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NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Delay Tolerant Networks: Operational, Evolving, an Ready for Expansion

The future of humanity’s presence beyond Earth depends on the successful commercialization of space. For commercialization to succeed, companies need cost-efficient architectures to support their business models and minimize risks for human capital, design, development, and operations. An ongoing challenge to any space enterprise is the reality that terrestrial network technologies are insufficient to provide reliable communications between assets in space. Whether you need to ensure your valuable data is safely transmitted to the ground or reliably delivered between platforms in orbit, ensuring data integrity over intermittent communication links is a necessity. Current solutions to space communications rely heavily on manual recording, storing, and retrieval of data from spacecraft. The current standard in space communication protocols, Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) Space Packet standard, is reliant on inflexible network architectures based around mission-critical infrastructure to ensure data delivery. However, by automating the recording, storing, retrieval, and verification of data with Delay Tolerant Networks (DTN), the operator is freed from the dependence on manual data management and expensive mission critical infrastructure. NASA has been developing delay tolerant systems since the late 1990’s. Multiple DTN implementations have been established during that time, each suited to different use cases. Most notably, the DTN deployment for the International Space Station (ISS) includes demonstration of two DTN technologies: Interplanetary Overlay Network (ION) and Delay Tolerant Network Marshall Enterprise (DTNME). Beyond ISS, there are even more NASA DTN deployments being considered. Now that DTN implementations are maturing, it is appropriate to reflect upon these decades of work, review the integration and performance of the existing ISS deployment, and explore the future possibilities for DTN deployment industry-wide. The ISS DTN deployment is a complex architecture consisting of different DTN implementations for the onboard and ground network environments. The ION DTN implementation is being used in the on-board network. The Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) DTN implementation, DTNME, is used by the ground network supporting ISS and will soon be a second onboard gateway too. The two implementations work cooperatively to provide high fidelity data services to flight operations users and payload developers across the globe. Though the two implementations yield a quality service, limitations are evident. Data rate, data storage, and device management are constrained by the services themselves and the complex nature of the deployment. Evolution of operations concepts will improve system capabilities and stability, but significant improvement will require additional development to the implementations themselves and to the overall deployment architecture. Taking advantage of the ongoing development and operation of the ISS DTN service will be central to the success of the future evolutions of NASA DTN deployments while demonstrating the benefits of DTN’s low-cost reliable data communication protocols for the growing commercial space industry. A broad effort on DTN integration and support is necessary to promote expansion beyond existing applications. NASA is developing several useful DTN implementations across a number of different systems: ION, DTNME, High-Rate DTN (HDTN), Bundle Protocol Library (BPLib), and others. To prevent fragmentation, DTN implementation teams need to communicate, collaborate, and integrate with one another to build a solid operational foundation for new DTN deployments. The establishment of a group that can assist new DTN users with understanding the purpose of each DTN implementation, provide best practices, and serve as a general knowledge base is paramount. Potential use of DTN on Gateway and other future NASA missions further drives the need for streamlined communication between DTN implementation teams. A well-integrated and highly engaged NASA DTN working group should help provide system architects the best DTN solutions for future commercial space efforts. This paper will first review the history of DTN implementations, explore the shortcoming of current space networking solutions given available limits in technology, and therefore establish the need for Delay Tolerant Networking in space communications. Secondly, the authors will explore NASA’s array of DTN implementations and highlight their usefulness to space applications. Thirdly, this paper will establish general DTN implementation distinguishing factors. Fourthly, the authors will discuss attempts to create a generic DTN comparison matrix, and the authors will review potential future topics in DTN innovation and collaboration, highlighting several key future efforts. Finally, this paper will describe how the institution of a NASA DTN Working Group will benefit DTN adoption across the governmental and commercial space sector. The goal of this paper is to encourage enthusiasm for DTN, share strategies for improving DTN on both current and future applications, promote the collaboration of DTN implementation groups within the international space operations community, and open the conversations about DTN, priorities, complexities, and innovation to the wider spaceflight industry.

DTN↗

DOE OSTI2024

Planning Roadmap for DER Integration in India: Industry Best Practices and Resource Guide

Ensuring safe, reliable, cost-effective DER integration at scale requires holistic planning, broad stakeholder engagement, and should address key development areas such as standards adoption, equipment testing and certification, interoperability and cybersecurity, interconnection procedures, and advanced forecasting and DER management. Each of these areas currently represent significant challenges for utilities, regulators, OEMs, developers, and even consumers worldwide. India has already seen significant growth of DERs and has announced targets for substantial growth yet to come, with the potential for DERs to make up a non-negligible portion of the country's overall generation capacity. As such, it is of critical importance that Indian stakeholders consider the potential impacts of wide-spread adoption of DERs and take preemptive action related to the five development areas listed here, among others. India should consider strategies including the adoption of key DER standards related to interconnection, testing, and cybersecurity; enabling effective and secure communication channels for DER interoperability; testing and certifying DER equipment in accredited testing laboratories; building robust, streamlined interconnection procedures; and revamping legacy system planning structures to incorporate DERs in a holistic planning framework.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

NASA NTRS1996

Geodata Modeling and Query in Geographic Information Systems

Geographic information systems (GIS) deal with collecting, modeling, man- aging, analyzing, and integrating spatial (locational) and non-spatial (attribute) data required for geographic applications. Examples of spatial data are digital maps, administrative boundaries, road networks, and those of non-spatial data are census counts, land elevations and soil characteristics. GIS shares common areas with a number of other disciplines such as computer- aided design, computer cartography, database management, and remote sensing. None of these disciplines however, can by themselves fully meet the requirements of a GIS application. Examples of such requirements include: the ability to use locational data to produce high quality plots, perform complex operations such as network analysis, enable spatial searching and overlay operations, support spatial analysis and modeling, and provide data management functions such as efficient storage, retrieval, and modification of large datasets; independence, integrity, and security of data; and concurrent access to multiple users. It is on the data management issues that we devote our discussions in this monograph. Traditionally, database management technology have been developed for business applications. Such applications require, among other things, capturing the data requirements of high-level business functions and developing machine- level implementations; supporting multiple views of data and yet providing integration that would minimize redundancy and maintain data integrity and security; providing a high-level language for data definition and manipulation; allowing concurrent access to multiple users; and processing user transactions in an efficient manner. The demands on database management systems have been for speed, reliability, efficiency, cost effectiveness, and user-friendliness. Significant progress have been made in all of these areas over the last two decades to the point that many generalized database platforms are now available for developing data intensive applications that run in real-time. While continuous improvement is still being made at a very fast-paced and competitive rate, new application areas such as computer aided design, image processing, VLSI design, and GIS have been identified by many as the next generation of database applications. These new application areas pose serious challenges to the currently available database technology. At the core of these challenges is the nature of data that is manipulated. In traditional database applications, the database objects do not have any spatial dimension, and as such, can be thought of as point data in a multi-dimensional space. For example, each instance of an entity EMPLOYEE will have a unique value corresponding to every attribute such as employee id, employee name, employee address and so on. Thus, every Employee instance can be thought of as a point in a multi-dimensional space where each dimension is represented by an attribute. Furthermore, all operations on such data are one-dimensional. Thus, users may retrieve all entities satisfying one or more constraints. Examples of such constraints include employees with addresses in a certain area code, or salaries within a certain range. Even though constraints can be specified on multiple attributes (dimensions), the search for such data is essentially orthogonal across these dimensions.

Adam, Nabil↗

NASA NTRS2010

Software Model Checking of ARINC-653 Flight Code with MCP

The ARINC-653 standard defines a common interface for Integrated Modular Avionics (IMA) code. In particular, ARINC-653 Part 1 specifies a process- and partition-management API that is analogous to POSIX threads, but with certain extensions and restrictions intended to support the implementation of high reliability flight code. MCP is a software model checker, developed at NASA Ames, that provides capabilities for model checking C and C++ source code. In this paper, we present recent work aimed at implementing extensions to MCP that support ARINC-653, and we discuss the challenges and opportunities that consequentially arise. Providing support for ARINC-653 s time and space partitioning is nontrivial, though there are implicit benefits for partial order reduction possible as a consequence of the API s strict interprocess communication policy.

Thompson, Sarah J.↗

NASA NTRS2012

Demonstration of Passive Fuel Cell Thermal Management Technology

The NASA Glenn Research Center is developing advanced passive thermal management technology to reduce the mass and improve the reliability of space fuel cell systems for the NASA Exploration program. The passive thermal management system relies on heat conduction within highly thermally conductive cooling plates to move the heat from the central portion of the cell stack out to the edges of the fuel cell stack. Using the passive approach eliminates the need for a coolant pump and other cooling loop components within the fuel cell system which reduces mass and improves overall system reliability. Previous development demonstrated the performance of suitable highly thermally conductive cooling plates and integrated heat exchanger technology to collect the heat from the cooling plates (Ref. 1). The next step in the development of this passive thermal approach was the demonstration of the control of the heat removal process and the demonstration of the passive thermal control technology in actual fuel cell stacks. Tests were run with a simulated fuel cell stack passive thermal management system outfitted with passive cooling plates, an integrated heat exchanger and two types of cooling flow control valves. The tests were run to demonstrate the controllability of the passive thermal control approach. Finally, successful demonstrations of passive thermal control technology were conducted with fuel cell stacks from two fuel cell stack vendors.

Burke, Kenneth A.↗

DOE OSTI2025

Digital Assurance Checklist for Homeowners and Installers

This document provides a comprehensive Digital Assurance Checklist for securing behind-the-meter energy assets, focusing on both installers and homeowners. As distributed energy resources (DERs) such as solar PV and battery storage become integral to residential energy systems, cybersecurity emerges as a critical component of reliability and safety. The guide outlines actionable steps for installers during pre-installation, commissioning, and post-installation phases, emphasizing practices like network segmentation, credential management, firmware validation, and homeowner education. For homeowners, the document introduces a tiered approach to cyber hygiene—from essential measures like strong Wi-Fi credentials and automatic updates to advanced strategies such as network segmentation, DNS filtering, and intrusion detection. By adopting these practices, stakeholders can mitigate cyber risks, safeguard energy infrastructure, and ensure resilient, secure operation of DER systems. Additional resources and references to industry standards are included to support implementation.

99 - GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Advanced Transmission Technologies – GETs and HPCs Session 1: ATT Foundations and Dynamic Line Ratings (DLRs)

The INL TADA GETs Cohort Session 1, held on November 4, 2025, convened experts to address the integration of advanced transmission technologies, including Grid-Enhancing Technologies (GETs) and High Performance Conductors (HPCs), with a focus on digital assurance challenges. The session highlighted the growing importance of cybersecurity, supply chain transparency, reliability, and business risk management in deploying GETs, especially Dynamic Line Ratings (DLRs). Participants examined how expanded attack surfaces, limited vendor pools, and new regulatory requirements—such as FERC Orders 881, 2023, and 1920—are influencing utilities and technology providers. The workshop underscored the need for cyber-informed engineering, secure-by-design principles, and practical risk management strategies, while fostering collaboration and knowledge sharing among industry peers. Technical discussions covered the evolution from static to dynamic line ratings, complexities of cloud-based architectures, and NERC CIP compliance challenges. The session concluded with a collaborative risk exercise and a preview of future workshops on advanced power flow control and transmission topology optimization, reinforcing the cohort’s commitment to advancing digital assurance in the energy sector.

24 - POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

DOE OSTI2026

Digital Assurance Checklist for Homeowners and Installers

99 - GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗

NASA NTRS2007

Fundamental Technology Development for Gas-Turbine Engine Health Management

Integrated vehicle health management technologies promise to dramatically improve the safety of commercial aircraft by reducing system and component failures as causal and contributing factors in aircraft accidents. To realize this promise, fundamental technology development is needed to produce reliable health management components. These components include diagnostic and prognostic algorithms, physics-based and data-driven lifing and failure models, sensors, and a sensor infrastructure including wireless communications, power scavenging, and electronics. In addition, system assessment methods are needed to effectively prioritize development efforts. Development work is needed throughout the vehicle, but particular challenges are presented by the hot, rotating environment of the propulsion system. This presentation describes current work in the field of health management technologies for propulsion systems for commercial aviation.

Mercer, Carolyn R.↗

NASA NTRS2023

Towards an Indian Land Data Assimilation System (ILDAS): A Coupled Hydrologic-Hydraulic System for Water Balance Assessments

Effective management of water resources requires reliable estimates of land surface states and fluxes, including water balance components. But most land surface models run in uncoupled mode and do not produce river discharge at catchment scales to be useful for water resources management applications. Such integrated systems are also rare over India where hydrometeorological extremes have wreaked havoc on the economy and people. So, an Indian Land Data Assimilation System (ILDAS) with a coupled land surface and a hydrodynamic model has been developed and driven by multiple meteorological forcings (0.1°, daily) to estimate land surface states, channel discharge, and floodplain inundation. ILDAS benefits from an integrated framework as well as the largest suite of observation records collected over India and has been used to produce a reanalysis product for 1981–2021 using four forcing datasets, namely, Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, Version 2 (MERRA-2), Climate Hazards Group InfraRed Precipitation with Station data (CHIRPS), ECMWF’s ERA-5, and Indian Meteorological Department (IMD) gridded precipitation. We assessed the uncertainty and bias in these precipitation datasets and validated all major components of the terrestrial water balance, i.e., surface runoff, soil moisture, terrestrial water storage anomalies, evapotranspiration, and streamflow, against a combination of satellite and in situ observation datasets. Our assessment shows that ILDAS can represent the hydrological processes reasonably well over the Indian landmass with IMD precipitation showing the best relative performance. Evaluation against ESA-CCI soil moisture shows that MERRA-2 based estimates outperform the others, whereas ERA-5 performs best in simulating evapotranspiration when evaluated against MODIS ET. Evaluations against observed records show that CHIRPS-based estimates have the highest performance in reconstructing surface runoff and streamflow. Once operational, this system will be useful for supporting transboundary water management decision making in the region.

Indian Land Data Assimilation System (ILDAS)↗

DOE OSTI2024

Safe Operations at Roadway Junctions: Intelligent Roadway Infrastructure as Functional Interlocking

Automated vehicle (AV) technology is quickly maturing, and the corresponding infrastructure systems that evaluate traffic and communicate to vehicles requires sophisticated sensing and perception technologies, referred to as intelligent roadway infrastructure (IRI), to complement emerging AV capabilities. IRI provides signals to vehicles, indicating right-of-way for vehicles and communicating to approaching AVs that no other vehicle is failing to yield. This capability, denoted as safety-affirmative signaling, provides a green light or a green arrow as appropriate and affirms through communication links to connected vehicles when it is safe to proceed. About 36% of collisions occur at intersections, with most occurring upon left turns (22.2%) or crossing over (12.6%), and only a small percentage (1.2%) while turning right at an intersection. Of all intersection crashes about half (52.5%) of those vehicles were traveling through a signalized intersection 2. Safety-affirmative signaling would guarantee safety of AV fleet vehicles, by providing the interlocking principle, a term from automated train control that only allows progression through a railway intersection after affirming no opportunity for a crash exists. IRI through safety-affirmative signaling would bring performance and safety to complex roadway intersections where AV transit fleet service is most needed, as well as safety benefits to traditional, non-automated vehicles and vulnerable road users. The implementation of IRI has functional, programmatic, and technical challenges. Research work performed at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) in an integrative approach encapsulating these themes, and termed infrastructure perception and control (IPC) is motivated by improved performance (travel time), improved safety (reduced collisions), and improved energy efficiency (less fuel burned and minimized production of greenhouse gases). IPC is intended not only for roadway and intersection applications but also in extension to inform complementary buildings and grid systems to enable better co-management, as vehicles and their charging needs become increasingly integrated into the built environment. The NREL IPC project presents an open-source framework, architecture, and supporting technology to implement IRI, addressing critical issues such as fusion of data, reliability, standardization of data interfaces, and confidence of detection. The framework is informed by previous experience in U.S. Department of Defense research technology, specifically in the use of radar to detect, identify, and track aerial threats. These principles combined with multi-sensor fusion provides for a complete digital twin with known and measurable confidence and accuracy from which safety-affirmative signaling can be developed and deployed.

ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS,MATHEMATICS AND COMPUT↗

NASA NTRS2005

Design Methods and Practices for Fault Prevention and Management in Spacecraft

Integrated Systems Health Management (ISHM) is intended to become a critical capability for all space, lunar and planetary exploration vehicles and systems at NASA. Monitoring and managing the health state of diverse components, subsystems, and systems is a difficult task that will become more challenging when implemented for long-term, evolving deployments. A key technical challenge will be to ensure that the ISHM technologies are reliable, effective, and low cost, resulting in turn in safe, reliable, and affordable missions. To ensure safety and reliability, ISHM functionality, decisions and knowledge have to be incorporated into the product lifecycle as early as possible, and ISHM must be considered as an essential element of models developed and used in various stages during system design. During early stage design, many decisions and tasks are still open, including sensor and measurement point selection, modeling and model-checking, diagnosis, signature and data fusion schemes, presenting the best opportunity to catch and prevent potential failures and anomalies in a cost-effective way. Using appropriate formal methods during early design, the design teams can systematically explore risks without committing to design decisions too early. However, the nature of ISHM knowledge and data is detailed, relying on high-fidelity, detailed models, whereas the earlier stages of the product lifecycle utilize low-fidelity, high-level models of systems and their functionality. We currently lack the tools and processes necessary for integrating ISHM into the vehicle system/subsystem design. As a result, most existing ISHM-like technologies are retrofits that were done after the system design was completed. It is very expensive, and sometimes futile, to retrofit a system health management capability into existing systems. Last-minute retrofits result in unreliable systems, ineffective solutions, and excessive costs (e.g., Space Shuttle TPS monitoring which was considered only after 110 flights and the Columbia disaster). High false alarm or false negative rates due to substandard implementations hurt the credibility of the ISHM discipline. This paper presents an overview of the current state of ISHM design,and a review of formal design methods to make recommendations about possible approaches to enable the ISHM capabilities to be designed-in at the system-level, from the very beginning of the vehicle design process.

Tumer, Irem Y.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Planner-Based Control of Advanced Life Support Systems

The paper describes an approach to the integration of qualitative and quantitative modeling techniques for advanced life support (ALS) systems. Developing reliable control strategies that scale up to fully integrated life support systems requires augmenting quantitative models and control algorithms with the abstractions provided by qualitative, symbolic models and their associated high-level control strategies. This will allow for effective management of the combinatorics due to the integration of a large number of ALS subsystems. By focusing control actions at different levels of detail and reactivity we can use faster: simpler responses at the lowest level and predictive but complex responses at the higher levels of abstraction. In particular, methods from model-based planning and scheduling can provide effective resource management over long time periods. We describe reference implementation of an advanced control system using the IDEA control architecture developed at NASA Ames Research Center. IDEA uses planning/scheduling as the sole reasoning method for predictive and reactive closed loop control. We describe preliminary experiments in planner-based control of ALS carried out on an integrated ALS simulation developed at NASA Johnson Space Center.

Muscettola, Nicola↗

NASA NTRS2010

Verification and Implementation of Operations Safety Controls for Flight Missions

There are several engineering disciplines, such as reliability, supportability, quality assurance, human factors, risk management, safety, etc. Safety is an extremely important engineering specialty within NASA, and the consequence involving a loss of crew is considered a catastrophic event. Safety is not difficult to achieve when properly integrated at the beginning of each space systems project/start of mission planning. The key is to ensure proper handling of safety verification throughout each flight/mission phase. Today, Safety and Mission Assurance (S&MA) operations engineers continue to conduct these flight product reviews across all open flight products. As such, these reviews help ensure that each mission is accomplished with safety requirements along with controls heavily embedded in applicable flight products. Most importantly, the S&MA operations engineers are required to look for important design and operations controls so that safety is strictly adhered to as well as reflected in the final flight product.

Smalls, James R.↗

NASA NTRS2010

Experimental Creep Life Assessment for the Advanced Stirling Convertor Heater Head

The United States Department of Energy is planning to develop the Advanced Stirling Radioisotope Generator (ASRG) for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) for potential use on future space missions. The ASRG provides substantial efficiency and specific power improvements over radioisotope power systems of heritage designs. The ASRG would use General Purpose Heat Source modules as energy sources and the free-piston Advanced Stirling Convertor (ASC) to convert heat into electrical energy. Lockheed Martin Corporation of Valley Forge, Pennsylvania, is integrating the ASRG systems, and Sunpower, Inc., of Athens, Ohio, is designing and building the ASC. NASA Glenn Research Center of Cleveland, Ohio, manages the Sunpower contract and provides technology development in several areas for the ASC. One area is reliability assessment for the ASC heater head, a critical pressure vessel within which heat is converted into mechanical oscillation of a displacer piston. For high system efficiency, the ASC heater head operates at very high temperature (850 C) and therefore is fabricated from an advanced heat-resistant nickel-based superalloy Microcast MarM-247. Since use of MarM-247 in a thin-walled pressure vessel is atypical, much effort is required to assure that the system will operate reliably for its design life of 17 years. One life-limiting structural response for this application is creep; creep deformation is the accumulation of time-dependent inelastic strain under sustained loading over time. If allowed to progress, the deformation eventually results in creep rupture. Since creep material properties are not available in the open literature, a detailed creep life assessment of the ASC heater head effort is underway. This paper presents an overview of that creep life assessment approach, including the reliability-based creep criteria developed from coupon testing, and the associated heater head deterministic and probabilistic analyses. The approach also includes direct benchmark experimental creep assessment. This element provides high-fidelity creep testing of prototypical heater head test articles to investigate the relevant material issues and multiaxial stress state. Benchmark testing provides required data to evaluate the complex life assessment methodology and to validate that analysis. Results from current benchmark heater head tests and newly developed experimental methods are presented. In the concluding remarks, the test results are shown to compare favorably with the creep strain predictions and are the first experimental evidence for a robust ASC heater head creep life.

Krause, David L.↗

NASA NTRS2005

Simulation of Range Safety for the NASA Space Shuttle

This paper describes a simulation environment that seamlessly combines a number of safety and environmental models for the launch phase of a NASA Space Shuttle mission. The components of this simulation environment represent the different systems that must interact in order to determine the Expectation of casualties (E(sub c)) resulting from the toxic effects of the gas dispersion that occurs after a disaster affecting a Space Shuttle within 120 seconds of lift-off. The utilization of the Space Shuttle reliability models, trajectory models, weather dissemination systems, population models, amount and type of toxicants, gas dispersion models, human response functions to toxicants, and a geographical information system are all integrated to create this environment. This simulation environment can help safety managers estimate the population at risk in order to plan evacuation, make sheltering decisions, determine the resources required to provide aid and comfort, and mitigate damages in case of a disaster. This simulation environment may also be modified and used for the landing phase of a space vehicle but will not be discussed in this paper.

Rabelo, Luis↗

NASA NTRS2012

Spaceflight Ground Support Equipment Reliability & System Safety Data

Presented were Reliability Analysis, consisting primarily of Failure Modes and Effects Analysis (FMEA), and System Safety Analysis, consisting of Preliminary Hazards Analysis (PHA), performed to ensure that the CoNNeCT (Communications, Navigation, and Networking re- Configurable Testbed) Flight System was safely and reliably operated during its Assembly, Integration and Test (AI&T) phase. A tailored approach to the NASA Ground Support Equipment (GSE) standard, NASA-STD-5005C, involving the application of the appropriate Requirements, S&MA discipline expertise, and a Configuration Management system (to retain a record of the analysis and documentation) were presented. Presented were System Block Diagrams of selected GSE and the corresponding FMEA, as well as the PHAs. Also discussed are the specific examples of the FMEAs and PHAs being used during the AI&T phase to drive modifications to the GSE (via "redlining" of test procedures, and the placement of warning stickers to protect the flight hardware) before being interfaced to the Flight System. These modifications were necessary because failure modes and hazards were identified during the analysis that had not been properly mitigated. Strict Configuration Management was applied to changes (whether due to upgrades or expired calibrations) in the GSE by revisiting the FMEAs and PHAs to reflect the latest System Block Diagrams and Bill Of Material. The CoNNeCT flight system has been successfully assembled, integrated, tested, and shipped to the launch site without incident. This demonstrates that the steps taken to safeguard the flight system when it was interfaced to the various GSE were successful.

Fernandez, Rene↗

NASA NTRS2004

Structural Health Management for Future Aerospace Vehicles

Structural Health Management (SHM) will be of critical importance to provide the safety, reliability and affordability necessary for the future long duration space missions described in America's Vision for Space Exploration. Long duration missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond cannot be accomplished with the current paradigm of periodic, ground based structural integrity inspections. As evidenced by the Columbia tragedy, this approach is also inadequate for the current Shuttle fleet, thus leading to its initial implementation of on-board SHM sensing for impact detection as part of the return to flight effort. However, future space systems, to include both vehicles as well as structures such as habitation modules, will require an integrated array of onboard in-situ sensing systems. In addition, advanced data systems architectures will be necessary to communicate, store and process massive amounts of SHM data from large numbers of diverse sensors. Further, improved structural analysis and design algorithms will be necessary to incorporate SHM sensing into the design and construction of aerospace structures, as well as to fully utilize these sensing systems to provide both diagnosis and prognosis of structural integrity. Ultimately, structural integrity information will feed into an Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) system that will provide real-time knowledge of structural, propulsion, thermal protection and other critical systems for optimal vehicle management and mission control. This paper will provide an overview of NASA research and development in the area of SHM as well as to highlight areas of technology improvement necessary to meet these future mission requirements.

Prosser, W. H.↗