Results for “Simplifications” — Page 54

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Computational Assessment of the Impact of Wave Count on Rotating Detonation Engine Performance

The impact of the number of azimuthally propagating waves on the performance of a Rotating Detonation Engine (RDE) is investigated using a simplified two-dimensional computational fluid dynamic simulation. The basic RDE configuration examined has no exit throat. The inlet is assumed lossless and does not allow backflow. The adiabatic, inviscid, and premixed simulation utilizes a particularly simple finite rate reaction mechanism that allows user control over the relative amounts of deflagration and detonation that occur, the presence and extent of a reaction delay associated with fuel and oxidizer mixing, and the number of waves present in the domain. The simplifications and idealizations decouple the effect of wave count from other potential loss mechanisms. Performance is measured using exhaust flow total pressure gain relative to the inlet total pressure. One, two, and three wave solutions are computed under identical boundary conditions and grid resolution. For simulations with no mixing delay and minimal deflagration, the number of waves present has negligible impact on performance. With a mixing delay, performance decreases with increasing wave number. With increased deflagration, performance increases with increasing wave number. With both effects simulated it is found that the two wave solution performs better than either the one or three wave solutions. The causes of these trends are explored. They imply that for practical, RDE’s, the number of waves that are present can impact performance.

Detonation↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Computational Assessment of the Impact of Wave Count on Rotating Detonation Engine Performance

The impact of the number of azimuthally propagating waves on the performance of a Rotating Detonation Engine (RDE) is investigated using a simplified two-dimensional computational fluid dynamic simulation. The basic RDE configuration examined has no exit throat. The inlet is assumed lossless and does not allow backflow. The adiabatic, inviscid, and premixed simulation utilizes a particularly simple finite rate reaction mechanism that allows user control over the relative amounts of deflagration and detonation that occur, the presence and extent of a reaction delay associated with fuel and oxidizer mixing, and the number of waves present in the domain. The simplifications and idealizations decouple the effect of wave count from other potential loss mechanisms. Performance is measured using exhaust flow total pressure gain relative to the inlet total pressure. One, two, and three wave solutions are computed under identical boundary conditions and grid resolution. For simulations with no mixing delay and minimal deflagration, the number of waves present has negligible impact on performance. With a mixing delay, performance decreases with increasing wave number. With increased deflagration, performance increases with increasing wave number. With both effects simulated it is found that the two wave solution performs better than either the one or three wave solutions. The causes of these trends are explored. They imply that for practical, RDE’s, the number of waves that are present can impact performance.

Detonation↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Transitioning a Flexible and Scalable Satellite Ground Station Observation Network (GSON) Framework to an Operational Environment

Obtaining accurate and timely satellite observations is of paramount importance in fields like disaster management, weather diagnoses/forecasting, and Earth Sciences remote sensing. Stored mission data (SMD), from low Earth orbiting (LEO) satellite sensors, provides important observations for these fields and applications, however data access to SMD can be delayed from one and half hours to three hours from the time the observations were made. This data latency poses a significant impact on data product optimal use. We developed a Ground Station Observation Network (GSON) that utilizes commercial ground station as a service (GSaaS) providers to acquire low latency direct broadcast (DB) data from AQUA, SNPP, and JPSS-1 satellites using antennas located in strategic locations around the world. We will discuss techniques to improve the deployment efficiency and code reliability and quality of the GSON framework. Topics include right-sizing and containerization of the code to facilitate integration and adaptation with continuous delivery (CD) pipeline, locating non-code assets in referenceable repositories separated from code, adaptation of pipelines as code and simplification of CD, intersecting with code quality tests and checks as part of the pipeline execution and deployment, and establishing distributed repositories, registries, and system identities in a way that mitigates compromise to the CD pipeline. These techniques enable deployment of processing systems that are both highly specific but also dynamically modifiable. This new class of system allows for a flexible and scalable deployment while avoiding the “black box” issues that can plague large system deployments.

cluster↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Numerical Methods for Jet Noise Predictions Using the Generalized Acoustic Analogy

Numerical methods used in several implementations of the Generalized Acoustic Analogy for the prediction of turbulent jet noise are discussed. The equation governing sound propagation in the analogy formulation is presented along with analytical simplifications to reduce the computational burden of obtaining solutions. Numerical methods for the resulting boundary-value problem for two classes of jet flows, axisymmetric and non-axisymmetric mean flows, are discussed in detail. Example results from problems of the two classed of jets are presented.

jet noise↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

EMU Helmet Free Water Transport Assessment for the HAB in Support of Eva 80

After water was reported in the EMU helmet during ISS US EVA-80, mitigation strategies were created to attempt to arrest the motion of any droplets that enter the helmet for future Extravehicular Activities (EVAs). This included adding absorbent materials into the interior of the helmet. To assess the effectiveness of this strategy, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of a human mannikin head in the EMU helmet was used to track water droplets and quantify how much water is likely to be caught by the absorbent material. A combination of engineering judgment, tests, and CFD results were used to develop the expected path of droplets in the helmet, to account for the simplifications necessary in modeling two-phase flow.

Abigail Baukus↗

NASA NTRS2021

CubeSat Active Thermal Control in Support of Advanced Payloads: The Active Thermal Architecture Project

The Active Thermal Architecture (ATA) is an advanced sub-1U Active Thermal Control technology (ATC) for high power payload support in 6U CubeSat form factors and above. The design utilizes a two-stage, single-phase mechanically pumped fluid loop coupled through a two-axis flexible rotary fluid hinge, to reject thermal power to a deployable tracking radiator. A COTS Ricor K508N cryocooler forms the second stage and provides cryogenic cooling to a custom Kevlar detector mount through a TMT pyrolytic graphene thermal strap. Passive vibration isolation and damping technologies prevent the transfer of jitter to the satellite systems. The ATA design utilizes state-of-the-art 3D fabrication techniques such as Ultrasonic Additive Manufacturing (UAM) to directly embed the working fluid channels into the HX, radiator, and CubeSat chassis allowing for the miniaturization and simplification of the ATA system into an integrated thermal control solution. This paper will focus on the design and ground-based characterization and qualification of the ATA system and provide performance metrics for its use as a thermal support subsystem for advanced infrared electro-optical CubeSat payloads. The ATA project is funded through a NASA Small Satellite Technology Program (SSTP) and is a partnership between the Center for Space Engineering at Utah State University and the Jet Propulsions Laboratory. The ATA active thermal control system has been raised to a TRL of 6 and hopes to provide payload support to advanced missions such as the SABER-Lite and JPL CIRAS projects.

Mok, Mason↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Provably Correct Floating-Point Implementation of Well Clear Avionics Concepts

The NASA DAIDALUS library provides formal definitions for Detect-and-Avoid avionics concepts such as when an aircraft is well-clear with respect to the surrounding air traffic, i.e., it does not operate in such proximity to create a collision hazard. While several properties are proven correct for DAIDALUS assuming ideal real number arithmetic, an actual implementation that uses floating-point numbers may behave unexpectedly because of round-off errors and run-time exceptions. This paper presents an experience report on the application of a formal methods toolchain to extract and verify floating-point C code from a real-valued specification of the well-clear module of DAIDALUS. This toolchain comprises the PVS theorem prover, the PRECiSA floating-point analyzer and code generator, and the Frama-C analysis suite. The generated code is automatically instrumented to detect when the control flow of the floating-point program may diverge from the ideal real number specification, and it is annotated with contracts that state the maximum accumulated round-off error. The absence of overflows is also formally verified for the generated code. In order to apply the toolchain to an industrial case study such as DAIDALUS, a formally verified pre-processing of the input specification is performed, which includes a program slicing and several semantic-preserving simplifications.

Program verification↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Computational Study of Low-Speed Boundary-Layer Laminar-Turbulent Transition over a 30º Swept Plate in a Channel

Reliable boundary-layer laminar-turbulent transition predictions are critical for the design of aircraft that use natural or controlled laminar flow to achieve low drag and better fuel efficiency. During cruise flight through low turbulence, the three-dimensional boundary layer over swept surfaces can transition prematurely due to stationary crossflow instabilities induced by surface roughness. Parabolized stability equations analyses have been successfully used to explain the different phases of the transition process under well controlled perturbations such as steps or discrete roughness elements. However, methodologies are still lacking to model the boundary layer receptivity to distributed random roughness, and the following non-linear instability stages leading to transition. For engineering applications, several semi-empirical methods based on linear amplification factors or local helicity have found growing adoption, but their reliability is limited by their level of simplification and the sparsity of data they are based on. To address this gap, a new study of the effect of distributed random surface roughness on crossflow transition was started, using a 30◦ swept plate as a test vehicle. The plate, which is mounted in the 2 Foot × 3 Foot Low-Speed Boundary-Layer Channel at the NASA Langley Research Center, has been tested with micro-scale roughness of varied geometry near the leading edge. In order to analyze the flow in the test section and prepare Direct Numerical Simulations with resolved roughness, Reynolds-Averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) simulations of the flow over the plate installed in the wind tunnel test section were performed using the Langtry-Menter transition model with stationary crossflow extension. This paper presents the results of these simulations, with comparison to the experiment.

ARMD↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

EMU Helmet Free Water Transport Assessment for the HAB in Support of Eva 80

After water was reported in the EMU helmet during ISS US EVA-80, mitigation strategies were created to attempt to arrest the motion of any droplets that enter the helmet for future Extravehicular Activities (EVAs). This included adding absorbent materials into the interior of the helmet. To assess the effectiveness of this strategy, a computational fluid dynamics (CFD) model of a human mannikin head in the EMU helmet was used to track water droplets and quantify how much water is likely to be caught by the absorbent material. A combination of engineering judgment, tests, and CFD results were used to develop the expected path of droplets in the helmet, to account for the simplifications necessary in modeling two-phase flow.

Abigail Baukus↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Implicit Large-Eddy Simulations of Compressible Mixing Layers

Implicit large-eddy simulations of the self-similar regions of two compressible mixing layers at high Reynolds number and convective Mach numbers of 0.381 and 0.690 were carried out. Experimental data was used as the input into a synthetic eddy method turbulent inflow boundary condition to initiate simulations. Computational grids with nearly isotropic cells were used and the grid counts ranged from 24 to 270 million points. Agreement with experimental velocity and Reynolds stress data was good given the simplifications of the simulation. The decrease in mixing layer growth rate with increasing compressibility compares well with the literature. Budgets for the Reynolds stress transport equation were extracted from the simulations. It was demonstrated that the grids used did not resolve the dissipation term at the experimental Reynolds number. However, low Reynolds number simulations indicate that the numerical dissipation replaces the physical dissipation and the dissipation term in the transport equation can be represented by the summation term that quantifies the imbalance in the budget. The budgets for the high Reynolds number mixing layers agree well with previous low Reynolds number studies; indicating that the primary mechanism for the reduced growth rate and increased anistropy of the Reynolds stress tensor due to compressibility is a reduction in the pressure-strain and production terms. A new scaling based on the magnitude of the Reynolds stress tensor is proposed. This scaling provides better relative comparisons between the data and shows that the decrease in pressure-strain in the shear component is the primary driver in reducing the transverse normal stress.

turbulence↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Overview of the Lunar Transit Trajectory Performed by the Power and Propulsion Element of NASA’s Gateway

NASA has committed to returning to the moon, landing the first woman and the next man on its surface. To support a sustained lunar presence, NASA is designing an orbital platform to be assembled in an orbit near the moon called the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO). This platform is known as the Gateway and its purpose it to support missions primarily to the lunar south pole. As NASA continues to study ways to reduce the cost of lunar exploration, a simplification implemented in 2020combinedthe first two elements of the Gateway, the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) and NASA’s Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO), onto a single commercial launch vehicle (CLV). When launched together, the PPE and HALO make up the first two elements of NASA’s Gateway and exceed the performance capacity of commercially available launch vehicles to deliver directly to the moon. The delivery of the Gateway is enabled by and takes advantage of the high efficiency of the PPEs high-power Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) system to transfer a significant starting mass from an initial Earth orbit to final insertion into the NRHO. The PPE is a 50-kW class high power solar electric propulsion stage comprised of two different types of electric thruster strings. The SEP system is operated in two different modes, a high thrust and high Isp (specific impulse), to both maximize the final delivered mass and attempt to minimize the time spent in the Van Allen Belts early in the transit trajectory. Additionally, this SEP system brings the capability to the assembled Gateway for transfer between orbits in cislunar space. This paper captures the preliminary low thrust lunar transfer reference trajectory to be flown by the PPE it delivers itself and HALO via a spiral trajectory from launch vehicle insertion to insertion into the NRHO as well as a preliminary reference round trip transfer of the Gateway from the NRHO to a Distant Retrograde Orbit (DRO) using the PPE. Once in its final NRHO, the Gateway is being designed to enable long duration human and robotic exploration of the lunar south pole as a precursor to Mars. The Gateway’s low thrust lunar transit trajectory is envisioned to prove out the application of and flight of a high-power SEP system as a demonstration of technologies applicable to the enabling of future human space exploration.

human exploration↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Trade-Offs of Simplified Versus Comprehensive Representation of Mineralogy When Studying Dust Impacts on Earth’s Climate Systems

The intensity and direction of dust impacts on Earth’s climate systems depend on mineral composition. For example, the presence or absence of a few percent of iron oxides in dust will determine if dust is warming or cooling the atmosphere. Similarly, feldspar will enhance ice cloud formation, while acid gases in the atmosphere will react on the surface of dust calcite limiting acid rain. Still, most climate models use a simplified representation of dust mineralogy. They assume a fixed composition at emission which stays invariant during transport and removal. Such simplification assumes spatially and temporally constant physical and chemical properties of dust, and appears to provide satisfactory results when comparing some properties with observations. The trade-off is their lack of spatial gradients, which will fail to induce circulation, cloud and precipitation changes. The two reasons to omit mineral variations are the uncertainty of current atlases of soil mineral composition in arid regions, and, more practically, an improved runtime efficiency. The former reason is losing ground with the recent launch (July 2022) of a dedicated mission (NASA/JPL EMIT) to retrieve global soil mineralogy of dust sources at high spatial resolution. While the EMIT science team is finalizing a satisfactory global map of mineral composition of dust sources, we analyzed the interaction of dust mineralogy on radiation and its impact on the fast temperature response using different representations of mineral composition from detailed and spatially varying to simplified and globally uniform, assuming different hematite contents and methods to calculate optical properties. Our results show that resolving dust mineralogy reduces dust absorption, and results in improved agreement with observation-based single scattering albedo (SSA), radiative fluxes from CERES (the Clouds and the Earth’s Radiant Energy System), and land surface temperature from CRU (Climatic Research Unit), compared to the baseline bulk dust model version. It also results in distinct radiative impacts on Earth’s climate over North Africa. From our 19-year simulation, we will show that it leads to a reduction of over 50% in net downward radiation at top of atmosphere (TOA) across the Sahara and an approximately 20% reduction over the Sahel. We will explain how the surface temperature response affects the monsoon flow from the Gulf of Guinea. Interestingly, we find similar results by simply fixing the hematite content of dust to a globally uniform value of 0.9% by volume. We will discuss the underlying reasons for such results and show that they may be unrelated to the distribution of soil mineralogy. Still, an accurate representation of soil mineralogy is necessary to better understand dust impacts on the Earth’s climate systems.

dust impacts↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Shock Capturing via Limiting for High-Order Methods including Discontinuous Galerkin

High-order methods, such as discontinuous Galerkin (DG), spectral, and flux reconstruction (FR), are prone to generating unwanted oscillations near shocks and discontinuities. Conventional limiting techniques, while effective in suppressing oscillations near shocks, often compromise accuracy near extrema, where the solution is only first-order accurate. This paper introduces a novel limiting technique for these high-order schemes, aimed at effectively managing shocks while preserving accuracy. The key idea is to expand the standard monotonicity limits to provide “room” near smooth extrema, ensuring that limiting has no effect and thus preserving accuracy. Near a discontinuity, these expanded limits effectively reduce to the original monotonicity limits, suppressing oscillations. Additional motivation is drawn from a formula for the derivative of Radau polynomials, which depicts the behavior of oscillations resulting from discontinuities. This behavior leads to a simplification by applying the limits to the sum of magnitudes of all modes, linear and higher degree. Unlike typical approaches, which rely on successful detection to activate limiting, our limiter depends continuously on the data, there by avoiding potential issues if detection fails. To reduce computing time, efficient criteria for detecting smooth regions where limiting is unnecessary are presented. Combined with detection, the continuous dependence on the data is lost, but the method is more economical. A notable characteristic of the entire process is its simplicity in both concept and implementation. Numerical tests for advection and Euler equations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

numerical methods↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Shock Capturing via Limiting for High-Order Methods including Discontinuous Galerkin

High-order methods, such as discontinuous Galerkin (DG), spectral, and flux reconstruction (FR), are prone to generating unwanted oscillations near shocks and discontinuities. Conventional limiting techniques, while effective in suppressing oscillations near shocks, often compromise accuracy near extrema, where the solution is only first-order accurate. This paper introduces a novel limiting technique for these high-order schemes, aimed at effectively managing shocks while preserving accuracy. The key idea is to expand the standard monotonicity limits to provide “room” near smooth extrema, ensuring that limiting has no effect and thus preserving accuracy. Near a discontinuity, these expanded limits effectively reduce to the original monotonicity limits, suppressing oscillations. Additional motivation is drawn from a formula for the derivative of Radau polynomials, which depicts the behavior of oscillations resulting from discontinuities. This behavior leads to a simplification by applying the limits to the sum of magnitudes of all modes, linear and higher degree. Unlike typical approaches, which rely on successful detection to activate limiting, our limiter depends continuously on the data, there by avoiding potential issues if detection fails. To reduce computing time, efficient criteria for detecting smooth regions where limiting is unnecessary are presented. Combined with detection, the continuous dependence on the data is lost, but the method is more economical. A notable characteristic of the entire process is its simplicity in both concept and implementation. Numerical tests for advection and Euler equations are conducted to demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed method.

numerical methods↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Application of Solar Electric Propulsion to the Low Thrust Lunar Transit of the Gateway Power and Propulsion Element

NASA has committed to returning to the moon, landing the first woman and the next man on its surface. To support a sustained lunar presence, NASA will assemble an orbital platform in a quasi-stable orbit near the moon known as a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO). This platform, known as Gateway, will support long duration exploration missions targeting the lunar south pole. An architecture simplification implemented in 2020 combined the first two elements of the Gateway together onto a single commercial launch vehicle (CLV). When launched, the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) and the Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) will form the initial capability of NASA’s Gateway. The PPE, with its high-power Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) system, will propel the combined vehicle from an elliptical Earth parking orbit to the target NRHO. A transit of such a large mass, delivered to the moon from a single launch vehicle, is only made possible using the highly efficient SEP system. Delivering the same mass via more traditional chemical propulsion systems would require major modifications to the mission architecture, significantly more propellant mass, and could necessitate the use of a more powerful launch vehicle. This paper describes the design of the nominal low-thrust transit by which Gateway will be delivered to the NRHO utilizing the PPE SEP system. Additionally, this paper captures how the unique capabilities of the PPE electric propulsion system have guided the design of the trajectory and how mission requirements have, in turn, impacted the maturation of the SEP system.

electric propulsion↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Application of Solar Electric Propulsion to the Low Thrust Lunar Transit of the Gateway Power and Propulsion Element

NASA has committed to returning to the moon, landing the first woman and the next man on its surface. To support a sustained lunar presence, NASA is designing an orbital platform to be assembled in a semi-stable orbit near the moon called the Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO). This platform is known as the Gateway and its purpose it to support missions primarily to the lunar south pole. As NASA continues to study ways to reduce the cost of lunar exploration, a simplification implemented in 2020 was combining the first two elements of the Gateway together onto a single commercial launch vehicle (CLV). When launched together, the Power and Propulsion Element (PPE) and NASA’s Habitation and Logistics Outpost (HALO) make up the Co-Manifested Vehicle (CMV). The PPE, a high-power Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) Stage, will propel the combined stack from a low elliptical orbit to a semi stable orbit near the moon known as a Near Rectilinear Halo Orbit (NRHO). A transit of such a large mass, delivered to the moon from a single launch vehicle is only made possible by the use of the highly efficient SEP low thrust propulsion system. Delivering the same mass via more traditional chemical propulsion systems would require multiple launches and significantly more propellant. This paper captures an overview of the PPE’s SEP system, the lunar transit it will perform to deliver these first two elements of NASA’s Gateway to the NRHO with a comparison of a chemical system performing the same lunar transit to illustrate how SEP enables NASA’s Gateway.

electric propulsion↗

NASA NTRS2024

Aeroelastic Stability Assessment Methodology and Application to Slat Noise Treatments on the High-Lift Common Research Model

This work supports a larger effort at NASA to reduce airframe noise and, thus, environmental noise around airports. The leading-edge slat of conventional high-lift systems is a prominent source of airframe noise, and two technologies were previously identified as promising for noise reduction without significant aerodynamic or weight penalty: the slat cove filler (SCF) and the slat gap filler (SGF). NASA fabricated a 10%-scale semispan aircraft model for wind tunnel testing based upon the High-Lift Common Research Model (CRM-HL). NASA embarked on a test campaign with the 10% CRM-HL to determine the noise reduction effectiveness and other performance metrics of 3D SCF and SGF treatments in flow conditions representative of flight. The highly flexible SCF and SGF treatments posed a risk to the model and aeroelastic instability would compromise research integrity, so aeroelastic stability assessment was required. This work briefly describes the 10% CRM-HL, design of the SCF and SGF treatments to the model, and supporting fluid structure interaction (FSI) research. Relations for static and dynamic aeroelastic similitude are then developed for convenience of reference, and simplifications are introduced of particular utility to the cases considered in this study. The similitude relations are employed to assess the stability of the treatments under wind tunnel flow conditions based upon known behaviors from the supporting research. It is shown that the treatments are safe for test under the anticipated wind tunnel flow conditions with significant margins/factors of safety. It is furthermore demonstrated that the SCF is more susceptible to aeroelastic instability than the SGF, which has implications for flight feasibility.

Similitude↗

NASA NTRS2025

Limitations and Feasibility of Mini X-Ray Devices in Space Environments

LIMITATIONS AND FEASIBILITY OF MINI X-RAY DEVICES IN SPACE ENVIRONMENTS As space exploration advances toward long-duration missions, reliable medical diagnostic tools become increasingly critical. The miniature x-ray (XR) technology demonstrations by the Exploration Medical Capability (ExMC) and the Exploration Medical Integrated Product Team (XMIPT) aim to assess the feasibility and utility of miniature XR devices in spaceflight. This abstract explores the limitations of current miniature XR systems, the challenges of training crew members, the potential role of clinical decision support systems (CDSS), and the feasibility of ground-based image interpretation. We also propose the integration of miniature XR into other ExMC efforts aimed at identifying the capabilities and resources needed for future exploration class missions. One of the primary challenges with miniature XR devices is the ability to achieve specific anatomical views, particularly in the confined and weightless conditions of a spacecraft. Operators may struggle to acquire diagnostic-quality images when space is limited for proper patient positioning and the volume of the imaging device. Since space radiation and detector limitations may further impact image quality, the flexibility of the operating procedures of these devices will be critical for their success in space applications. CHALLENGES IN TRAINING CREW TO OPERATE IMAGING DEVICES Training in the skills necessary to acquire diagnostic-quality scans may be a barrier for non-clinician crewmembers. The curriculum developed for crew medical officers (CMOs) will require simplification and adaptation to fit into the highly truncated pre-flight training period. Therefore, hands-on familiarization and simulation, both pre-flight and just-in-time training during missions, will be crucial to ensuring the crew can operate the devices in real-life situations. The ability to adjust acquisition parameters must be simplified or made automatic through exam selections on equipment user interfaces, and subject and operator positioning should be assisted with laser guidance and pictorial guides. POTENTIAL FOR CDSS OR ARTIFICIAL INTELLIGENCE (AI)-ASSISTED CDSS CDSS and AI-assisted CDSS offer significant promise in assisting crew members with limited medical training. These systems could provide real-time feedback on image quality and interpretation, helping to mitigate the risks of human error during space missions. Integrating procedural guidance tools, such as virtual and augmented reality, will support crewmembers in accurately positioning patients and obtaining high-quality images. However, the success of such systems will depend on the development of robust training datasets, integration with spaceflight-rated hardware, and the medical decision-making capabilities of operators. FEASIBILITY OF GROUND INTERPRETATION AND DATA TRANSMISSION Reliance on ground-based interpretation may prove difficult for acute care during exploration class-missions due to delays in transmission with increasing distance from Earth or complete communication blackout periods. In such instances where immediate interpretation for clinical intervention is required, crew must be able to interpret the images independently or utilize AI-based assistance to do so. File sizes for XR exams can also be large if numerous images are acquired and bandwidth constraints may limit data transmissions for both radiography and ultrasound exams. FUTURE WORK AND INTEGRATION INTO THE EVIDENCE LIBRARY Future work proposes integrating miniature XR devices into NASA’s Evidence Library to address medical conditions identified as significant contributors to crew morbidity and mortality. The possibility of combining miniature XR with other imaging modalities, such as ultrasound devices, is also under investigation. In conclusion, while miniature XR technology holds potential for extraterrestrial medical systems, there are significant challenges to overcome. Training, integration of AI tools, dedicated exam protocols for microgravity, and improved data transmission systems will be key to realizing the full benefits of miniature XR technology in space.

A M Nelson↗