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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 469 records · Page 26
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1994

Advanced timeline systems

The Mission Planning Division of the Mission Operations Laboratory at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center is responsible for scheduling experiment activities for space missions controlled at MSFC. In order to draw statistically relevant conclusions, all experiments must be scheduled at least once and may have repeated performances during the mission. An experiment consists of a series of steps which, when performed, provide results pertinent to the experiment's functional objective. Since these experiments require a set of resources such as crew and power, the task of creating a timeline of experiment activities for the mission is one of resource constrained scheduling. For each experiment, a computer model with detailed information of the steps involved in running the experiment, including crew requirements, processing times, and resource requirements is created. These models are then loaded into the Experiment Scheduling Program (ESP) which attempts to create a schedule which satisfies all resource constraints. ESP uses a depth-first search technique to place each experiment into a time interval, and a scoring function to evaluate the schedule. The mission planners generate several schedules and choose one with a high value of the scoring function to send through the approval process. The process of approving a mission timeline can take several months. Each timeline must meet the requirements of the scientists, the crew, and various engineering departments as well as enforce all resource restrictions. No single objective is considered in creating a timeline. The experiment scheduling problem is: given a set of experiments, place each experiment along the mission timeline so that all resource requirements and temporal constraints are met and the timeline is acceptable to all who must approve it. Much work has been done on multicriteria decision making (MCDM). When there are two criteria, schedules which perform well with respect to one criterion will often perform poorly with respect to the other. One schedule dominates another if it performs strictly better on one criterion, and no worse on the other. Clearly, dominated schedules are undesireable. A nondominated schedule can be generated by some sort of optimization problem. Generally there are two approaches: the first is a hierarchical approach while the second requires optimizing a weighting or scoring function.

Bulfin, R. L.↗
NASA NTRS1996

NASA's SPICE System Models the Solar System

SPICE is NASA's multimission, multidiscipline information system for assembling, distributing, archiving, and accessing space science geometry and related data used by scientists and engineers for mission design and mission evaluation, detailed observation planning, mission operations, and science data analysis.

mission design↗
NASA NTRS2008

Propensity and Risk Assessment for Solar Particle Events: Consideration of Integral Fluence at High Proton Energies

For future space missions with longer duration, exposure to large solar particle events (SPEs) with high energy levels is the major concern during extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) on the lunar and Mars surface. The expected SPE propensity for large proton fluence was estimated from a non-homogeneous Poisson model using the historical database for measurements of protons with energy > 30 MeV, Phi(sub 30). The database includes a continuous data set for the past 5 solar cycles. The resultant SPE risk analysis for a specific mission period was made including the 95% confidence level. In addition to total particle intensity of SPE, the detailed energy spectra of protons especially at high energy levels were recognized as extremely important parameter for the risk assessment, since there remains a significant cancer risks from those energetic particles for large events. Using all the recorded proton fluence of SPEs for energies >60 and >100 MeV, Phi(sub 60) and Phi(sub 100), respectively, the expected propensities of SPEs abundant with high energy protons were estimated from the same non-homogeneous Poisson model and the representative cancer risk was analyzed. The dependencies of risk with different energy spectra, for e.g. between soft and hard SPEs, were evaluated. Finally, we describe approaches to improve radiation protection of astronauts and optimize mission planning for future space missions.

Kim, Myung-Hee↗
NASA NTRS2008

DARPA/USAF/USN J-UCAS X-45A System Demonstration Program: A Review of Flight Test Site Processes and Personnel

The Joint Unmanned Combat Air Systems (J-UCAS) program is a collaborative effort between the Defense Advanced Research Project Agency (DARPA), the US Air Force (USAF) and the US Navy (USN). Together they have reviewed X-45A flight test site processes and personnel as part of a system demonstration program for the UCAV-ATD Flight Test Program. The goal was to provide a disciplined controlled process for system integration and testing and demonstration flight tests. NASA's Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) acted as the project manager during this effort and was tasked with the responsibilities of range and ground safety, the provision of flight test support and infrastructure and the monitoring of technical and engineering tasks. DFRC also contributed their engineering knowledge through their contributions in the areas of autonomous ground taxi control development, structural dynamics testing and analysis and the provision of other flight test support including telemetry data, tracking radars, and communications and control support equipment. The Air Force Flight Test Center acted at the Deputy Project Manager in this effort and was responsible for the provision of system safety support and airfield management and air traffic control services, among other supporting roles. The T-33 served as a J-UCAS surrogate aircraft and demonstrated flight characteristics similar to that of the the X-45A. The surrogate served as a significant risk reduction resource providing mission planning verification, range safety mission assessment and team training, among other contributions.

Cosentino, Gary B.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Cyberinfrastructure for Aircraft Mission Support

Forth last several years NASA's Airborne Science Program has been developing and using infrastructure and applications that enable researchers to interact with each other and with airborne instruments via network communications. Use of these tools has increased near realtime situational awareness during field operations, resulting it productivity improvements, improved decision making, and the collection of better data. Advances in pre-mission planning and post-mission access have also emerged. Integrating these capabilities with other tools to evolve coherent service-oriented enterprise architecture for aircraft flight and test operations is the subject of ongoing efforts.

Freudinger, Lawrence C.↗
NASA NTRS2008

Mission Activity Planning for Humans and Robots on the Moon

A series of studies is conducted to develop a systematic approach to optimizing, both in terms of the distribution and scheduling of tasks, scenarios in which astronauts and robots accomplish a group of activities on the Moon, given an objective function (OF) and specific resources and constraints. An automated planning tool is developed as a key element of this optimization system.

task allocation↗
NASA NTRS2018

Space Resources and Mining: Current Objectives, Plans, and Missions

Why are Space Resources and Their Use Important? There are many reasons why people and nations want to explore space, and there are many different ways in which space can be explored. A critical interface linking both the ‘why’ and the ‘how’ of space exploration is the identification, extraction, and use of resources in space. In both NASA’s Journey to Mars: Pioneering Next Steps in Space Exploration released in October of 2015 and the Global Exploration Roadmap released in August 2013, the ability to find, quantify, extract, process, and use space resources was identified as a critical objective by NASA and over 14 other space agencies for achieving affordable and sustainable human exploration beyond Earth’s orbit, encouraging and creating new commercial entities and markets based on space activities, and increasing the terrestrial economy and quality-of-life benefits for all humankind. Robotic and especially human space exploration up to this point in time can be considered to be ‘Earth reliant’ in that everything needed to support and enable the mission is launched from Earth. The past Apollo missions to the Moon and the International Space Station currently in orbit above the Earth all rely on hardware, habitats, power, transportation, and life support consumables sent from Earth to keep the crew alive and working. As the distance from Earth increases, the cost of transportation and the risks due to failures and logistics disruptions also increases. By using resources found at the site of exploration to make mission critical consumables (such as propellants, fuel cell reactants and life support commodities), spare parts, and infrastructure needed to support surface activities (such as landing pads, roads, habitats/shelters, and power/thermal systems) commonly referred to as In Situ Resource Utilization, a significant amount of launch mass and cost can be saved and risk reduced. The ability to do these things also changes how exploration is performed from Earth Reliant to NASA’s goal of ‘Earth Independent’ exploration. After the US Apollo program was over, people began to recognize that it had been an inspiration for a generation of young students to go into Science, Technology, Engineering and Math (STEM) fields, and that the US industry and economy had significantly grown and lived off these students and the technological advances made to achieve these missions for decades. Space exploration should no longer be focused solely on scientific advancement or national pride, but for economic growth and population standard of living advancement. Considering the economic value of human exploration and how it could expand the economy of the US was brought to full light in a speech by John Marburger, the director of US Office of Science and Technology Policy under George W Bush at the Goddard Symposium in 2006. In his speech he highlighted that the ultimate goal was not to just Explore space but to Use space for the benefit of mankind. He further stated that the use of off-planet resources, in this case from the Moon, should be a critical architectural consideration for human space exploration to make it more affordable and sustainable. This could be achieved in two ways. The first is to start by encouraging and commercializing the extraction and production of transportation and life support related products from space resources, which could than lead to other resource uses once an affordable transportation architecture is established. The second is to encourage the spin-in of terrestrial technologies into space applications and spin-off of space technologies into terrestrial applications to increase the efficiency and profitability of terrestrial industries.

Sanders, Gerald B.↗
NASA NTRS2016

Cassini Navigation: The Road to Consistent Subkilometer Accuracy Satellite Encounters

This paper reviews the orbit determination performance for the last five years of the Cassini Mission Solstice Tour. During this period of time, Cassini had more than 30 satellite encounters, including Titan, Rhea, and Dione. We report on the navigational flyby accuracy, comparing post-flyby reconstructions and encounter predictions, and discuss the performance improvement and challenges over the years. Finally, we give an overview of the "Grand Finale" end of mission planned for 2017.The Cassini mission has been in orbit in the Saturnian system for more than 11 years, and hasreturned a wealth of discoveries and operational knowledge in the outer Solar System. In this paper, we reported on the last three years of navigation operations focusing on orbit determinationand encounter performance. Modeling and strategy changes over the past years now allow us tonavigate bodies at 100s of meters in accuracy, and consider a miss larger than 1 km an outlier.The Cassini Grand Finale will be spectacular - do not miss it!

Bellerose, Julie↗