Wavefront sensing and control software for a segmented space telescope
This paper describes the engineering version of the STCS, the algorithms it incorporates, and methods of communicating with the testbed hardware.
wavefront↗
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Results for “control software”
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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Dynamic Assurance of Autonomous Systems through Ground Control Software∗
Assurance cases are being increasingly acknowledged as a way to build trust in complex systems with autonomous capabilities [1]. An assurance case is a comprehensive, defensible, and valid justification that a system will function as intended for the specific mission and operating environment. Such justifications for systems with autonomous capabilities are often based on various probabilistic quantifications [2]. Due to the dynamic nature of the environmental conditions in which these systems operate, as well as the changing nature of the autonomous systems themselves, these probabilistic quantifications cannot be simply estimated once during design time. Rather, they need to be continually evaluated during systems operations to ensure that the assurance case justifications are valid. We refer to the assurance case that combines both the static and dynamic elements as a Dynamic Assurance Case (DAC).
dynamic assurance case↗
autoNGC: Autonomous Navigation, Guidance, and Control Software in a Low SWaP Box
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Robert Pritchett↗
Preliminary Design of Robotic Control Software for Mars Sample Return -- Capture, Containment, and Return System
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MSR↗
DRIVING FUSION SUCCESS: TARGET DIAGNOSTICS SOFTWARE CONTROL AT NATIONAL IGNITION FACILITY (NIF)
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Lasers↗
Maximizing Performance Of A Telerobot With Minimal Software
Control software system of seven-degree-of-freedom telerobot designed to elicit maximum performance from minimal, fixed-software computer at remote robot site. Includes multiple control modules, each providing parameter-driven control of specified aspect of behavior of telerobot. Software system runs in Ada language on multiple 68020 processors or potentially on single central processing unit. Conceived for use in outer space, also proves useful in underwater construction and inspection, handling of materials in nuclear facilities, and cleaning up hazardous materials.
Backes, Paul G.↗
Trends in software reliability for digital flight control
Software error data of major recent Digital Flight Control Systems Development Programs. The report summarizes the data, compare these data with similar data from previous surveys and identifies trends and disciplines to improve software reliability.
Hecht, H.↗
Reconfigurable Software for Controlling Formation Flying
Software for a system to control the trajectories of multiple spacecraft flying in formation is being developed to reflect underlying concepts of (1) a decentralized approach to guidance and control and (2) reconfigurability of the control system, including reconfigurability of the software and of control laws. The software is organized as a modular network of software tasks. The computational load for both determining relative trajectories and planning maneuvers is shared equally among all spacecraft in a cluster. The flexibility and robustness of the software are apparent in the fact that tasks can be added, removed, or replaced during flight. In a computational simulation of a representative formation-flying scenario, it was demonstrated that the following are among the services performed by the software: Uploading of commands from a ground station and distribution of the commands among the spacecraft, Autonomous initiation and reconfiguration of formations, Autonomous formation of teams through negotiations among the spacecraft, Working out details of high-level commands (e.g., shapes and sizes of geometrically complex formations), Implementation of a distributed guidance law providing autonomous optimization and assignment of target states, and Implementation of a decentralized, fuel-optimal, impulsive control law for planning maneuvers.
Mueller, Joseph B.↗
Antenna Controller Replacement Software
The Antenna Controller Replacement (ACR) software accurately points and monitors the Deep Space Network (DSN) 70-m and 34-m high-efficiency (HEF) ground-based antennas that are used to track primarily spacecraft and, periodically, celestial targets. To track a spacecraft, or other targets, the antenna must be accurately pointed at the spacecraft, which can be very far away with very weak signals. ACR s conical scanning capability collects the signal in a circular pattern around the target, calculates the location of the strongest signal, and adjusts the antenna pointing to point directly at the spacecraft. A real-time, closed-loop servo control algorithm performed every 0.02 second allows accurate positioning of the antenna in order to track these distant spacecraft. Additionally, this advanced servo control algorithm provides better antenna pointing performance in windy conditions. The ACR software provides high-level commands that provide a very easy user interface for the DSN operator. The operator only needs to enter two commands to start the antenna and subreflector, and Master Equatorial tracking. The most accurate antenna pointing is accomplished by aligning the antenna to the Master Equatorial, which because of its small size and sheltered location, has the most stable pointing. The antenna has hundreds of digital and analog monitor points. The ACR software provides compact displays to summarize the status of the antenna, subreflector, and the Master Equatorial. The ACR software has two major functions. First, it performs all of the steps required to accurately point the antenna (and subreflector and Master Equatorial) at the spacecraft (or celestial target). This involves controlling the antenna/ subreflector/Master-Equatorial hardware, initiating and monitoring the correct sequence of operations, calculating the position of the spacecraft relative to the antenna, executing the real-time servo control algorithm to maintain the correct position, and monitoring tracking performance.
Chao, Roger Y.↗
Spaceport Command and Control System Software Development
The control system for the Space Launch System (SLS) and Orion capsule contains a multitude of displays for use in displaying information like vehicle health, sensor information, life support, etc. Currently users in the Launch Control Center (LCC) are using a list-based selection Graphical User Interface (GUI) to open various displays. However the display names are not intuitive as to what the display looks like nor what data is presented in a display. My project involves adding additional functionality to the current display selection GUI utilizing thumbnail images of each display for easy browsing. This new GUI allows users to find their desired display much faster without needing to memorize the layout of every display based only on the display's name.
Chapa, Nicholas↗
Space Telescope Pointing Control System software
The Space Telescope Pointing Control System software is in the advanced development stage, having been tested on both the airbearing and the static simulator. The overall structure of the software is discussed, along with timing and sizing evaluations. The interaction between the controls analysts and software designer is described.
Dougherty, H.↗
SEPAC software configuration control plan and procedures, revision 1
SEPAC Software Configuration Control Plan and Procedures are presented. The objective of the software configuration control is to establish the process for maintaining configuration control of the SEPAC software beginning with the baselining of SEPAC Flight Software Version 1 and encompass the integration and verification tests through Spacelab Level IV Integration. They are designed to provide a simplified but complete configuration control process. The intent is to require a minimum amount of paperwork but provide total traceability of SEPAC software.
Source record↗
Oxygen Generation System Laptop Bus Controller Flight Software
The Oxygen Generation System Laptop Bus Controller Flight Software was developed to allow the International Space Station (ISS) program to activate specific components of the Oxygen Generation System (OGS) to perform a checkout of key hardware operation in a microgravity environment, as well as to perform preventative maintenance operations of system valves during a long period of what would otherwise be hardware dormancy. The software provides direct connectivity to the OGS Firmware Controller with pre-programmed tasks operated by on-orbit astronauts to exercise OGS valves and motors. The software is used to manipulate the pump, separator, and valves to alleviate the concerns of hardware problems due to long-term inactivity and to allow for operational verification of microgravity-sensitive components early enough so that, if problems are found, they can be addressed before the hardware is required for operation on-orbit. The decision was made to use existing on-orbit IBM ThinkPad A31p laptops and MIL-STD-1553B interface cards as the hardware configuration. The software at the time of this reporting was developed and tested for use under the Windows 2000 Professional operating system to ensure compatibility with the existing on-orbit computer systems.
Rowe, Chad↗
Stress testing of digital flight-control system software
A technique for dynamically testing digital flight-control system software on a module-by-module basis is described. Each test module is repetitively executed faster than real-time with an exhaustive input sequence. Outputs of the test module are compared with outputs generated by an alternate, simpler implementation for the same input data. Discrepancies between the two sets of output indicate the possible presence of a software error. The results of an implementation of this technique in the Digital Flight-Control System Software Verification Laboratory are discussed.
Rajan, N.↗
Design and performance of AI agents interfacing with an atomic layer deposition tool
In this work, we introduce the design of an atomic layer deposition (ALD) reactor augmented with an AI interface for autonomous materials synthesis. Our modular design encapsulates the particularities of the hardware behind a Python interface that communicates with the ALD control software via transmission control protocol. This interface is compatible with model context protocol interfaces used in agentic frameworks. We have integrated our tool with a simple AI agent that leverages a large language model to transform user-supplied queries into ALD processes that are then run in our reactor. Our approach uses a JavaScript object notation schema to encode ALD processes. Our experimental results show that the AI interface does not impose a significant overhead to our control software, at least within our fastest 10 ms scale. We also carried out a detailed evaluation of the agent performance using leading models in two classes of tasks: basic instruction and process discovery tasks, where the agent is presented with a target material and needs to identify the correct ALD process compatible with the reactor configuration. Despite the simplicity of our agent design, we observed that most of the advanced models excelled at the instruction tasks. However, only recent models, such as o1, o3, GPT-5, and Claude Opus 4, performed well in process discovery tasks. We also observed significant variability in the response for the hardest challenges. While the results obtained are promising, we identify areas where AI research could improve the performance of agents for ALD.
47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
Additional software developments wanted for modeling and control of flexible space systems
Existing modeling and control software packages are either inadequate or inefficient for applications to flexible space structures. Some additional software developments are wanted for effective design and evaluation of the control systems. The following are discussed: (1) linear-quadratic optimal regulators as usual can be designed using various modern control design software packages, (2) modal dashpots are very effective output-feedback vibration controllers for flexible structures, not only effective for augmenting a small amount of active damping to a large number of vibration modes (like the so-called low-authority structural controllers), but also effective for quick suppression of large vibrations (like high-authority structural controllers), and (3) the actual performance of any control design needs to be evaluated against a faithful model of the flexible structure to be controlled. The potential of destabilization or serious performance degradation needs to be detected by numerical simulation of the structure with the control loops being closed.
Lin, Jiguan Gene↗
Developing Software For A Flight-Control System
Improved process for development of flight-control software devised by integrating conventional software-development process with conventional control-system-analysis process. Reduces costs of development, eliminates need for reengineering, and almost eliminates production errors. Concept applicable to design of other control systems and of complicated hardware-and-software systems in general.
Murray, Jonathan↗
Utilizing Code Generation from Models for Electric Aircraft Motor Controller Flight Software
The processes followed to develop and test safety-critical flight software significantly increase development effort and overhead in comparison to both non-safety-critical and non-flight software. Generating code from models can be used to reduce development effort; however, the processes for using code generation to develop flight software are relatively immature. This work presents an approach for developing safety-critical flight software utilizing code generation from models to reduce development time and effort. The presented use-case is of electric aircraft motor control software developed for NASA's X-57 Maxwell aircraft.
flight software↗