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RTN-045: Guidelines for User Tutorials

This document defines the guidelines, principles, and formats for user-facing tutorials that demonstrate how to use the Rubin Science Platform (RSP) to analyze data from the Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST). All Rubin staff and the broader science community should use these guidelines when contributing to the sets of Jupyter Notebook or documentation-based tutorials maintained by the Rubin Community Science team (CST).

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

ECHO Responds to NASA's Earth Science User Community

Over the past decade NASA has designed, built, evolved, and operated the Earth Observing System Data and Information System (EOSDIS) Information Management System (IMS) in order to provide user access to NASA's Earth Science data holdings. During this time revolutionary advances in technology have driven changes in NASA's approach to providing an IMS service. This paper will describe NASA's strategic planning and approach to build and evolve the EOSDIS IMS and to serve the evolving needs of NASA's Earth Science community. It discusses the original strategic plan and how lessons learned help to form a new plan, a new approach and a new system. It discusses the original technologies and how they have evolved to today.

Pfister, Robin↗

An Analysis for an Internet Grid to Support Space Based Operations

Currently, and in the past, dedicated communication circuits and "network services" with very stringent performance requirements have been used to support manned and unmanned mission critical ground operations at GSFC, JSC, MSFC, KSC and other NASA facilities. Because of the evolution of network technology, it is time to investigate other approaches to providing mission services for space ground and flight operations. In various scientific disciplines, effort is under way to develop network/komputing grids. These grids consisting of networks and computing equipment are enabling lower cost science. Specifically, earthquake research is headed in this direction. With a standard for network and computing interfaces using a grid, a researcher would not be required to develop and engineer NASA/DoD specific interfaces with the attendant increased cost. Use of the Internet Protocol (IP), CCSDS packet spec, and reed-solomon for satellite error correction etc. can be adopted/standardized to provide these interfaces. Generally most interfaces are developed at least to some degree end to end. This study would investigate the feasibility of using existing standards and protocols necessary to implement a SpaceOps Grid. New interface definitions or adoption/modification of existing ones for the various space operational services is required for voice both space based and ground, video, telemetry, commanding and planning may play a role to some undefined level. Security will be a separate focus in the study since security is such a large issue in using public networks. This SpaceOps Grid would be transparent to users. It would be anagulous to the Ethernet protocol's ease of use in that a researcher would plug in their experiment or instrument at one end and would be connected to the appropriate host or server without further intervention. Free flyers would be in this category as well. They would be launched and would transmit without any further intervention with the researcher or ground ops personnel. The payback in developing these new approaches in support of manned and unmanned operations is lower cost and will enable direct participation by more people in organizations and educational institutions in space based science. By lowering the high cost of space based operations and networking, more resource will be available to the science community for science. With a specific grid in place, experiment development and operations would be much less costly by using standardized network interfaces. Because of the extensive connectivity on a global basis, significant numbers of people would participate in science who otherwise would not be able to participate.

Bradford, Robert↗

MODIS Science Algorithms and Data Systems Lessons Learned

For almost 10 years, standard global products from NASA's Earth Observing System s (EOS) two Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) sensors are being used world-wide for earth science research and applications. This paper discusses the lessons learned in developing the science algorithms and the data systems needed to produce these high quality data products for the earth sciences community. Strong science team leadership and communication, an evolvable and scalable data system, and central coordination of QA and validation activities enabled the data system to grow by two orders of magnitude from the initial at-launch system to the current system able to reprocess data from both the Terra and Aqua missions in less than a year. Many of the lessons learned from MODIS are already being applied to follow-on missions.

Wolfe, Robert E.↗

The James Webb Space Telescope's Plan for Operations and Instrument Capabilities for Observations in the Solar System

The James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) is optimized for observations in the near- and mid-infrared and will provide essential observations for targets that cannot be conducted from the ground or other missions during its lifetime. The state-of-the-art science instruments, along with the telescopeʼs moving target tracking, will enable the infrared study, with unprecedented detail, for nearly every object (Mars and beyond) in the Solar System. The goals of this special issue are to stimulate discussion and encourage participation in JWST planning among members of the planetary science community. Key science goals for various targets, observing capabilities for JWST, and highlights for the complementary nature with other missions/observatories are described in this paper.

Milam, Stefanie N.↗

Gas-grain simulation facility: Aerosol and particle research in microgravity

This document reports on the proceedings of the Gas-Grain Simulation Facility (GGSF) Science Workshop which was co-hosted by NASA Ames Research Center and Desert Research Institute, University of Nevada System, and held in Las Vegas, Nevada, on May 4-6, 1992. The intent of the workshop was to bring together the science community of potential GGSF experimenters, Science Working Group and staff members, and the Phase A contractor to review the Phase A design with the science participants and to facilitate communication between the science community and the hardware developers. The purpose of this report is to document the information disseminated at the workshop, to record the participants' review of the Phase A GGSF design concept and the current science and technical requirements for the Facility, and to respond to any questions or concerns that were raised at the Workshop. Recommendations for the future based on numerous discussions with the participants are documented, as well as science presentations and poster sessions that were given at the Workshop and a summary of 21 candidate experiments.

Huntington, Judith L.↗

Normalizing Resource Identifiers using Lexicons in the Global Change Information System: Linking Earth Science Identifiers, Concepts, and Communities

Earth Science informatics involves collaboration between multiple groups of people with diverse specializations and goals,often using variations in terminology to refer to common resources. The uniformity of the resource identifiers often does not cross organizational boundaries. Because of this, permanent, widely used, unambiguous identifiers for resources are elusive. We examine real world cases of changing and inconsistent identifiers which inherently work against persistence and uniformity. We also present a solution which mediates factors in these situations; namely the creation of lexicons:mappings of sets of terms to URIs which are curated within the Global Change Information System (GCIS). We discuss aspects of the GCIS which facilitate the use of lexicons: an information model which disambiguates resources, a RESTful API which provides metadata through content-negotiation, and a strategy for long term curation of URIs, including mechanisms for handling changes to URIs and variations in terms used by different communities while providing persistent URIs and preserving relationships between resources We provide working definitions of terms,contexts, and lexicons, and relate them to the practical challenges of disambiguation and curation. We also discuss the mechanisms employed and architecture of the GCIS, and how these choices facilitate representation of persistent identifiers and mappings of them to identifiers used colloquially within various earth science communities of practice.

Linkded Data↗

Maximizing Launch Vehicle and Payload Design Via Early Communications

The United States? current fleet of launch vehicles is largely derived from decades-old designs originally made for payloads that no longer exist. They were built primarily for national security or human exploration missions. Today that fleet can be divided roughly into small-, medium-, and large-payload classes based on mass and volume capability. But no vehicle in the U.S. fleet is designed to accommodate modern payloads. It is usually the payloads that must accommodate the capabilities of the launch vehicles. This is perhaps most true of science payloads. It was this paradigm that the organizers of two weekend workshops in 2008 at NASA's Ames Research Center sought to alter. The workshops brought together designers of NASA's Ares V cargo launch vehicle (CLV) with scientists and payload designers in the astronomy and planetary sciences communities. Ares V was still in a pre-concept development phase as part of NASA?s Constellation Program for exploration beyond low Earth orbit (LEO). The space science community was early in a Decadal Survey that would determine future priorities for research areas, observations, and notional missions to make those observations. The primary purpose of the meetings in April and August of 2008, including the novel format, was to bring vehicle designers together with space scientists to discuss the feasibility of using a heavy lift capability to launch large observatories and explore the Solar System. A key question put to the science community was whether this heavy lift capability enabled or enhanced breakthrough science. The meetings also raised the question of whether some trade-off between mass/volume and technical complexity existed that could reduce technical and programmatic risk. By engaging the scientific community early in the vehicle design process, vehicle engineers sought to better understand potential limitations and requirements that could be added to the Ares V from the mission planning community. From the vehicle standpoint, while the human exploration mission could not be compromised to accommodate other payloads, the design might otherwise be tailored to not exclude other payload requirements. This paper summarizes the findings of the workshops and discusses the benefits of bringing together the vehicle design and science communities early in their concept phases

Morris, Bruce↗

Phenomena Portal: Large- Scale Visual Exploration of Atmospheric Phenomena

The Earth science community is experiencing a high influx of remote sensing data due to recent advancements in sensor technology. This enables the community to extend their research on a larger scale than ever before. Unfortunately, traditional data processing techniques do not scale well to these new, high volume data sources. State-of-the-art machine learning (ML) pipelines have been proven to overcome these burdens in various other fields but are underexploited within the physical sciences community. Moreover, ML is reliant on labeled data, which is currently sparsely available, owing to the fact that ML adoption is still in the early stages within the Earth and atmospheric science communities. To address these issues, we developed the Phenomena Portal, a visual exploration tool that uses ML to detect various atmospheric phenomena on a global scale. This allows the Earth and atmospheric science communities to view trends of occurrences of phenomena, identify potential relationships between them, and analyze spatiotemporal patterns over time. These detections can also serve as initial labeled data for ML research pertaining to the respective phenomena. The tool also incorporates feedback from subject matter experts to further improve the model detection accuracy, thereby facilitating human-in-the-loop. This presentation will provide an overview of the ML model development and cloud deployment. We also discuss the capabilities of the user interface for displaying the detections.

Muthukumaran Ramasubramanian↗

NASA-ESA Mars Sample Return Program

NASA's Perseverance mission arrived at Jezero Crater on Mars in February 2021 and began scientific studies and acquisition of Martian samples for return to Earth by future missions, consistent with the recommendations of the U.S. science community in the previous Planetary Science Decadal Survey. NASA and ESA have established a joint Mars Sample Return (MSR) program to safely deliver these samples back to Earth, allowing researchers to use advanced scientific instrumentation that cannot be transported on robotic spacecraft and enable future studies of carefully curated samples using capabilities that have not yet been developed. The MSR architecture consists of two flight elements to follow Perseverance, the NASA-led Sample Retrieval Lander (SRL) and the ESA-led Earth Return Orbiter (ERO). The ERO is designed to orbit Mars and provide relay services for the SRL, including its ESA Sample Fetch Rover (SFR) and the NASA Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV). The SRL deploys the SFR to retrieve Martian samples cached by the Perseverance rover and then returns the samples to the Orbiting Sample container (OS) on board the MAV using the ESA Sample Transfer Arm (STA). Independently, Perseverance could also deliver samples retained onboard to the OS. The MAV would launch and release the OS into low Mars orbit for rendezvous with the ERO. Upon successful capture of the OS in the ERO’s primary payload, the NASA Capture/Containment Return System (CCRS), the OS would be safely contained and loaded into the Earth Entry System (EES). The ERO will leave Mars orbit and release the EES on Earth approach on a ballistic reentry trajectory through the Earth's atmosphere for landing in the United States. Following return of the samples to Earth, the samples would be protected, preserved, assessed, curated, and made available to the international science community for scientific research and analysis. The NASA SRL and ESA ERO missions are expected to launch as early as 2026, with the return of Martian samples to Earth as early as 2031. MSR’s primary objective is the return of scientifically selected Mars samples for detailed investigation in terrestrial laboratories. The mission would also further inform the design of future human missions. The Mars Sample Return campaign is underway with the successful collection of several scientifically selected samples in Jezero Crater. The MSR Program is working towards a confirmation review in 2023 for the remaining flight elements.

Mars↗

Connecting Community Scientific Hypotheses to Mars Sample Science

The proposed Mars Sample Return (MSR) program seeks to bring back to Earth a set of specially curated samples from the surface of Mars. The first segment of the MSR program is presently under-way; the Mars 2020 rover Perseverance has, to date, collected 24 samples of martian rock, regolith, and at-mosphere within Jezero crater. Its geologically diverse rock sample set can provide insight into the time evolu-tion of the Jezero environment, including the possible preservation of ancient biosignatures. Presently, a cache of 10 samples has been deposited in the Three Forks region on the floor of Jezero crater. These sam-ples, deemed scientifically return worthy by the Mars science community [1], are intended as a contingency sample set, as Perseverance has subsequently obtained more samples, and is therefore storing a more compre-hensive and scientifically valuable set of samples that will grow as the rover ascends to the rim of Jezero crater. The return of samples from Mars has been identi-fied as the highest priority planetary mission in the past three National Academies Decadal Surveys [2-4]. Sub-stantial work has gone into establishing science objec-tives for an MSR program, an overall framework for sample retrieval and analysis, and the expected impact on future Mars science and exploration (e.g., [5]). These objectives have been established at a relatively high level, e.g., “Interpret the primary geologic pro-cesses and history that formed the martian geologic rec-ord, with an emphasis on the role of water.” (Objective 1 in [5]) and are designed to encapsulate the broad sci-entific priorities of, and lay the groundwork for, inves-tigation strategies and measurements to be conducted by a future MSR program. It is from this overarching framework that the Connecting Community Scientific Hypotheses to Mars Sample Science workshop (‘The Workshop’) was conceived, with the purpose of distil-ling these high-level scientific objectives into discrete, testable hypotheses across a range of scientific disci-plines. The output of the workshop is meant to be a ‘hy-pothesis document’ serving as a starting point for cata-loging and condensing specific hypotheses for consid-eration by the scientific community. The template for this approach is based on the “driving hypotheses” de-veloped by the OSIRIS-REx team as part of their Sam-ple Analysis Plan [6].

Michael A Mischna↗

NSI operations center

The NASA Science Internet (NSI) Network Operations Staff is responsible for providing reliable communication connectivity for the NASA science community. As the NSI user community expands, so does the demand for greater interoperability with users and resources on other networks (e.g., NSFnet, ESnet), both nationally and internationally. Coupled with the science community's demand for greater access to other resources is the demand for more reliable communication connectivity. Recognizing this, the NASA Science Internet Project Office (NSIPO) expands its Operations activities. By January 1990, Network Operations was equipped with a telephone hotline, and its staff was expanded to six Network Operations Analysts. These six analysts provide 24-hour-a-day, 7-day-a-week coverage to assist site managers with problem determination and resolution. The NSI Operations staff monitors network circuits and their associated routers. In most instances, NSI Operations diagnoses and reports problems before users realize a problem exists. Monitoring of the NSI TCP/IP Network is currently being done with Proteon's Overview monitoring system. The Overview monitoring system displays a map of the NSI network utilizing various colors to indicate the conditions of the components being monitored. Each node or site is polled via the Simple Network Monitoring Protocol (SNMP). If a circuit goes down, Overview alerts the Network Operations staff with an audible alarm and changes the color of the component. When an alert is received, Network Operations personnel immediately verify and diagnose the problem, coordinate repair with other networking service groups, track problems, and document problem and resolution into a trouble ticket data base. NSI Operations offers the NSI science community reliable connectivity by exercising prompt assessment and resolution of network problems.

Zanley, Nancy L.↗

The Glory Program: Global Science from a Unique Spacecraft Integration

The Glory program is an Earth and Solar science mission designed to broaden science community knowledge of the environment. The causes and effects of global warming have become a concern in recent years and Glory aims to contribute to the knowledge base of the science community. Glory is designed for two functions: one is solar viewing to monitor the total solar irradiance and the other is observing the Earth s atmosphere for aerosol composition. The former is done with an active cavity radiometer, while the latter is accomplished with an aerosol polarimeter sensor to discern atmospheric particles. The Glory program is managed by NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) with Orbital Sciences in Dulles, VA as the prime contractor for the spacecraft bus, mission operations, and ground system. This paper will describe some of the more unique features of the Glory program including the integration and testing of the satellite and instruments as well as the science data processing. The spacecraft integration and test approach requires extensive analysis and additional planning to ensure existing components are successfully functioning with the new Glory components. The science mission data analysis requires development of mission unique processing systems and algorithms. Science data analysis and distribution will utilize our national assets at the Goddard Institute for Space Studies (GISS) and the University of Colorado's Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP). The Satellite was originally designed and built for the Vegetation Canopy Lidar (VCL) mission, which was terminated in the middle of integration and testing due to payload development issues. The bus was then placed in secure storage in 2001 and removed from an environmentally controlled container in late 2003 to be refurbished to meet the Glory program requirements. Functional testing of all the components was done as a system at the start of the program, very different from a traditional program. The plan for Glory is to minimize any changes to the spacecraft in order to meet the Glory requirements. This means that the instrument designs must adhere to the existing interfaces and capabilities as much as possible. Given Glory's unique history and the potential science return, the program is one of significant value to both the science community and the world. The findings Glory promises will improve our understanding of the drivers for global climate change for a minimal investment. The program hopes to show that reuse of existing government assets can result in a lower cost, and fully successful mission.

Bajpayee Jaya↗

Design of Large Lightweight Space Telescope Optical Systems for the Next Generation Space Telescope

The Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) is currently in a Pre Phase A study effort to prove feasibility of design and to show that the design can be implemented within cost constraint guidelines and meet the requirements of the science community. In an effort to achieve the science communities goals as outlined in "HST and Beyond" the NGST team has developed a government "yardstick" design of an eight meter diameter segmented telescope which would be launched in an Atlas IIAS launch vehicle to a L2 (Lagrange Point) orbit. This paper will discuss the design of the Optical Telescope Assembly (OTA) and the various issues and complications of designing lightweight optics to be placed in the environment that the NGST will encounter both during launch and during its operational mission at L2. The OTA must be lightweight but structurally must withstand the launch environment and transfer to its final L2 orbit. The OTA must be stable at L2 to provide high quality science at the cryogenic temperatures it will experience. The OTA segmented petal concept is to develop lightweight optics which can either be manipulated to achieve and maintain a desired figure or be rigid enough so that change in shape is only necessary for phasing and alignment. The secondary mirror structural mast must also be rigid with frequency responses which are not coupled to spacecraft modes in order to maintain and decenter and despace requirements.

Jacobson, Dave↗