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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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The experience acquired through development, implementation and operation of the Kepler K2 science pipelines can provide lessons learned for the development of science pipelines for other missions such as NASA's Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite and ESA's PLATO mission.
This is collection of case studies detailing mishaps involving remotely piloted aircraft and lessons learned from each accident investigation. Topics include accidents and incidents in the experimental flight test environment as well as human factors elements of RPA mishaps in the operational environment.
The Kilopower nuclear ground testing nicknamed KRUSTY (Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling TechnologY) was completed at the Nevada Nuclear Security Site (NNSS) on March 21, 2018. This full scale nuclear demonstration verified the Kilopower reactor neutronics during startup, steady state, and transient operations in a space simulated environment. This was the first space reactor test completed for fission power systems in over 50 years and marked a turning point in NASA's nuclear program. The completed reactor power system design incorporated flight prototypic materials and full scale components in an effort to study the reactor dynamics at full power and significantly reduce follow on risk of a future flight demonstration. This design provided a unique opportunity for the power system to simulate several expected and unexpected mission scenarios that allowed the designers to verify that the reactor dynamics could tolerate many worst case conditions regarding reactor stability and control. The dynamic changes imposed on the reactor validated the ability of the reactor to load follow the power conversion system and passively control the fuel temperature and overall system stability. With successful completion of the KRUSTY experiment, the NASA/DOE team will evaluate the lessons learned throughout the project and apply them towards a flight demonstration of a Kilopower reactor.
The Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) Knowledge Capture & Transfer (KCT) team conducted video interviews with element managers in the Exploration Ground Systems (EGS) Program Office at Kennedy Space Center (KSC). The immediate goal was to capture a point-in-time profile of challenges, solutions, and lessons learned derived from EGS element development activity from the end of the Space Shuttle Program (SSP) to the present time.
The Johnson Space Center has pursued integrating risk management practices and techniques throughout a large organization with an extraordinarily diverse mission. Past mission and institutional failures have been used to inform NASA's safety culture and a implement a uniform risk management environment. Basics from the loss prevention industry have influenced NASA's approach to sustaining its unique, yet aging, infrastructure. Lessons learned at NASA can augment and enhance occupational safety, health and risk management capabilities within hazardous industries. By focusing on risk informed decision-making, building a pervasive safety culture, and accommodating human factors, NASA's safety capabilities have been specifically developed to minimize the risk of loss of life and loss of mission.
This presentation examines the UTMs second mantra, a risk-based approach where geographical needs and use cases determine the airspace performance requirements and draws lessons from geofence buffer sizing research and trajectory conformance requirement research.
This paper looks at the key programmatic and technical drivers of the James Webb Space Telescope and assesses ways to building more cost-effective telescopes in the future. The paper evaluates the top level programmatics for JWST along with the key technical drivers from design through integration and testing. Actual data and metrics from JWST are studied to identify what ultimately drove cost on JWST. Finally, the paper assesses areas where applying lessons learned can reduce costs on future observatories and will provide better insights into critical areas to optimize for cost.
The Balloon Experimental Twin Telescope for Infrared Interferometry (BETTII) mission launched from Palestine, Texas in June 2017. After an exciting launch and successful cruise, the BETTII gondola suffered an anomalous event at termination. BETTII separated from its parachute and free-fell 136,000 feet into the west Texas desert. This event was classified as a "close-call" and investigated as such. We present here the recovery effort required to find the payload and extract the payload from its impact site. We also present lessons learned from the event and results from the investigation, the design for the next BETTII gondola, and a path forward for return to flight.
The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-16 observatory was launched on 19 November 2016. During daily on-orbit operations, shadowing of the inboard magnetometer sensor unit occurs due to spacecraft geometry and solar angle. Throughout the shadowing periods of the inboard magnetometer, anomalous excursions of 20 nanotesla (nT) are observed. In addition to the excursions during shadow events, the measurement difference between the inboard and outboard magnetometer varies over the day, indicating erroneous measurements by one or both magnetometers. In addition, based on the deployment rotations, the zero offsets of the X and Y axes were found to be significantly different, ~30nT, from ground calibration data. Because of these observations, an extensive root cause investigation was undertaken to correct the magnetometer system for the next spacecraft in the GOES-R series. This paper documents the efforts of that activity and the lessons learned as a result of the investigation.
The Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES)-16 observatory was launched on 19 November 2016. During daily on-orbit operations, shadowing of the inboard magnetometer sensor unit occurs due to spacecraft geometry and solar angle. Throughout the shadowing periods of the inboard magnetometer, anomalous excursions of 20 nanotesla (nT) are observed. In addition to the excursions during shadow events, the measurement difference between the inboard and outboard magnetometer varies over the day, indicating erroneous measurements by one or both magnetometers. In addition, based on the deployment rotations, the zero offsets of the X and Y axes were found to be significantly different, ~30nT, from ground calibration data. Because of these observations, an extensive root cause investigation was undertaken to correct the magnetometer system for the next spacecraft in the GOES-R series. This paper documents the efforts of that activity and the lessons learned as a result of the investigation.
Fault protection as a discipline involves a collection of flight software logic and operational processes for detecting unacceptable anomalous behavior, responding prior to reaching criticality, restricting the propagation of a failure beyond a fault containment region, and recovering the vehicle back to full or degraded functionality if possible. The System Fault Protection (SFP) design for the SMAP Earth orbiter was put to the test during its 90-day vehicle commissioning activities. During this time, the SFP software autonomously protected the vehicle from multiple faults to critical hardware, and the operations team successfully returned the observatory to its science state. The SFP also performed well in the presence of anomalous behavior below true safety limits by not taking unnecessary response actions, instead allowing the operations team time to monitor the behavior. Certain aspects of the SFP design were modified during operations via both parameter updates and a full flight software update in order to better match the vehicle behavior in the flight environment. An evaluation of the SMAP SFP performance during vehicle Commissioning will be provided in this paper, as well as a set of lessons learned largely focused on visibility, SFP mutability in operations, responses to peripheral device faults, and Safe Mode recovery and design. By capturing some of the knowledge gained during SMAP Commissioning, it is intended that this paper provide guidance for making future System Fault Protection designs more robust and supportive of operations.
Launched in 1989, the Galileo mission added dramatically to our understanding of the Jovian system and our entire solar system1. To make best use of limited resources, the Galileo Orbiter used excess power from its Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generators (RTGs) for temperature management of its Retro-Propulsion Module (RPM). This paper describes operational challenges introduced by this design and how, despite major mission changes through development and flight, they were overcome through a challenging six-year interplanetary cruise to Jupiter. This case study offers lessons for missions planning to couple critical spacecraft subsystems in unconventional ways.
The Johnson Space Center has pursued integrating safety culture and risk management practices and techniques throughout a large organization with an extraordinarily diverse mission. Past mission and institutional failures have been used to inform NASA's safety culture and a implement a uniform risk management environment. Basics from the loss prevention industry have influenced NASA's approach to sustaining its unique, yet aging, infrastructure. Lessons learned at NASA can augment and enhance occupational safety, health and risk management capabilities within hazardous industries. By focusing on risk informed decision-making, building a pervasive safety culture, and accommodating human factors, NASA's safety capabilities have been specifically developed to minimize the risk of loss of life and loss of mission.
In 2017, our team investigated and evaluated the novel concept of operations of astronaut self-scheduling (rescheduling their own timeline without creating violations) onboard International Space Station (ISS). Five test sessions were completed for this technology demonstration called Crew Autonomous Scheduling Test (CAST). For the first time in a spaceflight operational environment, an ISS crewmember planned, rescheduled, and executed their activities in real-time on a mobile device while abiding by flight and scheduling constraints. This paper discusses the lessons learned from deployment to execution.
Through most of the project formulation prior to Phase A, the Wide Field InfraRed Survey Telescope (WFIRST) project was developed as a Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in house mission with one secondary instrument developed by JPL and an existing telescope donated from elsewhere in the federal government and managed by the original industry vendor. GSFC was responsible for the spacecraft bus, the instrument supporting structure and the Wide Field Instrument (WFI), which provides the primary science for the mission. Shortly before the beginning of Phase A, NASA codified its acquisition strategy for WFIRST to explore a more substantial role for industry in the mission. The project decided to have a large portion of the WFI be co-developed by industry. This paper describes lessons learned and recommendations for bringing potential industry partners into a project at later stages of conceptual design and presents viewpoints from both the vendor and customer on the experience with WFIRST.
Cumulus is a scalable, extensible cloud-based archive system which is capable of ingesting, archiving, and distributing data from both existing on-prem sources and new cloud-native missions. As we have built and evolved the system with contributions from seven NASA EOSDIS organizations, we have learned several lessons about how to build a robust, broadly-applicable, microservices-based cloud system for geospatial data which we will share in this talk.
Crafting a great user experience is hard. Crafting a great user experience for Earth science applications is fraught with challenges. From the variability in metadata to the experience profile of various users the possible permutations of use cases introduce layer upon layer of complexities that must be designed against. In this session, the Earthdata Search team would like to highlight lessons learned over the lifespan of the application the good, the bad, and the ugly.
I've been asked to be a presenter along with a panel of fellow NASA Electromagnetic Compatibility (EMC) engineers at this year's IEEE EMC & Signal and Power Integrity (SIPI) 2019 symposium. The topic I am asked to cover is in regards to I&T horror stories because of my 15 years of personal experience as an EMC test engineer with Code 549. I am planning on only having slides with photos of test methods we no longer use as well as cover some mishaps that have happened over the years both within my organization and throughout the space industry. Highlighting the mistakes that were made, the lessons learned from those incidents and how they've effected how we test today.