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At least 361 records · Page 20

Software Development and Testing Support for the Avionics Systems Telemetry Tool Suite

The Customer Avionics Interface Development and Analysis (CAIDA) team helps to provide modeling and simulation software for the verification of the Launch Control System (LCS). With a new iteration of telemetry tools being developed, extensive work must be done to ensure features are implemented in an efficient manner. The authors worked to develop new functionalities in the telemetry tools, update documentation, and perform various tests on the CAIDA Advanced Telemetry Tool (CATT). This was accomplished with Python through built-in library frameworks. In addition, work needed to be performed to set up a training document for new engineers and interns joining the team in the future. The outcome of this internship was the completion of several new features, unit and functional tests on CATT, thorough documentation, and a developer’s guide to programming under CAIDA.

Negron-Martinez, Antonio Jose↗

Preparation of Papers for AIAA Technical Conferences

As the extent of human spaceflight becomes longer in duration and farther from Earth, there will be a need for astronauts to grow plants during their mission in order to have a source of food production. In order to have confidence in the effectiveness of this off-Earth food production system, it will need to be proven reliable before any long duration missions take place. For this reason, the Utilization & Life Sciences Office at NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is developing a test platform for components testing of a plant growing system.In order to ensure that this test platform is an effective stepping stone for a future plant growing system, this fall, internship contributions will include developing requirements and an integrated testing plan. This may include level 1, level 2, and level 3 requirements depending on the necessity of requirement detail.

Greaves, Benjamin J.↗

NASA SSERVI: Bridging Science and Human Exploration

The NASA Solar System Exploration Research Virtual Institute (SSERVI) is a virtual institute focused on research at the intersection of science and human exploration, training the next generation of exploration scientists, and developing the broad scientific and technical community. Part of SSERVI’s mission is to act as a hub for opportunities that engage the larger scientific and exploration communities in order to form new interdisciplinary, research-focused collaborations. This talk will describe the research efforts of the SSERVI domestic teams that constitute the U.S. complement of the Institute and how the Institute engages the community through workshops, conferences, online seminars and classes, student exchange programs and internships. In addition, this talk will discuss SSERVI’s current international partnerships, a key part of its global mission.

SSERVI↗

Developing Extended Reality Projects in Support of Design, Fabrication and Procedure

The goal of this internship was to improve and create virtual reality simulations and visualizations for use in parallel with the design, fabrication, and analysis of flight ready hardware for areas like the Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) and also Space Systems. Specifically, my work was done in the XRSpace lab at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) with assistance directly and indirectly from workers at KSC, JSC and LaRC. Led by David Reynolds, the XRSpace lab develops products for various entities at NASA. The work done in the XRSpace lab focuses on Extended Reality (XR) solutions for both simulations and visualization capabilities. The goal of the lab is to support the larger systems of NASA and to help find ways that XR technologies can streamline and optimize the design process. Extended Reality is an umbrella term that encompasses Mixed Reality, Augmented Reality, and Virtual Reality. In this capacity, I was able to complete several elements in the design, building, testing, and deployment for a variety of immersive experiences, including a VR procedure simulation, visualization aids, and a 360-image capture tool.

Joseph Chambers↗

UH-60A Airloads Flight Test Program: Data Counter 9017

Aeromechanics Branch interns at Ames Research Center have been directly contributing to the data quality analysis and reporting of the UH-60A Airloads Flight Test Program for many years. In chronological order (together with the semester and year): Caroline Edwards (Summer 2011); Joni DeGuzman and Carson Turner (Fall 2011); Eric Fritz (Spring 2012); Connor Beierle (Fall 2012); Christopher Olinger (Spring and Summer 2013); Needa Lin, Anatole Levkoff, Maxwell Loebig, Jose Orejel, Megan Prout, and Albert Sue (Summer 2014); Jared Archey (Fall 2014); Alexander Crone (Summer 2015); Jeffrey Diament, Austin Djang, and Jessica Swan (Summer 2016); Makenzie Allen (Summer 2017); Colin Lauzon (Fall 2017); Eric Gilkey (Spring 2018); and Nicholas Masso (Summer 2019). These interns have spent their internships reviewing flight logs, extracting the data out of TRENDS, formatting the data into spreadsheets, writing code to automate the process, and plotting results. Without their efforts, much of the work would be unfinished. The authors appreciate the achievements of the UH-60A Airloads Working Group during its 20-year lifetime, as well the contributions of Randy Peterson, Tom Norman, and William Warmbrodt to the data processing and assistance with the report preparation. Lastly, this report is dedicated to William Bousman for his efforts preceding, during, and subsequent to the UH-60A Airloads Flight Test Program.

Kufeld, Robert M.↗

TPSAS-NF1676L-15598-DND

The presentation is intended to give an overview of the verification efforts in the Safety-Critical Avionics Systems Branch at the NASA Langley Research Center. Mainly targeted at students that are interested in internships in our group.

Alwyn Goodloe↗

Wearable Protective Technologies

We are currently creating protective garments to be worn during the duration of SPE (solar particle events). Several garment prototypes have been created to protect the body, but nothing has been created for head protection. My focus during this internship was creating headgear designs. Some of the big requirements of an effective headgear design is that the hood design needs to cover the forehead and not have any gaps between the hood and neckline, and the areal density of radiation shielding needs to be at least 1.5 g/cm2. My designs were inspired by many different brands and designers including Nike’s outerwear selection, Moncler’s Fall 20 Genius collaborations with Simone Rocha, Craig Green, and Alyx, Marine Serre F/W 20, and A-Cold-Wall S/S 19. All of these had great examples of hood and vest designs. Many sketches were created from these and many other inspirations. Pattern development began by taking several measurements of the head and neck. I drafted the hood to cover the forehead and cover the neck. After the initial draft, the pattern was modified to accommodate a center panel to contour and shape the hood further. I also created a shoulder drape based on a kimono sleeve to add extra coverage over the neckline of the garment from a basic sloper’s neckline and shoulders. Radiation shielding was a special consideration in my design work. I did extensive research on different materials and ways to incorporate them into garments and found that I was not limited to polypropylene or polyethylene. Many common textiles are hydrogen rich, such as cotton, polyester, and silk, and could be incorporated into designs as radiation shielding. From this research, I am in the process of creating a prototype that uses these materials as shielding. I will be returning for the summer and hope to put more of the ideas I have into production.

Nicole Dugan↗

Trajectory Simulation Using Multi Model Monte Carlo with Python (MXMCPy)

EDL (Entry, Descent and Landing) is the process from a vehicle approaching a surface to landing on it, such as a Mars rover approaching the planet before landing. POST2 (Program to Optimize Simulated Trajectories 2) is Langley’s primary EDL simulation tool and is used NASA-wide for simulations. POST2 can generate highly accurate results by running a precise, but time consuming, Monte Carlo (MC) simulation hundreds or thousands of times. Though POST2 can produce highly accurate results, it can take unrealistic time spans to generate these results, which has created a need to speed up the simulations. The new NASA software MXMCPy offers various ways to speed up the simulations while getting just as precise results. Instead of running high-precision POST2 simulations many times for traditional MC, MXMCPy can run fewer high-precision POST2 simulations and many less precise POST2 simulations and merge the results. MXMCPy contains 30+ different methods which will each suggest different allocations between model precision levels, which result in results of varying precision based on the POST2 simulation. I created Python and Bash code to automate the 5 steps of MXMCPy’s application to POST2. I also tested the precision of traditional Monte Carlo simulations to MXMCPy aided simulations and found that MXMCPy can achieve substantially more precise solutions at the same computer runtime. I learned Test Driven Development (TDD), a software programming workflow which involves writing computer-automated tests before writing the code which is being tested. These tests are ran every time the code is changed and they can find glitches in the code much quicker than a human can. This programming workflow saved me a lot of time because the automated tests could tell me exactly where the code had stopped working. I plan on using this software development method for future academic and professional software projects. I have greatly enjoyed my work at NASA, so I have been applying to NASA internships and Pathways positions. In addition, I plan on applying what I have learned about Test Driven Development to my computer science courses next semester

James Warner↗

Systems Development, Datamining and Knowledge Discovery Abstract

This summer, 2020, during my NASA internship I worked with my mentor, Ali Shaykhian, as well as a group of four other interns: Javel Gramling, Janelisse Morales, Tristian Running Crane, and Zulmarie Jiménez. Our research and projects all differ but work together to solve datamining unstructured data into an easy to read format. Turning unstructured data into something easier to follow is important for helping quickly pull data out of larger documents, so that one doesn’t have to go through multiple pages to find certain data points. By being able to structure data pulled from a document, it can be usedto collect data from mass amounts of forms and arrange it in an easy to glance at table instead of multiple forms. I chose to focus mainly on creating form templates with both Microsoft Word and Excel and getting used to the types of data that can be collected; as well as learning where both programs differed. After I was familiar with what could be gathered, I worked towards taking data collected by a Word form and importing it into an Excel spreadsheet. By being able to transfer data from a Word document to an Excel document, there is an added layer of functionality to the datamining. Moving data around between Excel sheets isn’t that complex of a process, but when you try to import from a Word document a lot of formatting and readability can be lost. The purpose of my research is to reduce that loss by using Visual Basic scripts to clean and arrange imported data.

Makayla Amber Renfro↗

The Spaceport Command and Control System Security Assessor Project

This Summer, I worked as a National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Internships and Fellowships (NIF) intern under my mentor, Jill Giles within the Software Engineering Branch. Within this project, I worked alongside the Cyber Security branch to identify a list of Commercial Off the Shelf (COTS) software to analyze, research, and gain insight about potential vulnerabilities within the software that could become a threat of attack. After identifying the list of COTS software, my team and I used Microsoft Excel to create a worksheet to easily organize and design a questionnaire about the software. Security reports weregiven to us to identify the software used on the machines in the firing rooms. With these reports, we created a script that would populate the database with the software information to identify potential security weaknesses of COTS software.The goal of the project was to produce a final report, summarizing the most vulnerable launch control system servers and configurations and document vulnerabilities, residual risk, likelihood, and consequence. This project is important for the Cyber Security and Information Technology branches because it will identify security weaknesses and help to mitigate risk. From the Spaceport Command and Control System Security Assessor Project, I learned how to properly identify weaknesses and vulnerabilities within software and how to mitigate the risks within the software. This project also taught me how to create databases using scripts and input files.

Destani Satora Van Arsdalen↗

Development and Comparison of an Artificial Gravity Concept for Human Spaceflight

This Internship served as a resource to find specific research about the many facets of artificial gravity. With three main areas to be addressed in detail: the negative health effects of microgravity and how current mitigation methods fall short, the knowns and unknowns of artificial gravity as a countermeasure, and past artificial gravity habitat concepts. This report primarily focuses on the negative health effects of microgravity and how current mitigation methods fall short. Through NASA resources such as the NTRS, and external sources such as the AIAA, research papers were gathered that were pertinent to the topic. Each paper was uploaded to a NASA SharePoint and abstracts were drafted to highlight the important information. The expected results were to build a library of easily accessible information that would allow for Ryan Joyce and Gabe Merrill to easily get up to speed on relevant information. This process should allow for a faster period of understanding with high relevancy material. The ability to quickly reference data will help to build an informed and detailed case for any future proposals on artificial gravity. This also prevents the need to spend many hours searching for relevant documentation, allowing for more time to be dedicated to the creation process. The project has successfully met expectations and is continuing to add pertinent documentation. Current research shows great potential for artificial gravity as a countermeasure on long duration missions. The gravity like forces created in an artificial gravity ship could help to prevent serious problems such as muscle loss, bone fractures, vision loss due to increased intracranial pressure, and would allow for transition to other gravity environments with little to no recovery period. These conditions are highly favorable for long duration missions as current mitigation methods have yet to be proven beyond one year in space and often only slow symptoms instead of preventing them.

Alice Elberfeld↗

Optimizing Performance and Accuracy with LIFQWIK

For the 2020 Summer Internship period, optimization and analysis was performed of a new iteration of the LIFQWIK PLIF model, used to evaluate the accuracy of CFD simulations of fuel injector performance. This presentation details the accuracy and performance optimization steps taken and presents the results of that optimization.

CFD↗

Wind Tunnel Testing of Next-Generation High-Speed Engines

This talk will introduce students to supersonic and hypersonic flows as well as cover why these high-speed flow regimes are important to us today. The main focus is on the different propulsion systems used in Mach 3+ flight and how they are tested in wind tunnel facilities. Different wind tunnels at NASA Langley will used to demonstrate how ground tests facilitate the development of new engines from a proof-of-concept to a mature flight qualified design. There are many opportunities in field of high-speed aeronautics. I'll discuss my path to NASA Langley then give advice for internship and job opportunities at NASA.

Robin Hunt↗

ISEE System Technical Report

The Immersive Simulations and Engineering Environment (ISEE) Laboratory at Kennedy Space Center is a tool used to assist with operation simulation, for Human Factors operation activities, assisting future missions. The simulations created are important because they ensure that simulated operations are performed for customers, to assist with requirements. Simultaneously, each simulation will allow stakeholders to determine any and all risk associated with the Human Factors involved in a specific assignment. My internship consists of multiple project elements. The first of which, was to assist the Integrations branch chief in developing a growth rate algorithm proof. The integral part of this project, involved learning to powerup and perform the operational procedures of the ISEE lab, capturing and creating characters used in the CAD model virtual environment. In doing so, this led to use the software to model and 3D print screw cap structures for mock-up. The structures will be used to manipulate weight change out used in mock-up design and construction. These structures will also be used in future mock-up models constructed in the lab.

Darryl A J Minor↗