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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 397 records · Page 22

Human Spaceflight Technology Needs - A Foundation for JSC's Technology Strategy

Human space exploration has always been heavily influenced by goals to achieve a specific mission on a specific schedule. This approach drove rapid technology development, the rapidity of which adds risks as well as provides a major driver for costs and cost uncertainty. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is now approaching the extension of human presence throughout the solar system by balancing a proactive yet less schedule-driven development of technology with opportunistic scheduling of missions as the needed technologies are realized. This approach should provide cost effective, low risk technology development that will enable efficient and effective manned spaceflight missions. As a first step, the NASA Human Spaceflight Architecture Team (HAT) has identified a suite of critical technologies needed to support future manned missions across a range of destinations, including in cis-lunar space, near earth asteroid visits, lunar exploration, Mars moons, and Mars exploration. The challenge now is to develop a strategy and plan for technology development that efficiently enables these missions over a reasonable time period, without increasing technology development costs unnecessarily due to schedule pressure, and subsequently mitigating development and mission risks. NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC), as the nation s primary center for human exploration, is addressing this challenge through an innovative approach in allocating Internal Research and Development funding to projects. The HAT Technology Needs (TechNeeds) Database has been developed to correlate across critical technologies and the NASA Office of Chief Technologist Technology Area Breakdown Structure (TABS). The TechNeeds Database illuminates that many critical technologies may support a single technical capability gap, that many HAT technology needs may map to a single TABS technology discipline, and that a single HAT technology need may map to multiple TABS technology disciplines. The TechNeeds Database greatly clarifies understanding of the complex relationships of critical technologies to mission and architecture element needs. Extensions to the core TechNeeds Database allow JSC to factor in and appropriately weight JSC Center Core Technology Competencies, and considerations of Commercialization Potential and Partnership Potential. The inherent coupling among these, along with an appropriate importance weighting, has provided an initial prioritization for allocation of technology development research funding for JSC. The HAT Technology Needs Database, with a core of built-in reports, clarifies and communicates complex technology needs for cost effective human space exploration such that an organization seeking to assure that research prioritization supports human spaceflight of the future can be successful.

Stecklein, Jonette M.↗

The 30/20 GHz flight experiment system, phase 2. Volume 4: Experiment system development plan

The development plan for the 30/20 GHz flight experiment system is presented. A master program schedule with detailed development plans for each subsystem is planned with careful attention given to how technology items to ensure a minimal risk. The work breakdown structure shows the organization of the program management with detailed task definitions. The ROM costs based on the development plan are also given.

Bronstein, L.↗

SLS-PLAN-IT: A knowledge-based blackboard scheduling system for Spacelab life sciences missions

The primary scheduling tool in use during the Spacelab Life Science (SLS-1) planning phase was the operations research (OR) based, tabular form Experiment Scheduling System (ESS) developed by NASA Marshall. PLAN-IT is an artificial intelligence based interactive graphic timeline editor for ESS developed by JPL. The PLAN-IT software was enhanced for use in the scheduling of Spacelab experiments to support the SLS missions. The enhanced software SLS-PLAN-IT System was used to support the real-time reactive scheduling task during the SLS-1 mission. SLS-PLAN-IT is a frame-based blackboard scheduling shell which, from scheduling input, creates resource-requiring event duration objects and resource-usage duration objects. The blackboard structure is to keep track of the effects of event duration objects on the resource usage objects. Various scheduling heuristics are coded in procedural form and can be invoked any time at the user's request. The system architecture is described along with what has been learned with the SLS-PLAN-IT project.

Kao, Cheng-Yan↗

Developing a Strategic Plan for NASA JSC's Technology Investments

Human space exploration has always been heavily influenced by goals to achieve a specific mission on a specific schedule. This approach drove rapid technology development, the rapidity of which adds risks as well as provides a major driver for costs. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is now approaching the extension of human presence throughout the solar system by balancing a proactive yet less schedule-driven development of technology with opportunistic scheduling of missions as the needed technologies are realized. This approach should provide cost effective, low risk technology development that will enable efficient and effective manned spaceflight missions. As a first step, the NASA Human Spaceflight Architecture Team (HAT) has identified a suite of critical technologies needed to support future manned missions across a range of destinations, including in cislunar space, near earth asteroid visits, lunar exploration, Mars space, and Mars exploration. The challenge now is to develop a strategy and plan for technology development that efficiently enables these missions over a reasonable time period, without increasing technology development costs unnecessarily due to schedule pressure, and subsequently mitigating development and mission risks. NASA fs Johnson Space Center (JSC), as the nation's primary center for human exploration, is addressing this challenge through an innovative approach allocating Internal Research and Development funding to projects that have been prioritized using four focus criteria, with appropriate importance weighting. These four focus criteria are the Human Space Flight Technology Needs, JSC Core Technology Competencies, Commercialization Potential, and Partnership Potential. The inherent coupling in these focus criteria have been captured in a database and have provided an initial prioritization for allocation of technology development research funding. This paper will describe this process and this database, and the preliminary technology development prioritization results.

Stecklein, Jonette M.↗

Resource constrained design of artificial neural networks using comparator neural network

We present a systematic design method executed under resource constraints for automating the design of artificial neural networks using the back error propagation algorithm. Our system aims at finding the best possible configuration for solving the given application with proper tradeoff between the training time and the network complexity. The design of such a system is hampered by three related problems. First, there are infinitely many possible network configurations, each may take an exceedingly long time to train; hence, it is impossible to enumerate and train all of them to completion within fixed time, space, and resource constraints. Second, expert knowledge on predicting good network configurations is heuristic in nature and is application dependent, rendering it difficult to characterize fully in the design process. A learning procedure that refines this knowledge based on examples on training neural networks for various applications is, therefore, essential. Third, the objective of the network to be designed is ill-defined, as it is based on a subjective tradeoff between the training time and the network cost. A design process that proposes alternate configurations under different cost-performance tradeoff is important. We have developed a Design System which schedules the available time, divided into quanta, for testing alternative network configurations. Its goal is to select/generate and test alternative network configurations in each quantum, and find the best network when time is expended. Since time is limited, a dynamic schedule that determines the network configuration to be tested in each quantum is developed. The schedule is based on relative comparison of predicted training times of alternative network configurations using comparator network paradigm. The comparator network has been trained to compare training times for a large variety of traces of TSSE-versus-time collected during back-propagation learning of various applications.

Wah, Benjamin W.↗

Feasibility Criteria for Interval Management Operations as Part of Arrival Management Operations

Interval Management (IM) is a future airborne spacing concept that aims to provide more precise inter-aircraft spacing to yield throughput improvements and greater use of fuel efficient trajectories for arrival and approach operations. To participate in an IM operation, an aircraft must be equipped with avionics that provide speeds to achieve and maintain an assigned spacing interval relative to another aircraft. It is not expected that all aircraft will be equipped with the necessary avionics, but rather that IM fits into a larger arrival management concept developed to support the broader mixed-equipage environment. Arrival management concepts are comprised of three parts: a ground-based sequencing and scheduling function to develop an overall arrival strategy, ground-based tools to support the management of aircraft to that schedule, and the IM tools necessary for the IM operation (i.e., ground-based set-up, initiation, and monitoring, and the flight-deck tools to conduct the IM operation). The Federal Aviation Administration is deploying a near-term ground-automation system to support metering operations in the National Airspace System, which falls within the first two components of the arrival management concept. This paper develops a methodology for determining the required delivery precision at controlled meter points for aircraft that are being managed to a schedule and aircraft being managed to a relative spacing interval in order to achieve desired flow rates and adequate separation at the meter points.

Levitt, Ian M.↗

Advanced Platform Systems Technology study. Volume 4: Technology advancement program plan

An overview study of the major technology definition tasks and subtasks along with their interfaces and interrelationships is presented. Although not specifically indicated in the diagram, iterations were required at many steps to finalize the results. The development of the integrated technology advancement plan was initiated by using the results of the previous two tasks, i.e., the trade studies and the preliminary cost and schedule estimates for the selected technologies. Descriptions for the development of each viable technology advancement was drawn from the trade studies. Additionally, a logic flow diagram depicting the steps in developing each technology element was developed along with descriptions for each of the major elements. Next, major elements of the logic flow diagrams were time phased, and that allowed the definition of a technology development schedule that was consistent with the space station program schedule when possible. Schedules show the major milestone including tests required as described in the logic flow diagrams.

Source record↗

Programmatic and technical parameters associated with Shuttle/Centaur development and operations

The cost, schedule, technical, integration, and performance parameters associated with the development of the Shuttle/Centaur configurations, Centaur G and Centaur G-Prime, for compatibility with various elements of the STS are discussed. It is noted that the design concepts for these configurations involved the use of as much flight-proven hardware from the Atlas/Centaur program as possible. Forward and aft adapters were designed using graphite/epoxy composite structures for strength, weight, and thermal flow considerations. The Centaur integrated support system serves as the system interface for all systems between the Shuttle and Centaur from prelaunch through deployment of the Centaur in LEO. As a result of the Shuttle accident of January 28, 1986, the earliest possible flight for the Centaur mission appears to be December 1987.

Clark, Harry J.↗

IUS/TUG orbital operations and mission support study. Volume 4: Project planning data

Planning data are presented for the development phases of interim upper stage (IUS) and tug systems. Major project planning requirements, major event schedules, milestones, system development and operations process networks, and relevant support research and technology requirements are included. Topics discussed include: IUS flight software; tug flight software; IUS/tug ground control center facilities, personnel, data systems, software, and equipment; IUS mission events; tug mission events; tug/spacecraft rendezvous and docking; tug/orbiter operations interface, and IUS/orbiter operations interface.

Source record↗

Going Boldly Beyond: Progress on NASA's Space Launch System

NASA's Space Launch System is implementing an evolvable configuration approach to system development in a resource-constrained era. Legacy systems enable non-traditional development funding and contribute to sustainability and affordability. Limited simultaneous developments reduce cost and schedule risk. Phased approach to advanced booster development enables innovation and competition, incrementally demonstrating affordability and performance enhancements. Advanced boosters will provide performance for the most capable heavy lift launcher in history, enabling unprecedented space exploration benefiting all of humanity.

Singer, Jody↗

A prototype combinatorial scheduler for space-borne observational instruments

A prototype scheduler has been developed for observations to be carried out by the NASA Gamma Ray Observatory. The purpose of the scheduling system is to provide an automated method to determine optimized schedules conforming to all scheduling guidelines. Strategies used in creating COMPTEL/EGRET schedules and in scheduling OSSE targets are examined. It is concluded that the hybrid scheduler creates optimal schedules, or very nearly optimal schedules, and reduces the estimated scheduling time by 18 or 19 orders of magnitude, from about 10 to the 14th years to as few as 561 seconds.

Gilstrap, Lewey O.↗

Space Shuttle processing - A case study in artificial intelligence

A scheduling system incorporating AI is described and applied to the automated processing of the Space Shuttle. The unique problem of addressing the temporal, resource, and orbiter-configuration requirements of shuttle processing is described with comparisons to traditional project management for manufacturing processes. The present scheduling system is developed to handle the late inputs and complex programs that characterize shuttle processing by incorporating fixed preemptive scheduling, constraint-based simulated annealing, and the characteristics of an 'anytime' algorithm. The Space-Shuttle processing environment is modeled with 500 activities broken down into 4000 subtasks and with 1600 temporal constraints, 8000 resource constraints, and 3900 state requirements. The algorithm is shown to scale to very large problems and maintain anytime characteristics suggesting that an automated scheduling process is achievable and potentially cost-effective.

Mollikarimi, Cindy↗

Request-Driven Schedule Automation for the Deep Space Network

The DSN Scheduling Engine (DSE) has been developed to increase the level of automated scheduling support available to users of NASA s Deep Space Network (DSN). We have adopted a request-driven approach to DSN scheduling, in contrast to the activity-oriented approach used up to now. Scheduling requests allow users to declaratively specify patterns and conditions on their DSN service allocations, including timing, resource requirements, gaps, overlaps, time linkages among services, repetition, priorities, and a wide range of additional factors and preferences. The DSE incorporates a model of the key constraints and preferences of the DSN scheduling domain, along with algorithms to expand scheduling requests into valid resource allocations, to resolve schedule conflicts, and to repair unsatisfied requests. We use time-bounded systematic search with constraint relaxation to return nearby solutions if exact ones cannot be found, where the relaxation options and order are under user control. To explore the usability aspects of our approach we have developed a graphical user interface incorporating some crucial features to make it easier to work with complex scheduling requests. Among these are: progressive revelation of relevant detail, immediate propagation and visual feedback from a user s decisions, and a meeting calendar metaphor for repeated patterns of requests. Even as a prototype, the DSE has been deployed and adopted as the initial step in building the operational DSN schedule, thus representing an important initial validation of our overall approach. The DSE is a core element of the DSN Service Scheduling Software (S(sup 3)), a web-based collaborative scheduling system now under development for deployment to all DSN users.

Johnston, Mark D.↗

Balancing Contention and Synchronization on the Intel Paragon

The Intel Paragon is a mesh-connected distributed memory parallel computer. It uses an oblivious and deterministic message routing algorithm: this permits us to develop highly optimized schedules for frequently needed communication patterns. The complete exchange is one such pattern. Several approaches are available for carrying it out on the mesh. We study an algorithm developed by Scott. This algorithm assumes that a communication link can carry one message at a time and that a node can only transmit one message at a time. It requires global synchronization to enforce a schedule of transmissions. Unfortunately global synchronization has substantial overhead on the Paragon. At the same time the powerful interconnection mechanism of this machine permits 2 or 3 messages to share a communication link with minor overhead. It can also overlap multiple message transmission from the same node to some extent. We develop a generalization of Scott's algorithm that executes complete exchange with a prescribed contention. Schedules that incur greater contention require fewer synchronization steps. This permits us to tradeoff contention against synchronization overhead. We describe the performance of this algorithm and compare it with Scott's original algorithm as well as with a naive algorithm that does not take interconnection structure into account. The Bounded contention algorithm is always better than Scott's algorithm and outperforms the naive algorithm for all but the smallest message sizes. The naive algorithm fails to work on meshes larger than 12 x 12. These results show that due consideration of processor interconnect and machine performance parameters is necessary to obtain peak performance from the Paragon and its successor mesh machines.

Bokhari, Shahid H.↗

Developing a Reduced 240-Bus WECC Dynamic Model for Frequency Response Study of High Renewable Integration

The ongoing changes in the generation resource mix, driven by the rapid adoption of inverter-based resources (IBR) as well as the early retirement of synchronous generators, are bringing new challenges to the planning and operation of bulk electric power systems. Consequently, there is an increasing need to understand, design, and quantify the reliability service provision from IBRs by performing integrated scheduling and dynamic simulations. However, test systems that have consistent scheduling and dynamic models rarely exist largely because of the decoupled nature of the two simulations on a synchronous generator-dominated system. This paper develops the dynamic model of a reduced Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC) system. In conjunction with the existing scheduling model, it is suitable for integrating scheduling and dynamic simulations. The reduced 240-bus WECC model reflects the generation resource mix of the Western Interconnection as of 2018. Moreover, the developed dynamic model is validated against field frequency events measured by FNET/GridEye and preserves the dominant inter-area oscillation mode in WECC.

dynamic simulation↗

An economic assessment of behind-the-meter photovoltaics paired with batteries on the Hawaiian Islands.

Due to natural variability and uncertainty, the ever-increasing penetration of solar generation in Hawaii presents challenges to power grid operators to maintain reliable system operation. Demand response (DR) has the potential to be a cost-effective tool for Hawaii to reach its aggressive renewable energy goals while maintaining the reliability of power grids. The Hawaii Public Utilities Commission has approved the Hawaiian Electric Company's revised portfolio of DR programs. The companies have released a grid services purchase agreement and subscribed an initial tranche of load into their DR programs. This paper presents innovative analytical methods and comprehensive economic assessment for distributed photovoltaics (PV) paired with battery energy storage systems (BESSs) for two new DR programs, including fast frequency response and capacity grid service. Optimal dispatch and sizing methods are proposed for the paired system considering different tariff schedules and PV compensation programs across five islands. It was found that while the best resource configuration and potential economic benefits vary with tariff structure, a BESS paired with PV can be optimally dispatched to generate multiple value streams simultaneously. Compensation from DR programs is an important value stream to help increase the cost-effectiveness of the integrated system.

Battery energy storage system↗

Study of the impact of cruise speed on scheduling and productivity of commercial transport aircraft

A comparison is made between airplane productivity and utilization levels derived from commercial airline type schedules which were developed for two subsonic and four supersonic cruise speed aircraft. The cruise speed component is the only difference between the schedules which are based on 1995 passenger demand forecasts. Productivity-to-speed relationships were determined for the three discrete route systems: North Atlantic, Trans-Pacific, and North-South America. Selected combinations of these route systems were also studied. Other areas affecting the productivity-to-speed relationship such as aircraft design range and scheduled turn time were examined.

Bond, E. Q.↗