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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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NASA NTRS2012

Deterministic Design Optimization of Structures in OpenMDAO Framework

Nonlinear programming algorithms play an important role in structural design optimization. Several such algorithms have been implemented in OpenMDAO framework developed at NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC). OpenMDAO is an open source engineering analysis framework, written in Python, for analyzing and solving Multi-Disciplinary Analysis and Optimization (MDAO) problems. It provides a number of solvers and optimizers, referred to as components and drivers, which users can leverage to build new tools and processes quickly and efficiently. Users may download, use, modify, and distribute the OpenMDAO software at no cost. This paper summarizes the process involved in analyzing and optimizing structural components by utilizing the framework s structural solvers and several gradient based optimizers along with a multi-objective genetic algorithm. For comparison purposes, the same structural components were analyzed and optimized using CometBoards, a NASA GRC developed code. The reliability and efficiency of the OpenMDAO framework was compared and reported in this report.

Coroneos, Rula M.↗

NASA NTRS2012

Deterministic Design Optimization of Structures in OpenMDAO Framework

Coroneos, Rula M.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Exploring our Changing Planet through NASA’s Earth Information Center and Novel Methods for Earth Science Communication

In June 2023, NASA unveiled the Earth Information Center (EIC), an interagency initiative which invites the global community to explore how our planet is changing through interactive installations, captivating visualizations, and novel storytelling. Existing in both physical and virtual space, the EIC serves as a gateway to actionable information collected through an expanding fleet of Earth observing satellites and sensors. The EIC features data driven visualizations, near real-time information, immersive experiences, and curated stories that highlight the applications of publicly available data to address environmental challenges across nine thematic areas: agriculture, biodiversity, disasters, greenhouse gases, air quality, sea level rise, sustainable energy, water resources, and wildfires. Designed by an interdisciplinary team, EIC exhibits are developed to reach a wide base of end-users across multiple learning modalities. During the first year of operation, the inaugural location of the EIC at NASA Headquarters in Washington, DC, welcomed an estimated 24,000 visitors, hosted over 145 tours for domestic and international organizations, supported NASA’s Earth Day 2024 programming, and led six STEM programs for diverse student communities. With lessons learned from the first year of being open to the public and a variety of novel science communication tools in development, the EIC is expanding the mission’s reach by collaborating with museums and visitor centers. Through these collaborations, we aim to inform a broader demographic about the unprecedented changes observed in Earth’s climate and inspire communities to learn more about their one and only home, planet Earth.

Nicole Ramberg-Pihl↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

MOC Automation with GMSEC and the Generic Extendable Message Utility (GEMU)

Automation has become critical for ground systems, improving efficiency and reliability while reducing costs across mission operations. The Goddard Mission Services Evolution Center (GMSEC) software suite has played a significant role in enabling this automation, leveraging its publish/subscribe paradigm through a message bus architecture to facilitate seamless communication and data flow. Historically, the GMSEC suite, through components like Criteria Action Table (CAT) has been pivotal in automating ground system capabilities. However, as technology advances, limitations in automation with CAT have emerged, creating an opportunity to enhance ground system automation through the introduction of GEMU. This new GMSEC component brings new capabilities and addresses specific automation constraints that CAT could not overcome, allowing for more sophisticated, flexible, and efficient message processing. GEMU, at its core, is designed to accelerate the development of custom GMSEC-compliant applications. It enables users to construct automated message processing pipelines quickly, supporting both drag-and-drop web-based configuration and scripting through a simple domain-specific language. This advancement not only simplifies the process but also reduces the time needed for implementing automated solutions. This presentation will outline GEMU’s potential value in improving mission operations automation. It will highlight the benefits of transitioning from CAT to GEMU and offer insights into how GEMU can drive operational efficiencies. We will also provide an overview of the automation capabilities of GEMU and its potential impact on mission operations centers (MOCs).

GMSEC↗

NASA NTRS1989

The use of graphics in the design of the human-telerobot interface

The Man-Systems Telerobotics Laboratory (MSTL) of NASA's Johnson Space Center employs computer graphics tools in their design and evaluation of the Flight Telerobotic Servicer (FTS) human/telerobot interface on the Shuttle and on the Space Station. It has been determined by the MSTL that the use of computer graphics can promote more expedient and less costly design endeavors. Several specific examples of computer graphics applied to the FTS user interface by the MSTL are described.

Stuart, Mark A.↗

NASA NTRS1999

Landsat-7 Mission and Early Results

The Landsat-7 mission has the goal of acquiring annual data sets of reflective band digital imagery of the landmass of the Earth at a spatial resolution of 30 meters for a period of five years using the Enhanced Thematic Mapper Plus (ETM+) imager on the Landsat-7 satellite. The satellite was launched on April 15, 1999. The mission builds on the 27-year continuous archive of thematic images of the Earth from previous Landsat satellites. This paper will describe the ETM+ instrument, the spacecraft, and the ground processing system in place to accomplish the mission. Results from the first few months in orbit will be given, with emphasis on performance parameters that affect image quality, quantity, and availability. There will also be a discussion of the Landsat Data Policy and the user interface designed to make contents of the archive readily available, expedite ordering, and distribute the data quickly. Landsat-7, established by a Presidential Directive and a Public Law, is a joint program of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Earth Science Enterprise and the United States Geological Survey (USGS) Earth Resources Observing System (EROS) Data Center.

Dolan, S. Kenneth↗

NASA NTRS2002

Getting a Grip on Grid Generation

GridPro is an automatic, object-oriented, multi-block grid generator that provides ease of use, high quality, rapid production, and parametric design. When paired with a 3-D graphic user interface called az- Manager, GridPro presents users with an extremely efficient, interactive capability to build topology, edit surfaces, set computational fluid dynamics (CFD) boundary conditions, and view multi-block grids. The origins of the GridPro technology date back to a 1989 SBIR contract with NASA's Glenn Research Center, in which Glenn was seeking a multi-block grid generation program that would run automatically upon identifying a pattern of grid blocks supplied by a user. The technology is currently used in many engineering fields, including aerospace, turbo- machinery, automotive, and chemical industries.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS1985

Error Free Software

A mathematical theory for development of "higher order" software to catch computer mistakes resulted from a Johnson Space Center contract for Apollo spacecraft navigation. Two women who were involved in the project formed Higher Order Software, Inc. to develop and market the system of error analysis and correction. They designed software which is logically error-free, which, in one instance, was found to increase productivity by 600%. USE.IT defines its objectives using AXES -- a user can write in English and the system converts to computer languages. It is employed by several large corporations.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS1978

Medical Telemetry

Telemetry is the process whereby physiological or other data is acquired by instruments, translated into radio signals and j sent to a receiving station where the signals are decoded and recorded. Extensively used in I space operations, it is finding new Earth applications, among them transmission of medical data between emergency vehicles and hospitals. For example, transmission of an electrocardiogram from an ambulance to a hospital enables a physician to read the telemetered EKG and advise ambulance attendants on emergency procedures. Central Medical Emergency Dispatch (CMED) operates as a regional emergency medical communications center for Cleveland, Ohio and Cuyahoga County. The CMED system includes radio and telephone communications from hospital-to-hospital and from ambulance-to-hospital, but for improved emergency life support CMED sought to add a county-wide telemetry capability. The problem was that there were only eight radio frequencies available for telemetry and there were more than 30 potential users in Cleveland alone. NASA's Lewis Research Center volunteered its expert assistance. The Center's engineers studied the systems of other telemetry using cities, surveyed area hospitals to assure compatibility of telemetry equipment, and advised what types of equipment would be needed in emergency vehicles and at the various hospitals. The Lewis plan suggested that CMED be designated the central coordinating agency for the Cuyahoga County system, monitoring all telemetry frequencies and, when requested, assigning one not in use or one to be used at a sufficient distance that it would create no interference problem.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS2008

Proven and Robust Ground Support Systems - GSFC Success and Lessons Learned

Over the past fifteen years, Goddard Space Flight Center has developed several successful science missions in-house: the Wilkinson Microwave Anisotropy Probe (WMAP), the Imager for Magnetopause-to-Aurora Global Exploration (IMAGE), the Earth Observing 1 (EO-1) [1], and the Space Technology 5 (ST-5)[2] missions, several Small Explorers, and several balloon missions. Currently in development are the Solar Dynamics Observatory (SDO) [3] and the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)[4]. What is not well known is that these missions have been supported during spacecraft and/or instrument integration and test, flight software development, and mission operations by two in house satellite Telemetry and Command (T & C) Systems, the Integrated Test and Operations System (ITOS) and the Advanced Spacecraft Integration and System Test (ASIST). The advantages of an in-house satellite Telemetry and Command system are primarily in the flexibility of management and maintenance - the developers are considered a part of the mission team, get involved early in the development process of the spacecraft and mission operations-control center, and provide on-site, on-call support that goes beyond Help Desk and simple software fixes. On the other hand, care must be taken to ensure that the system remains generic enough for cost effective re-use from one mission to the next. The software is designed such that many features are user-configurable. Where user-configurable options were impractical, features were designed so as to be easy for the development team to modify. Adding support for a new ground message header, for example, is a one-day effort because of the software framework on which that code rests. This paper will discuss the many features of the Goddard satellite Telemetry and Command systems that have contributed to the success of the missions listed above. These features include flexible user interfaces, distributed parallel commanding and telemetry decommutation, a procedure language, the interfaces and tools needed for a high degree of automation, and instantly accessible archives of spacecraft telemetry. It will discuss some of the problems overcome during development, including secure commanding over networks or the Internet, constellation support for the three satellites that comprise the ST-5 mission, and geographically distributed telemetry end users.

Pfarr, Barbara↗

NASA NTRS2018

The Importance of User Feedback in Sustaining Trusted Repositories

The NASA Earth Observation System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) has been operating since 1994 and is serving a global user community with well-managed Earth science data in a variety of scientific disciplines. EOSDIS processes, archives and distributes data and information products resulting from spaceborne and airborne instruments as well as in situ measurements from field campaigns. The Earth Science Data and Information System (ESDIS) Project at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center manages EOSDIS with its 12 Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) located across the United States. During the entire life of EOSDIS, the ESDIS Project and the DAACs have deployed many different mechanisms for user feedback, which have proven extremely valuable to their evolution and performance in their service to user communities. Some of the inputs from our user groups have resulted in fundamental changes in the architecture, design and operations of EOSDIS, while others have provided novel ideas for incremental changes. The EOSDIS DAACs have User Working Groups (UWGs) that represent broad user communities in the Earth science disciplines served by the DAACs. The UWGs meet periodically to assess and provide feedback on dataset and service priorities. As regular users of the data and services of the DAAC and experts in the scientific disciplines, the UWG members provide valuable inputs for planning and prioritizing the services, as well as addition of new datasets, for the benefit of the community. The EOSDIS is evaluated annually through an independently administered survey of its users resulting in the American Customer Satisfaction Index (ACSI). The survey provides an ACSI score as well as free-text suggestions from users, which are also helpful in making specific system improvements. In addition, each of the DAACs has a user services group that address on-going requests for help and other comments from users. The ESDIS Project has established a mechanism through the "earthdata" website (http://earthdata.nasa.gov) for users to provide feedback of any kind and these questions/comments are routed to the appropriate individuals in the Project or the DAACs. These various forms of receiving user feedback and responding to them continue to be extremely valuable in evolving and sustaining our Earth Science repository.

Behnke, Jeanne↗

NASA NTRS2016

IDEAS and App Development Internship in Hardware and Software Design

In this report, I will discuss the tasks and projects I have completed while working as an electrical engineering intern during the spring semester of 2016 at NASA Kennedy Space Center. In the field of software development, I completed tasks for the G-O Caching Mobile App and the Asbestos Management Information System (AMIS) Web App. The G-O Caching Mobile App was written in HTML, CSS, and JavaScript on the Cordova framework, while the AMIS Web App is written in HTML, CSS, JavaScript, and C# on the AngularJS framework. My goals and objectives on these two projects were to produce an app with an eye-catching and intuitive User Interface (UI), which will attract more employees to participate; to produce a fully-tested, fully functional app which supports workforce engagement and exploration; to produce a fully-tested, fully functional web app that assists technicians working in asbestos management. I also worked in hardware development on the Integrated Display and Environmental Awareness System (IDEAS) wearable technology project. My tasks on this project were focused in PCB design and camera integration. My goals and objectives for this project were to successfully integrate fully functioning custom hardware extenders on the wearable technology headset to minimize the size of hardware on the smart glasses headset for maximum user comfort; to successfully integrate fully functioning camera onto the headset. By the end of this semester, I was able to successfully develop four extender boards to minimize hardware on the headset, and assisted in integrating a fully-functioning camera into the system.

CSS↗

NASA NTRS1979

User guide for STRMLN: A boundary-layer program for contoured wind-tunnel liner design

A 2-D boundary layer computer code developed to process data for an arbitrary number of streamlines is presented. Provisions are included for the computer code to determine either mass transfer rates necessary for an effective boundary layer displacement of zero thickness or the effective displacement thickness for a specified mass transfer-rate distribution. The computer code was developed to be compatible with other computer codes which are being modified and/or developed at the NASA-Langley Research Center in order to design the three dimensional, contoured, wind tunnel liner used in transonic testing of a laminar flow control system installed on a supercritical airfoil section. A brief discription of the liner design procedure, representative liner calculations, adaptive-wall design for a two dimensional wind tunnel test, and other applications are reported.

Anderson, E. C.↗

NASA NTRS2002

Perceived orientation in physical and virtual environments: changes in perceived orientation as a function of idiothetic information available

Two experiments examined perceived spatial orientation in a small environment as a function of experiencing that environment under three conditions: real-world, desktop-display (DD), and head-mounted display (HMD). Across the three conditions, participants acquired two targets located on a perimeter surrounding them, and attempted to remember the relative locations of the targets. Subsequently, participants were tested on how accurately and consistently they could point in the remembered direction of a previously seen target. Results showed that participants were significantly more consistent in the real-world and HMD conditions than in the DD condition. Further, it is shown that the advantages observed in the HMD and real-world conditions were not simply due to nonspatial response strategies. These results suggest that the additional idiothetic information afforded in the real-world and HMD conditions is useful for orientation purposes in our presented task domain. Our results are relevant to interface design issues concerning tasks that require spatial search, navigation, and visualization.

NASA Center ARC↗

NASA NTRS1999

Gulf of Mexico Helicopter Offshore System Technologies Recommended Development Path

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Advanced Air Transportation Technologies (AATT) project in cooperation with the Department of Transportation (DOT) Volpe National Transportation Systems Center (VNTSC) contracted with the System Resources Corporation (SRC) for the evaluation of the existing environment and the identification of user and service provider needs in the Gulf of Mexico low-altitude Offshore Sector. The results of this contractor activity are reported in the Gulf of Mexico Helicopter Offshore System Technologies Engineering Needs Assessment. A recommended system design and transition strategy was then developed to satisfy the identified needs within the constraints of the environment. This work, also performed under contract to NASA, is the subject of this report.

Koenke, Edmund J.↗

NASA NTRS2007

Design of a Mission Data Storage and Retrieval System for NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

The Western Aeronautical Test Range (WATR) at the NASA Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) employs the WATR Integrated Next Generation System (WINGS) for the processing and display of aeronautical flight data. This report discusses the post-mission segment of the WINGS architecture. A team designed and implemented a system for the near- and long-term storage and distribution of mission data for flight projects at DFRC, providing the user with intelligent access to data. Discussed are the legacy system, an industry survey, system operational concept, high-level system features, and initial design efforts.

Lux, Jessica↗

NASA NTRS2007

Design of a Mission Data Storage and Retrieval System for NASA Dryden Flight Research Center

Lux, Jessica↗

NASA NTRS2005

Monitoring Agents for Assisting NASA Engineers with Shuttle Ground Processing

The Spaceport Processing Systems Branch at NASA Kennedy Space Center has designed, developed, and deployed a rule-based agent to monitor the Space Shuttle's ground processing telemetry stream. The NASA Engineering Shuttle Telemetry Agent increases situational awareness for system and hardware engineers during ground processing of the Shuttle's subsystems. The agent provides autonomous monitoring of the telemetry stream and automatically alerts system engineers when user defined conditions are satisfied. Efficiency and safety are improved through increased automation. Sandia National Labs' Java Expert System Shell is employed as the agent's rule engine. The shell's predicate logic lends itself well to capturing the heuristics and specifying the engineering rules within this domain. The declarative paradigm of the rule-based agent yields a highly modular and scalable design spanning multiple subsystems of the Shuttle. Several hundred monitoring rules have been written thus far with corresponding notifications sent to Shuttle engineers. This chapter discusses the rule-based telemetry agent used for Space Shuttle ground processing. We present the problem domain along with design and development considerations such as information modeling, knowledge capture, and the deployment of the product. We also present ongoing work with other condition monitoring agents.

Semmel, Glenn S.↗