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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

STK/Lifetime as a Replacement for Heritage Orbital Lifetime Software

The Flight Dynamics Analysis Branch (FDAB) of NASNGSFC is tasked with determining the orbital lifetime of several developmental and operational satellites, which include the Hubble Space Telescope. A DOS based program developed by the FDAB many years ago, called PC Lifetime, is used to determine a satellite s lifetime and could soon be in need of a replacement. STK s Lifetime Object Tool is a possible candidate. Due to the reduced support of the PC Lifetime program, and the growing incompatibility of older programs with new operating systems, a comparative analysis was done to determine if STWLifetime could meet the stringent requirements that were laid before it. The use of highly accurate numerical propagators such as STK s High Precision Orbit Propagator ( OP) and the Goddard Trajectory Determination System (GTDS) provided a basis on which to compare STWLifetime s results. Several test cases were run, but the main four test cases would determine whether or not STWLifetime could be PC- Lifetime s replacement. These four cases include a geotransfer orbit, two circular LEOS, and a Poiar LEO. Following rigorous testmg procedures, a conclusion will be determined. STK has proved to be a versatile program on many satellite missions and the FDAB has high hopes that it can pass FDAB s requirements for orbital lifetime prediction.

Dove, Edwin↗

Data Movement Categories

We have endeavored to classify the commonly seen data movement needs, as observed in data-intensive institutions (both commercial and non-profit), into four categories. Knowing how to map a data movement task into one of the four categories helps select proper data mover tools. For each category, how the data storage is involved, high-level examples and the nature of typical solutions are described. Finally, some general remarks are provided to help further orient readers new to this field - the 4th IT pillar.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

Maximizing TDRS Command Load Lifetime

The GNC software onboard ISS utilizes TORS command loads, and a simplistic model of TORS orbital motion to generate onboard TORS state vectors. Each TORS command load contains five "invariant" orbital elements which serve as inputs to the onboard propagation algorithm. These elements include semi-major axis, inclination, time of last ascending node crossing, right ascension of ascending node, and mean motion. Running parallel to the onboard software is the TORS Command Builder Tool application, located in the JSC Mission Control Center. The TORS Command Builder Tool is responsible for building the TORS command loads using a ground TORS state vector, mirroring the onboard propagation algorithm, and assessing the fidelity of current TORS command loads onboard ISS. The tool works by extracting a ground state vector at a given time from a current TORS ephemeris, and then calculating the corresponding "onboard" TORS state vector at the same time using the current onboard TORS command load. The tool then performs a comparison between these two vectors and displays the relative differences in the command builder tool GUI. If the RSS position difference between these two vectors exceeds the tolerable lim its, a new command load is built using the ground state vector and uplinked to ISS. A command load's lifetime is therefore defined as the time from when a command load is built to the time the RSS position difference exceeds the tolerable limit. From the outset of TORS command load operations (STS-98), command load lifetime was limited to approximately one week due to the simplicity of both the onboard propagation algorithm, and the algorithm used by the command builder tool to generate the invariant orbital elements. It was soon desired to extend command load lifetime in order to minimize potential risk due to frequent ISS commanding. Initial studies indicated that command load lifetime was most sensitive to changes in mean motion. Finding a suitable value for mean motion was therefore the key to achieving this goal. This goal was eventually realized through development of an Excel spreadsheet tool called EMMIE (Excel Mean Motion Interactive Estimation). EMMIE utilizes ground ephemeris nodal data to perform a least-squares fit to inferred mean anomaly as a function of time, thus generating an initial estimate for mean motion. This mean motion in turn drives a plot of estimated downtrack position difference versus time. The user can then manually iterate the mean motion, and determine an optimal value that will maximize command load lifetime. Once this optimal value is determined, the mean motion initially calculated by the command builder tool is overwritten with the new optimal value, and the command load is built for uplink to ISS. EMMIE also provides the capability for command load lifetime to be tracked through multiple TORS ephemeris updates. Using EMMIE, TORS command load lifetimes of approximately 30 days have been achieved.

Brown, Aaron J.↗

An Integrated Software Architecture for Solar Cruiser Mission Design and Navigation

Solar Cruiser is a solar sailing mission, riding as a secondary payload to the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission, expected to launch in February of 2025. The Solar Cruiser vehicle will generate thrust via a complex, low-thrust solar sail. The extreme low-thrust nature of the solar sail will leave Solar Cruiser highly sensitive to external environmental effects (such as solar radiation pressure and high-order gravitational perturbations) throughout the entirety of flight. Because of this, preliminary & operational optimization routines must be intricately tied to high-order predictive propagation models to ensure the greatest possible confidence in mission success. The Solar Cruiser Mission Design and Navigation (MDNav) team has designed a software tool suite, employing the latest in software containerization technology, to accomplish this task, allowing for seamless development across several users and operating systems. Combining JPL’s Monte toolkit with University of Alabama’s high-performance optimizer, ASSET, the proposed architecture allows for instant verification of optimized trajectories within the same development environment that the optimization takes place, removing the need for mission designers and navigators to switch between tools. The MDNav software suite itself is separated from the development and operational scripts to be used in flight, which allows for maintaining a low-footprint version control profile – thus avoiding unnecessary file bloating. This paper discusses the historical differences between previous iterations of the Solar Cruiser MDNav tool suite and the current iteration, planned operational interfaces of the tool with other software and subsystems, and the planned path forward in maintaining containerization services for the software throughout the lifetime of Solar Cruiser.

solar cruiser↗

An Integrated Software Architecture for Solar Cruiser Mission Design and Navigation

Solar Cruiser is a solar sailing mission, riding as a secondary payload to the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission, slated to launch in February of 2025. The Solar Cruiser vehicle will generate thrust via a complex, low-thrust solar sail. The extreme low-thrust nature of the solar sail will leave Solar Cruiser highly sensitive to external environmental effects (such as solar radiation pressure and high-order gravitational perturbations) throughout the entirety of flight. Because of this, preliminary operational optimization routines must be intricately tied to high-order predictive propagation models to ensure the greatest possible confidence in mission success. The Solar Cruiser Mission Design and Navigation (MDNav) team has designed a software tool suite, employing the latest in software containerization technology, to accomplish this task; allowing for seamless development across several users and operating systems. Combining JPL’s Monte toolkit with high-performance optimizers written by the University of Alabama, the proposed architecture allows for instant verification of optimized trajectories within the same development environment that the optimization takes place, removing the need for mission designers and navigators to switch between tools. The MDNav suite image deployment process is separated from the development and operational scripts to be used in flight, which allows for maintaining a low-footprint version control profile without unnecessary file bloating. This paper discusses the historical differences between previous iterations of the Solar Cruiser MDNav tool suite and the current iteration, planned operational interfaces of the tool with other software and subsystems, and the planned path forward in maintaining containerization services for the software throughout the lifetime of Solar Cruiser.

optimization↗

Ada and cyclic runtime scheduling

An important issue that must be faced while introducing Ada into the real time world is efficient and prodictable runtime behavior. One of the most effective methods employed during the traditional design of a real time system is the cyclic executive. The role cyclic scheduling might play in an Ada application in terms of currently available implementations and in terms of implementations that might be developed especially to support real time system development is examined. The cyclic executive solves many of the problems faced by real time designers, resulting in a system for which it is relatively easy to achieve approporiate timing behavior. Unfortunately a cyclic executive carries with it a very high maintenance penalty over the lifetime of the software that is schedules. Additionally, these cyclic systems tend to be quite fragil when any aspect of the system changes. The findings are presented of an ongoing SofTech investigation into Ada methods for real time system development. The topics covered include a description of the costs involved in using cyclic schedulers, the sources of these costs, and measures for future systems to avoid these costs without giving up the runtime performance of a cyclic system.

Hood, Philip E.↗

NASA product assurance in the 1990s

The objectives of NASA product assurance in the 1990s are identified. They are to provide for personnel safety, and safe and reliable operation of hardware and software during the lifetime of a program or mission. The NASA product assurance program, a multi-discipline effort that focuses on safety, reliability, maintainability, and quality assurance expertise to meet NASA operational requirements is described. This program supports NASA 's unmanned launch vehicles such as satellites and planetary probes, manned spacecraft (such as the Space Shuttle and Space Station Freedom), and ground support equipment.

Rodney, George A.↗

An Integrated Software Architecture for Solar Cruiser Mission Design and Navigation

Solar Cruiser is a solar sailing mission, riding as a secondary payload to the Interstellar Mapping and Acceleration Probe (IMAP) mission, expected to launch in February of 2025. The Solar Cruiser vehicle will generate thrust via a complex, low-thrust solar sail. The extreme low-thrust nature of the solar sail will leave Solar Cruiser highly sensitive to external environmental effects (such as solar radiation pressure and high-order gravitational perturbations) throughout the entirety of flight. Because of this, preliminary & operational optimization routines must be intricately tied to high-order predictive propagation models to ensure the greatest possible confidence in mission success. The Solar Cruiser Mission Design and Navigation (MDNav) team has designed a software tool suite, employing the latest in software containerization technology, to accomplish this task, allowing for seamless development across several users and operating systems. Combining JPL’s Monte toolkit with high-performance optimizers written by researchers at the University of Alabama, the proposed architecture allows for instant verification of optimized trajectories within the same development environment that the optimization takes place, removing the need for mission designers and navigators to switch between tools. The MDNav software suite itself is separated from the development and operational scripts to be used in flight, which allows for maintaining a low-footprint version control profile – thus avoiding unnecessary file bloating. This paper discusses the historical differences between previous iterations of the Solar Cruiser MDNav tool suite and the current iteration, planned operational interfaces of the tool with other software and subsystems, and the planned path forward in maintaining containerization services for the software throughout the lifetime of Solar Cruiser.

Containerization↗

Rapid Analysis, Self-Calibrating Array for Air Monitoring

Human space missions have critical needs for monitoring and control for life support systems. These systems have monitoring needs that include feedback for closed loop processes and quality control for environmental factors. Sensors and monitoring technologies assure that the air environment and water supply for the astronaut crew habitat fall within acceptable limits, and that the life support system is functioning properly and efficiently. The longer the flight duration and the more distant the destination, the more critical it becomes to have carefully monitored and automated control systems for life support. Past experiments with the JPL ENose have demonstrated a lifetime of the sensor array, with the software, of around 18 months. The lifetime of the calibration, for some analytes, was as long as 24 months. We are working on a sensor array and new algorithms that will include sensor response time in the analysis. The preliminary array analysis for two analytes shows that the analysis time, of an event, can be dropped from 45 minutes to less than10 minutes and array training time can be cut substantially. We will describe the lifetime testing of an array and show lifetime data on individual sensors. This progress will lead to more rapid identification of analytes, and faster training time of the array.

Self Calibrating↗

Degradation of Insulating Glass Units: Thermal Performance, Measurements and Energy Impacts

Insulating glass unit (IGU) degradation has been studied extensively. However, there is limited understanding of how present durability evaluation standards relate to product lifetime. Furthermore, there is debate on how to quantify performance of installed windows over time to better understand degradation processes. More knowledge on these topics is required to link durability evaluation to product lifetime projections based on energy performance. Energy models provide helpful estimations of total annual building energy consumption. However, most models are based on “as installed” performance of envelope components and fail to account for performance degradation. This can lead to an underestimation of building lifetime energy consumption. A better understanding of the relationship between durability and energy performance can inform integration of degradation dynamics into energy modeling software. This will improve lifetime building energy consumption estimations as well as inform appropriate retrofit strategies and timing. This paper reviews current durability literature, various standards for window performance ratings and weathering methods, existing in situ IGU energy performance measurement techniques, and whole-building energy effects. The challenges and disparities among various studies are analyzed and discussed. The authors hope that further work in this area will lead to the development of improved in situ test methods to assess IGU degradation in the field and link this knowledge to improved energy performance modeling approaches.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗

Accounting for Uncertainties in Strengths of SiC MEMS Parts

A methodology has been devised for accounting for uncertainties in the strengths of silicon carbide structural components of microelectromechanical systems (MEMS). The methodology enables prediction of the probabilistic strengths of complexly shaped MEMS parts using data from tests of simple specimens. This methodology is intended to serve as a part of a rational basis for designing SiC MEMS, supplementing methodologies that have been borrowed from the art of designing macroscopic brittle material structures. The need for this or a similar methodology arises as a consequence of the fundamental nature of MEMS and the brittle silicon-based materials of which they are typically fabricated. When tested to fracture, MEMS and structural components thereof show wide part-to-part scatter in strength. The methodology involves the use of the Ceramics Analysis and Reliability Evaluation of Structures Life (CARES/Life) software in conjunction with the ANSYS Probabilistic Design System (PDS) software to simulate or predict the strength responses of brittle material components while simultaneously accounting for the effects of variability of geometrical features on the strength responses. As such, the methodology involves the use of an extended version of the ANSYS/CARES/PDS software system described in Probabilistic Prediction of Lifetimes of Ceramic Parts (LEW-17682-1/4-1), Software Tech Briefs supplement to NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 30, No. 9 (September 2006), page 10. The ANSYS PDS software enables the ANSYS finite-element-analysis program to account for uncertainty in the design-and analysis process. The ANSYS PDS software accounts for uncertainty in material properties, dimensions, and loading by assigning probabilistic distributions to user-specified model parameters and performing simulations using various sampling techniques.

Nemeth, Noel↗

Integrated Functional and Executional Modelling of Software Using Web-Based Databases

NASA's software subsystems undergo extensive modification and updates over the operational lifetimes. It is imperative that modified software should satisfy safety goals. This report discusses the difficulties encountered in doing so and discusses a solution based on integrated modelling of software, use of automatic information extraction tools, web technology and databases.

Kulkarni, Deepak↗

Integrated Functional and Executional Modelling of Software Using Web-Based Databases

NASA's software subsystems undergo extensive modification and updates over the operational lifetimes. It is imperative that modified software should satisfy safety goals. This report discusses the difficulties encountered in doing so and discusses a solution based on integrated modelling of software, use of automatic information extraction tools, web technology and databases. To appear in an article of Journal of Database Management.

Kulkarni, Deepak↗

Probabilistic Prediction of Lifetimes of Ceramic Parts

ANSYS/CARES/PDS is a software system that combines the ANSYS Probabilistic Design System (PDS) software with a modified version of the Ceramics Analysis and Reliability Evaluation of Structures Life (CARES/Life) Version 6.0 software. [A prior version of CARES/Life was reported in Program for Evaluation of Reliability of Ceramic Parts (LEW-16018), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 20, No. 3 (March 1996), page 28.] CARES/Life models effects of stochastic strength, slow crack growth, and stress distribution on the overall reliability of a ceramic component. The essence of the enhancement in CARES/Life 6.0 is the capability to predict the probability of failure using results from transient finite-element analysis. ANSYS PDS models the effects of uncertainty in material properties, dimensions, and loading on the stress distribution and deformation. ANSYS/CARES/PDS accounts for the effects of probabilistic strength, probabilistic loads, probabilistic material properties, and probabilistic tolerances on the lifetime and reliability of the component. Even failure probability becomes a stochastic quantity that can be tracked as a response variable. ANSYS/CARES/PDS enables tracking of all stochastic quantities in the design space, thereby enabling more precise probabilistic prediction of lifetimes of ceramic components.

Nemeth, Noel N.↗

Analysis Description Languages for the LHC

An analysis description language is a domain specific language capable of describing the contents of an LHC analysis in a standard and unambiguous way, independent of any computing framework. It is designed for use by anyone with an interest in, and knowledge of, LHC physics, i.e., experimentalists, phenomenologists and other enthusiasts. Adopting analysis description languages would bring numerous benefits for the LHC experimental and phenomenological communities ranging from analysis preservation beyond the lifetimes of experiments or analysis software to facilitating the abstraction, design, visualization, validation, combination, reproduction, interpretation and overall communication of the analysis contents. Here, we introduce the analysis description language concept and summarize the current efforts ongoing to develop such languages and tools to use them in LHC analyses.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

Implementation and Testing of VLBI Software Correlation at the USNO

The Washington Correlator (WACO) at the U.S. Naval Observatory (USNO) is a dedicated VLBI processor based on dedicated hardware of ASIC design. The WACO is currently over 10 years old and is nearing the end of its expected lifetime. Plans for implementation and testing of software correlation at the USNO are currently being considered. The VLBI correlation process is, by its very nature, well suited to a parallelized computing environment. Commercial off-the-shelf computer hardware has advanced in processing power to the point where software correlation is now both economically and technologically feasible. The advantages of software correlation are manifold but include flexibility, scalability, and easy adaptability to changing environments and requirements. We discuss our experience with and plans for use of software correlation at USNO with emphasis on the use of the DiFX software correlator.

Fey, Alan↗

Investigating Various Failure Models on Commercial Silicon Carbide

Structures and components made from ceramic materials are often brittle and can fail by the unstable growth of existing flaws such as voids and cracks. There have been several failure criteria developed for ceramics, in the past and they are broadly categorized based on their dependency on crack geometry. The present work implements eight failure criteria using an open-source software package – srlife, which predicts the lifetime or failure probability of concentrated solar power (CSP) structural components. The present work also checks the viability of building a ceramic CSP receiver, by analyzing the reliability predictions from srlife for a SiC ceramic. The reliability predictions for a biaxial loading problem indicated the Shetty Mixed-Mode criterion gives the most conservative predictions. Whereas, in case of the CSP receiver, the predictions show that the co-planar strain energy criterion gives the most conservative predictions as it is agnostic towards the type of stress, and therefore, is not recommended to be used designing ceramic receivers.

Chaugule, Pawan (ORCID:0000000275706572)↗