SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “learning from home”

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.

SourceResearch connectionFrom yearThrough year

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 55 records · Page 3

All sources NASA NTRS DOE OSTI

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Exploring Innovative Methods for Earth Science Communication Through NASA’s Earth Information Center

Environmental challenges stemming from unprecedented changes in our planet have increased the need to communicate our understanding of Earth as a connected system. In June 2023, NASA unveiled the Earth Information Center (EIC), part of NASA’s Earth Action Strategy aimed at amplifying NASA’s Earth science impact by engaging decision-makers beyond the scientific community. Existing in both physical and virtual space, the EIC provides critical information on how the planet is changing and affecting livelihoods across the globe. For over fifty years, NASA has utilized the unique vantage point space offers to monitor Earth in collaboration with Federal partners. Through an expanding fleet of Earth observing satellites and sensors, NASA informs local to global decision making within nine thematic areas: agriculture, biodiversity, disasters, greenhouse gases, health and air quality, sea level rise and coastal impacts, sustainable energy, water resources, and wildfires. Visitors to the inaugural location of the EIC at NASA Headquarters in Washington D.C., can interact with Earth observation data and models through innovative exhibits and storytelling. Designed by an interdisciplinary team, the EIC is designed for multiple modality learning to reach a wide base of end-users. Data driven visualizations, near real-time information, and curated stories highlight the applications of Earth observations to address environmental challenges. Complementary exhibits and immersive storytelling allow visitors to physically step inside environmental data and connect with information on an emotional level. Taken together, the collective EIC provides scientists and non-scientists alike with the ability to see our home planet as NASA sees it, as a system of systems, while delivering easily accessible information to those who need it most.

Earth Information Center↗

NASA NTRS2020

MER Opportunity dust-storm recovery operations and implications for future Mars surface missions

In June 2018, NASA’s Mars Exploration Rover Opportunity became engulfed in the most intense global dust storm observed in its 14-year mission and in Mars’ recorded history. Sapped of life-giving solar energy, Opportunity fell silent to ground operators on June 11, in what would be its final call home. Over the course of the next eight months, the MER team employed numerous recovery efforts and radiated over one thousand commands to wake the silent rover. Although unsuccessful, MER’s dust-storm recovery team changed the paradigm of dust-storm operations from Opportunity’s survival of a previous global dust storm in 2007. In this paper, the authors offer a glimpse into MER’s recovery efforts and lessons learned from Opportunity dust-storm operations for future solar-powered Mars surface missions. In the first section, the authors discuss the indicators of the approaching dust storm and the actions the team employed to reduce Opportunity’s power consumption and preserve available battery charge prior to loss of contact. The second section discusses the team’s recovery efforts until Opportunity’s declared End-of-Mission, the steps the team took to re-establish contact with Opportunity, the assumptions made during each step of the recovery process, and the commanding actions employed. Finally, the authors discuss the operational impacts of global dust storms on the safe and successful operation of solar-powered spacecraft on the Martian surface, and offer design recommendations for future solar-powered missions from the lessons learned during Opportunity’s 14-year mission and experience through two global dust storms.

Nelson, Robert W.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Safety Culture at the World’s Premier Multi-User Spaceport

NASA’s Agency-wide Safety Culture is implemented at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) using a unique strategy due an unparalleled approach in making human spaceflight history. Kennedy Space Center, the world’s premier multi-user spaceport, enables U.S. government and commercial space access, while providing the world a resource to allow the exploration of and the ability to work in space. A consistently healthy safety culture at KSC is imperative for mission success: desired achievements, protection of space flight hardware, and ultimately, the preservation of human life requires the support of a healthy safety culture. Emphasis on the NASA Agency-wide development of Safety Culture began with the conception of the NASA Agency Safety Culture Working Group. After the devastating loss of life and mission of the Space Shuttle Colombia, a broken safety culture was identified as an organizational cause by the Columbia Accident Investigation Board Report. Thus, the Agency Safety Culture Working Group was developed in 2009 to assess the status of the Agency’s Safety Culture, while addressing safety culture concerns at the NASA Center-level. A Five-factor model was developed to serve as the guiding principles for Safety Culture: 1) Reporting Culture, 2) Just Culture, 3) Flexible Culture, 4) Learning Culture, and 5) Engaged Culture. These five factors are included in the NASA Safety Culture logo, which was intentionally designed as a DNA double helix to prompt the permeation of safety into day-to-day work. KSC specifically implements the NASA Agency-wide Safety Culture principles in a tailored approach that is relevant to the diversity of work being performed. An emphasis is placed on the implementation to include safety at home, not exclusively at work. This emphasis is a KSC-specific element that has been intentionally added to promote a closed loop Safety Culture. To advertise the safety culture, various safety and health events are held throughout the calendar year, providing innovative speakers and engaging activities, while also promoting a wide range of curated safety initiatives. Development and continuous improvement of the KSC safety tracking database, allows for advanced tracking-to-closure, along with providing data sets used to identify areas of emphasis. Other safety initiatives rely solely on employee participation, such as the photo challenges; participants are encouraged to identify and capture themselves, coworkers, or family members participating in safe or healthy activities to share with others within the Center and at Agency levels. Fabrication of exclusive videos and graphics are utilized to advertise and inform employee of safety initiatives, upcoming safety events, and general dispersion of safety information. In addition, an anonymous Agency-wide Safety Culture Survey is advertised, administered, and analyzed at Kennedy Space Center, with the purpose of receiving basic feedback on Safety Culture perceptions to help prevent future incidents from occurring. Through these briefly identified means, and many other forms of employee engagement, Kennedy Space Center aims to maintain safety in the forefront, while creating an environment where everyone trusts that safety is a priority.

Larrin E. Moody↗

NASA NTRS1990

Satellite Videoconferences

NASA is helping thousands of teachers to learn more about aerospace matters, improve their classroom skills, and expand significantly the content of their aerospace education curricula by means of live educational satellite videoconferences. The 1 1/2 hour 'Update for Teachers' programs originate at Oklahoma State University (OSU) Telecommunications Center. The television signals are transmitted to the WESTAR IV communications satellite, which remits them to participating schools across the U.S. and in parts of Mexico and Canada. The schools are equipped with small home style satellite reception dishes. Education Satellite Videoconference programs are conducted four times yearly, covering a variety of aerospace subjects. Teachers can call toll-free and have questions answered after the speaker's presentations. Information about NASA educational resources and how to obtain them will be provided.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS2000

Do-It-Yourself: A Special Library's Approach to Creating Dynamic Web Pages Using Commercial Off-The-Shelf Applications

Many librarians may feel that dynamic Web pages are out of their reach, financially and technically. Yet we are reminded in library and Web design literature that static home pages are a thing of the past. This paper describes how librarians at the Institute for Defense Analyses (IDA) library developed a database-driven, dynamic intranet site using commercial off-the-shelf applications. Administrative issues include surveying a library users group for interest and needs evaluation; outlining metadata elements; and, committing resources from managing time to populate the database and training in Microsoft FrontPage and Web-to-database design. Technical issues covered include Microsoft Access database fundamentals, lessons learned in the Web-to-database process (including setting up Database Source Names (DSNs), redesigning queries to accommodate the Web interface, and understanding Access 97 query language vs. Standard Query Language (SQL)). This paper also offers tips on editing Active Server Pages (ASP) scripting to create desired results. A how-to annotated resource list closes out the paper.

Relational databases↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

GL4U: Bioinformatics training for students and educators using space omics data

NASA’s GeneLab project provides researchers open access to space-relevant experiment multi-omics data that can be mined to understand the effects of spaceflight on biological systems. To maximize the number of scientists who understand and utilize GeneLab data and data processing pipelines, GeneLab has created GeneLab for Colleges and Universities (GL4U). GL4U provides space biology-relevant training in bioinformatics to the next generation of scientists through direct and indirect approaches. The GeneLab team plans to host two annual data processing bootcamps, one for college-level students (direct) and one for college educators (indirect – training of trainers), in which participants learn to analyze GeneLab’s space-relevant omics data. The GL4U direct training pilot program was conducted in June 2021. During the pilot, students participated in a week-long bootcamp consisting of space biology-specific lectures and hands-on instruction using Jupyter Notebooks to analyze RNA sequence data. This pilot demonstrated the capacity of GL4U for training young scientists and encouraging data re-use. During the educator pilot, scheduled for June 2022, educators will receive materials and training to enable them to run the bootcamp at their home institutions or alternatively to adapt the content to implement within existing courses, thereby extending the reach of this initiative.

Amanda Marie Saravia-butler↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

GL4U: Bioinformatics Training for Students and Educators Using Space Omics Data

Amanda Marie Saravia-butler↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

High Flying Interns: NASA's Student Airborne Research Program

The NASA Student Airborne Research Program is an annual summer internship for upper-level undergraduate STEM majors. Each summer since 2009, we have competitively selected ~30 undergraduates from colleges and universities across the United States for this unique airborne research experience. In all past summers, students flew onboard a NASA research aircraft where they assisted in the operation of remote sensing and in situ instrumentation to study the Earth, ocean, and atmosphere. Students also participated in field trips where they acquired data to ground-truth and complement the airborne data. After their flights and field trips, students then spent the rest of summer developing individual research projects using the data they collected as well as data from previous year SARP flights, other NASA airborne campaigns, and NASA satellite data. This summer, we adapted the program to be entirely online. Each of the 28 undergraduate students still completed an individual research project using data from previous SARP flights as well as publicly available data from other airborne campaigns, satellites, and/or ground stations. Students were mentored remotely by five university faculty members, five graduate students, and several additional scientists and engineers from NASA. In order to preserve some aspects of the hands-on research experience, we also shipped each student a box of twenty-four Whole Air Sampling canisters identical to what they would have used to collect air samples onboard the NASA aircraft. Instead, each student collected ground samples near their home starting in mid-April through July. The goal of this sampling was to attempt to characterize the impacts of pandemic-related changes in emissions with time across the United States. The results of that ground sampling are being presented in scientific sessions in this meeting. In addition, students also measured PM2.5 and aerosol optical depth from June through August using sensors provided by the Citizen-Enabled Aerosol Measurements for Satellites (CEAMS) at Colorado State University. We will discuss strategies we employed to conduct research online, the unexpected opportunities that arose, and lessons learned.

STEM disciplines↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

GL4U: Using Space Biology Omics Data to Provide Bioinformatics Training for Students and Educators

NASA’s GeneLab project provides researchers open access to space-relevant multi-omics data via the Open Science Data Repository (OSDR) that can be mined to understand the effects of spaceflight on biological systems. To maximize the number of scientists who understand and utilize GeneLab data and data processing pipelines, GeneLab created GeneLab for Colleges and Universities (GL4U). GL4U provides space biology-relevant training in bioinformatics to the next generation of scientists through direct (training students) and indirect (training educators) approaches. The GL4U pilot programs were conducted in June 2021 (direct training) and 2022 (indirect training). During the pilots, students and educators at Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCUs) and Minority Serving Institutions (MSIs) participated in a week-long (direct training) or two-week-long (indirect training) bootcamp consisting of space biology-specific lectures and hands-on instruction using Jupyter Notebooks to analyze space biology RNA sequencing data from OSDR. During the educator pilot, participants received materials, training, and the necessary compute resources to enable them to run the bootcamp at their home institutions, thereby extending the reach of this initiative. In July 2023, GeneLab is partnering with JPL to expand GL4U to include amplicon sequencing (Amp-Seq) analysis training. During the GL4U Amp-Seq bootcamp, student and educator participants will receive training on how to analyze and interpret Amp-Seq data using the NASA GeneLab data processing pipeline. All bootcamp material, including instructions for requesting compute resources, will be made publicly available on GitHub for educators to teach the GL4U content in subsequent semesters. GL4U provides undergraduate students from underrepresented groups the opportunity to learn about NASA and Space Biology, and to enhance their career prospects by gaining hands-on experience analyzing omics data, a skillset that is highly applicable and marketable in the life sciences. We present results from pre- and post-training surveys completed by all participants of the Amp-Seq bootcamp.

Amanda M Saravia-Butler↗

NASA NTRS2017

Reinventing Image Detective: An Evidence-Based Approach to Citizen Science Online

Usability studies demonstrate that web users are notoriously impatient, spending as little as 15 seconds on a home page. How do you get users to stay long enough to understand a citizen science project? How do you get users to complete complex citizen science tasks online? Image Detective, a citizen science project originally developed by scientists and science engagement specialists at the NASA Johnson Space center to engage the public in the analysis of images taken from space by astronauts to help enhance NASA's online database of astronaut imagery, partnered with the CosmoQuest citizen science platform to modernize, offering new and improved options for participation in Image Detective. The challenge: to create a web interface that builds users' skills and knowledge, creating engagement while learning complex concepts essential to the accurate completion of tasks. The project team turned to usability testing for an objective understanding of how users perceived Image Detective and the steps required to complete required tasks. A group of six users was recruited online for unmoderated and initial testing. The users followed a think-aloud protocol while attempting tasks, and were recorded on video and audio. The usability test examined users' perception of four broad areas: the purpose of and context for Image Detective; the steps required to successfully complete the analysis (differentiating images of Earth's surface from those showing outer space and identifying common surface features); locating the image center point on a map of Earth; and finally, naming geographic locations or natural events seen in the image. Usability test findings demonstrated that the following best practices can increase participation in Image Detective and can be applied to the successful implementation of any citizen science project: (1) Concise explanation of the project, its context, and its purpose; (2) Including a mention of the funding agency (in this case, NASA); (3) A preview of the specific tasks required of participants; (4) A dedicated user interface for the actual citizen science interaction. In addition, testing revealed that users may require additional context when a task is complex, difficult, or unusual (locating a specific image and its center point on a map of Earth). Video evidence will be made available with this presentation.

Romano, Cia↗

NASA NTRS2017

Image Detective 2.0: Engaging Citizen Scientists with NASA Astronaut Photography

Image Detective 2.0 engages citizen scientists with NASA astronaut photography of the Earth obtained by crew members on the International Space Station (ISS). Engaged citizen scientists are helping to build a more comprehensive and searchable database by geolocating this imagery and contributing to new imagery collections. Image Detective 2.0 is the newest addition to the suite of citizen scientist projects available through CosmoQuest, an effort led by the Astronomical Society of the Pacific (ASP) and supported through a NASA Science Mission Directorate Cooperative Agreement Notice award. CosmoQuest hosts a number of citizen science projects enabling individuals from around the world to engage in authentic NASA science. Image Detective 2.0, an effort that focuses on imagery acquired by astronauts on the International Space Station, builds on work initiated in 2012 by scientists and education specialists at the NASA Johnson Space Center. Through the many lessons learned, Image Detective 2.0 enhances the original project by offering new and improved options for participation. Existing users, as well as new Image Detective participants joining through the CosmoQuest platform, gain first-hand experience working with astronaut photography and become more engaged with this valuable data being obtained from the International Space Station. Citizens around the world are captivated by astronauts living and working in space. As crew members have a unique vantage point from which to view our Earth, the Crew Earth Observations (CEO) online database, referred to as the Gateway to Astronaut Photography of Earth (https://eol.jsc.nasa.gov/), provides a means for crew members to share their unique views of our home planet from the ISS with the scientific community and the public. Astronaut photography supports multiple uses including scientific investigations, visualizations, education, and outreach. These astronaut images record how the planet is changing over time, from human-made changes like urban growth and agriculture, to natural features and landforms such as tropical cyclones, aurora, coastlines, volcanoes and more. This imagery provides researchers on Earth with data to understand the planet from the perspective of the ISS, and is a useful complement to other remotely sensed datasets collected from robotic satellite platforms.

Higgins, Melissa↗

NASA NTRS2011

An Alternative Approach to Human Servicing of Manned Earth Orbiting Spacecraft

As manned spacecraft have grown larger and more complex, they have come to rely on spacewalks or Extravehicular Activities (EVA) for both mission success and crew safety. Typically these spacecraft maintain all of the hardware and trained personnel needed to perform an EVA on-board at all times. Maintaining this capability requires volume and up-mass for storage of EVA hardware, crew time for ground and on-orbit training, and on-orbit maintenance of EVA hardware . This paper proposes an alternative methodology to utilize launch-on-need hardware and crew to provide EVA capability for space stations in Earth orbit after assembly complete, in the same way that most people would call a repairman to fix something at their home. This approach would not only reduce ground training requirements and save Intravehicular Activity (IVA) crew time in the form of EVA hardware maintenance and on-orbit training, but would also lead to more efficient EVAs because they would be performed by specialists with detailed knowledge and training stemming from their direct involvement in the development of the EVA. The on-orbit crew would then be available to focus on the immediate response to the failure as well as the day-to-day operations of the spacecraft and payloads. This paper will look at how current ISS unplanned EVAs are conducted, including the time required for preparation, and offer alternatives for future spacecraft utilizing lessons learned from ISS. As this methodology relies entirely on the on-time and on-need launch of spacecraft, any space station that utilized this approach would need a robust transportation system including more than one launch vehicle capable of carrying crew. In addition the fault tolerance of the space station would be an important consideration in how much time was available for EVA preparation after the failure. Each future program would have to weigh the risk of on-time launch against the increase in available crew time for the main objective of the spacecraft.

Mularski, John↗

NASA NTRS1997

The HSCaRS Summer Enrichment Program; Research Opportunities for Minority and Women Undergraduates in Global Change Science

The primary objective of the HSCaRS Summer Enrichment Program (SEP) is to make significant contributions to the NASA Mission to Planet Earth (MTPE) and the Alabama A&M University (AAMU) Center for Hydrology, Soil Climatology and Remote Sensing (HSCaRS) research missions by providing undergraduate student research internships with an emphasis on minority and women students. Additional objectives are to encourage more minority and women students to pursue advanced degrees in Earth system and global change science and to increase the participation of minority institutions in the U.S. Global Change Research Program. Also, the SEP strives to make students in the traditional science disciplines more aware of the opportunities in Earth System Science. In designing the SEP, it was acknowledged that HSCaRS was a new research effort and Center. Consequently, students were not expected to immediately recognize the Center as one would older, more established research laboratories with national reputations, such as Los Alamos, Battelle, National Consortium for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), etc. Yet we still wanted to compete nationally for the best students. Therefore, we designed the program with a competitive financial package that includes a stipend of $400 per week, round-trip transportation from home to the summer research site, and free campus housing and meal plans provided by Alabama A&M University. Students also received a modest living allowance of approximately $25 per week. The internship program was 10 weeks in residence at Alabama A&M University or IGCRE, and gave students the opportunity to select from six general research areas: micro-meteorology, soil data analysis, soil moisture modeling, instrumentation, geographic information systems, and computer science. Student participants also enrolled in an introductory global change science course as part of the summer program (a copy of the course outline is in the appendix). The program included participation in a field program for approximately two weeks. All students were required to participate in the field program as a learning experience, regardless of the relationship of the field program to their majors or particular research project.

Estes, Jr., Maurice G.↗

NASA NTRS2010

There's Enough Space for Everyone

Only a few fortunate people have the opportunity to go into space and experience the wonders of our universe first-hand. But thanks to social media and virtual worlds, many unique opportunities exist for us to learn, explore and experience what s out there from wherever we are. NASA and Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) are making this even easier to do. From blogs to Twitter messages, from Facebook pages to Flickr Photo sites, NASA is leveraging social media to share never-before-seen footage and inside information on spaceflight, scientific discoveries and other space activities. Over the last year, Marshall has reached more than half-a-million viewers through its high-profile, real-time blogs. Through its Watching a Launch blog, visitors were invited to take the "virtual" rides of their lives as they received a first-hand account of seeing a powerful shuttle launch - up close and personal. Through the Shuttle Ferry Flight blog, they got to experience the Shuttle Atlantis journey home to Kennedy Space Center as it rode "piggyback" on a modified Boeing 747 airplane. This year, Marshall s Flickr photo galleries have been visited over 700,000 times, Ares rocket videos have been viewed on iTunes, YouTube, TeacherTube and NASA Web sites more than 1.2 million times, and Marshall s Facebook Page has over 2,800 "friends" who regularly follow NASA. Social media tools have been a powerful way to reach and inspire the public, but NASA has also used these tools effectively to promote education and outreach. From events such as the Great Moonbuggy Race to the Student Launch Initiative, Marshall has used social networks to interest, excite and engage students. This presentation shares some of NASA s experiences on what has worked . . . and what hasn't . . . and seeks to spread the message that through social media "there's enough space for everyone."

Schumacher, Daniel M.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Applying Satellite Data to Support Disaster Response and Emergency Management Decision Making

Using the vantage point of space, satellite observations provide information about the Earth that can serve a critical role in building situational awareness and filling in data gaps during disaster response. NASA’s Earth Science Division ( studies the Earth as a system and develops technologies to improve the quality of life here on our home planet. Within NASA ESD, the Disasters Program and its Disasters Response Coordination System (DRCS) aims to advance Earth science data and information to support management decisions that prevent or mitigate the impacts of disasters. Using a whole-of-NASA approach to coordinate and mobilize the Agency’s assets and expertise to provide geospatial information during disasters, this work brings the utility of Earth observation information to emergency management and disaster response and reduces the impacts of disasters on lives and livelihoods .This poster will introduce the utility of satellite and geospatial information to disaster response through examples of recent DRCS incident response activations and highlight the DRCS model that employs a user-centered activation framework beginning with direct requests from responders and ending with after-action assessments that feed lessons learned and process improvements.

Remote Sensing↗

NASA NTRS2014

Fatigue‐Related Countermeasures for Long‐Duration Exploration Missions

The NASA Human Research Program's (HRP) Behavioral Health and Performance Element (BHP) supports and conducts research to mitigate deleterious outcomes related to fatigue, sleep loss, circadian desynchronization, and work overload. Objective evidence indicates that within the context of the International Space Station (ISS), sleep is reduced and there is circadian misalignment. Despite chronic sleep loss and high workloads; however, astronauts successfully complete their missions. Contributing to their success is not only the tremendous skills and capabilities of each astronaut, but also the collaborative team efforts amongst the crew, between flight and ground crews, and through real‐time care provided by medical personnel. It is anticipated that risks to human health and performance will increase in the context of exploration missions, where crewmembers will venture to deep space for extended durations and in small vehicles with limited communication with home. Hence, fatigue‐related countermeasures are being developed and/or validated that include unobtrusive monitoring technologies to detect fatigue‐related performance decrements, environmental countermeasures, and sleep education and training for flight and ground crews. Given that fatigue is an issue in current ISS missions, the BHP works collaboratively with Space Medicine operations to collect data in the operational environment, to validate fatigue-related countermeasures, and provide evidence‐based mitigations. Our presentation will summarize fatigue‐related operational research that is underway through NASA's BHP in partnership with its operational counterparts. Efforts include studies evaluating the effects of hypnotics, lighting protocols as countermeasures for circadian entrainment, and investigations involving education and training. This presentation will further identify, based on flight and terrestrial evidence, additional sleep and circadian countermeasures that may still be needed to support exploration missions. Lessons learned from transitioning research deliverables into ISS operations will also be discussed.

Whitmire, A.↗

NASA NTRS2017

Understanding the International Space Station Crew Perspective following Long-Duration Missions through Data Analytics & Visualization of Crew Feedback

The International Space Station (ISS) first became a home and research laboratory for NASA and International Partner crewmembers over 16 years ago. Each ISS mission lasts approximately 6 months and consists of three to six crewmembers. After returning to Earth, most crewmembers participate in an extensive series of 30+ debriefs intended to further understand life onboard ISS and allow crews to reflect on their experiences. Examples of debrief data collected include ISS crew feedback about sleep, dining, payload science, scheduling and time planning, health & safety, and maintenance. The Flight Crew Integration (FCI) Operational Habitability (OpsHab) team, based at Johnson Space Center (JSC), is a small group of Human Factors engineers and one stenographer that has worked collaboratively with the NASA Astronaut office and ISS Program to collect, maintain, disseminate and analyze this data. The database provides an exceptional and unique resource for understanding the "crew perspective" on long duration space missions. Data is formatted and categorized to allow for ease of search, reporting, and ultimately trending, in order to understand lessons learned, recurring issues and efficiencies gained over time. Recently, the FCI OpsHab team began collaborating with the NASA JSC Knowledge Management team to provide analytical analysis and visualization of these over 75,000 crew comments in order to better ascertain the crew's perspective on long duration spaceflight and gain insight on changes over time. In this initial phase of study, a text mining framework was used to cluster similar comments and develop measures of similarity useful for identifying relevant topics affecting crew health or performance, locating similar comments when a particular issue or item of operational interest is identified, and providing search capabilities to identify information pertinent to future spaceflight systems and processes for things like procedure development and training. In addition, the comments were scored for sentiment using a polarity scoring algorithm to identify both positive and negative comments for particular groups and clusters, allowing the team to make analytically informed decisions regarding future hardware and operating procedures. The use of polarity scoring with time series analysis was used to provide insight into how crew health and habitability is changing throughout various spaceflight increments or the station lifecycle as a whole. Finally, a visualization framework was developed to address the needs of the end users to search for and analyze comments by user, category or mission. This paper will discuss how the use of an analytical framework in conjunction with the current human interface, improved the understanding of crew perspective and shortened the time for analysis allowing for more informed decisions and rapid development of improvements. These methods are significantly optimizing the way that this valuable data can be assessed and applied to current and future spaceflight design and development. This collaboration allows the FCI OpsHab team to effectively analyze and share data in a more automated and timely fashion. Trends are no longer derived manually and can be illustrated effectively and accurately with these evolving techniques to an ever growing group of human spaceflight end users.

Bryant, Cody↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Plant Habitat 04 Citizen Outreach: The Space Chile Grow a Pepper Plant Challenge (2020-2021)

The Space Chile Grow a Pepper Plant Challenge (SCGAPPC) is a citizen outreach activity performed in conjunction with NASA technical demonstration, Plant Habitat (PH)-04 which grew a New Mexico chile pepper as the first fruit in the Advanced Plant Habitat (APH). Growing a related pepper variety from Chimayo, New Mexico, the activity tasked citizen “Space Farmers” to grow a pepper plant indoors, at home, or in controlled environments to document the details of growth, and search for solutions to growing consistently productive and flavorful peppers under these conditions. Launched in February of 2020, a scientist on the PH04 team shared an introduction on social media to provide information about the activity and instructions on how to participate. Each space farmer received an envelopecontaining seeds and a mission sticker. They conducted their own pepper growth trials to record environment and horticultural data and submit one pepper to the University of New Mexico for capsaicin analysis. This activity was available online at the onset of the COVID-19 shutdown. During 2020-2021, over 1,800 envelopes were mailed across the globe, tens of thousands of seed pouches were shared, the SCGAPPC was featured during a virtual Growing Beyond Earth Educator Workshop with the challenge of becoming a critical part of that program when students were working remotely. Citizen space farmers around the world contributed to space biology and crop production research while learning about CE agriculture. Members of the space biology community volunteered participation, skills, and interaction. An online community page provided a format for scientists, and the general publicto interact. A portion of data was documented in an online database. The primary outcome served to inform the publicabout NASA space crop production, while creating a channel to share experiences and compare results from a singlecrop growing under varying controlled environments.

Jacob Torres↗