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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 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1994

Open Source Service Agent (OSSA) in the intelligence community's Open Source Architecture

The Community Open Source Program Office (COSPO) has developed an architecture for the intelligence community's new Open Source Information System (OSIS). The architecture is a multi-phased program featuring connectivity, interoperability, and functionality. OSIS is based on a distributed architecture concept. The system is designed to function as a virtual entity. OSIS will be a restricted (non-public), user configured network employing Internet communications. Privacy and authentication will be provided through firewall protection. Connection to OSIS can be made through any server on the Internet or through dial-up modems provided the appropriate firewall authentication system is installed on the client.

Fiene, Bruce F.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

LIS-Hydro: Authoritative Source for OCONUS Hydro-Intelligence

U.S. military forces are often tasked to participate in a variety of transboundary water-related decision-making activities, including humanitarian assistance operations through Department of State tasking, support of in-country infrastructure development activities that help develop or improve diplomatic relationships, and support of transboundary water treaty negotiations or disputes to reduce risk of conflict caused by water security issues. The U.S. intelligence communities have identified the coordination over shared water resources as an area of significant concern to U.S. national security (U.S. National Defense Strategy, 2018). Such transboundary water issues are projected to intensify in the future under increasingly complex population dynamics, political tensions due to parallel issues, and a changing climate. A 2017 joint NASA, USACE/RDC, and U.S. Air Force co-sponsored workshop revealed a lack of sufficient decision support tools and access to timely technical and contextual information needed to assess and respond to potential water-related threats around the world. The need for an integrated operational service, with the capacity to combine and synthesize hydrological modeling, assimilation, forecasting, and visualization capabilities across the U.S. Government, was highlighted as a key recommendation. In direct response, a subset of the U.S. Department of Defense, National Intelligence Community, and Oak Ridge National Laboratory are collaborating on the development of a fully integrated hydro-modeling and streamflow prediction system (i.e., LIS-Hydro). Completion of the project and sustainment of the operational capability by Air Force Weather will establish a national asset to assist federal agencies implement government-wide strategies around water resources (U.S. Global Water Strategy, 2017). The hydrological products and services will, for the very first time, establish a routinely available authoritative source of global water intelligence information supporting war-fighters, planners, and decision makers at all echelons and services of the U.S. military, Federal government, and intelligence community. A summary of the interagency scientific collaboration in addressing some of the key gaps and needs identified during the 2017 workshop will be presented.

Land Information System↗
NASA NTRS2013

US Rocket Propulsion Industrial Base Health Metrics

The number of active liquid rocket engine and solid rocket motor development programs has severely declined since the "space race" of the 1950s and 1960s center dot This downward trend has been exacerbated by the retirement of the Space Shuttle, transition from the Constellation Program to the Space launch System (SLS) and similar activity in DoD programs center dot In addition with consolidation in the industry, the rocket propulsion industrial base is under stress. To Improve the "health" of the RPIB, we need to understand - The current condition of the RPIB - How this compares to past history - The trend of RPIB health center dot This drives the need for a concise set of "metrics" - Analogous to the basic data a physician uses to determine the state of health of his patients - Easy to measure and collect - The trend is often more useful than the actual data point - Can be used to focus on problem areas and develop preventative measures The nation's capability to conceive, design, develop, manufacture, test, and support missions using liquid rocket engines and solid rocket motors that are critical to its national security, economic health and growth, and future scientific needs. center dot The RPIB encompasses US government, academic, and commercial (including industry primes and their supplier base) research, development, test, evaluation, and manufacturing capabilities and facilities. center dot The RPIB includes the skilled workforce, related intellectual property, engineering and support services, and supply chain operations and management. This definition touches the five main segments of the U.S. RPIB as categorized by the USG: defense, intelligence community, civil government, academia, and commercial sector. The nation's capability to conceive, design, develop, manufacture, test, and support missions using liquid rocket engines and solid rocket motors that are critical to its national security, economic health and growth, and future scientific needs. center dot The RPIB encompasses US government, academic, and commercial (including industry primes and their supplier base) research, development, test, evaluation, and manufacturing capabilities and facilities. center dot The RPIB includes the skilled workforce, related intellectual property, engineering and support services, and supply chain operations and management. This definition touches the five main segments of the U.S. RPIB as categorized by the USG: defense, intelligence community, civil government, academia, and commercial sector.

Doreswamy, Rajiv↗
NASA NTRS1995

Applying AI tools to operational space environmental analysis

The U.S. Air Force and National Oceanic Atmospheric Agency (NOAA) space environmental operations centers are facing increasingly complex challenges meeting the needs of their growing user community. These centers provide current space environmental information and short term forecasts of geomagnetic activity. Recent advances in modeling and data access have provided sophisticated tools for making accurate and timely forecasts, but have introduced new problems associated with handling and analyzing large quantities of complex data. AI (Artificial Intelligence) techniques have been considered as potential solutions to some of these problems. Fielding AI systems has proven more difficult than expected, in part because of operational constraints. Using systems which have been demonstrated successfully in the operational environment will provide a basis for a useful data fusion and analysis capability. Our approach uses a general purpose AI system already in operational use within the military intelligence community, called the Temporal Analysis System (TAS). TAS is an operational suite of tools supporting data processing, data visualization, historical analysis, situation assessment and predictive analysis. TAS includes expert system tools to analyze incoming events for indications of particular situations and predicts future activity. The expert system operates on a knowledge base of temporal patterns encoded using a knowledge representation called Temporal Transition Models (TTM's) and an event database maintained by the other TAS tools. The system also includes a robust knowledge acquisition and maintenance tool for creating TTM's using a graphical specification language. The ability to manipulate TTM's in a graphical format gives non-computer specialists an intuitive way of accessing and editing the knowledge base. To support space environmental analyses, we used TAS's ability to define domain specific event analysis abstractions. The prototype system defines events covering reports of natural phenomena such as solar flares, bursts, geomagnetic storms, and five others pertinent to space environmental analysis. With our preliminary event definitions we experimented with TAS's support for temporal pattern analysis using X-ray flare and geomagnetic storm forecasts as case studies. We are currently working on a framework for integrating advanced graphics and space environmental models into this analytical environment.

Krajnak, Mike↗
NASA NTRS2020

Data Assimilation Enhancements to Air Force Weather’s Land Information System

The United States Air Force (USAF) has a proud and storied tradition of enabling significant advancements in the area of characterizing and modeling land state information. 557th Weather Wing (557 WW; DoD’s Executive Agent for Land Information) provides routine geospatial intelligence information to warfighters, planners, and decision makers at all echelons and services of the U.S. military, government and intelligence community. 557 WW and its predecessors have been home to the DoD’s only operational regional and global land data analysis systems since January 1958. As a trusted partner since 2005, Air Force Weather (AFW) has relied on the Hydrological Sciences Laboratory at NASA/GSFC to lead the interagency scientific collaboration known as the Land Information System (LIS). LIS is an advanced software framework for high performance land surface modeling and data assimilation of geospatial intelligence (GEOINT) information.

Wegiel, Jerry↗
NASA NTRS1974

An introduction to the problem of interstellar communication

Man's place in the universe is considered, taking into account the earth and the sun as viewed from space. The solar system lies far out towards the edge of the galactic disk, some 30,000 light-years away from the center of a lens-shaped galaxy. Questions concerning a search for extraterrestrial intelligence are discussed. Current radio astronomical techniques make it potentially possible to communicate with 200 million stars. Attention is given to the fraction of stars with planetary systems, the number of planets suitable for life, the fraction of life-bearing planets with intelligence, and the fraction of intelligent communities developing a technical phase.

Sagan, C.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Discovery and problem solving: Triangulation as a weak heuristic

Recently the artificial intelligence community has turned its attention to the process of discovery and found that the history of science is a fertile source for what Darden has called compiled hindsight. Such hindsight generates weak heuristics for discovery that do not guarantee that discoveries will be made but do have proven worth in leading to discoveries. Triangulation is one such heuristic that is grounded in historical hindsight. This heuristic is explored within the general framework of the BACON, GLAUBER, STAHL, DALTON, and SUTTON programs. In triangulation different bases of information are compared in an effort to identify gaps between the bases. Thus, assuming that the bases of information are relevantly related, the gaps that are identified should be good locations for discovery and robust analysis.

Rochowiak, Daniel↗
NASA NTRS1991

Challenges in building intelligent systems for space mission operations

The purpose here is to provide a top-level look at the stewardship functions performed in space operations, and to identify the major issues and challenges that must be addressed to build intelligent systems that can realistically support operations functions. The focus is on decision support activities involving monitoring, state assessment, goal generation, plan generation, and plan execution. The bottom line is that problem solving in the space operations domain is a very complex process. A variety of knowledge constructs, representations, and reasoning processes are necessary to support effective human problem solving. Emulating these kinds of capabilities in intelligent systems offers major technical challenges that the artificial intelligence community is only beginning to address.

Hartman, Wayne↗
NASA NTRS1994

New architectural paradigms for multi-petabyte distributed storage systems

In the not too distant future, programs such as NASA's Earth Observing System, NSF/ARPA/NASA's Digital Libraries Initiative and Intelligence Community's (NSA, CIA, NRO, etc.) mass storage system upgrades will all require multi-petabyte (petabyte: 1015 bytes of bitfile data) (or larger) distributed storage solutions. None of these requirements, as currently defined, will meet their objectives utilizing either today's architectural paradigms or storage solutions. Radically new approaches will be required to not only store and manage veritable 'mountain ranges of data', but to make the cost of ownership affordable, much less practical in today's (and certainly the future's) austere budget environment! Within this paper we will explore new architectural paradigms and project systems performance benefits and dollars per petabyte of information stored. We will discuss essential 'top down' approaches to achieving an overall systems level performance capability sufficient to meet the challenges of these major programs.

Lee, Richard R.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

LIS-Hydro: A Comprehensive Framework for Flood Prediction, Analysis, and Management

A subset of agencies from across the U.S. Federal enterprise are collaborating on the development of a fully-integrated hydro-modeling and streamflow prediction system (i.e., LIS-Hydro). The hydrological products and services will, for the very first time, establish a routinely available authoritative source of global water intelligence information supporting war-fighters, planners, and decision makers at all echelons and services of the U.S. military, Federal government, and intelligence community. Completion of the project and sustainment of the operational capability by Air Force Weather will establish a national asset to assist federal agencies in implementing government-wide strategies around water resources (U.S. Global Water Strategy, 2017). A summary of the interagency scientific collaboration in addressing some of the key gaps and needs identified during a 2017 joint NASA, USACE/ERDC, and U.S. Air Force co-sponsored workshop will be presented.

Jerry W Wegiel↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Community Benchmark Problem for Intelligent Contingency Management

This paper introduces a Community Benchmark Problem (CBP) for Intelligent Contingency Management (ICM) for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) aircraft. The CBP aims to provide a common framework for measuring and comparing the progress of autonomy solutions for UAM aircraft in handling emergency situations. The paper proposes a methodology for defining and quantifying five measures of complexity that capture the challenges and requirements of ICM for UAM: Mission, Environmental, Autonomy, Decision-Making, and Mission Fault. In addition, it proposes a methodology for defining and quantifying mission risk acceptability with the same goals: Contingency Management, Mission Success, Operational, Mission Redefinition, and Environmental. We describe how to use these measures to track progress of the development of ICM capability, as well as to create scenarios and evaluate the performance of different autonomy solutions.

autonomy↗
NASA NTRS1991

Object-oriented knowledge representation for expert systems

Object oriented techniques have generated considerable interest in the Artificial Intelligence (AI) community in recent years. This paper discusses an approach for representing expert system knowledge using classes, objects, and message passing. The implementation is in version 4.3 of NASA's C Language Integrated Production System (CLIPS), an expert system tool that does not provide direct support for object oriented design. The method uses programmer imposed conventions and keywords to structure facts, and rules to provide object oriented capabilities.

Scott, Stephen L.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA's Implementation of Cloud Services for Human Space Flight

Cloud is a tried-and-true technology used throughout United States government agencies, including the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). With reliable results and infrequent downtimes, cloud allows for secure remote access, customizability, and streamlined monitoring options, creating an environment for better data integrity and availability. As NASA increasingly migrates functions to the cloud, the Space Communications and Navigation Program (SCaN) program has been investigating how this capability can be leveraged to provide communication services to its users and customers. Currently, missions such as NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR), Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE), and Roman Space Telescope (RST) are planned to incorporate cloud into their data delivery architecture. However, SCaN is looking to expand further. This conversion to using cloud services allows for greater availability of mission data for both robotic and human space flight (HSF)missions. The SCaN program and the Near Space Network (NSN) are working to consolidate resources and create a cloud environment suitable for the entirety of the SCaN program network architecture. SCaN is in the process of finalizing its cloud architecture and soon will be implementing cloud services. The new services used will adhere to federal regulations including Federal Risk and Authorization Management Program (FedRAMP), which is built upon National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST)documentation. While keeping in mind these security requirements, an auxiliary objective of the cloud integration is to ensure the most cost-efficient solution; providing a scalable, robust and resilient system. Using cloud services, NASA will gain access to better centralized monitoring and management features, along with customizable services on a pay-per-use plan. With the ever-growing NASA mission data volume needs, maintaining ample storage space is another major constraint. Processing and storing such large amounts of data, on the order of terabytes a day, requires dynamic processing capability which is inherently a strength of cloud computing. By routing this data from ground stations through the cloud, there will be greater ease of access for both SCaN and the user community. Artificial intelligence and other built-in cloud functions can also enhance efficiency, improving data processing time. Thereby also allowing for better data availability. As we look to the future of cloud services, NASA will continue to leverage capabilities that will benefit NASA’s ability to provide cost-effective communication services. This paper further outlines the evolution of cloud use by SCaN in the context of Human Space Flight.

cloud storage↗
NASA NTRS2018

An Evolutionary Computation System Design Concept for Developing Controlled Closed Ecosystems: An Intelligent Systems Approach to Foster Gravitational Ecosystem Research for Developing Sustainable Communities in Space and on Earth

An adjustably-autonomous intelligent systems approach for developing Closed Ecosystems (CESs) is presented, which includes a design concept and preliminary design details for the Controlled Closed-Ecosystem Development System (CCEDS) and the Orbiting Modular Artificial-Gravity Spacecraft (OMAGS). The paper is divided into three sections: CESs, the CCEDS Design Concept, and Orbiting Fractional-Gravity Closed Ecosystems OMAGS design concept. The first section briefly describes Closed EcoSystems (CESs), complex adaptive systems, biomes, microbial microbiomes, and their relevance for the study of astrobiology. This section also discusses initial efforts in the development of Closed Environment Life Support Systems (CELSSs) for sustainable communities in space and on Earth. This section concludes with a discussion of the bioregenerative life support system challenge of and the corresponding consequences due to the inverse relationship of the very small human biomass/non-human biomass ratio overall on the Earth with respect to the extremely large human biomass/non-human-biomass ratio found in cities and the International Space Station. The second section describes the CCEDS design concept, which consists of a population of controlled colonies of CES Modules (CESMs), each an integrated CES, continually generating data for an intelligent system that operates the CESs and their CESMs. A variety of CESM types and their use are briefly described. The CCEDS intelligent system uses an evolutionary computation algorithm described in this section to develop and optimize these CESs to increase their viability duration and the size of the animals they support with the ultimate goal to support populations of humans, both on Earth and in space. The CCEDS architecture, its five control subsystems, and its five evolutionary computation levels are also discussed. The section concludes with a discussion of several CCEDS design strategies. The third section summarizes the OMAGS design concept for a spacecraft with a payload consisting of CESs in an orbiting spacecraft centrifuge that operates for at least 5 years. The spacecraft concept is described including its 150cm-radius centrifuge with a 2 ton & 3,000 liter bioscience payload capacity for 24 CESMs. The centrifuge design has four physical levels for its CESMs, each level subject to a different fractional gravity level. This section presents the spacecraft benefits of being designed and operated such that the spacecraft and payload centrifuge wheel counter-rotate resulting in net zero angular momentum and zero gyroscopic forces. Artificial-gravity generation by centripetal acceleration is also discussed. This section concludes by showing the external specifications of the CESMs and their layout in the centrifuge, followed by discussing the multi-payload module rationale. In tandem, the CCEDS and OMAGS systems can be used to foster gravitational ecosystem research for developing sustainable communities in space and on Earth.

Dorais, Gregory A.↗
NASA NTRS1995

An Intelligent Agent for the K-12 Educational Community

Nearly every professional would like to have a personal assistant to perform the physical and mental work of searching libraries for needed information. This paper describes a tool which performs this function using commonly available Internet services. The promises and difficulties of developing such a tool are described.

Rorvig, Mark E.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Standard protocol stack for mission control

It is proposed to create a fully 'open' architectural specification for standardized space mission command and control. By being open, i.e., independent for any particular implementation, diversity and competition will be encouraged among future commercial suppliers of space equipment and systems. Customers of the new standard capability are expected to include: (1) the civil space community (e.g., NASA, NOAA, international Agencies); (2) the military space community (e.g., Air Force, Navy, intelligence); and (3) the emerging commercial space community (e.g., mobile satellite service providers).

Hooke, Adrian J.↗
NASA NTRS1984

Artificial intelligence applications concepts for the remote sensing and earth science community

The following potential applications of AI to the study of earth science are described: (1) intelligent data management systems; (2) intelligent processing and understanding of spatial data; and (3) automated systems which perform tasks that currently require large amounts of time by scientists and engineers to complete. An example is provided of how an intelligent information system might operate to support an earth science project.

Campbell, W. J.↗
NASA NTRS1994

SIGMA: A Knowledge-Based Simulation Tool Applied to Ecosystem Modeling

The need for better technology to facilitate building, sharing and reusing models is generally recognized within the ecosystem modeling community. The Scientists' Intelligent Graphical Modelling Assistant (SIGMA) creates an environment for model building, sharing and reuse which provides an alternative to more conventional approaches which too often yield poorly documented, awkwardly structured model code. The SIGMA interface presents the user a list of model quantities which can be selected for computation. Equations to calculate the model quantities may be chosen from an existing library of ecosystem modeling equations, or built using a specialized equation editor. Inputs for dim equations may be supplied by data or by calculation from other equations. Each variable and equation is expressed using ecological terminology and scientific units, and is documented with explanatory descriptions and optional literature citations. Automatic scientific unit conversion is supported and only physically-consistent equations are accepted by the system. The system uses knowledge-based semantic conditions to decide which equations in its library make sense to apply in a given situation, and supplies these to the user for selection. "Me equations and variables are graphically represented as a flow diagram which provides a complete summary of the model. Forest-BGC, a stand-level model that simulates photosynthesis and evapo-transpiration for conifer canopies, was originally implemented in Fortran and subsequenty re-implemented using SIGMA. The SIGMA version reproduces daily results and also provides a knowledge base which greatly facilitates inspection, modification and extension of Forest-BGC.

Dungan, Jennifer L.↗