Results for “programming systems” — Page 48

NASA NTRS1978

A concept for a transparent data acquisition and distribution system for spaceflight applications

The paper describes the Modular Data System concept of the NASA End-to-End Data System program. Data from a single instrument along with the necessary ancillary data will be assembled into self-contained packets and subsequently transmitted over various communications links (space telemetry channel, ground communications circuits, etc.) to the experimenter's facility in real time; reliable error control coding will be included in each link transmission to protect the integrity of the data packets. A major objective is to make the entire data acquisition and distribution process transparent to the experimenter in the sense that the output terminal of the distribution system will be physically, logically and electrically identical to that of the experiment output channel.

Greene, E. P.↗

NASA NTRS1989

An expert system for setting time steps in dynamic finite element programs

An expert system, ETUDES - Expert Time integration control Using Deep and Surface Knowledge System, which addresses the determination of the timestep for time integration of linear structural dynamic equations is described. This timestep may also be applicable for a moderately nonlinear simulation of the same structure. The program also determines whether an explicit or implicit method is most efficient for the particular simulation. A production rule programming system written in OPS5 is used for the implementation of this prototype expert system. Issues relating to the expert system architecture for this application, such as knowledge representation and structure, as well as domain knowledge are discussed. The prototype is evaluated by measuring its performance in various benchmark model problems.

Ramirez, Martin R.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The Instrumented Walking and Turning Test to Evaluate Suited Gait Dynamics and Performance in Extravehicular Activity Training Environments

Background and aims: Walking will be required for many exploration tasks on the Moon during the Artemis program. Walking in a straight line on the confined floorspace of a testing area, and repetitive treadmill walking that requires no change in direction may not adequately reflect the balance and coordination required during ambulation. Also, performance of turning maneuvers may be affected differently in different extravehicular activity (EVA) training facilities that simulate partial gravity. For example, the Neutral Buoyancy Lab (NBL) simulates lunar gravity by adding weight to underwater subjects to alter buoyancy and achieve the equivalent ground reaction force of 1/6 of Earth’s gravity (1/6G), whereas the Active Response Gravity Offload System (ARGOS) uses a computer controlled overhead suspension system programmed to continuously offload a percentage of a subject’s weight to simulate 1/6G. The degree to which dynamic movements such as turning are comparable across these EVA training facilities has not yet been evaluated. The instrumented gait test helps NASA scientists and engineers evaluate gait dynamics and performance in suited conditions, and this test demonstrates the unique characteristics and limitations of EVA training facilities. We developed an instrumented walking and turning test using inertial measurement units (IMUs) and conducted the test at NASA’s EVA training facilities. Results were used to compare suited walking and turning characteristics in the ARGOS and the NBL. Methods: Subjects donned the Mark III space suit during offloading with the ARGOS spreader bar gimbal and donned the Z2.5 space suit while underwater in the NBL with weights and floatation added to achieve realistic suit center of gravity. The test team securely attached three Opal (APDM, OR, USA) wireless IMUs on the space suit for each test run: one on the middle of the hard upper torso, and one on the left and on the right ankle bearings. During the NBL tests, the IMUs were encased in a waterproof housing (GoPro) with foam added to create a tighter fit. At both testing facilities, 6.3 m x 1.0 m (LxW) walking lines were marked, and a cone for turning or walking around was located at the end of the walking path with another line on the other side of the cone to indicate the stopping point after walking around the cone. Under simulated 1/6G, subjects began by standing at the marked line with their arms folded across the chest, they then walked at a preferred speed along the straight walking path until they reached the end, turned 180 degrees around the cone, and finally stopped at the marked stopping point. All IMU data recorded during testing were automatically saved to the internal memory. Then, raw IMU signals were processed using custom MATLAB (Mathworks, MA, USA) code to compare gait parameters during both the walking and the turning components of the task. These parameters included time (s), speed (m/s for walking and rad/s for turning), step number (n) and walk:turn time ratio (% time spent straight walking versus turning). Results: Less time, faster gait, fewer steps, and higher walk:turn ratio during both walking and turning components were exhibited during tests performed at the ARGOS versus those performed at the NBL. During the NBL tests, the slower walking speed continued at the same rate throughout a U-shape turn. During the ARGOS tests, the subjects performed shorter and tighter turns at 4 times the speed of the NBL turns because they walked 30% faster and the vertical offloading system gave them more support. Conclusion: Our data show that the differences in walking and turning parameters during the NBL tests may be due to the high viscosity in the water environment where the motion of the lower limbs was slow and did not reach full flexion and extension. These tests improve the current knowledge of testing environments in preparation for EVAs on the lunar surface.

Kyoung Jae Kim↗

NASA NTRS1989

Transport systems research vehicle color display system operations manual

A recent upgrade of the Transport Systems Research Vehicle operated by the Advanced Transport Operating Systems Program Office at the NASA Langley Research Center has resulted in an all-glass panel in the research flight deck. Eight ARINC-D size CRT color displays make up the panel. A major goal of the display upgrade effort was ease of operation and maintenance of the hardware while maintaining versatility needed for flight research. Software is the key to this required versatility and will be the area demanding the most detailed technical design expertise. This document is is intended to serve as a single source of quick reference information needed for routine operation and system level maintenance. Detailed maintenance and modification of the display system will require specific design documentation and must be accomplished by individuals with specialized knowledge and experience.

Easley, Wesley C.↗

NASA NTRS1994

Advanced integrated life support system update

The Advanced Integrated Life Support System Program (AILSS) is an advanced development effort to integrate the life support and protection requirements using the U.S. Navy's fighter/attack mission as a starting point. The goal of AILSS is to optimally mate protection from altitude, acceleration, chemical/biological agent, thermal environment (hot, cold, and cold water immersion) stress as well as mission enhancement through improved restraint, night vision, and head-mounted reticules and displays to ensure mission capability. The primary emphasis to date has been to establish garment design requirements and tradeoffs for protection. Here the garment and the human interface are treated as a system. Twelve state-off-the-art concepts from government and industry were evaluated for design versus performance. On the basis of a combination of centrifuge, thermal manikin data, thermal modeling, and mobility studies, some key design parameters have been determined. Future efforts will concentrate on the integration of protection through garment design and the use of a single layer, multiple function concept to streamline the garment system.

Whitley, Phillip E.↗

NASA NTRS2017

Near Earth Asteroid Scout: NASA's Solar Sail Mission to a NEA

NASA is developing a solar sail propulsion system for use on the Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) Scout reconnaissance mission and laying the groundwork for their use in future deep space science and exploration missions. Solar sails use sunlight to propel vehicles through space by reflecting solar photons from a large, mirror-like sail made of a lightweight, highly reflective material. This continuous photon pressure provides propellant-less thrust, allowing for very high delta V maneuvers on long-duration, deep space exploration. Since reflected light produces thrust, solar sails require no onboard propellant. The Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) Scout mission, funded by NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems Program and managed by NASA MSFC, will use the sail as primary propulsion allowing it to survey and image Asteroid 1991VG and, potentially, other NEA’s of interest for possible future human exploration. The NEA Scout spacecraft is housed in a 6U CubeSat-form factor and utilizes an 86 square meter solar sail for a total mass less than 14 kilograms. The mission is in partnership with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory with support from Langley Research Center and science participants from various institutions. NEA Scout will be launched on the maiden flight of the Space Launch System in 2019. The solar sail for NEA Scout will be based on the technology developed and flown by the NASA NanoSail-D and flown on The Planetary Society’s Lightsail-A. Four approximately-7-meter stainless steel booms wrapped on two spools (two overlapping booms per spool) will be motor driven and pull the sail from its stowed volume. The sail material is an aluminized polyimide approximately 2.5 microns thick. As the technology matures, solar sails will increasingly be used to enable science and exploration missions that are currently impossible or prohibitively expensive using traditional chemical and electric propulsion systems. This paper will summarize the status of the NEA Scout mission and solar sail technology in general.

Near Earth Asteroid↗

DOE OSTI2026

Aligning NASA Earth Science Data Stewardship with FAIR Principles: Outcomes, Recommendations, and Future Directions

The FAIR Principles—Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, and Reusable—offer a widely accepted framework for improving the sharing and reuse of digital scientific data by both human and machine users. Following these principles is critical for effective scientific data stewardship, broader scientific collaboration, and compliance with federal and agency data policies. This paper, based on the work of NASA’s Open, Free, and FAIR Working Group (O’FAIR WG) under the Earth Science Data Systems Program, presents an overview of how FAIR is being applied within NASA’s Earth science data landscape. It highlights ongoing progress and challenges, identifies FAIR-enabling resources, and offers recommendations and strategic actions to enhance the FAIRness of NASA-funded open and free Earth science data products. The FAIR-enabling resources identified underscore the vital role of NASA's existing enterprise processes, standards, tools, and infrastructures in supporting FAIR implementation. Our findings show strong performance in making NASA Earth science data more findable and accessible. However, further work is needed—especially in enhancing interoperability, so that different systems and tools can better understand and exchange data. This is especially important for enabling machine-driven discovery and analysis. We emphasize the importance of a balanced strategy that combines a centralized, top-down approach—focused on building enterprise-level capabilities and processes—with a decentralized, bottom-up approach driven by discipline-specific needs and community practices. We advocate for coordinated efforts to enhance (meta)data interoperability to facilitate seamless data and information sharing and exchange of Earth science data both within NASA and across other agencies managing Earth science data.

Data Product↗

DOE OSTI2020

SMART Mobility. Mobility Decision Science Capstone Report

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Systems and Modeling for Accelerated Research in Transportation (SMART) Mobility Consortium is a multiyear, multi-laboratory collaborative, managed by the Energy Efficient Mobility Systems Program of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Vehicle Technologies Office, dedicated to further understanding the energy implications and opportunities of advanced mobility technologies and services. The first three-year research phase of SMART Mobility occurred from 2017 through 2019, and included five research pillars: Connected and Automated Vehicles, Mobility Decision Science, Multi-Modal Freight, Urban Science, and Advanced Fueling Infrastructure. A sixth research thrust integrated aspects of all five pillars to develop a SMART Mobility Modeling Workflow to evaluate new transportation technologies and services at scale. This report summarizes the work of the Mobility Decision Science Pillar. The Mobility Decision Science Pillar sought to fill gaps in existing knowledge about the human role in the mobility system including travel decision-making and technology adoption in the context of future mobility. The objective was to study how underlying preferences, needs, and contextual factors might constrain or hasten future transportation system scenarios. For information about the other Pillars and about the SMART Mobility Modeling Workflow, please refer to the relevant pillar’s Capstone Report.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Am-241 Powered Dynamic Radioisotope Power System (DRPS) for Long Duration Lunar Rovers

For more than half a century most deep space and planetary missions have utilised Pu-238 as the isotope of choice for fuelling radioisotope thermoelectric generators and radioisotope heater units. In Europe, Am-241 based fuel has been selected and developed as part of the European Space Agency funded radioisotope power system program to provide technology solutions in the form of radioisotope thermoelectric generators and radioisotope heater units. A concurrent design study, in collaboration with NASA Glenn Research Centre, has been undertaken to design and develop a dynamic radioisotope power conversion concept that uses the European Large Heat Source. This is a 200 Wth Am-241 based heat source being developed for ESA and is an essential building block for the University of Leicester led radioisotope thermoelectric generator programme. This study aims to expand on the applications of the Am-241 based heat source within and outside Europe. The advancement in Am-241 power technologies could give rise to a suitable and sustainable addition to current Pu-238 based technologies, making the solar system and beyond more accessible for science and exploration mission.

Dynamic Radioisotope Power System↗

DOE OSTI2023

PotLib 2023: New version of a potential energy surface library for chemical systems

POTLIB is a library of global and semiglobal potential energy surface subprograms. The library currently features 410 entries, including both single-state entries and multi-state entries. When one calls the routine of a single-state entry, it returns the ground-electronic-state adiabatic potential energy surface at the input geometry. In addition, some entries also return the gradient of the surface. Further, when one calls a multi-state entry, it returns a diabatic potential energy matrix (DPEM). If the entry also has the gradient of the DPEM, one can compute adiabatic surfaces, their gradients, and the nonadiabatic coupling vectors (NACs) from the DPEM and its gradient by diagonalization. Some but not all the routines conform to one of a set of standard interfaces. The goal is to facilitate chemical dynamics research by collecting and disseminating a comprehensive collection of state-of-the-art potential energy routines (developed by a wide, international group of researchers) with systematic and well-defined interfaces for use with chemical dynamics programs. Systems in the library include CHArO 2 , CHN 2 O + , CH 2 O, CH 2 O 2 , CH 3 N 2 , CH 3 O, CH 4 , CH 4 Br, CH 4 Cl, CH 4 F, CH 4 O, CH 4 OCl, CH 4 OF, CH 4 OH, CH 5 , CH$^{+}_{5}$, CH 5 N, CH 5 O 2 , CH 8 O 2 , C 2 H 2 N 2 O, C 2 H 2 O, C 2 H 4 N, C 2 H 4 O 4 , C 2 H 6 Cl, C 2 H 6 F, C 2 H 6 H, C 2 H 6 O, C 2 H 6 OH, C 2 H 7 , C 2 O 2 , C 3 H 4 O 2 , C 3 H 7 NO, C 6 H 6 O, C 6 H 6 S, C 7 H8S, HBrCl, HCl 2 , HF 2 , HI 2 , HLiF, HNaF, HO 2 , HO 3 , HOBr, HSiO, H 2 Br, H 2 ClO, H 2 F, H 2 F 2 , H 2 FO, H 2 Na, H 2 O, H 2 O 2 , H 2 OBr, H 3 , H 3 Cl, H 3 ClN, H 3 ClO, H 3 N, H 3 O, H 3 O 2 , H$^{+}_{3}$, H 3 S, H 4 ClSi, H 4 N, H 4 NO, H 4 O 2 , H 5 GeO, H 5 Si, H$^{+}_{7}$, Al m H n , Al n , Ar N O, K 2 Rb 2 , NO 2 , N 2 O, N 2 O 2 , N 3 , N 4 , O 3 , and O 4 .

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

DOE OSTI2020

SMART Mobility. Modeling Workflow Development, Implementation, and Results Capstone Report

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Systems and Modeling for Accelerated Research in Transportation (SMART) Mobility Consortium is a multiyear, multi-laboratory collaborative, managed by the Energy Efficient Mobility Systems Program of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Vehicle Technologies Office, dedicated to further understanding the energy implications and opportunities of advanced mobility technologies and services. The first three-year research phase of SMART Mobility occurred from 2017 through 2019, and included five research pillars: Connected and Automated Vehicles, Mobility Decision Science, Multi-Modal Freight, Urban Science, and Advanced Fueling Infrastructure. A sixth research thrust integrated aspects of all five pillars to develop a SMART Mobility Modeling Workflow to evaluate new transportation technologies and services at scale. This report summarizes the work of the SMART Mobility Modeling Workflow effort. The SMART Mobility Modeling Workflow was developed to evaluate new transportation technologies such as connectivity, automation, sharing, and electrification through multi-level systems analysis that captures the dynamic interactions between technologies. By integrating multiple models across different levels of fidelity and scale, the Workflow yields insights about the influence of new mobility and vehicle technologies at the system level. For information about the other Pillars, please refer to the relevant pillar’s Capstone Report.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

NASA NTRS2013

Web Based Prognostics and 24/7 Monitoring

We created a general framework for analysts to store and view data in a way that removes the boundaries created by operating systems, programming languages, and proximity. With the advent of HTML5 and CSS3 with JavaScript the distribution of information is limited to only those who lack a browser. We created a framework based on the methodology: one server, one web based application. Additional benefits are increased opportunities for collaboration. Today the idea of a group in a single room is antiquated. Groups will communicate and collaborate with others from other universities, organizations, as well as other continents across times zones. There are many varieties of data gathering and condition-monitoring software available as well as companies who specialize in customizing software to individual applications. One single group will depend on multiple languages, environments, and computers to oversee recording and collaborating with one another in a single lab. The heterogeneous nature of the system creates challenges for seamless exchange of data and ideas between members. To address these limitations we designed a framework to allow users seamless accessibility to their data. Our framework was deployed using the data feed on the NASA Ames' planetary rover testbed. Our paper demonstrates the process and implementation we followed on the rover.

CSS3↗

NASA NTRS2017

NASA's Near Earth Asteroid Scout Mission

NASA is developing solar sail propulsion for a near-term Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) reconnaissance mission and laying the groundwork for their future use in deep space science and exploration missions. The NEA Scout mission, funded by NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Program and managed by NASA MSFC, will use the sail as primary propulsion allowing it to survey and image one or more NEA's of interest for possible future human exploration. NEA Scout uses a 6U cubesat (to be provided by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory), an 86 m2 solar sail and will weigh less than 14 kilograms. The solar sail for NEA Scout will be based on the technology developed and flown by the NASA NanoSail-D and The Planetary Society's Lightsail-A. Four ~7 m stainless steel booms wrapped on two spools (two overlapping booms per spool) will be motor deployed and pull the sail from its stowed volume. The sail material is an aluminized polyimide approximately 3 microns thick. NEA Scout will launch on the Space Launch System (SLS) first mission in 2018 and deploy from the SLS after the Orion spacecraft is separated from the SLS upper stage. The NEA Scout spacecraft will stabilize its orientation after ejection using an onboard cold-gas thruster system. The same system provides the vehicle Delta-V sufficient for a lunar flyby. After its first encounter with the moon, the 86 m2 sail will deploy, and the sail characterization phase will begin. A mechanical Active Mass Translation (AMT) system, combined with the remaining ACS propellant, will be used for sail momentum management. Once the system is checked out, the spacecraft will perform a series of lunar flybys until it achieves optimum departure trajectory to the target asteroid. The spacecraft will then begin its two year-long cruise. About one month before the asteroid flyby, NEA Scout will pause to search for the target and start its approach phase using a combination of radio tracking and optical navigation. The solar sail will provide continuous low thrust to enable a relatively slow flyby of the target asteroid under lighting conditions favorable to geological imaging. Once complete, NASA will have demonstrated the capability to fly low-cost, high Delta-V cubesats to perform interplanetary missions.

Johnson, Les↗

NASA NTRS2015

AMO EXPRESS: A Command and Control Experiment for Crew Autonomy

NASA is investigating a range of future human spaceflight missions, including both Mars-distance and Near Earth Object (NEO) targets. Of significant importance for these missions is the balance between crew autonomy and vehicle automation. As distance from Earth results in increasing communication delays, future crews need both the capability and authority to independently make decisions. However, small crews cannot take on all functions performed by ground today, and so vehicles must be more automated to reduce the crew workload for such missions. NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Program funded Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project conducted an autonomous command and control demonstration of intelligent procedures to automatically initialize a rack onboard the International Space Station (ISS) with power and thermal interfaces, and involving core and payload command and telemetry processing, without support from ground controllers. This autonomous operations capability is enabling in scenarios such as a crew medical emergency, and representative of other spacecraft autonomy challenges. The experiment was conducted using the Expedite the Processing of Experiments for Space Station (EXPRESS) rack 7, which was located in the Port 2 location within the U.S Laboratory onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Activation and deactivation of this facility is time consuming and operationally intensive, requiring coordination of three flight control positions, 47 nominal steps, 57 commands, 276 telemetry checks, and coordination of multiple ISS systems (both core and payload). The autonomous operations concept includes a reduction of the amount of data a crew operator is required to verify during activation or de-activation, as well as integration of procedure execution status and relevant data in a single integrated display. During execution, the auto-procedures provide a step-by-step messaging paradigm and a high level status upon termination. This messaging and high level status is the only data generated for operator display. To enhance situational awareness of the operator, the Web-based Procedure Display (WebPD) provides a novel approach to the issues of procedure display and execution tracking. For this demonstration, the procedure was initiated and monitored from the ground. As the Timeliner sequences executed, their high level execution status was transmitted to ground, for WebPD consumption.

Stetson, Howard K.↗

DOE OSTI2020

SMART Mobility. Urban Science Capstone Report

The U.S. Department of Energy’s Systems and Modeling for Accelerated Research in Transportation (SMART) Mobility Consortium is a multiyear, multi-laboratory collaborative, managed by the Energy Efficient Mobility Systems Program of the Office of Energy Efficiency and Renewable Energy, Vehicle Technologies Office, dedicated to further understanding the energy implications and opportunities of advanced mobility technologies and services. The Urban Science (US) Pillar focuses on maximum-mobility and minimum-energy opportunities associated with emerging transportation and transportation-related technologies specifically within the urban context. Such technologies, often referred to as automated, connected, efficient (or electrified), and shared (ACES), have the potential to greatly improve mobility and related quality of life in urban areas. Although all the SMART Mobility research pillars share some commonalities, Urban Science strives to model, analyze, and gain insights from the perspective of human settlements (the “city”) as a living organism. This is especially critical as the United States is one of the most urbanized countries, and as more and more of the global population migrates to urban areas.1 The urban mobility system consists of a complex network that reaches well beyond roads and vehicles and includes significant investments in public transit, private mobility services (such as taxis and transportation network companies, or TNCs), significant parking reserves, and curb management practices, not to mention the abundance of emerging on-demand micromobility services for the movement of people and goods such as e-bikes and scooters, which make the urban space a dynamic laboratory for mobility. Urban spaces also concentrate employment, markets, services, and attractions, which are the destinations for most trips. The concentration of human activities and ensuing density also creates the need and emphasis for space efficiency in urban environments, which is often less of a constraint in suburban or rural contexts. This mixture of transportation and mobility infrastructure and practice, combined with global urbanization trends, make urban spaces a critical focus of research for developing energy-efficient mobility systems (EEMS).

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

NASA NTRS2015

AMO EXPRESS: A Command and Control Experiment for Crew Autonomy Onboard the International Space Station

NASA is investigating a range of future human spaceflight missions, including both Mars-distance and Near Earth Object (NEO) targets. Of significant importance for these missions is the balance between crew autonomy and vehicle automation. As distance from Earth results in increasing communication delays, future crews need both the capability and authority to independently make decisions. However, small crews cannot take on all functions performed by ground today, and so vehicles must be more automated to reduce the crew workload for such missions. NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Program funded Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project conducted an autonomous command and control experiment on-board the International Space Station that demonstrated single action intelligent procedures for crew command and control. The target problem was to enable crew initialization of a facility class rack with power and thermal interfaces, and involving core and payload command and telemetry processing, without support from ground controllers. This autonomous operations capability is enabling in scenarios such as initialization of a medical facility to respond to a crew medical emergency, and representative of other spacecraft autonomy challenges. The experiment was conducted using the Expedite the Processing of Experiments for Space Station (EXPRESS) rack 7, which was located in the Port 2 location within the U.S Laboratory onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Activation and deactivation of this facility is time consuming and operationally intensive, requiring coordination of three flight control positions, 47 nominal steps, 57 commands, 276 telemetry checks, and coordination of multiple ISS systems (both core and payload). Utilization of Draper Laboratory's Timeliner software, deployed on-board the ISS within the Command and Control (C&C) computers and the Payload computers, allowed development of the automated procedures specific to ISS without having to certify and employ novel software for procedure development and execution. The procedures contained the ground procedure logic and actions as possible to include fault detection and recovery capabilities.

Stetson, Howard K.↗

NASA NTRS2015

AMO EXPRESS: A Command and Control Experiment for Crew Autonomy Onboard the International Space Station

NASA is investigating a range of future human spaceflight missions, including both Mars-distance and Near Earth Object (NEO) targets. Of significant importance for these missions is the balance between crew autonomy and vehicle automation. As distance from Earth results in increasing communication delays, future crews need both the capability and authority to independently make decisions. However, small crews cannot take on all functions performed by ground today, and so vehicles must be more automated to reduce the crew workload for such missions. NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems Program funded Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project conducted an autonomous command and control experiment on-board the International Space Station that demonstrated single action intelligent procedures for crew command and control. The target problem was to enable crew initialization of a facility class rack with power and thermal interfaces, and involving core and payload command and telemetry processing, without support from ground controllers. This autonomous operations capability is enabling in scenarios such as initialization of a medical facility to respond to a crew medical emergency, and representative of other spacecraft autonomy challenges. The experiment was conducted using the Expedite the Processing of Experiments for Space Station (EXPRESS) rack 7, which was located in the Port 2 location within the U.S Laboratory onboard the International Space Station (ISS). Activation and deactivation of this facility is time consuming and operationally intensive, requiring coordination of three flight control positions, 47 nominal steps, 57 commands, 276 telemetry checks, and coordination of multiple ISS systems (both core and payload). Utilization of Draper Laboratory's Timeliner software, deployed on-board the ISS within the Command and Control (C&C) computers and the Payload computers, allowed development of the automated procedures specific to ISS without having to certify and employ novel software for procedure development and execution. The procedures contained the ground procedure logic and actions as possible to include fault detection and recovery capabilities. The autonomous operations concept includes a reduction of the amount of data a crew operator is required to verify during activation or de-activation, as well as integration of procedure execution status and relevant data in a single integrated display. During execution, the auto-procedures (via Timerliner) provide a step-by-step messaging paradigm and a high-level status upon termination. This messaging and high-level status is the only data generated for operator display. To enhance situational awareness of the operator, the Web-based Procedure Display (WebPD) provides a novel approach to the issues of procedure display and execution tracking. WebPD is a web based application that serves as the user interface for electronic procedure execution. It incorporates several aspects of the HTML5 standard. Procedures are written in a dialect of XML called Procedure Representation Language (PRL). WebPD tracks execution status in the procedure or procedures being displayed. WebPD aggregates and simplifies the auto-sequence execution status information, and formatted to be easily followed and understood by an operator who is not dedicated to actively monitoring the task. WebPD also provides an integrated data and control interface to pause or halt the execution in order to provide a check point of operation and to examine progress before starting the next sequence of activities. For this demonstration, the procedure was initiated and monitored from the ground. As the Timeliner sequences executed, their high-level execution status was written to PLMDM memory. This memory is read and downlinked via Ku-Band at a 1 Hz rate. The data containing the high-level execution status is de-commutated on the ground, and rebroadcast for WebPD consumption. A future demonstration will be performed onboard, with ISS astronauts initiating the operations instead of ground controllers. The AMO EXPRESS experiment demonstrated activation and de-activation of EXPRESS rack 7, providing the capability of future single button activations and deactivations of facility class racks. The experiment achieved numerous technical and operations 'firsts' for the ISS

Stetson, Howard K.↗

NASA NTRS1993

Status of the Fiber Optic Control System Integration (FOCSI) program

This report presents a discussion of the progress made in the NASA/NAVY Fiber Optic Control System Integration (FOCSI) program. This program will culminate in open-loop flight tests of passive optical sensors and associated electro-optics on an F-18 aircraft. Currently, the program is in the final stages of hardware fabrication and environmental testing of the passive optical sensors and electro-optics. This program is a foundation for future Fly-by-Light (FBL) programs. The term Fly-by-Light is used to describe the utilization of passive optical sensors and fiber optic data links for monitoring and control of aircraft in which sensor and actuation signals are transmitted optically. The benefits of this technology for advanced aircraft include the following: improved reliability and reduced certification cost due to greater immunity to EME (electromagnetic effects); reduced harness volume and weight; elimination of short circuits and sparking in wiring due to insulation deterioration; lower maintenance costs (fewer components); greater flexibility in data bus protocol and architecture; absence of ground loops; and higher operating temperatures for electrically passive optical sensors.

Baumbick, Robert J.↗