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NASA NTRS2020

A Systems Analysis Approach to Understanding the Physiological Adaptation to Spaceflight

This book is a summary of interdisciplinary research (physiology, space medicine, engineering, computer science, mathematics) that spans two decades (1972-1992). The research was an attempt to use systems analysis, mathematical modeling, computer simulations, and database systems to integrate the biomedical spaceflight data that was being collected during this period. The goal of the effort was to achieve a better understanding of the human physiological response to short-term and long-term space travel. The activity was primarily devoted to analyzing the biomedical results of Skylab (1973-74), a series of three space missions which is still ranked as the most comprehensive of all long-term biomedical space studies to date. This work was begun as a coordinated effort between the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (Johnson Space Center) and the General Electric Company’s Space Division (Houston, TX). It was the intent that this multidisciplined, integrative approach could reveal aspects of the then-new science of microgravity adaptation that were not obvious by adhering to the traditional methodology of examining each organ system in isolation. Some joint work with the Russians, including the Apollo-Soyez test project and a joint bedrest study was also supported during this period. In the 1980’s the systems analysis group’s effort was redirected to support the science management of human and animal experiments on the Space Shuttle. A few examples from this era are also included in the book. Parts of this work have been published elsewhere, presented at technical meetings, and documented in reports with limited distribution. These publications will be referenced throughout the text and the interested reader is advised to use these as resource material where additional details are desired. The intent of this book is not to reproduce these documents but rather to present a coherent view of the integrative analysis under one cover. This volume contains the first detailed publication (other than in internal reports) of an extensive metabolic balance analysis of Skylab data, the development and validation of the “Whole-Body Algorithm,” and simulation studies of diverse hypogravic environments. An analysis of cardiovascular deconditioning and a description of the calcium regulatory model are also new. A long period has passed between the completion of the main body of work represented in this book and its publication in this form. It was inevitable that new research efforts would lead to developments related to the spaceflight problems addressed and thereby make some of our biomedical conclusions obsolete. Although in some cases reference to more recent work have been included, for the most part this book should be considered an historical summary demonstrating the approach and utility of systems analysis and computer modeling in the NASA Life Sciences program at the time the studies were conducted.

Leonard, Joel I.↗

NASA NTRS2020

Tactical Separation and Safety Alerting System for Terminal Airspace

Provision of tactical alerts to aid air traffic controllers in providing separation assurance in terminal airspace is hindered by the complexity of the airspace, its operations, and flight procedures. A prototype automation system is studied that provides controllers with both separation and safety alerts based on or derived from the separation standard for terminal airspace. The system models flight trajectories heuristically, with use of merged intent information from readily available sources: area navigation departure procedures, flight-plan routes, and arrival nominal interior routes used in terminal automation systems. Flight vertical intent is modeled according to standard procedural restrictions except when superseded by controller-issued altitude clearances. Importantly, flight trajectories are modeled for all aircraft, including those conducting visual approaches. New safety-alert thresholds for aircraft conducting visual approaches are studied. Performance of the system is evaluated through fast-time playback of recorded air traffic data from high-fidelity Human-In-The-Loop simulations and real-world operations in two Terminal Radar Approach Control facilities. The prototype system is found to produce a false-alert rate of 8% for separation alerts. The number and validity of safety alerts are studied by comparing with the current Conflict Alert system, showing that the false alerts of Conflict Alert are at 85% and they are avoided in the prototype system.

Air Traffic Management↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Overarching Properties as Means of Compliance: An Industrial Case Study

The Overarching Properties (OPs) have been created by an inter-national working group and are being evaluated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA), industry, and other certifying agencies in an effort to streamline certification processes. Their intent is to facilitate the use of alternative approaches and to al-low flexibility to combine the system, software, and complex hardware certification. The hope is that the FAA may eventually establish an Advisory Circular that offers the OPs as a Means of Compliance (MoC) for software approval (and eventually systems and hardware) by showing the product possesses the three OPs: Intent (specification of the intended behavior), Correctness (implementation of the intended behavior) and Innocuity (safety of unintended behavior). In the certification community, there is still a concern about the practicability of using such high level properties in certification. This paper aims to address that concern by showing possession of the OPs in an industrial case study using assurance arguments. The two main contributions of this paper are: a certification process based on OPs as Means of Compliance, and a certification argument for an on-board physical model of an UAV, as industrial example. We pro-pose a hybrid approach for the certification process that combines OPs with existing certification standards. Thus, OPs can be used for parts of a system that uses technologies that are not supported by current standards or for which existing standards require additional effort without commensurate additional safety assurance.

certification↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

An Improved Weighted Least Squares Algorithm for the Analysis of Strain-Gage Balance Calibration Data

An improved version of an algorithm is presented that uses a weighted least squares fit of balance calibration data for the generation of the balance load prediction equations. The weighted least squares fit assigns a weighting factor between zero and one to each calibration data point that depends on a simple count of the number of intentionally loaded balance gages. The greater the number of the loaded gages is, the smaller a data point's weighting factor becomes. This strategy has two advantages. First, single-component loads become more influential during the regression analysis of the calibration data. In addition, the negative influence of load schedule asymmetries on the regression analysis results can more effectively be controlled. The original algorithm of 2017 was improved in 2020. Now, gage output differences relative to the natural zeros are exclusively used as input for the determination of the number of intentionally loaded gages. The improved weighted least squares fit can be applied with both the Non-Iterative Method and the Iterative Method that are used for the balance load prediction in the aerospace testing community. Machine calibration data of a force balance is used to illustrate benefits of the application of the improved weighted least squares fit of balance calibration data.

strain-gage balance↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Best Practices, Lessons Learned, and Examples on the Application of Damage Tolerance in Space Structures

Damage tolerance is an important consideration in space structures applications. The intent of damage tolerance is to demonstrate that the structure is robust to the presence of flaws over the service life of the space vehicle. Damage tolerance requirements in documents such as those in NASA, AIAA, and ISO can be challenging to implement. The intent of this paper is three-fold: (1) Provide best practices in the application of damage tolerance requirements for space applications, (2) Provide lessons learned for each of class of hardware, (3) Provide examples of challenging situations encountered in the application of damage tolerance. Examples cover additive manufacturing, composite overwrapped pressure vessels, pressurized structures, liquid rocket engines, thermal protection systems, and other classes of hardware. The philosophy and limitations of leak before burst and proof test logic are also discussed. Finally, a discussion on elastic-plastic fracture mechanics with comparisons to test data will be presented.

Best Practices↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Safety Culture at the World’s Premier Multi-User Spaceport

NASA’s Agency-wide Safety Culture is implemented at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) using a unique strategy due an unparalleled approach in making human spaceflight history. Kennedy Space Center, the world’s premier multi-user spaceport, enables U.S. government and commercial space access, while providing the world a resource to allow the exploration of and the ability to work in space. A consistently healthy safety culture at KSC is imperative for mission success: desired achievements, protection of space flight hardware, and ultimately, the preservation of human life requires the support of a healthy safety culture. Emphasis on the NASA Agency-wide development of Safety Culture began with the conception of the NASA Agency Safety Culture Working Group. After the devastating loss of life and mission of the Space Shuttle Colombia, a broken safety culture was identified as an organizational cause by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report. Thus, the Agency Safety Culture Working Group was developed in 2009 to assess the status of the Agency’s Safety Culture, while addressing safety culture concerns at the NASA Center-level. A Five-factor model was developed to serve as the guiding principles for Safety Culture: 1) Reporting Culture, 2) Just Culture, 3) Flexible Culture, 4) Learning Culture, and 5) Engaged Culture. These five factors are included in the NASA Safety Culture logo, which was intentionally designed as a DNA double helix to prompt the permeation of safety into day-to-day work. KSC specifically implements the NASA Agency-wide Safety Culture principles in a tailored approach that is relevant to the diversity of work being performed. An emphasis is placed on the implementation to include safety at home, not exclusively at work. This emphasis is a KSC-specific element that has been intentionally added to promote a closed loop Safety Culture. To advertise the safety culture, various safety and health events are held throughout the calendar year, providing innovative speakers and engaging activities, while also promoting a wide range of curated safety initiatives. Development and continuous improvement of the KSC safety tracking database, allows for advanced tracking-to-closure, along with providing data sets used to identify areas of emphasis. Other safety initiatives rely solely on employee participation, such as the photo challenges; participants are encouraged to identify and capture themselves, coworkers, or family members participating in safe or healthy activities to share with others within the Center and at Agency levels. Fabrication of exclusive videos and graphics are utilized to advertise and inform employee of safety initiatives, upcoming safety events, and general dispersion of safety information. In addition, an anonymous Agency-wide Safety Culture Survey is advertised, administered, and analyzed at Kennedy Space Center, with the purpose of receiving basic feedback on Safety Culture perceptions to help prevent future incidents from occurring. Through these briefly identified means, and many other forms of employee engagement, Kennedy Space Center aims to maintain safety in the forefront, while creating an environment where everyone trusts that safety is a priority.

Larrin E. Moody↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

ETM Industry: Tabletop Defining Notions for Cooperative Operating Practices

This tabletop plans to cover 3 main topics in regards to the research that NASA has conducted for High-E Traffic Management (ETM), as well as implementing it to stand up an ETM system in the Airspace Operations Lab to invite industry participants to join us in a collaborative evaluation at the end of 2023. (Or earlier for system architectural connectivity). Working to define the notions that go into Cooperative Operating Practices for a collaborative traffic management process, we will be showing and training to some of our early prototype concepts and discussing: 1. Operational Intent: We have built an OI generation tool and would like to discuss specifics to the requirements of OI size, update rates, and duration. 2. Strategic Conflict Detection: We have built a concept to detect overlapping OI’s and would like to discuss the output information; time horizon, geometry and confidence level of intersection. In addition we are looking at a service that would provide all users with additional information in regards to the probability of your actual flight intent getting within a specified separation envelope. 3. Cooperative Operating Practices (COPS): Specifically looking at COPs for strategic deconfliction, we are looking to industry to build the actual COPS based on various criteria; vehicle-to-vehicle interactions, or company to company agreements. What is the strategy when OIs intersect; wait and see, take a pre-negotiated COPS action, or ad-hoc negotiation and discuss what that looks like.

High-E Traffic Management (ETM)↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Conjunction Assessment and Deconfliction Paradigm for Co-Located Satellite Constellations With on-Spacecraft “Autonomous” Flight Dynamics Control

Satellite constellations that employ on-spacecraft flight dynamics and conjunction assessment (CA) approaches face particular challenges. First, they must arrange to obtain and upload to the constellation satellite close approach information, such as Conjunction Data Messages, so that their on-board systems will have the data they need to make informed CA decisions. Second, given current latencies in obtaining CA screening information, such systems often cannot obtain dedicated screenings of their proposed maneuvers before they are executed. Third, they usually cannot engage in real time with owner/operators (O/Os) with whom they may come into conjunction, relying instead on pre-arranged courses of action that may or may not fit a given situation well. Despite these difficulties, it is nonetheless possible, as operators such as SpaceX have demonstrated, to operate safely using on-board CA calculations, in the presence of a largely collaborative operating environment. The situation breaks down, however, when two constellations that operate with such a paradigm are placed in the same orbital region and will experience conjunctions with each other. Each may have a vague idea of where the other’s satellites are, or perhaps even a somewhat precise idea if they exchange O/O ephemerides, but neither will know the other’s more immediate maneuver intentions, especially for situations in which they are in a high-risk conjunction with each other and a mitigation maneuver is required. As there is no formalized way for these automated systems to ascertain each other’s intentions for this type of conjunction, it is quite possible that each spacecraft may choose a maneuver that results in the two objects’ colliding. An opportunity to develop a solution to this problem was presented by the NASA “Starling” project, a small experimental constellation developed to demonstrate autonomous satellite control and constellation reconfiguration and for which a launch was obtained that, serendipitously, will place this constellation close to the SpaceX Starlink constellation. Because the NASA constellation is experimental, an extended mission part of the mission has been negotiated to implement and test mechanisms for resolving the problem of co-located constellations with on-board flight dynamics control. For the last eighteen months, a consortium among NASA Ames (the Starling satellite providers), NASA CARA (the Agency organization responsible for conjunction assessment), Space X, and the Department of Commerce (in observer status) has met regularly to assemble a concept of operations for a robust solution to this problem and has developed a prototype ground node that will serve as a needed CA screening and information dispensary. The approach and methods, as well as the active employment of the developed ground node, will be tested both in simulation before actual use and then in actual spacecraft operations, which are anticipated to begin in January 2024. This paper will describe the co-located autonomously-controlled constellation problem and the developed solution in detail, outlining what ground node (i.e., government) infrastructure and features are required, what particular capabilities are needed by the constellations themselves in order to make use of this deconfliction paradigm, and the migration path forward to allow such a capability set to be incorporated by the Department of Commerce’s space traffic coordination system.

Conjunction Assessment↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Overview of the Interagency Nuclear Safety Review Board Playbook

National Security Presidential Memorandum #20 (NSPM-20) directed the NASA Administrator to establish an Interagency Nuclear Safety Review Board (INSRB), replacing the ad hoc safety review panels used for space nuclear system launch reviews since the 1960s. NSPM-20 provides over-arching direction regarding the Board’s purpose and intent. Upon formation of this new entity, its members recognized that more detailed guidance was needed to ensure predictable and reliable performance of the Board’s functions. The Board drafted and later approved a guidance document referred to as “the Playbook” for this purpose. This paper will summarize the main features of this publicly-available document, along with providing context for its initial drafting and revision. The goal of this paper is to broaden the degree of awareness by the space nuclear system community of INSRB’s activities and intents.

INSRB↗

NASA NTRS2022

Flight Rule Design, Implementation, Verification, and Validation for the Psyche Mission

NASA Jet Propulsion Lab (JPL)’s upcoming mission Psyche will begin its journey to the asteroid (16) Psyche in late 2022 in an effort to better understand its origins and, in turn, better understand our own. Operating the spacecraft safely will require the dedicated efforts of a small team that understands the spacecraft’s operational constraints, as well as a set of powerful spacecraft models designed to catch command errors that can pose risks to mission success. One of the responsibilities of the operations team is to ensure adherence to a set of Flight Rules written by spacecraft and instrument experts that are designed to mitigate these risks. Psyche’s innovations in Flight Rule design principles and advancements in the tools and processes used to implement and check Flight Rules are discussed. A comparison of Psyche’s approach to Flight Rules to other JPL missions will provide lessons learned for future missions that must perform constraint checking during operations. Flight Rule development faces several major challenges. First, flight rule developers must work with Subject Matter Experts (SME) to write the rules in a way that captures the intent of the constraint in a straightforward, enforceable manner. Second, software implementers must correctly interpret flight rules into code so that it meets the original intent of the SME. Finally, a means must be provided for SMEs to validate flight rule implementations without requiring them to understand the underlying software. Innovative processes intended to efficiently close the loop between stakeholders and software developers are described, such as the use of test-driven development to provide stakeholders with easy-to-review implementations. New guidelines for flight rule writing, designed to address these challenges, are described for future missions to adopt and build upon. Psyche Mission System has a variety of new and heritage tools that improve in the Flight Rule validation and checking process. Psyche developed a powerful, new tool called RandSEQ and made significant improvements to Octopusjam, two valuable tools that aid the development of Flight Rule unit tests. Advancements in the models and processes for performing sequence validation with SEQuence GENerator (SEQGEN), the primary, high-heritage tool used for automated flight rule checks on Psyche, are described. The development of new software and the advancements to existing software put Psyche at the forefront of Flight Rule technology. All missions must perform detailed constraint checking, so a comparison of Psyche’s approach to some of these items to the approaches taken by other missions such as Dawn, M2020, and Europa Clipper is done, specifically to examine SME-developer communication, tools used, and development process. Lessons learned from this comparison will be provided.

Weise, Tim↗

NASA NTRS2023

Information and Best Practices Related to NASA Nuclear Flight Safety for Space Flights Involving Space Nuclear Systems

The purpose of this handbook is to facilitate a repeatable and robust process that promotes clear and effective interfaces between activities and stakeholders focused on meeting nuclear flight safety requirements for missions utilizing space nuclear systems (SNS), within the context of NASA’s broader nuclear-related activities and interfaces. NPR 8715.26, Nuclear Flight Safety, requires that the NASA project manager “incorporate nuclear flight safety considerations starting with program or project formulation through the point at which the SNS or other radioactive material no longer has the potential to affect Earth’s biosphere.” NASA’s use of SNS inherently involves partnering with other stakeholders to conduct a range of related activities that interface with nuclear flight safety. From a categorical perspective these include: (i) meeting the authorities and licensing requirements for possession and use of nuclear material, as governed by other Federal authorities; (ii) conducting National Environmental Policy Act (NEPA) activities for nuclear-enabled missions; (iii) meeting Federal nuclear launch authorization requirements; (iv) conducting radiological contingency planning activities, including those associated with international commitments; (v) performing risk communication and public outreach activities; and (vi) ensuring decommissioning and disposal strategies reflect National policies and interests. It is the intent of this handbook to promote an effective interface between nuclear flight safety and these interrelated categorical activities. In addition to activities undertaken with partnering agencies, there are individual nuclear-related activities and programs that have a nexus to nuclear flight safety, and these include: (i) applicable NASA Standing Review Boards; (ii) the US Department of Energy nuclear safety activities conducted in partnership with NASA under Memoranda of Understanding; (iii) the Department of Defense’s Range Safety activities; (iv) NASA’s general involvement in interagency and international dialogues regarding nuclear safety; (v) the NASA-administered Interagency Nuclear Safety Review Board; (vi) NASA’s program and project governance activities and nuclear-specific Technical Discipline Team activities under the Office of the Chief Engineer; and others. It is the intent of this handbook to promote effective leveraging of these additional interrelated organizational activities, as appropriate.

Donald Helton↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Roadmap to Cooperative Operating Practices for Strategic Conflict Detection and Resolution in the Upper Class-E Traffic Management Concept

As the governing body of flight operations in the highly anticipated emergent area of Upper Class E airspace (60,000 ft and above), the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) has recognized the potential for a possible extensible traffic management system for new entrants into this domain. Following the successes with Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) and Advanced / Urban Air Mobility (AAM / UAM) Traffic Management programs, FAA put forth an initial concept of operations for supporting the start of the Upper Class E Traffic Management (ETM) concept. Like UTM and AAM / UAM, ETM is envisioned to also be a community-based, industry driven cooperative management concept. However, tailoring it to be adaptable to the atmospheric communication, navigation, and surveillance deficits, as well as the diverse vehicle and mission profiles operating in the ETM environment will be the challenge. As such, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Ames Research Center has been investigating several technologies that will help enable industry in the development of this new type of cooperative operating environment. These technologies are being prototyped and will be tested in a collaborative evaluation of an initial ETM system in late 2023. The evaluation will concentrate on building out ETM system technologies that will inform the participants regarding operational intent sharing, strategic conflict detection, and the resultant deconfliction process. In addition to the technical aspects, key roles and responsibilities will need to be defined. This will be done through exploring community-agreed upon Cooperative Operating Practices (COPs) that include procedures and capabilities to aid in timely, strategic conflict identification and resolution to be developed during the evaluation. As an initial step to the evaluation, the ETM research team at NASA Ames solicited industry feedback on various aspects of ETM operations from subject matter experts. A virtual tabletop walkthrough session was held over a two-day period to follow a roadmap through the functional steps needed to build COPs, focusing on strategic conflict detection and resolution. Overall, the ETM tabletop provided insights into how the community wanted to instantiate the generation and sharing of operational intent, detect strategic conflicts and resolve those conflicts using a preliminary set of procedural community-agreed upon COPs.

Upper Class-E Traffic Management (ETM)↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Natural Language Understanding Approach for Digitizing Aircraft Ground Taxi Instructions

Recent Advancements in spoken language processing technologies have enabled the development of reliable automation tools to assist air traffic control (ATC) operations. These advancements present a unique opportunity to strategically implement digital taxi instructions for aircraft movement on the ground. Digital taxi instructions issue taxiing procedures to pilots as textual or graphical instructions. There are several benefits of digital instructions, including a reduction in radio congestion, elimination of communication errors, and improved aircraft monitoring capabilities. Natural language understanding (NLU) models can extract digital taxi instructions from verbal instructions issued by air traffic controllers. This capability enables the implementation of a digital taxi communication framework with minimal changes to the existing air traffic controller operational environment. We explore a novel application for NLU: automatically generating digital taxi instructions from air traffic controller speech. We describe the development of an annotation scheme to represent (aircraft) ground traffic communications in the US National Airspace System (NAS).Our annotation scheme uses intent classification and slot filling to extract taxi instructions, enabling NLU models to leverage syntactic information. Several neural network models were trained to categorize the controller’s intent and label information relevant to his or her intent.Our research demonstrates that it is feasible to use NLU to automatically generate digitaltaxi instructions, suggesting that it is a powerful tool for the implementation of digital taxi communications.

Hillel Steinmetz↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA CARA Prelaunch Analysis and Process

NASA implemented an official Procedural Requirement (NPR) 8079.1 in June 2023, establishing the minimum collision avoidance requirements and associated operational protocols for NASA space flight programs, projects, and spacecraft to protect the space environment by reducing the risk of collision to an acceptable level. Part of the requirement employs a two-fold approach to analyze the satellite design process with conjunction assessment and risk mitigation in mind, during the pre-launch process, led by the Conjunction Assessment Risk Analysis (CARA) Program for non-Human Space Flight (HSF) Missions. This presentation outlines CARA coordination with missions, informed by the NPR, that spans early mission development to operations. CARA is an Agency-level resource that provides support to all NASA non-HSF missions. CARA protects the orbital environment from collision between NASA non-HSF missions and other tracked on-orbit objects. During the pre-formulation and formulation phases, NASA missions undergo a series of conjunction assessment analyses captured in the Orbital Collision Avoidance Plan (OCAP) prior to transitioning to the implementation phase (typically at the Preliminary Design Review (PDR) or equivalent). The OCAP analyses consist of a thorough review of the spacecraft(s) orbit selection and placement, deployment, cataloguing performance, trackability, ephemeris generation, conjunction mitigation options, autonomous maneuvering, and risk assessment parameters which are performed by a dedicated CARA Analysis Team. The results of these analyses, CARA’s formal recommendations, and the mission’s methods for implementing them, are documented in the OCAP. The intent of engaging in this process so early in the mission design phase, is to ensure that conjunction assessment is considered from the outset, thus mitigating costly design changes and operational risks down the road. NASA missions are also required to coordinate their operational processes and conjunction mitigation procedures with CARA in a Conjunction Assessment Operations Implementation Agreement (CAOIA). The aim of this process is to document the conjunction assessment screening process, conjunction risk assessment parameters, conjunction mitigation steps, flight dynamics operations concepts and maneuvers, and the communication and coordination process between the mission’s project manager and CARA. The intent of the CAOIA document is for it to be completed iteratively, and as missions update these elements, corresponding changes are made in the CAOIA. With this process in place, the engagement and coordination between the missions and CARA from early in the design process into mission operations, helps to ensure that missions not only have a robust conjunction assessment concept of operations to reduce conjunction risk for space sustainability, but are also able to achieve their science goals and have a successful mission.

conjunction assessment↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA CARA Prelaunch Analysis and Process

conjunction assessment↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Lunar Surface Missions for Resource Reconnaissance: NASA's PRIME-1 and VIPER

In 2019 NASA announced it would return to the Moon where it would seek to establish a sustainable lunar presence. In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) is a critical part of the infrastructure needed to sustain and grow human surface exploration. NASA further codified its ISRU intentions with the release of the Moon to Mars objectives in 2022, which calls out specific infrastructure goals, and in the release of the Architecture Definition Document in 2023. While there are a variety of resources that are of interest, including oxygen from regolith minerals, water is a game changing resource for in-situ consumable and propellant production. NASA’s intention of targeting of the lunar polar region for Artemis is, in part due to the potential of water resources there.

Lunar↗

NASA NTRS2024

GlennICE Manual 4.2.0

This manual is intended to provide the information necessary for an applications engineer to configure, compile, and execute the GlennICE software. The intent of this document is not to detail the algorithms of the software. The intent of this document is to detail how a user can interact and configure the algorithms of this software in order to produce a desired simulation.

GlennICE↗

NASA NTRS2025

A Preliminary Study on the Feasibility of Large Language Models for Detecting Micro-Behaviors Among Team Members in Space Missions

Large-language models (LLMs) have been recently used for spoken language understanding (SLU) to infer meaning and semantics from speech in tasks such as speaker intent and sentiment classification. Due to being trained on large amounts of data, and their ability to understand context and relationships between words, LLMs are competent, enabling them to generalize across tasks without requiring many task-specific training samples. This research examines the feasibility of few-shot learning in LLMs for detecting subtle, brief, and possibly unconscious interactions between team members, called ``micro-behaviors," and provides insights into the appropriate design of LLMs for this task. Our data came from 5 teams participating in a 45-day mission at the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Human Exploration Research Analog (HERA). More specifically we used data collected from team interaction battery (TIB) tasks teams performed five times in-mission which comprise an average 1.5 hours of conversation data per day. Micro-behaviors were coded according to an adapted version of Smith & Griffins (2022) theoretical framework in terms of Violation (i.e., presence of valenced behavior, uplifting/positive or discouraging/negative), Intensity (i.e., force of behavior in terms of how uplifting or discouraging is the behavior), and Intent (i.e., motive of the behavior in terms of whether it was deliberate or unintentional). We explore the ability of LLMs to detect the presence and intensity of micro-behaviors. We examine employing and fine-tuning readily available LLMs (i.e., RoBERTa, DistilBERT), as well as prompting state-of-the-art sequence classification models (i.e., Llama-2, Llama-3). In a total of 13,058 conversational turns (17.8% uplifting, 3.3% discouraging, 75.76% neutral, 3.14% nulls), we compute the macro F1-score of the 3-way micro-behavior classification task (i.e., classifying among uplifting, discouraging, and neutral; 33% chance). Results indicate that the RoBERTa model achieves a F1-score of 36.2% (uplift: 43.3% precision (P), 15.1% recall (R); discourage: 20% P, 0.5% R). These results significantly improve when we augment the data via paraphrasing in the RoBERTa model, reaching a 41.2% macro F1-score (uplift: 37.7% P, 86.3% R; discourage: 3.5% P, 1.8% R). Finally, the Llama-2 model with 3-shot prompting yields 38% macro F1-score (uplift: 28.7% P, 20% R; discourage: 7.2% P, 18% R), which is slightly better compared to the RoBERTa model without data augmentation, highlighting the effectiveness of sequence classification models in detecting minority classes with a small sample size. Findings indicate that LLMs hold potential to detect subtle behaviors in conversations, which could be valuable in assessing team behavior in space exploration missions. Future studies will evaluate the performance of different LLM prompting strategies or fine-tuning methods.

Ankush Raut↗