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At least 487 records · Page 27

OEXP Analysis Tools Workshop

This publication summarizes the software needs and available analysis tools presented at the OEXP Analysis Tools Workshop held at the NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Virginia on June 21 to 22, 1988. The objective of the workshop was to identify available spacecraft system (and subsystem) analysis and engineering design tools, and mission planning and analysis software that could be used for various NASA Office of Exploration (code Z) studies, specifically lunar and Mars missions.

Garrett, L. Bernard↗

A NASA-wide approach toward cost-effective, high-quality software through reuse

NASA Langley Research Center sponsored the second Workshop on NASA Research in Software Reuse on May 5-6, 1992 at the Research Triangle Park, North Carolina. The workshop was hosted by the Research Triangle Institute. Participants came from the three NASA centers, four NASA contractor companies, two research institutes and the Air Force's Rome Laboratory. The purpose of the workshop was to exchange information on software reuse tool development, particularly with respect to tool needs, requirements, and effectiveness. The participants presented the software reuse activities and tools being developed and used by their individual centers and programs. These programs address a wide range of reuse issues. The group also developed a mission and goals for software reuse within NASA. This publication summarizes the presentations and the issues discussed during the workshop.

Scheper, Charlotte O.↗

Extending the International Space Station Life and Operability

The International Space Station (ISS) is in an operational configuration with final assembly complete. To fully utilize ISS and extend the operational life, it became necessary to upgrade and extend the onboard systems with the Obsolescence Driven Avionics Redesign (ODAR) project. ODAR enabled a joint project between the Johnson Space Center (JSC) and Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) focused on upgrading the onboard payload and Ku-Band systems, expanding the voice and video capabilities, and including more modern protocols allowing unprecedented access for payload investigators to their on-orbit payloads. The MSFC Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) was tasked with developing a high-rate enhanced Functionally Distributed Processor (eFDP) to handle 300Mbps Return Link data, double the legacy rate, and incorporate a Line Outage Recorder (LOR). The eFDP also provides a 25Mbps uplink transmission rate with a Space Link Extension (SLE) interface. HOSC also updated the Payload Data Services System (PDSS) to incorporate the latest Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) protocols, most notably the use of the Internet Protocol (IP) Encapsulation, in addition to the legacy capabilities. The Central Command Processor was also updated to interact with the new onboard and ground capabilities of Mission Control Center -- Houston (MCC-H) for the uplink functionality. The architecture, implementation, and lessons learned, including integration and incorporation of Commercial Off The Shelf (COTS) hardware and software into the operational mission of the ISS, is described herein. The applicability of this new technology provides new benefits to ISS payload users and ensures better utilization of the ISS by the science community

Cecil, Andrew J.↗

CCSDS Time-Critical Onboard Networking Service

The Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) is developing recommendations for communication services onboard spacecraft. Today many different communication buses are used on spacecraft requiring software with the same basic functionality to be rewritten for each type of bus. This impacts on the application software resulting in custom software for almost every new mission. The Spacecraft Onboard Interface Services (SOIS) working group aims to provide a consistent interface to various onboard buses and sub-networks, enabling a common interface to the application software. The eventual goal is reusable software that can be easily ported to new missions and run on a range of onboard buses without substantial modification. The system engineer will then be able to select a bus based on its performance, power, etc and be confident that a particular choice of bus will not place excessive demands on software development. This paper describes the SOIS Intra-Networking Service which is designed to enable data transfer and multiplexing of a variety of internetworking protocols with a range of quality of service support, over underlying heterogeneous data links. The Intra-network service interface provides users with a common Quality of Service interface when transporting data across a variety of underlying data links. Supported Quality of Service (QoS) elements include: Priority, Resource Reservation and Retry/Redundancy. These three QoS elements combine and map into four TCONS services for onboard data communications: Best Effort, Assured, Reserved, and Guaranteed. Data to be transported is passed to the Intra-network service with a requested QoS. The requested QoS includes the type of service, priority and where appropriate, a channel identifier. The data is de-multiplexed, prioritized, and the required resources for transport are allocated. The data is then passed to the appropriate data link for transfer across the bus. The SOIS supported data links may inherently provide the quality of service support requested by the intra-network layer. In the case where the data link does not have the required level of support, the missing functionality is added by SOIS. As a result of this architecture, re-usable software applications can be designed and used across missions thereby promoting common mission operations. In addition, the protocol multiplexing function enables the blending of multiple onboard networks. This paper starts by giving an overview of the SOIS architecture in section 11, illustrating where the TCONS services fit into the overall architecture. It then describes the quality of service approach adopted, in section III. The prototyping efforts that have been going on are introduced in section JY. Finally, in section V the current status of the CCSDS recommendations is summarized.

Parkes, Steve↗

Mission planning and execution within the mission data system

Not only has the number of launched spacecraft per year exploded over the past few years, but also spacecraft are getting progressively more complex, as flyby missions give way to remote orbiters, which in turn give way to rovers and other in situ explorers. To address the software issues in this expanding mission set, JPL started the Mission Data System (MDS) project, an effort to make flight software engineering more straightforward and less prone to error through the eplicit modeling of spacecraft state. This paper presents how MDS performs mission planning and execution in the context of explicitly managing spacecraft state.

MDS↗

Link Analysis in the Mission Planning Lab

The legacy communications link analysis software currently used at Wallops Flight Facility involves processes that are different for command destruct, radar, and telemetry. There is a clear advantage to developing an easy-to-use tool that combines all the processes in one application. Link Analysis in the Mission Planning Lab (MPL) uses custom software and algorithms integrated with Analytical Graphics Inc. Satellite Toolkit (AGI STK). The MPL link analysis tool uses pre/post-mission data to conduct a dynamic link analysis between ground assets and the launch vehicle. Just as the legacy methods do, the MPL link analysis tool calculates signal strength and signal- to-noise according to the accepted processes for command destruct, radar, and telemetry assets. Graphs and other custom data are generated rapidly in formats for reports and presentations. STK is used for analysis as well as to depict plume angles and antenna gain patterns in 3D. The MPL has developed two interfaces with the STK software (see figure). The first interface is an HTML utility, which was developed in Visual Basic to enhance analysis for plume modeling and to offer a more user friendly, flexible tool. A graphical user interface (GUI) written in MATLAB (see figure upper right-hand corner) is also used to quickly depict link budget information for multiple ground assets. This new method yields a dramatic decrease in the time it takes to provide launch managers with the required link budgets to make critical pre-mission decisions. The software code used for these two custom utilities is a product of NASA's MPL.

McCarthy, Jessica A.↗

Orion GNC Mitigation Efforts for Van Allen Radiation

The Orion Crew Module (CM) is NASA's next generation manned space vehicle, scheduled to return humans to lunar orbit in the coming decade. The Orion avionics and GN&C architectures have progressed through a number of project phases and are nearing completion of a major milestone. The first unmanned test mission, dubbed "Exploration Flight Test One" (EFT-1) is scheduled to launch from NASA Kennedy Space Center late next year and provides the first integrated test of all the vehicle systems, avionics and software. The EFT-1 mission will be an unmanned test flight that includes a high speed re-entry from an elliptical orbit, which will be launched on an expendable launch vehicle (ELV). The ELV will place CM and the ELV upper stage into a low Earth orbit (LEO) for one revolution. After the first LEO, the ELV upper stage will re-ignite and place the combined upper stage/CM into an elliptical orbit whose perigee results in a high energy entry to test CM response in a relatively high velocity, high heating environment. While not producing entry velocities as high as those experienced in returning from a lunar orbit, the trajectory was chosen to provide higher stresses on the thermal protection and guided entry systems, as compared against a lower energy LEO entry. However the required entry geometry with constraints on inclination and landing site result in a trajectory that lingers for many hours in the Van Allen radiation belts. This exposes the vehicle and avionics to much higher levels of high energy proton radiation than a typical LEO or lunar trajectory would encounter. As a result, Van Allen radiation poses a significant risk to the Orion avionics system, and particularly the Flight Control Module (FCM) computers that house the GN&C flight software. The measures taken by the Orion GN&C, Flight Software and Avionics teams to mitigate the risks associated with the Van Allen radiation on EFT-1 are covered in the paper. Background on the Orion avionics subsystem is provided, as well as an overview of the GN&C software architecture. The measures taken to handle radiation induced failure of the one or both of the FCM's are presented, and finally simulation and actual hardware-in-the-loop (HWIL) results are shown confirming the validity of the implementation. The paper presents an overview of the Orion avionics architecture describing the GNC sensors, onboard data network as well as the flight control computers and their planned restart capabilities. GN&C sensors include two Orion Inertial Measurement Units (OIMU's), a Vision Processing Unit (VPU) to process camera images, three barometric altimeters and a single GPS receiver. All of the sensors communicate to one of two Power and Data Units (PDU's). The PDU's multiplex analog and serial data from the sensors and write the data to the Orion Data Network (ODN). The OIMU s write measurement messages directly as onto the ODN, but they are routed through PDU network switches.

King, Ellis T.↗

A Multi-mission Event-Driven Component-Based System for Support of Flight Software Development, ATLO, and Operations first used by the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) Project

This paper details an architectural description of the Mission Data Processing and Control System (MPCS), an event-driven, multi-mission ground data processing components providing uplink, downlink, and data management capabilities which will support the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) project as its first target mission. MPCS is developed based on a set of small reusable components, implemented in Java, each designed with a specific function and well-defined interfaces. An industry standard messaging bus is used to transfer information among system components. Components generate standard messages which are used to capture system information, as well as triggers to support the event-driven architecture of the system. Event-driven systems are highly desirable for processing high-rate telemetry (science and engineering) data, and for supporting automation for many mission operations processes.

Mission Data Processing and Control System (MPCS)↗

Sailing Towards an Expressive Scheduling Language for Europa Clipper

The mission planners for NASA's Europa Clipper deep-space mission use automated scheduling software to generate activity plans and command sequences for multiple instruments and subsystems before sending the sequences for execution on board. Both science and engineering planners must translate their intents into expressions of mission constraints, goals, and preferences that the scheduling engine understands. This paper describes the ongoing development of a dedicated domain-specific java-embedded language that can efficiently and accurately capture such concerns for the Europa Clipper mission, along with a user-interface companion for the language.

Schaffer, Steve↗

Science opportunity analyzer - a multi-mission approach to science planning

In the past Science Planning for space missions has been comprised of using ad-hoc software toolscollected or reconstructed from previous missions, tools used by other groups who often speak a different 'technical' language or even 'the backs of envelopes'. In addition to the tools being rough, the work done with these tools often has had to be redone or at least re-entered when it came time to determine actual observations. Science Opportunity Analyzer (SOA), a Java-based application, has been built for scientists to enable them to identify/analyze observation opportunities and then, to create corresponding observation designs.

Science opportunity analyzer science planning SOA ↗

The Satellite Flythrough and Reconstruction Softwares at CCMC

The next-generation of model data visualization to be offered at the Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) will be based on Kamodo, an open source python package. To increase the usefulness of our services, we are also developing new capabilities based on this software, called the satellite flythrough and the reconstruction tools, to be offered both as packages for offline analysis and through an online interface (coming soon). The satellite flythrough software ‘flies’ a satellite trajectory, whether real or imaginary, through either model data hosted at CCMC or on a personal machine. This service greatly simplifies the complexity of users’ access to model data, abstracting away the time-consuming details of model data formats and interpolation. We demonstrate execution times of a few seconds to a few minutes for several example flythroughs of a trajectory stretching over a few days, depending on the parameters chosen. We also demonstrate a reconstruction tool built on top of the satellite flythrough software, for use with mission planning and model-data comparisons. This tool, based on reconstructions provided for the GDC Science and Technology Definition Team, converts multiple, simultaneous satellite flythroughs into two-dimensional reconstructions. The reconstruction tool provides a software capability for satellite constellations to determine how many satellites are needed and in what configuration to resolve the desired features in the model data. Both tools are currently available through GitHub for a selection of CCMC-hosted ITM models. Finally, we present initial results from work in progress and plans for future work, including an expansion of the reconstruction tool to provide 3D reconstruction capabilities and a line-of-sight calculation tool.

software, python↗

IUS/TUG orbital operations and mission support study. Volume 4: Project planning data

Planning data are presented for the development phases of interim upper stage (IUS) and tug systems. Major project planning requirements, major event schedules, milestones, system development and operations process networks, and relevant support research and technology requirements are included. Topics discussed include: IUS flight software; tug flight software; IUS/tug ground control center facilities, personnel, data systems, software, and equipment; IUS mission events; tug mission events; tug/spacecraft rendezvous and docking; tug/orbiter operations interface, and IUS/orbiter operations interface.

Source record↗

NASA Software Assurance's Roles in Research and Technology

This slide presentation reviews the interactions between the scientist and engineers doing research and technology and the software developers and others who are doing software assurance. There is a discussion of the role of the Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) in developing software to be used for research and technology, and the importance of this role as the technology moves to the higher levels of the technology readiness levels (TRLs). There is also a call to change the way the development of software is developed.

Wetherholt, Martha↗

Small Explorer project: Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS). Mission operations and data analysis plan

The Mission Operations and Data Analysis Plan is presented for the Submillimeter Wave Astronomy Satellite (SWAS) Project. It defines organizational responsibilities, discusses target selection and navigation, specifies instrument command and data requirements, defines data reduction and analysis hardware and software requirements, and discusses mission operations center staffing requirements.

Melnick, Gary J.↗

Software-Defined Radio for Space-to-Space Communications

A paper describes the Space- to-Space Communications System (SSCS) Software- Defined Radio (SDR) research project to determine the most appropriate method for creating flexible and reconfigurable radios to implement wireless communications channels for space vehicles so that fewer radios are required, and commonality in hardware and software architecture can be leveraged for future missions. The ability to reconfigure the SDR through software enables one radio platform to be reconfigured to interoperate with many different waveforms. This means a reduction in the number of physical radio platforms necessary to support a space mission s communication requirements, thus decreasing the total size, weight, and power needed for a mission.

Fisher, Ken↗