IMP D&E /AIMP/ PFM encoding system interface document
Digital data processor, circuit design and fabrication, digital word readout, and interfaces for IMP D and IMP E pulse frequency modulation encoding system
IMP↗
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Balloon borne optical disk mass storage system
An on-board data recording system for balloon-borne interferometer using a vacuum operable, ruggedized WORM optical drive is presented. This system, as presently under development, provides 320 Mbytes of data storage (or approximately 11 hrs at the 64 kbits/sec telemetry rate of the experiment). It has the capability of recording the unmodified telemetry bit system as transmitted or doing some preprocessing of the data onboard. The system is compact and requires less than 28 watts of battery power to operate.
Vanek, M. D.↗
Process and methodology of developing Cassini G and C Telemetry Dictionary
While the Cassini spacecraft telemetry design had taken on the new approach of 'packetized telemetry', the AACS (Attitude and Articulation Subsystem) had further extended into the design of 'mini-packets' in its telemetry system. Such telemetry packet and mini-packet design produced the AACS Telemetry Dictionary; iterations of the latter in turn provided changes to the former. The ultimate goals were to achieve maximum telemetry packing density, optimize the 'freshness' of more time-critical data, and to effect flexibility, i.e., multiple AACS data collection schemes, without needing to change the overall spacecraft telemetry mode. This paper describes such a systematic process and methodology, evidenced by various design products related to, or as part of, the AACS Telemetry Dictionary.
Kan, Edwin P.↗
Autonomous Satellite Command and Control through the World Wide Web: Phase 3
NASA's New Millenium Program (NMP) has identified a variety of revolutionary technologies that will support orders of magnitude improvements in the capabilities of spacecraft missions. This program's Autonomy team has focused on science and engineering automation technologies. In doing so, it has established a clear development roadmap specifying the experiments and demonstrations required to mature these technologies. The primary developmental thrusts of this roadmap are in the areas of remote agents, PI/operator interface, planning/scheduling fault management, and smart execution architectures. Phases 1 and 2 of the ASSET Project (previously known as the WebSat project) have focused on establishing World Wide Web-based commanding and telemetry services as an advanced means of interfacing a spacecraft system with the PI and operators. Current automated capabilities include Web-based command submission, limited contact scheduling, command list generation and transfer to the ground station, spacecraft support for demonstrations experiments, data transfer from the ground station back to the ASSET system, data archiving, and Web-based telemetry distribution. Phase 2 was finished in December 1996. During January-December 1997 work was commenced on Phase 3 of the ASSET Project. Phase 3 is the subject of this report. This phase permitted SSDL and its project partners to expand the ASSET system in a variety of ways. These added capabilities included the advancement of ground station capabilities, the adaptation of spacecraft on-board software, and the expansion of capabilities of the ASSET management algorithms. Specific goals of Phase 3 were: (1) Extend Web-based goal-level commanding for both the payload PI and the spacecraft engineer; (2) Support prioritized handling of multiple PIs as well as associated payload experimenters; (3) Expand the number and types of experiments supported by the ASSET system and its associated spacecraft; (4) Implement more advanced resource management, modeling and fault management capabilities that integrate the space and ground segments of the space system hardware; (5) Implement a beacon monitoring test; (6) Implement an experimental blackboard controller for space system management; (7) Further define typical ground station developments required for Internet-based remote control and for full system automation of the PI-to-spacecraft link. Each of those goals is examined in the next section. Significant sections of this report were also published as a conference paper.
Cantwell, Brian↗
Dawn Orbit Determination Team: Trajectory Modeling and Reconstruction Processes at Vesta
The Dawn spacecraft spent over a year in orbit around Vesta from July 2011 through August 2012. In order to maintain the designated science reference orbits and enable the transfers between those orbits, precise and timely orbit determination was required. Challenges included low-thrust ion propulsion modeling, estimation of relatively unknown Vesta gravity and rotation models, track-ing data limitations, incorporation of real-time telemetry into dynamics model updates, and rapid maneuver design cycles during transfers. This paper discusses the dynamics models, filter configuration, and data processing implemented to deliver a rapid orbit determination capability to the Dawn project.
low thrust↗
Lessons Learned During Implementation and Early Operations of the DS1 Beacon Monitor Experiment
A new approach to mission operations will be flight validated on NASA's New Millennium Program Deep Space One (DS1) mission which launched in October 1998. The Beacon Monitor Operations Technology is aimed at decreasing the total volume of downlinked engineering telemetry by reducing the frequency of downlink and the volume of data received per pass. Cost savings are achieved by reducing the amount of routine telemetry processing and analysis performed by ground staff. The technology is required for upcoming NASA missions to Pluto, Europa, and possibly some other missions. With beacon monitoring, the spacecraft will assess its own health and will transmit one of four beacon messages each representing a unique frequency tone to inform the ground how urgent it is to track the spacecraft for telemetry. If all conditions are nominal, the tone provides periodic assurance to ground personnel that the mission is proceeding as planned without having to receive and analyze downlinked telemetry. If there is a problem, the tone will indicate that tracking is required and the resulting telemetry will contain a concise summary of what has occurred since the last telemetry pass. The primary components of the technology are a tone monitoring technology, AI-based software for onboard engineering data summarization, and a ground response system. In addition, there is a ground visualization system for telemetry summaries. This paper includes a description of the Beacon monitor concept, the trade-offs with adapting that concept as a technology experiment, the current state of the resulting implementation on DS1, and our lessons learned during the initial checkout phase of the mission. Applicability to future missions is also included.
Sherwood, Rob↗
Revamping Spacecraft Operational Intelligence with Splunk
So what is Splunk? Instead of giving the technical details, which you can find online, I'll tell you what it did for me. Splunk slapped everything into one place, with one uniform format, and gave me the ability to forget about all these annoying details of where it is, how to parse it, and all that. Instead, I only need to interact with Splunk to find the data I need. This sounds simple and obvious, but it's surprising what you can do once you all of your data is indexed in one place. By having your data organized, querying becomes much easier. Let's say that I want to search telemetry for a sensor_name gtemp_1 h and to return all data that is at most five minutes old. And because Splunk can hook into a real ]time stream, this data will always be up-to-date. Extending the previous example, I can now aggregate all types of data into one view based in time. In this picture, I've got transaction logs, telemetry, and downlinked files all in one page, organized by time. Even though the raw data looks completely than this, I've defined interfaces that transform it into this uniform format. This gives me a more complete picture for the question what was the spacecraft doing at this particular time? And because querying data is simple, I can start with a big block of data and whiddle it down to what I need, rather than hunting around for the individual pieces of data that I need. When we have all the data we need, we can begin widdling down the data with Splunk's Unix-like search syntax. These three examples highlights my trial-and-error attempts to find large temperature changes. I begin by showing the first 5 temperatures, only to find that they're sorted chronologically, rather than from highest temperatures to lowest temperatures. The next line shows sorting temperatures by their values, but I find that that fs not really what I want either. I want to know the delta temperatures between readings. Looking through Splunk's user manual, I find the delta function, which lets me dynamically generate new information to use in my query. With that extra piece of information, I can now return only the telemetry readings where the temperature changed by at least 10. One other useful feature I'll mention is that all of these queries can be run through Splunk's API. So any scripting language you can think of can plug right in and make these queries. This gives us the ability to build a lot of new tools.
operational intelligence↗
CCSDS telemetry systems experience at the Goddard Space Flight Center
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) designs, builds, manages, and operates science and applications spacecraft in near-earth orbit, and provides data capture, data processing, and flight control services for these spacecraft. In addition, GSFC has the responsibility of providing space-ground and ground-ground communications for near-earth orbiting spacecraft, including those of the manned spaceflight programs. The goal of reducing both the developmental and operating costs of the end-to-end information system has led the GSFC to support and participate in the standardization activities of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS), including those for packet telemetry. The environment in which such systems function is described, and the GSFC experience with CCSDS packet telemetry in the context of the Gamma-Ray Observatory project is discussed.
Carper, Richard D.↗
Evolution of snow sensors and the potential of microwave devices in operational telemetry networks
Both manually collected snow-course data and telemetered information from SNOTEL sites throughout the western United States are used to make forecasts of streamflow. Although these conventional methods have proven highly reliable over the years, they still exhibit some shortcomings. Active and passive microwave remote sensing systems recently developed and tests present the potential to eliminate some negative aspects associated with other types of sensors currently in use. Because of their ability to see through the snowpack they offer a unique opportunity to improve snowpack measurement techniques. As yet neither the active nor passive system is developed sufficiently to supplant existing methods in operational telemetry networks. Active microwave sensors are the most promising for the near future and are being used in research and development programs to study snow pillow performance in the SNOTEL system.
Shafer, B. A.↗
Dynamic Line Rating Oncor Electric Delivery Smart Grid Program
Electric transmission lines are the lifeline of the electric utility industry, delivering its product from source to consumer. This critical infrastructure is often constrained such that there is inadequate capacity on existing transmission lines to efficiently deliver the power to meet demand in certain areas or to transport energy from high-generation areas to high-consumption regions. When this happens, the cost of the energy rises; more costly sources of power are used to meet the demand or the system operates less reliably. These economic impacts are known as congestion, and they can amount to substantial dollars for any time frame of reference: hour, day or year. There are several solutions to the transmission constraint problem, including: construction of new generation, construction of new transmission facilities, rebuilding and reconductoring of existing transmission assets, and Dynamic Line Rating (DLR). All of these options except DLR are capital intensive, have long lead times and often experience strong public and regulatory opposition. The Smart Grid Demonstration Program (SGDP) project co-funded by the Department of Energy (DOE) and Oncor Electric Delivery Company developed and deployed the most extensive and advanced DLR installation to demonstrate that DLR technology is capable of resolving many transmission capacity constraint problems with a system that is reliable, safe and very cost competitive. The SGDP DLR deployment is the first application of DLR technology to feed transmission line real-time dynamic ratings directly into the system operation’s State Estimator and load dispatch program, which optimizes the matching of generation with load demand on a security, reliability and economic basis. The integrated Dynamic Line Rating (iDLR)1 collects transmission line parameters at remote locations on the lines, calculates the real-time line rating based on the equivalent conductor temperature, ambient temperature and influence of wind and solar radiation on the stringing section, transmits the data to the Transmission Energy Management System, validates its integrity and passes it on to Oncor and ERCOT (Electric Reliability Council of Texas) respective system operations. The iDLR system is automatic and transparent to ERCOT System Operations, i.e., it operates in parallel with all other system status telemetry collected through Supervisory Control and Data Acquisition (SCADA) employed across the company.
24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
Optical data transmission technology for fixed and drag-on STS payloads umbilicals. Volume 1: Executive summary
The feasibility of using optical data handling methods to transmit payload checkout and telemetry is discussed. Optical communications are superior to conventional communication systems for the following reasons: high data capacity optical channels; small and light weight optical cables; and optical signal immunity to electromagnetic interference. Task number one analyzed the ground checkout data requirements that may be expected from the payload community. Task number two selected the optical approach based on the interface requirements, the location of the interface, the amount of time required to reconfigure hardware, and the method of transporting the optical signal. Task number three surveyed and selected optical components for the two payload data link. Task number four makes a qualitative comparison of the conventional electrical communication system and the proposed optical communication system.
St.denis, R. W.↗
Data transport concepts for future NASA spacecraft
The anticipated increase in data quantity from NASA spacecraft over the next decade is expected to far exceed the capability of the present NASA data/information system to effectively manage and process that data. Conceptual designs aimed at providing more responsive and cost-effective methods for transporting and interpreting space-generated data are presented. Details of the Modular Data Transport System (MDTS) and Ancillary Data and Support Computing (ADSC) efforts done under the NASA End-to-End Data System (NEEDS) program are discussed. The common 'thread' throughout the data transport process involves the use of packet telemetry. Characteristics and benefits of packet telemetry are presented along with a discussion of techniques for generating and advantages of including ancillary data in each packet.
Lord, D. D.↗
SOAREX-8 Suborbital Experiments 2015 - A New Paradigm for Small Spacecraft Communication
In 2015 NASA plans to launch a payload to 280 Km altitude on a sounding rocket from the Wallops Flight Facility. This payload will contain several novel technologies that work together to demonstrate methodologies for space sample return missions and for nanosatellite communications in general. The payload will deploy and test an Exo-Brake, which slows the payload aerodynamically, providing eventual de-orbit and recovery of future ISS samples through a Small Payload Quick Return project. In addition, this flight addresses future Mars mission entry technology, space-to-space communications using the Iridium Short Messaging Service (SMS), GPS tracking, and wireless sensors using the ZigBee protocol. SOAREX-8 is being assembled and tested at Ames Research Center (ARC) and the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) is funding sensor and communications work. Open source Arduino technology and software are used for system control. The ZigBee modules used are XBee units that connect analog sensors for temperature, air pressure and acceleration measurement wirelessly to the payload telemetry system. Our team is developing methods for power distribution and module mounting, along with software for sensor integration, data assembly and downlink. We have demonstrated relaying telemetry to the ground using the Iridium satellite constellation on a previous flight, but the upcoming flight will be the first time we integrate useful flight test data from a ZigBee wireless sensor network. Wireless sensor data will measure the aerodynamic efficacy of the Exo-Brake permitting further on orbit flight tests of improved designs. The Exo-Brake is 5 sq m in area and will be stored in a container and deployed during ascent once the payload is jettisoned from the launch vehicle. We intend to further refine the hardware and continue testing on balloon launches, future sounding rocket flights and on nanosatellite missions. The use of standards-based and open source hardware/software has allowed for this project to be completed with a very modest budget and a challenging schedule. There is a wealth of hardware and software available for both the Arduino platform and the XBee, all low-cost or open-source. Along with the Exo-Brake hardware and deployment discussion, this paper will describe in detail the system architecture emphasizing the successful use of open source hardware and software to minimize effort and cost. Testing procedures, radio frequency interference (RFI) mitigation, success criteria and expected results will also be discussed. The use of Iridium short messaging capability for space-to-space links, standards-based wireless sensor networks, and other innovative communications technology are also presented.
aerobrake↗
CCSDS File Delivery Protocol (CFDP): Why it's Useful and How it Works
Reliable delivery of data products is often required across space links. For example, a NASA mission will require reliable delivery of images produced by an on-board detector. Many missions have their own (unique) way of accomplishing this, requiring custom software. Many missions also require manual operations (e.g. the telemetry receiver software keeps track of what data is missing, and a person manually inputs the appropriate commands to request retransmissions). The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) developed the CCSDS File Delivery Protocol (CFDP) specifically for this situation. CFDP is an international standard communication protocol that provides reliable delivery of data products. It is designed for use across space links. It will work well if run over the widely used CCSDS Telemetry and Telecommand protocols. However, it can be run over any protocol, and will work well as long as the underlying protocol delivers a reasonable portion of the data. The CFDP receiver will autonomously determine what data is missing, and request retransmissions as needed. The CFDP sender will autonomously perform the requested transmissions. When the entire data product is delivered, the CFDP receiver will let the CFDP sender know that the transaction has completed successfully. The result is that custom software becomes standard, and manual operations become autonomous. This paper will consider various ways of achieving reliable file delivery, explain why CFDP is the optimal choice for use over space links, explain how the core protocol works, and give some guidance on how to best utilize CFDP within various mission scenarios. It will also touch on additional features of CFDP, as well as other uses for CFDP (e.g. the loading of on-board memory and tables).
Ray, Tim↗
The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems Standards program
The objectives of the Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) include the identification of those common elements of space data systems which, if implemented in a standardized way, will significantly enhance the operation of future cooperative space missions. Recommendations of the CCSDS include packet telemetry and telecommand concepts, coding designs, ancillary data parameters and formats, and data exchange conventions. Consideration is given to the application of CCSDS recommendations.
Costa, S. Richard↗
Relay Communications Support to the ExoMars Schiaparelli Lander
The European Space Agency’s ExoMars Trace Gas Orbiter (TGO) arrived at Mars on October 19, 2016, three days after releasing the Schiaparelli Lander on a ballistic trajectory to Meridiani Planum. During the separation event, and subsequently during Schiaparelli’s Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL), the NASA-provided Electra UHF payload onboard TGO was used to record signals from the Schiaparelli Lander for post-processing on the ground to recover both tracking of the lander’s carrier signal and reconstruction of the lander’s 8 kb/s telemetry. In addition, ESA’s Mars Express orbiter also recorded the Schiaparelli signal, with ground post-processing providing independent tracking of the lander carrier signal, and the Giant Metrewave Radio Telescope near Pune, India was configured to provide real-time detection of the lander carrier signal. While an anomaly in the latter stages of EDL led to loss of the lander, these critical event data sets, and in particular the telemetry reconstruction enabled by the TGO Electra recording, proved essential in enabling detailed diagnosis of the anomaly. And while the loss of the lander during EDL precluded the planned surface relay operations, the preparations for that activity provide important lessons learned for future Mars relay support scenarios.
Edwards, Charles D., Jr.↗
Research program for experiment M133
The development of the automatic data-acquisition and sleep-analysis system is reported. The purpose was consultation and evaluation in the transition of the Skylab M133 Sleep-Monitoring Experiment equipment from prototype of flight status; review of problems associated with acquisition and on-line display of data in near-real time via spacecraft telemetry; and development of laboratory facilities and design of equipment to assure reliable playback and analysis of analog data. The existing prototype system modified, and the changes improve the performance of the analysis circuitry and increase its reliability. These modifications are useful for pre- and postflight analysis, but are not now proposed for the inflight system. There were improvements in the EEG recording cap, some of which will be incorporated into the flight hardware.
Frost, J. D., Jr.↗
High-Capacity Communications from Martian Distances
High capacity communications from Martian distances, required for the envisioned human exploration and desirable for data-intensive science missions, is challenging. NASA s Deep Space Network currently requires large antennas to close RF telemetry links operating at kilobit-per-second data rates. To accommodate higher rate communications, NASA is considering means to achieve greater effective aperture at its ground stations. This report, focusing on the return link from Mars to Earth, demonstrates that without excessive research and development expenditure, operational Mars-to-Earth RF communications systems can achieve data rates up to 1 Gbps by 2020 using technology that today is at technology readiness level (TRL) 4-5. Advanced technology to achieve the needed increase in spacecraft power and transmit aperture is feasible at an only moderate increase in spacecraft mass and technology risk. In addition, both power-efficient, near-capacity coding and modulation and greater aperture from the DSN array will be required. In accord with these results and conclusions, investment in the following technologies is recommended:(1) lightweight (1 kg/sq m density) spacecraft antenna systems; (2) a Ka-band receive ground array consisting of relatively small (10-15 m) antennas; (3) coding and modulation technology that reduces spacecraft power by at least 3 dB; and (4) efficient generation of kilowatt-level spacecraft RF power.
Williams, W. Dan↗