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At least 127 records · Page 7
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2000

Cockpit weather information system

Weather information, periodically collected from throughout a global region, is periodically assimilated and compiled at a central source and sent via a high speed data link to a satellite communication service, such as COMSAT. That communication service converts the compiled weather information to GSDB format, and transmits the GSDB encoded information to an orbiting broadcast satellite, INMARSAT, transmitting the information at a data rate of no less than 10.5 kilobits per second. The INMARSAT satellite receives that data over its P-channel and rebroadcasts the GDSB encoded weather information, in the microwave L-band, throughout the global region at a rate of no less than 10.5 KB/S. The transmission is received aboard an aircraft by means of an onboard SATCOM receiver and the output is furnished to a weather information processor. A touch sensitive liquid crystal panel display allows the pilot to select the weather function by touching a predefined icon overlain on the display's surface and in response a color graphic display of the weather is displayed for the pilot.

Tu, Jeffrey Chen-Yu↗
NASA NTRS2012

MPST Software: MoonKommand

This software automatically processes Sally Ride Science (SRS) delivered MoonKAM camera control files (ccf) into uplink products for the GRAIL-A and GRAIL-B spacecraft as part of an education and public outreach (EPO) extension to the Grail Mission. Once properly validated and deemed safe for execution onboard the spacecraft, MoonKommand generates the command products via the Automated Sequence Processor (ASP) and generates uplink (.scmf) files for radiation to the Grail-A and/or Grail-B spacecraft. Any errors detected along the way are reported back to SRS via email. With Moon Kommand, SRS can control their EPO instrument as part of a fully automated process. Inputs are received from SRS as either image capture files (.ccficd) for new image requests, or downlink/delete files (.ccfdl) for requesting image downlink from the instrument and on-board memory management. The Moon - Kommand outputs are command and file-load (.scmf) files that will be uplinked by the Deep Space Network (DSN). Without MoonKommand software, uplink product generation for the MoonKAM instrument would be a manual process. The software is specific to the Moon - KAM instrument on the GRAIL mission. At the time of this writing, the GRAIL mission was making final preparations to begin the science phase, which was scheduled to continue until June 2012.

Kwok, John H.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Novel RF Architecture for Simultaneous Communication, Navigation, and Remote Sensing with Software-Defined Radio

The rapid growth of SmallSat and CubeSat missions at NASA has necessitated a re-evaluation of communication and remote-sensing architectures. Novel designs for CubeSat-sized single-board computers can now include larger Field-Programmable Gate Arrays (FPGAs) and faster System-on-Chip (SoCs) devices. These components substantially improve onboard processing capabilities so that varying subsystems no longer require an independent processor. By replacing individual Radio Frequency (RF) systems with a single software-defined radio (SDR) and processor, mission designers have greater control over reliability, performance, and efficiency. The presented architecture combines individual processing systems into a single design and establishes a modular SDR architecture capable of both remote-sensing and communication applications. This new approach based on a multi-input multi-output (MIMO) SDR features a scalable architecture optimized for Size, Weight, Power, and Cost (SWaP-C), with sufficient noise performance and phase-coherence to enable both remote-sensing and navigation applications, while providing a communication solution for simultaneous S-band and X-band transmission. This SDR design is developed around the NASA CubeSat Card Standard (CS2) that provides the required modularity through simplified backplane and interchangeable options for multiple radiation-hardened/tolerant processors. This architecture provides missions with a single platform for high-rate communication and a future platform to develop cognitive radio systems.

Advanced Avionics, Hybrid Processing, Data Process↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Enabling Reliable, Fault-Tolerant Autonomous Lunar Habitats with High-Performance Spaceflight Computing

The lunar surface presents unfavorable constraints and harsh living conditions. To address these challenges, autonomous habitats will require complex integrated systems that combine advanced software, high-performance hardware, and cutting-edge sensors to ensure sustainability, safety, and operational efficiency. Consequently, maintaining a sustainable presence on the Moon requires reliable infrastructure and efficient development, precise monitoring, and utilization of resources within a lunar installation. These elements are essential not only to ensure that lunar settlement can be long-term, self-sustaining, and resource-efficient, but also to serve as a foundation for future missions and eventual human habitation on Mars. Humans are not native to the Moon; therefore, our survival and ability to thrive will depend on autonomous systems that can foster safety and resilience through high-availability architectures, graceful degradation, and highly fault-tolerant spaceflight hardware capable of continuing operation during failures. This requires advanced human-rated distributed systems architectures with specialized electronics, scalable capabilities, and an integrated design approach. Unlike current practices focused on short-term missions and regularly maintained components, permanent lunar compute systems must be designed for extended operations beyond mission durations. This paper explores the necessity of transitioning toward fault- tolerant, highly autonomous hardware systems designed for multi-year missions. It also identifies critical subsystems that require high levels of autonomy, supported by radiation-hardened processors and extreme thermal loads, which are essential to mitigate long-term degradation and ensure sustainable lunar habitation. Finally, the paper aligns with NASA’s identified Civil Space Shortfalls, particularly in high-performance onboard computing, advanced data acquisition, extreme-environment avionics, radiation monitoring and countermeasures, and autonomous health management. It proposes NASA’s new High-Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) processor as a turnkey solution, delivering 100 times the performance-per-watt of legacy rad-hard CPUs and enabling onboard AI, edge computing, and fault-tolerant features essential for sustained lunar autonomy and beyond.

Sarkis S Mikaelian↗
NASA NTRS1986

A computer modeling methodology and tool for assessing design concepts for the Space Station Data Management System

A computer modeling tool is being developed to assess candidate designs for the Space Station Data Management System (DMS). The DMS is to be a complex distributed computer system including the processor, storage devices, local area networks, and software that will support all processing functions onboard the Space Station. The modeling tool will allow a candidate design for the DMS, or for other subsystems that use the DMS, to be evaluated in terms of parameters. The tool and its associated modeling methodology are intended for use by DMS and subsystem designers to perform tradeoff analyses between design concepts using varied architectures and technologies.

Jones, W. R.↗
NASA NTRS2011

High-Throughput, Adaptive FFT Architecture for FPGA-Based Spaceborne Data Processors

Exponential growth in microelectronics technology such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) has enabled high-performance spaceborne instruments with increasing onboard data processing capabilities. As a commonly used digital signal processing (DSP) building block, fast Fourier transform (FFT) has been of great interest in onboard data processing applications, which needs to strike a reasonable balance between high-performance (throughput, block size, etc.) and low resource usage (power, silicon footprint, etc.). It is also desirable to be designed so that a single design can be reused and adapted into instruments with different requirements. The Multi-Pass Wide Kernel FFT (MPWK-FFT) architecture was developed, in which the high-throughput benefits of the parallel FFT structure and the low resource usage of Singleton s single butterfly method is exploited. The result is a wide-kernel, multipass, adaptive FFT architecture. The 32K-point MPWK-FFT architecture includes 32 radix-2 butterflies, 64 FIFOs to store the real inputs, 64 FIFOs to store the imaginary inputs, complex twiddle factor storage, and FIFO logic to route the outputs to the correct FIFO. The inputs are stored in sequential fashion into the FIFOs, and the outputs of each butterfly are sequentially written first into the even FIFO, then the odd FIFO. Because of the order of the outputs written into the FIFOs, the depth of the even FIFOs, which are 768 each, are 1.5 times larger than the odd FIFOs, which are 512 each. The total memory needed for data storage, assuming that each sample is 36 bits, is 2.95 Mbits. The twiddle factors are stored in internal ROM inside the FPGA for fast access time. The total memory size to store the twiddle factors is 589.9Kbits. This FFT structure combines the benefits of high throughput from the parallel FFT kernels and low resource usage from the multi-pass FFT kernels with desired adaptability. Space instrument missions that need onboard FFT capabilities such as the proposed DESDynl, SWOT (Surface Water Ocean Topography), and Europa sounding radar missions would greatly benefit from this technology with significant reductions in non-recurring cost and risk.

NguyenKobayashi, Kayla↗
NASA NTRS2022

Terrain Relative Navigation in a Lunar Landing Scenario Using autoNGC

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is developing Autonomous Navigation Guidance and Control (autoNGC) as a flight software system for future onboard use for missions in a variety of orbital regimes, including cislunar space and beyond. This paper describes processor-in-the-loop (PIL) testing using a lunar landing scenario with terrain relative navigation (TRN) and weak-signal GPS. We give an overview of the autoNGC project and describe preliminary navigation simulation results. We also describe the TRN PIL tests on a flight-like development board, using simulated images rendered from Lunar Reconnaissance Orbit high-resolution digital terrain models. The navigation simulations show that weak-signal GPS combined with TRN during a descent from a low lunar parking orbit results in sufficiently low navigation uncertainties to support such a mission profile independent of ground-based navigation. The PIL tests show that onboard image processing and landmark correlation is achievable at a sufficiently high measurement rate.

Michael A Shoemaker↗
NASA NTRS1976

A synthetic aperture processor using CCD signal processing techniques

Synthetic aperture radar (SAR) imaging was the most suitable technique for achieving high resolution imagery through atmospheric cloud cover. This feature was important for planetary as well as earth orbiting satellite systems, and for military aircraft applications. Such applications require onboard data processing or wide-band data transmission systems in order to handle the large amounts of raw data produced by such systems. A number of techniques were utilized in implementing SAR processors. Frequency filtering and Fourier transform operations using both optical and digital techniques were utilized in SAR processing.

Bailey, W. H.↗
NASA NTRS1980

Packet communications in satellites with multiple-beam antennas and signal processing

A communication satellite with a multiple-beam antenna and onboard signal processing is considered for use in a 'message-switched' data relay system. The signal processor may incorporate demodulation, routing, storage, and remodulation of the data. A system user model is established and key functional elements for the signal processing are identified. With the throughput and delay requirements as the controlled variables, the hardware complexity, operational discipline, occupied bandwidth, and overall user end-to-end cost are estimated for (1) random-access packet switching; and (2) reservation-access packet switching. Other aspects of this network (eg, the adaptability to channel switched traffic requirements) are examined. For the given requirements and constraints, the reservation system appears to be the most attractive protocol.

Davies, R.↗
NASA NTRS1978

LANDSAT-2 and LANDSAT-3 Flight evaluation report

Flight performance analysis of LANDSAT 2 and LANDSAT 3 are presented for the period July 1978 to October 1978. Spacecraft operations and orbital parameters are summarized for each spacecraft. Data are provided on the performance and operation of the following subsystems onboard the spacecraft: power; attitude control; command/clock; telemetry; orbit adjust; magnetic moment compensating assembly; unified S band/premodulation processor; electrical interface; thermal narrowband tape recorders; wideband telemetry; attitude measurement sensor; wideband video tape recorders; return beam vidicon; multispectral scanner subsystem; and data collections.

Winchester, T. W.↗
NASA NTRS2005

Autonomous Flight Safety System Road Test

On February 3, 2005, Kennedy Space Center (KSC) conducted the first Autonomous Flight Safety System (AFSS) test on a moving vehicle -- a van driven around the KSC industrial area. A subset of the Phase III design was used consisting of a single computer, GPS receiver, and UPS antenna. The description and results of this road test are described in this report.AFSS is a joint KSC and Wallops Flight Facility project that is in its third phase of development. AFSS is an independent subsystem intended for use with Expendable Launch Vehicles that uses tracking data from redundant onboard sensors to autonomously make flight termination decisions using software-based rules implemented on redundant flight processors. The goals of this project are to increase capabilities by allowing launches from locations that do not have or cannot afford extensive ground-based range safety assets, to decrease range costs, and to decrease reaction time for special situations.

Simpson, James C.↗
NASA NTRS2005

Autonomous Flight Safety System September 27, 2005, Aircraft Test

This report describes the first aircraft test of the Autonomous Flight Safety System (AFSS). The test was conducted on September 27, 2005, near Kennedy Space Center (KSC) using a privately-owned single-engine plane and evaluated the performance of several basic flight safety rules using real-time data onboard a moving aerial vehicle. This test follows the first road test of AFSS conducted in February 2005 at KSC. AFSS is a joint KSC and Wallops Flight Facility (WEF) project that is in its third phase of development. AFSS is an independent subsystem intended for use with Expendable Launch Vehicles that uses tracking data from redundant onboard sensors to autonomously make flight termination decisions using software-based rules implemented on redundant flight processors. The goals of this project are to increase capabilities by allowing launches from locations that do not have or cannot afford extensive ground-based range safety assets, to decrease range costs, and to decrease reaction time for special situations. The mission rules are configured for each operation by the responsible Range Safety authorities and can be loosely categorized in four major categories: Parameter Threshold Violations, Physical Boundary Violations present position and instantaneous impact point (TIP), Gate Rules static and dynamic, and a Green-Time Rule. Examples of each of these rules were evaluated during this aircraft test.

Simpson, James C.↗
NASA NTRS2013

RUSHMAPS: Real-Time Uploadable Spherical Harmonic Moment Analysis for Particle Spectrometers

RUSHMAPS is a new onboard data reduction scheme that gives real-time access to key science parameters (e.g. moments) of a class of heliophysics science and/or solar system exploration investigation that includes plasma particle spectrometers (PPS), but requires moments reporting (density, bulk-velocity, temperature, pressure, etc.) of higher-level quality, and tolerates a lowpass (variable quality) spectral representation of the corresponding particle velocity distributions, such that telemetry use is minimized. The proposed methodology trades access to the full-resolution velocity distribution data, saving on telemetry, for real-time access to both the moments and an adjustable-quality (increasing quality increases volume) spectral representation of distribution functions. Traditional onboard data storage and downlink bandwidth constraints severely limit PPS system functionality and drive cost, which, as a consequence, drives a limited data collection and lower angular energy and time resolution. This prototypical system exploit, using high-performance processing technology at GSFC (Goddard Space Flight Center), uses a SpaceCube and/or Maestro-type platform for processing. These processing platforms are currently being used on the International Space Station as a technology demonstration, and work is currently ongoing in a new onboard computation system for the Earth Science missions, but they have never been implemented in heliospheric science or solar system exploration missions. Preliminary analysis confirms that the targeted processor platforms possess the processing resources required for realtime application of these algorithms to the spectrometer data. SpaceCube platforms demonstrate that the target architecture possesses the sort of compact, low-mass/power, radiation-tolerant characteristics needed for flight. These high-performing hybrid systems embed unprecedented amounts of onboard processing power in the CPU (central processing unit), FPGAs (field programmable gate arrays), and DSP (digital signal processing) elements. The fundamental computational algorithm de constructs 3D velocity distributions in terms of spherical harmonic spectral coefficients (which are analogous to a Fourier sine-cosine decomposition), but uses instead spherical harmonics Legendre polynomial orthogonal functions as a basis for the expansion, portraying each 2D angular distribution at every energy or, geometrically, spherical speed-shell swept by the particle spectrometer. Optionally, these spherical harmonic spectral coefficients may be telemetered to the ground. These will provide a smoothed description of the velocity distribution function whose quality will depend on the number of coefficients determined. Successfully implemented on the GSFC-developed processor, the capability to integrate the proposed methodology with both heritage and anticipated future plasma particle spectrometer designs is demonstrated (with sufficiently detailed design analysis to advance TRL) to show specific science relevancy with future HSD (Heliophysics Science Division) solar-interplanetary, planetary missions, sounding rockets and/or CubeSat missions.

Figueroa-Vinas, Adolfo↗
NASA NTRS2012

SCaN Testbed Software Development and Lessons Learned

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has developed an on-orbit, adaptable, Software Defined Radio (SDR)Space Telecommunications Radio System (STRS)-based testbed facility to conduct a suite of experiments to advance technologies, reduce risk, and enable future mission capabilities on the International Space Station (ISS). The SCAN Testbed Project will provide NASA, industry, other Government agencies, and academic partners the opportunity to develop and field communications, navigation, and networking technologies in the laboratory and space environment based on reconfigurable, SDR platforms and the STRS Architecture.The SDRs are a new technology for NASA, and the support infrastructure they require is different from legacy, fixed function radios. SDRs offer the ability to reconfigure on-orbit communications by changing software for new waveforms and operating systems to enable new capabilities or fix any anomalies, which was not a previous option. They are not stand alone devices, but required a new approach to effectively control them and flow data. This requires extensive software to be developed to utilize the full potential of these reconfigurable platforms. The paper focuses on development, integration and testing as related to the avionics processor system, and the software required to command, control, monitor, and interact with the SDRs, as well as the other communication payload elements. An extensive effort was required to develop the flight software and meet the NASA requirements for software quality and safety. The flight avionics must be radiation tolerant, and these processors have limited capability in comparison to terrestrial counterparts. A big challenge was that there are three SDRs onboard, and interfacing with multiple SDRs simultaneously complicatesd the effort. The effort also includes ground software, which is a key element for both the command of the payload, and displaying data created by the payload. The verification of the software was an extensive effort. The challenges of specifying a suitable test matrix with reconfigurable systems that offer numerous configurations is highlighted. Since the flight system testing requires methodical, controlled testing that limits risk, a nearly identical ground system to the on-orbit flight system was required to develop the software and write verification procedures before it was installed and tested on the flight system. The development of the SCAN testbed was an accelerated effort to meet launch constraints, and this paper discusses tradeoffs made to balance needed software functionality and still maintain the schedule. Future upgrades are discussed that optimize the avionics and allow experimenters to utilize the SCAN testbed potential.

radio communication↗
NASA NTRS2017

ISS Potable Water Sampling and Chemical Analysis Results for 2016

This paper continues the annual tradition of summarizing at this conference the results of chemical analyses performed on archival potable water samples returned from the International Space Station (ISS). 2016 represented a banner year for life on board the ISS, including the successful conclusion for two crew members of a record one-year mission. Water reclaimed from urine and/or humidity condensate remained the primary source of potable water for the crew members of ISS Expeditions 46-50. The year 2016 was also marked by the end of a long-standing tradition of U.S. sampling and monitoring of Russian Segment potable water sources. Two water samples taken during Expedition 46 in February 2016 and returned on Soyuz 44, represented the final Russian Segment samples to be collected and analyzed by the U.S. side. Although anticipated for 2016, a rise in the total organic carbon (TOC) concentration of the product water from the U.S. water processor assembly due to breakthrough of organic contaminants from the system did not materialize, as evidenced by the onboard TOC analyzer and archive sample results.

Straub, John E., II↗
NASA NTRS2017

ISS Potable Water Sampling and Chemical Analysis Results for 2016

This paper continues the annual tradition, at this conference, of summarizing the results of chemical analyses performed on archival potable water samples returned from the International Space Station (ISS). 2016 represented a banner year for life aboard the ISS, including the successful conclusion for 2 crewmembers of a record 1-year mission. Water reclaimed from urine and/or humidity condensate remained the primary source of potable water for the crewmembers of ISS Expeditions 46-50. The year was also marked by the end of a long-standing tradition of U.S. sampling and monitoring of Russian Segment potable water sources. Two water samples, taken during Expedition 46 and returned on Soyuz 44 in March 2016, represented the final Russian Segment samples to be collected and analyzed by the U.S. side. Although anticipated for 2016, a rise in the total organic carbon (TOC) concentration of the product water from the U.S. water processor assembly due to breakthrough of organic contaminants from the system did not materialize, as evidenced by the onboard TOC analyzer and archival sample results.

Straub, John E., II↗
NASA NTRS2004

Software Processes SAR Motion-Measurement Data

Motion Measurement Processor (MMP) is one of three computer programs that are used together in the operation of a terrain-mapping dual-frequency interferometric synthetic-aperture-radar (SAR) system. The other two programs - Jurassicprok and Calibration Processor - are described in the two immediately preceding articles. MMP acquires all the motion and attitude data collected by onboard instrumentation systems, including radar, laser and camera metrology, inertial navigation systems, and Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. MMP combines all this information and processes it into all the trajectory information needed to run Jurassicprok, which performs the interferometric processing and mapping functions. MMP includes several Kalman filters for combining and smoothing aircraft motion and attitude data, and least-squares inversion and filtering software tools for solving for interferometric baseline lengths. MMP synchronizes the motion and radar data. It combines the various measurement data into a unified, seven-dimensional reference system and puts out the resulting filtered trajectory and attitude data along with instructions for use of the data by Jurassicprok, as well as the command files used to operate Jurassicprok.

Freedman, Adam↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Signal and Power Integrity Design Methodology for High-Performance Flight Computing Systems

Computing capabilities of space systems have in-creased onboard performance by orders of magnitude with the use of radiation-tolerant field-programmable gate arrays (FPGA)and processors. The incorporation of signal and power integrity analysis with printed circuit board (PCB) design in reliable computing architectures for space systems has become critical to enable future mission capabilities. Developers launch high-performance processors into a breadth of orbits and missions, running varying applications that create challenges for designing reliable computing hardware. Specifically, for these designs, academic and industry research has focused on component radiation performance, fault mitigation, and reliable architectures. How-ever, other design parameters including electromagnetic interference (EMI), PCB stackup, signal integrity (SI), voltage regulator module (VRM) design, and power distribution network (PDN)are often deprioritized or disregarded as the design matures. Since these characteristics are becoming more significant in high-performance processor designs, this research presents a hardware design and analysis methodology for high-performance, space-computing systems that focuses on a holistic design approach and PDN reliability. While these challenges exist across all space hardware, the reduced PCB dimensions imposed by SmallSats and CubeSats introduce additional hurdles, specifically to VRM and decoupling design. By examining the relationship between the PDN and radiation performance, an analytical relationship is developed that incorporates Total Ionizing Dose and Single-Event Transients to ensure reliability throughout the mission duration. The presented design methodology is applied to the SpaceCube v3.0 Mini, an FPGA-based on-board science data processing system developed at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center.

Advanced avionics↗