Engineering topics
Warfield, Keith
Publications and source records attributed to Warfield, Keith.
The Habitable Exoplanet (HabEx) imaging mission concept: preliminary science drivers and technical requirements
HabEx is one of 4 possible NASA flagship mission concepts studied for a possible launch in the 2030s. It will be optimized for direct imaging and spectroscopy of habitable exoplanets, and will also enable a wide range of general astrophysics observations. HabEx shall characterize full planetary systems around nearby solar-type stars for the first time, including rocky planets, possible water worlds, gas giants, ice giants, and faint circumstellar debris disks. It will in particular explore our nearest neighbor planetary systems and search for signs of habitability and bio-signatures in the atmospheres of rocky planets. Such high spatial resolution high contrast observations require a large (~3.5 to 8m) stable diffraction- limited optical space telescope, which also opens new unique capabilities for studying the formation and evolution of stars and galaxies. We present here some preliminary science objectives identified for HabEx by our Science and Technology Definition Team (STDT), together with a first look at the key challenges and design trades ahead.
Exo-C: A Space Mission for Direct Imaging and Spectroscopy of Extrasolar Planetary Systems
Exo-C is NASAs first community study of a modest aperture space telescope designed for high contrast observations of exoplanetary systems. The mission will be capable of taking optical spectra of nearby exoplanets in reflected light, discovering previously undetected planets, and imaging structure in a large sample of circumstellar disks. It will obtain unique science results on planets down to super-Earth sizes and serve as a technology pathfinder toward an eventual flagship-class mission to find and characterize habitable Earth-like exoplanets. We present the mission/payload design and highlight steps to reduce mission cost/risk relative to previous mission concepts. Key elements are an unobscured telescope aperture, an internal coronagraph with deformable mirrors for precise wavefront control, and an orbit and observatory design chosen for high thermal stability. Exo-C has a similar telescope aperture, orbit, lifetime, and spacecraft bus requirements to the highly successful Kepler mission (which is our cost reference). The needed technology development is on-course for a possible mission start in 2017. This paper summarizes the study final report completed in January 2015. During 2015 NASA will make a decision on its potential development.
Team X Report #1401: Exoplanet Coronagraph STDT Study 2013-06
This document is intended to stimulate discussion of the topic described. All technical and cost analyses are preliminary. This document is not a commitment to work, but is a precursor to a formal proposal if it generates sufficient mutual interest. The data contained in this document may not be modified in any way. Cost estimates described or summarized in this document were generated as part of a preliminary, first-order cost class identification as part of an early trade space study, are based on JPL-internal parametric cost modeling, assume a JPL in-house build, and do not constitute a commitment on the part of JPL or Caltech. JPL and Team X add cost reserves for development and operations. Unadjusted estimate totals and cost reserve allocations would be revised as needed in future more-detailed studies as appropriate for the specific cost-risks for a given mission concept.
Concurrent Engineering Working Group (CEWG) Learning to Work Together
No abstract available
What is Team X?
Team X is a concurrent engineering team for rapid design and analysis of space mission concepts. It was developed in 1995 by JPL to reduce study time and cost. More than 1100 studies have been completed It is institutionally endorsed and it has been emulated by many institutions. In Concurrent Engineering (i.e., Parallel) diverse specialists work in real time, in the same place, with shared data, to yield an integrated design
Aerospace Concurrent Engineering Design Teams: Current State, Next Steps and a Vision for the Future
Over the past sixteen years, government aerospace agencies and aerospace industry have developed and evolved operational concurrent design teams to create novel spaceflight mission concepts and designs. These capabilities and teams, however, have evolved largely independently. In today's environment of increasingly complex missions with limited budgets it is becoming readily apparent that both implementing organizations and today's concurrent engineering teams will need to interact more often than they have in the past. This will require significant changes in the current state of practice. This paper documents the findings from a concurrent engineering workshop held in August 2010 to identify the key near term improvement areas for concurrent engineering capabilities and challenges to the long-term advancement of concurrent engineering practice. The paper concludes with a discussion of a proposed vision for the evolution of these teams over the next decade.
Characterizing Distributed Concurrent Engineering Teams: A Descriptive Framework for Aerospace Concurrent Engineering Design Teams
As aerospace missions grow larger and more technically complex in the face of ever tighter budgets, it will become increasingly important to use concurrent engineering methods in the development of early conceptual designs because of their ability to facilitate rapid assessments and trades in a cost-efficient manner. To successfully accomplish these complex missions with limited funding, it is also essential to effectively leverage the strengths of individuals and teams across government, industry, academia, and international agencies by increased cooperation between organizations. As a result, the existing concurrent engineering teams will need to increasingly engage in distributed collaborative concurrent design. This paper is an extension of a recent white paper written by the Concurrent Engineering Working Group, which details the unique challenges of distributed collaborative concurrent engineering. This paper includes a short history of aerospace concurrent engineering, and defines the terms 'concurrent', 'collaborative' and 'distributed' in the context of aerospace concurrent engineering. In addition, a model for the levels of complexity of concurrent engineering teams is presented to provide a way to conceptualize information and data flow within these types of teams.
Concurrent Engineering Working Group White Paper Distributed Collaborative Design: The Next Step in Aerospace Concurrent Engineering
As aerospace missions grow larger and more technically complex in the face of ever tighter budgets, it will become increasingly important to use concurrent engineering methods in the development of early conceptual designs because of their ability to facilitate rapid assessments and trades of performance, cost and schedule. To successfully accomplish these complex missions with limited funding, it is essential to effectively leverage the strengths of individuals and teams across government, industry, academia, and international agencies by increased cooperation between organizations. As a result, the existing concurrent engineering teams will need to increasingly engage in distributed collaborative concurrent design. The purpose of this white paper is to identify a near-term vision for the future of distributed collaborative concurrent engineering design for aerospace missions as well as discuss the challenges to achieving that vision. The white paper also documents the advantages of creating a working group to investigate how to engage the expertise of different teams in joint design sessions while enabling organizations to maintain their organizations competitive advantage.