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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 109 records · Page 6

Feeding People's Curiosity: Leveraging the Cloud for Automatic Dissemination of Mars Images

Smartphones and tablets have made wireless computing ubiquitous, and users expect instant, on-demand access to information. The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) operations software suite, MSL InterfaCE (MSLICE), employs a different back-end image processing architecture compared to that of the Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) in order to better satisfy modern consumer-driven usage patterns and to offer greater server-side flexibility. Cloud services are a centerpiece of the server-side architecture that allows new image data to be delivered automatically to both scientists using MSLICE and the general public through the MSL website (http://mars.jpl.nasa.gov/msl/).

Cloud Computing↗

The Earth Observing System (EOS) Ground System: Leveraging an Existing Operational Ground System Infrastructure to Support New Missions

The Earth Observer System (EOS) was officially established in 1990 and went operational in December 1999 with the launch of its flagship spacecraft Terra. Aqua followed in 2002 and Aura in 2004. All three spacecraft are still operational and producing valuable scientific data. While all are beyond their original design lifetime, they are expected to remain viable well into the 2020s. The EOS Ground System is a multi-mission system based at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center that supports science and spacecraft operations for these three missions. Over its operational lifetime to date, the EOS Ground System has evolved as needed to accommodate mission requirements. With an eye towards the future, several updates are currently being deployed. Subsystem interconnects are being upgraded to reduce data latency and improve system performance. End-of-life hardware and operating systems are being replaced to mitigate security concerns and eliminate vendor support gaps. Subsystem hardware is being consolidated through the migration to Virtual Machine based platforms. While mission operations autonomy was not a design goal of the original system concept, there is an active effort to apply state-of-the-art products from the Goddard Mission Services Evolution Center (GMSEC) to facilitate automation where possible within the existing heritage architecture. This presentation will provide background information on the EOS ground system architecture and evolution, discuss latest improvements, and conclude with the results of a recent effort that investigated how the current system could accommodate a proposed new earth science mission.

Earth Science Mission Operations (ESMO)↗

NASA Crew Personal Active Dosimeters (CPADs): Leveraging Novel Terrestrial Personal Radiation Monitoring Capabilities for Space Exploration

The NASA Space Radiation Analysis Group (SRAG) is developing novel Crew Personal Active Dosimeters (CAPDs) for upcoming crewed space exploration missions and beyond. To reduce the resource footprint of the project a COTS dosimeter base is used for the development of CPADs. This base was identified from evaluations of existing COTS personal dosimeters against the concept of operations of future crewed missions and tests against detection requirements for radiation characteristic of the space environment. CPADs exploit operations efficiencies from novel features for space flight personal dosimeters such as real-time dose feedback, and autonomous measuring and data transmission capabilities. Preliminary CPAD design, results of radiation testing and aspects of operational integration will be presented.

Leitgab, Martin↗

High Leverage Technologies for In-Space Assembly of Complex Structures

In-space assembly (ISA), the ability to build structures in space, has the potential to enable or support a wide range of advanced mission capabilities. Many different individual assembly technologies would be needed in different combinations to serve many mission concepts. The many-to-many relationship between mission needs and technologies makes it difficult to determine exactly which specific technologies should receive priority for development and demonstration. Furthermore, because enabling technologies are still immature, no realistic, near-term design reference mission has been described that would form the basis for flowing down requirements for such development and demonstration. This broad applicability without a single, well-articulated mission makes it difficult to advance the technology all the way to flight readiness. This paper reports on a study that prioritized individual technologies across a broad field of possible missions to determine priority for future technology investment.

Hamill, Doris↗

Smashing the Stovepipe: Leveraging the GMSEC Open Architecture and Advanced IT Automation to Rapidly Prototype, Develop and Deploy Next-Generation Multi-Mission Ground Systems

Satellite/Payload Ground Systems - Typically highly-customized to a specific mission's use cases - Utilize hundreds (or thousands!) of specialized point-to-point interfaces for data flows / file transfers Documentation and tracking of these complex interfaces requires extensive time to develop and extremely high staffing costs Implementation and testing of these interfaces are even more cost-prohibitive, and documentation often lags behind implementation resulting in inconsistencies down the road With expanding threat vectors, IT Security, Information Assurance and Operational Security have become key Ground System architecture drivers New Federal security-related directives are generated on a daily basis, imposing new requirements on current / existing ground systems - These mandated activities and data calls typically carry little or no additional funding for implementation As a result, Ground System Sustaining Engineering groups and Information Technology staff continually struggle to keep up with the rolling tide of security Advancing security concerns and shrinking budgets are pushing these large stove-piped ground systems to begin sharing resources - I.e. Operational / SysAdmin staff, IT security baselines, architecture decisions or even networks / hosting infrastructure Refactoring these existing ground systems into multi-mission assets proves extremely challenging due to what is typically very tight coupling between legacy components As a result, many "Multi-Mission" ops. environments end up simply sharing compute resources and networks due to the difficulty of refactoring into true multi-mission systems Utilizing continuous integration / rapid system deployment technologies in conjunction with an open architecture messaging approach allows System Engineers and Architects to worry less about the low-level details of interfaces between components and configuration of systems GMSEC messaging is inherently designed to support multi-mission requirements, and allows components to aggregate data across multiple homogeneous or heterogeneous satellites or payloads - The highly-successful Goddard Science and Planetary Operations Control Center (SPOCC) utilizes GMSEC as the hub for it's automation and situational awareness capability Shifts focus towards getting GS to a final configuration-managed baseline, as well as multi-mission / big-picture capabilities that help increase situational awareness, promote cross-mission sharing and establish enhanced fleet management capabilities across all levels of the enterprise.

GMSEC↗

Leveraging Terrestrial Industry for Utilization of Space Resources

NASA's Journey to Mars: Pioneering Next Steps in Space Exploration released in October of 2015 states that NASA is working toward the capability to work, operate, and sustainably live safely beyond Earth. To progress from our current "Earth-Reliant" approach to exploration and eventually become "Earth Independent", we need to first identify resources in space and then learn to use and harvest them to minimize logistics from Earth, reduce costs, and enable sustainable and affordable space transportation and surface operations. Known as In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU), the collection and conversion of space resources into products such as propellants, fuel cell reactants, and life support consumables can greatly reduce the mass, cost, and risk of space exploration. Also, the ability to perform civil engineering, construction, and manufacturing at sites of exploration can also allow for increased crew safety and sustainable growth in critical infrastructure. Much of what NASA wants to do on the Moon and Mars with respect to harnessing and utilizing space resources has been performed and perfected on Earth over the centuries. While minimizing mass and operating in the vacuum of space may be unique challenges to NASA, both terrestrial industry and NASA face many of the same challenges associated with operating in severe environments, minimizing maintenance and logistics, maximizing performance per unit mass and volume, performing remote and autonomous operations, and integrating hardware from many vendors and countries. In the end, both NASA and terrestrial industry need to obtain a return on the investment for the development and deployment of these capabilities. This paper will first examine what is ISRU and what are the space resources of interest. The paper will than discuss what are NASA's approach, life cycle, and economic considerations for implementing ISRU. The paper will outline the site and infrastructure needs associated with a phased implementation of ISRU into human missions to the Moon and Mars. The paper will than assess what technologies and operations from terrestrial industries are relevant and synergistic with ISRU (from prospecting to product storage), and what challenges and similarities between the two can be exploited. Lastly, the paper will end with a discussion on where do we go from here for industry and NASA to collaborate.

Sanders, Gerald B.↗

Inheriting Curiosity: Leveraging MBSE to Build Mars2020

The success of the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) Martian mission Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) prompted NASA to challenge JPL to build a second rover, Mars2020. Mars2020 has chosen to infuse Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE) in pursuit of aiding the design of the Flight System. This paper will derive the motivation for MBSE infusion and will explain the current state of the Mars2020 Flight System Model. Successes in MBSE adoption will be discussed, as will limitations to the methodology.

Mars↗

Leverage Your Science Data Return by Flying with the International Earth Science Constellation (ESC)

Constellations have proven to be an effective and efficient way to acquire earth science data. By flying together, sensors on all satellites in a constellation take measurements of the same air, water, or land mass at essentially the same time. The sensors form a single "virtual satellite". The key to making a constellation effective and efficient is keeping the operations as independent as possible in order to minimize the operational burden and costs. The Earth Science Constellation (ESC) has been successful on all counts and continues to welcome new missions to continue its 18+ year record of coincidental earth science observations. The ESC also serves as a model for future constellation designs. This paper describes the ESC and its evolution from its initial launches in 1999 through the present and how new missions might benefit from joining the ESC.

Morning Constellation; Afternoon Constellation; Ea↗

Leveraging Technology in Invasive Species Mapping

Kenya has had several invasions of alien species that have had negative impacts on biodiversity, agriculture and human development. For instance, prickly pear out-competes native plants, precludes grazing and browsing near it, and inhibits the proliferation of indigenous species. The Northern Kenya Rangelands in the recent decades has experienced increased infestation by invasive plant species shrinking forage space available for both livestock and wildlife. An Invasive Species App has been co-developed and is currently being used in tracking locations and sightings of invasive species of trees or shrubs and the extensiveness of their effects. The App is customized to include any list of local invasive plants present in an area, take photos of the invasive species and is also able to work offline in cases of no internet connection in the remote areas.

remote sensing↗

How to Leverage the Power of SAR Observations for Forest Monitoring Systems

Earth observations from Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) can provide unique observations related to forest structure and condition. Furthermore, SAR has many potential applications in forest monitoring systems, particularly where clouds have impeded optical observations. Currently, there is a reliable, freely-available, provision of SAR datasets, such as Sentinel-1, and there are plans to have more observations in the near- future (NISAR, BIOMASS). Given SAR’s enhanced earth observation characteristics, there is broad interest in using SAR datasets for decision support systems, such as deforestation early warning systems. However, applications of SAR are still underutilized. What is preventing users from using SAR data in their decision support systems? This study documents the experiences and lessons learned from the SERVIR network on the main limitations of incorporating SAR datasets into existing forest monitoring systems. This research also focuses on the major technical and scientific barriers we experience and best practices to address them. The results of this study are part of the SERVIR- SilvaCarbon collaboration. The primary goal of this collaboration is to build capacity in the applied use of SAR for forest monitoring and biomass estimation. The products of this effort aim to start closing the gap between SAR-science and forest applications. We will also present results to generate applied-ready knowledge for SAR.

SAR↗

Leveraging the Usage of GPUs in SAR Processing for the NISAR Mission

The NASA ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission will redefine the future of earth science in terms of both the quality as well as the quantity of data that will be downlinked daily. The current software architecture used to process this data is the InSAR Scientific Computing Environment (ISCE), a powerful and modular platform that applies a combination of novel and legacy processing modules to many sources of SAR data. Until recently, this architecture could process most images in a reasonable amount of time; however in the case of the NISAR mission (where the daily influx as well as the size of the images themselves are significantly larger) the current architecture can take hours to process even a single image. This paper explores new efforts to use a Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) to accelerate one of the processing modules to achieve unprecedented runtimes with no loss in precision, potentially setting a new standard in radar processing in the world of “Big Data”.

Cohen, Joshua↗

Low-Thrust Trajectory Design for a Cislunar CubeSat Leveraging Structures from the Bicircular Restricted Four-Body Problem

The upcoming Lunar IceCube (LIC) mission will deliver a 6U CubeSat to a low lunar orbit via a ride-share opportunity during NASAs Artemis 1 mission. This presents a challenging trajectory design scenario, as the vast change in energy required to transfer from the initial deployment state to the destination orbit is compounded by the limitations of the LICs low-thrust engine. This investigation addresses these challenges by developing a trajectory design framework that utilizes dynamical structures available in the Bicircular Restricted Four-Body Problem (BCR4BP) along with a robust direct collocation algorithm. Maps are created that expedite the selection of invariant manifold paths from a periodic staging orbit in the BCR4BP that offer favorable connections between the LIC transfer phases. Initial guesses assembled from these maps are passed to a direct collocation algorithm that corrects them in the BCR4BP while including the variable low-thrust acceleration of the spacecraft engine. Results indicate that the ordered motion provided by the BCR4BP and the robustness of direct collocation combine to offer an efficient and adaptable framework for designing a baseline trajectory for the LIC mission.

Pritchett, Robert↗