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NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Evaluation of User Experience of Self-Scheduling Software for Astronauts: Defining a Satisfaction Baseline

As NASA turns its sights to deep-space exploration, a greater focus on sup-porting crew autonomy has led to the development of Playbook, a self-scheduling software tool. Evaluating the user satisfaction of Playbook is essential in ensuring its usability for critical spaceflight operations. Satisfaction of an interface is often quantified with attitude surveys, such as the User Experience Questionnaire (UEQ). This paper demonstrates an application of the UEQ in comparing the user experience of Playbook interface de-signs for displaying graphical data. We lay the foundation for future user experience comparisons by defining a satisfaction baseline, which is crucial as more features are integrated into Playbook’s interface. This work ex-tends a validated user experience framework into a spaceflight domain, allowing optimization of human-computer interaction as future operational tools are developed.

user experience↗

NASA NTRS1988

Lessons learned from an Ada conversion project

Recognizing the importance of building software with the robustness to accommodate rapid advances in technology, developers have focused on methods which preserve both past and future investment in software and in providing an advanced software engineering environment that frees the engineer, to the greatest extent possible, from the more routine aspects of software design and development. The software engineer is permitted to concentrate on the creative aspects of problem resolution. Standard languages such as Ada maximize portability across hardware and operating systems. Standard interfaces which enhance portability and permit the incorporation of new technology as it becomes available have been developed. Software design and development techniques which maximize portability receive increasing emphasis. Experience gained in porting an Ada application between two widely varying environments is evaluated in light of current practices to maximize software portability.

Porter, Tim↗

NASA NTRS2000

Level 1 Processing of MODIS Direct Broadcast Data From Terra

In February 2000, an effort was begun to adapt the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Level 1 production software to process direct broadcast data. Three Level 1 algorithms have been adapted and packaged for release: Level 1A converts raw (level 0) data into Hierarchical Data Format (HDF), unpacking packets into scans; Geolocation computes geographic information for the data points in the Level 1A; and the Level 1B computes geolocated, calibrated radiances from the Level 1A and Geolocation products. One useful aspect of adapting the production software is the ability to incorporate enhancements contributed by the MODIS Science Team. We have therefore tried to limit changes to the software. However, in order to process the data immediately on receipt, we have taken advantage of a branch in the geolocation software that reads orbit and altitude information from the packets themselves, rather than external ancillary files used in standard production. We have also verified that the algorithms can be run with smaller time increments (2.5 minutes) than the five-minute increments used in production. To make the code easier to build and run, we have simplified directories and build scripts. Also, dependencies on a commercial numerics library have been replaced by public domain software. A version of the adapted code has been released for Silicon Graphics machines running lrix. Perhaps owing to its origin in production, the software is rather CPU-intensive. Consequently, a port to Linux is underway, followed by a version to run on PC clusters, with an eventual goal of running in near-real-time (i.e., process a ten-minute pass in ten minutes).

Lynnes, Christopher↗

NASA NTRS2014

Traffic Aware Planner (TAP) Flight Evaluation

NASA's Traffic Aware Planner (TAP) is a cockpit decision support tool that has the potential to achieve significant fuel and time savings when it is embedded in the data-rich Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) airspace. To address a key step towards the operational deployment of TAP and the NASA concept of Traffic Aware Strategic Aircrew Requests (TASAR), a system evaluation was conducted in a representative flight environment in November, 2013. Numerous challenges were overcome to achieve this goal, including the porting of the foundational Autonomous Operations Planner (AOP) software from its original simulation-based, avionics-embedded environment to an Electronic Flight Bag (EFB) platform. A flight-test aircraft was modified to host the EFB, the TAP application, an Automatic Dependent Surveillance Broadcast (ADS-B) processor, and a satellite broadband datalink. Nine Evaluation Pilots conducted 26 hours of TAP assessments using four route profiles in the complex eastern and north-eastern United States airspace. Extensive avionics and video data were collected, supplemented by comprehensive inflight and post-flight questionnaires. TAP was verified to function properly in the live avionics and ADS-B environment, characterized by recorded data dropouts, latency, and ADS-B message fluctuations. Twelve TAP-generated optimization requests were submitted to ATC, of which nine were approved, and all of which resulted in fuel and/or time savings. Analysis of subjective workload data indicated that pilot interaction with TAP during flight operations did not induce additional cognitive loading. Additionally, analyses of post-flight questionnaire data showed that the pilots perceived TAP to be useful, understandable, intuitive, and easy to use. All program objectives were met, and the next phase of TAP development and evaluations with partner airlines is in planning for 2015.

Maris, John M.↗

NASA NTRS2014

Transition Marshall Space Flight Center Wind Profiler Splicing Algorithm to Launch Services Program Upper Winds Tool

NASAs LSP customers and the future SLS program rely on observations of upper-level winds for steering, loads, and trajectory calculations for the launch vehicles flight. On the day of launch, the 45th Weather Squadron (45 WS) Launch Weather Officers (LWOs) monitor the upper-level winds and provide forecasts to the launch team via the AMU-developed LSP Upper Winds tool for launches at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. This tool displays wind speed and direction profiles from rawinsondes released during launch operations, the 45th Space Wing 915-MHz Doppler Radar Wind Profilers (DRWPs) and KSC 50-MHz DRWP, and output from numerical weather prediction models.The goal of this task was to splice the wind speed and direction profiles from the 45th Space Wing (45 SW) 915-MHz Doppler radar Wind Profilers (DRWPs) and KSC 50-MHz DRWP at altitudes where the wind profiles overlap to create a smooth profile. In the first version of the LSP Upper Winds tool, the top of the 915-MHz DRWP wind profile and the bottom of the 50-MHz DRWP were not spliced, sometimes creating a discontinuity in the profile. The Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) Natural Environments Branch (NE) created algorithms to splice the wind profiles from the two sensors to generate an archive of vertically complete wind profiles for the SLS program. The AMU worked with MSFC NE personnel to implement these algorithms in the LSP Upper Winds tool to provide a continuous spliced wind profile.The AMU transitioned the MSFC NE algorithms to interpolate and fill data gaps in the data, implement a Gaussian weighting function to produce 50-m altitude intervals in each sensor, and splice the data together from both DRWPs. They did so by porting the MSFC NE code written with MATLAB software into Microsoft Excel Visual Basic for Applications (VBA). After testing the new algorithms in stand-alone VBA modules, the AMU replaced the existing VBA code in the LSP Upper Winds tool with the new algorithms. They then tested the code in the LSP Upper Winds tool with archived data. The tool will be delivered to the 45 WS after the 50-MHz DRWP upgrade is complete and the tool is tested with real-time data. The 50-MHz DRWP upgrade is expected to be finished in October 2014.

Space launch↗

NASA NTRS1991

Expanded serial communication capability for the transport systems research vehicle laptop computers

A recent upgrade of the Transport Systems Research Vehicle (TSRV) operated by the Advanced Transport Operating Systems Program Office at the NASA Langley Research Center included installation of a number of Grid 1500 series laptop computers. Each unit is a 80386-based IBM PC clone. RS-232 data busses are needed for TSRV flight research programs, and it has been advantageous to extend the application of the Grids in this area. Use was made of the expansion features of the Grid internal bus to add a user programmable serial communication channel. Software to allow use of the Grid bus expansion has been written and placed in a Turbo C library for incorporation into applications programs in a transparent manner via function calls. Port setup; interrupt-driven, two-way data transfer; and software flow control are built into the library functions.

Easley, Wesley C.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Integrated Component-based Data Acquisition Systems for Aerospace Test Facilities

The Multi-Instrument Integrated Data Acquisition System (MIIDAS), developed by the NASA Langley Research Center, uses commercial off the shelf (COTS) products, integrated with custom software, to provide a broad range of capabilities at a low cost throughout the system s entire life cycle. MIIDAS combines data acquisition capabilities with online and post-test data reduction computations. COTS products lower purchase and maintenance costs by reducing the level of effort required to meet system requirements. Object-oriented methods are used to enhance modularity, encourage reusability, and to promote adaptability, reducing software development costs. Using only COTS products and custom software supported on multiple platforms reduces the cost of porting the system to other platforms. The post-test data reduction capabilities of MIIDAS have been installed at four aerospace testing facilities at NASA Langley Research Center. The systems installed at these facilities provide a common user interface, reducing the training time required for personnel that work across multiple facilities. The techniques employed by MIIDAS enable NASA to build a system with a lower initial purchase price and reduced sustaining maintenance costs. With MIIDAS, NASA has built a highly flexible next generation data acquisition and reduction system for aerospace test facilities that meets customer expectations.

Ross, Richard W.↗

NASA NTRS2006

Rapid Assessment of Aircraft Structural Topologies for Multidisciplinary Optimization and Weight Estimation

Algorithms for rapid generation of moderate-fidelity structural finite element models of air vehicle structures to allow more accurate weight estimation earlier in the vehicle design process have been developed. Application of these algorithms should help to rapidly assess many structural layouts before the start of the preliminary design phase and eliminate weight penalties imposed when actual structure weights exceed those estimated during conceptual design. By defining the structural topology in a fully parametric manner, the structure can be mapped to arbitrary vehicle configurations being considered during conceptual design optimization. Recent enhancements to this approach include the porting of the algorithms to a platform-independent software language Python, and modifications to specifically consider morphing aircraft-type configurations. Two sample cases which illustrate these recent developments are presented.

Samareh, Jamshid A.↗

NASA NTRS1991

The QDP/PLT user's guide

PLT is a high level plotting package. A Programmer can create a default plot suited for the data being displayed. At run times, users can then interact with the plot overriding any or all of these defaults. The user is also provided the capability to fit functions to the displayed data. This ability to display, interact with, and to fit the data make PLT a useful tool in the analysis of data. The Quick and Dandy Plotter (QDP) program will read ASCII text files that contain PLT commands and data. Thus, QDP provides and easy way to use the PLT software QPD files provide a convenient way to exchange data. The QPD/PLT software is written in standard FORTRAN 77 and has been ported to VAX VMS, SUN UNIX, IBM AIX, NeXT NextStep, and MS-DOS systems.

Tennant, Allyn F.↗

NASA NTRS1996

Assumed--stress hybrid elements with drilling degrees of freedom for nonlinear analysis of composite structures

The goal of this research project is to develop assumed-stress hybrid elements with rotational degrees of freedom for analyzing composite structures. During the first year of the three-year activity, the effort was directed to further assess the AQ4 shell element and its extensions to buckling and free vibration problems. In addition, the development of a compatible 2-node beam element was to be accomplished. The extensions and new developments were implemented in the Computational Structural Mechanics Testbed COMET. An assessment was performed to verify the implementation and to assess the performance of these elements in terms of accuracy. During the second and third years, extensions to geometrically nonlinear problems were developed and tested. This effort involved working with the nonlinear solution strategy as well as the nonlinear formulation for the elements. This research has resulted in the development and implementation of two additional element processors (ES22 for the beam element and ES24 for the shell elements) in COMET. The software was developed using a SUN workstation and has been ported to the NASA Langley Convex named blackbird. Both element processors are now part of the baseline version of COMET.

Knight, Norman F., Jr.↗

NASA NTRS1993

Development of a case tool to support decision based software development

A summary of the accomplishments of the research over the past year are presented. Achievements include: made demonstrations with DHC, a prototype supporting decision based software development (DBSD) methodology, for Paramax personnel at ODU; met with Paramax personnel to discuss DBSD issues, the process of integrating DBSD and Refinery and the porting process model; completed and submitted a paper describing DBSD paradigm to IFIP '92; completed and presented a paper describing the approach for software reuse at the Software Reuse Workshop in April 1993; continued to extend DHC with a project agenda, facility necessary for a better project management; completed a primary draft of the re-engineering process model for porting; created a logging form to trace all the activities involved in the process of solving the reengineering problem, and developed a primary chart with the problems involved by the reengineering process.

Wild, Christian J.↗

NASA NTRS1991

T on the Cray X/MP

This research was aimed at porting the T programming language, a dialect of LISP, to the Cray X/MP computer. The effort involved research into systems engineering and software engineering problems related not only to compiler design and implementation, but also to parallel computation, the X/MP being a shared-memory multiprocessor. Porting also involved the sub-tasks of retargeting the assembler, code-generator, and run-time system. A reasonably effective porting methodology that is relatively straight forward, although more difficult than table-driven approaches, has been developed. The run-time system was not ported, and thus the T programs cannot be run without explicit linking of the required run-time support. The run-time performance gain achieved in generated code was found to be disappointing. Recommendations for the achievement of higher performance are given.

Hudak, Paul↗

NASA NTRS2013

Plant Habitat Telemetry / Command Interface and E-MIST

Plant Habitat (PH) is an experiment to be taken to the International Space Station (ISS) in 2016. It is critical that ground support computers have the ability to uplink commands to control PH, and that ISS computers have the ability to downlink PH telemetry data to ground support. This necessitates communication software that can send, receive, and process, PH specific commands and telemetry. The objective of the Plant Habitat Telemetry/ Command Interface is to provide this communication software, and to couple it with an intuitive Graphical User Interface (GUI). Initial investigation of the project objective led to the decision that code be written in C++ because of its compatibility with existing source code infrastructures and robustness. Further investigation led to a determination that multiple Ethernet packet structures would need to be created to effectively transmit data. Setting a standard for packet structures would allow us to distinguish these packets that would range from command type packets to sub categories of telemetry packets. In order to handle this range of packet types, the conclusion was made to take an object-oriented programming approach which complemented our decision to use the C++ programming language. In addition, extensive utilization of port programming concepts was required to implement the core functionality of the communication software. Also, a concrete understanding of a packet processing software was required in order to put aU the components of ISS-to-Ground Support Equipment (GSE) communication together and complete the objective. A second project discussed in this paper is Exposing Microbes to the Stratosphere (EMIST). This project exposes microbes into the stratosphere to observe how they are impacted by atmospheric effects. This paper focuses on the electrical and software expectations of the project, specifically drafting the printed circuit board, and programming the on-board sensors. The Eagle Computer-Aided Drafting (CAD) software was used to draft the E-MIST circuit. This required several component libraries to be created. Coding the sensors and obtaining sensor data involved using the Arduino Uno developmental board and coding language, and properly wiring peripheral sensors to the microcontroller (the central control unit of the experiment).

Walker, Uriae M.↗

NASA NTRS1996

Parallelization and Algorithmic Enhancements of High Resolution IRAS Image Construction

The Infrared Astronomical Satellite caried out a nearly complete survey of the infrared sky, and the survey data are important for the study of many astrophysical phenomena. However, many data sets at other wavelengths have higher resolutions than that of the co-added IRAS maps, and high resolution IRAS images are strongly desired both for their own information content and their usefulness in correlation. The HIRES program was developed by the Infrared Processing and Analysis Center (IPAC) to produce high resolution (approx. 1') images from IRAS data using the Maximum Correlation Method (MCM). We describe the port of HIRES to the Intel Paragon, a massively parallel supercomputer, other software developments for mass production of HIRES images, and the IRAS Galaxy Atlas, a project to map the Galactic plane at 60 and 100(micro)m.

Satellite infrared IRAS IRAS maps IRAS images↗

NASA NTRS1983

Development and evaluation of a Fault-Tolerant Multiprocessor (FTMP) computer. Volume 2: FTMP software

The software developed for the Fault-Tolerant Multiprocessor (FTMP) is described. The FTMP executive is a timer-interrupt driven dispatcher that schedules iterative tasks which run at 3.125, 12.5, and 25 Hz. Major tasks which run under the executive include system configuration control, flight control, and display. The flight control task includes autopilot and autoland functions for a jet transport aircraft. System Displays include status displays of all hardware elements (processors, memories, I/O ports, buses), failure log displays showing transient and hard faults, and an autopilot display. All software is in a higher order language (AED, an ALGOL derivative). The executive is a fully distributed general purpose executive which automatically balances the load among available processor triads. Provisions for graceful performance degradation under processing overload are an integral part of the scheduling algorithms.

Lala, J. H.↗

NASA NTRS2013

Tool Use Within NASA Software Quality Assurance

As space mission software systems become larger and more complex, it is increasingly important for the software assurance effort to have the ability to effectively assess both the artifacts produced during software system development and the development process itself. Conceptually, assurance is a straightforward idea - it is the result of activities carried out by an organization independent of the software developers to better inform project management of potential technical and programmatic risks, and thus increase management's confidence in the decisions they ultimately make. In practice, effective assurance for large, complex systems often entails assessing large, complex software artifacts (e.g., requirements specifications, architectural descriptions) as well as substantial amounts of unstructured information (e.g., anomaly reports resulting from testing activities during development). In such an environment, assurance engineers can benefit greatly from appropriate tool support. In order to do so, an assurance organization will need accurate and timely information on the tool support available for various types of assurance activities. In this paper, we investigate the current use of tool support for assurance organizations within NASA, and describe on-going work at JPL for providing assurance organizations with the information about tools they need to use them effectively.

software assurance↗

NASA NTRS2017

Novel End-to-End Molecular Biology Approach for Direct Nanopore 1D cDNA Sequencing of Reverse Transcribed mRNAs Purified from Cell Cultures by the NASA ISS WetLab2 SPM

Continued space bioscience research onboard the International Space Station (ISS) and future long-duration flight missions to the Moon or Mars will require the ability to conduct on-orbit molecular analysis of biological samples independently from Earth. In the last year two new molecular analytic technologies have been installed and the technologies demonstrated onboard the ISS: The Sample Prep Module (SPM) WetLab-2 (WL2) qRT-PCR toolbox and the Oxford Nanopore MinIon Biomolecule Sequencer. Here we describe protocol development and integration into existing ISS technology for end-to-end on-orbit biological sample processing and molecular analysis with real time results generated utilizing only field offline analytic software. For this experiment we isolated primary cells from bone marrow flushes of wild type B6129SF2 mice (Jackson Labs) long bones. The cell isolate was then processed using the SPM to produce total 147nanograms of RNA. The total RNA was purified to only messenger RNA (mRNA) and transferred to Smartcycler Thermocycle ISS kit consumable tube using Eppendorf gel loading pipette tips for further processing. Complementary first strand cDNA was synthesized using OLIGO dT priming followed by addition of SuperScript II Reverse Transcriptase and thermal cycling as per manufacturers instruction. All thermal cycling was conducted using the ISS WetLab-2 Cephid Smarcycler real time thermal cycler. Our protocol takes advantage of mRNAs native poly(A) tail, synthesized in vivo to protect the mRNA from degradation by endonucleases, to eliminate end-prep for adapter ligation. The adapted library is purified using MyOne C1 Streptavidin beads before elution in buffer. The pre-sequencing library is diluted in the loading buffer and injected into the MinIon sample port, drawn into the nanopore window by capillary action, and sequenced using the MinKnown software with local basecalling. The sequencing read produced 34.5 million events and local basecalling produced 117,301 successful reads. NCBI Blast of the data for the mouse genome resulted in 2,462 successful nucleotide collection matches (gene sequences) exceeding 70 homology. These results demonstrate the viability of this novel flight ready end-to-end sample analytic methodology and provide a real time homolog for flight experimentation utilizing supply kits and technologies that have already been demonstrated on ISS.

MinIon↗

DOE OSTI2025

Assessing VQLS for Fluid Dynamics on a Hybrid Quantum-HPC Stack

Recent advances in quantum linear solvers offer a promising direction for accelerating extreme scientific computations such as fluid dynamics. However, the deep and complex circuits required by many quantum algorithms limit their practical use on current quantum hardware. The Variational Quantum Linear Solver (VQLS) presents a viable alternative for near-term quantum devices (NISQ), and initial efforts have explored its application to select fluid dynamics problems. In this work, we evaluate the use of VQLS for canonical fluid dynamics problems, aiming to identify pathways for generalizing its implementation across a broader class of systems. We analyze the impact of various circuit ansatz and classical optimizers on solution quality and convergence behavior. Furthermore, we assess the algorithm's feasibility within a hybrid quantum–high-performance computing (HPC) framework by porting it to QFw, a state-of-the-art quantum-HPC software stack. 11This manuscript has been authored by UT-Battelle, LLC, under contract DE-AC05-00OR22725 with the US Department of Energy (DOE). The US government retains and the publisher, by accepting the article for publication, acknowledges that the US government retains a nonexclusive, paid-up, irrevocable, worldwide license to publish or reproduce the published form of this manuscript, or allow others to do so, for US government purposes. DOE will provide public access to these results of federally sponsored research in accordance with the DOE Public Access Plan. This research used resources of the Oak Ridge Leadership Computing Facility at the Oak Ridge National Laboratory, which is supported by the Office of Science of the US DOE under Contract No. DE-AC05-00OR22725.

Gopalakrishnan Meena, Murali [ORNL] (ORCID:0000000↗