and Operations Analysis for the RLV Program

The Army-NASA Virtual Innovations Laboratory (ANVIL) was recently created to provide virtual reality tools for performing Human Engineering and operations analysis for both NASA and the Army. The author's summer research project consisted of developing and refining these tools for NASA's Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV) program. Several general simulations were developed for use by the ANVIL for the evaluation of the X34 Engine Changeout procedure. These simulations were developed with the software tool dVISE 4.0.0 produced by Division Inc. All software was run on an SGI Indigo2 High Impact. This paper describes the simulations, various problems encountered with the simulations, other summer activities, and possible work for the future. We first begin with a brief description of virtual reality systems.

Lunsford, Myrtis Leigh↗