Results for “autonomy” — Page 81

NASA NTRS2016

Why Deep Space Habitats Should Be Different from the International Space Station

It is tempting to view the International Space Station (ISS) as a model for deep space habitats. This is not a good idea for many reasons. The ISS does not have a habitation module; instead the individual crew quarters are dispersed across several modules, the galley is in the US Laboratory and the waste hygiene compartment is in a Node. This distributed arrangement may be inconvenient but more important differences distinguish a deep space habitat from the ISS. First, the Space Shuttle launch system that shaped, sized, and delivered most ISS elements has been retired. Its replacement, the Space Launch System (SLS), is specifically designed for human exploration beyond low-Earth orbit and is capable of transporting more efficient, large diameter, heavy-lift payloads. Next, because of the Earth's protective geomagnetic field, ISS crews are naturally shielded from lethal radiation. Deep space habitat designs must include either a storm shelter or strategically positioned equipment and stowage for radiation protection. Another important difference is the increased transit time with no opportunity for an ISS-type emergency return. It takes 7 to 10 days to go between Earth and cis-lunar locations and 1000 days for the Mars habitat transit. This long commute calls for greater crew autonomy with habitats designed for the crew to fix their own problems. The ISS rack-enclosed, densely packaged subsystems are a product of the Shuttle era and not maintenance friendly. A solution better suited for deep space habitats spreads systems out allowing direct access to single-layer packaging and providing crew access to each component without having to remove another. Operational readiness is another important discriminator. The ISS required over 100 flights to build, resupply, and transport the crew, whereas SLS offers the capability to launch a fully provisioned habitat that is operational without additional outfitting or resupply flights.

Griffin, Brand↗

NASA NTRS2016

Serious Gaming for Test & Evaluation of Clean-Slate (Ab Initio) National Airspace System (NAS) Designs

Incremental approaches to air transportation system development inherit current architectural constraints, which, in turn, place hard bounds on system capacity, efficiency of performance, and complexity. To enable airspace operations of the future, a clean-slate (ab initio) airspace design(s) must be considered. This ab initio National Airspace System (NAS) must be capable of accommodating increased traffic density, a broader diversity of aircraft, and on-demand mobility. System and subsystem designs should scale to accommodate the inevitable demand for airspace services that include large numbers of autonomous Unmanned Aerial Vehicles and a paradigm shift in general aviation (e.g., personal air vehicles) in addition to more traditional aerial vehicles such as commercial jetliners and weather balloons. The complex and adaptive nature of ab initio designs for the future NAS requires new approaches to validation, adding a significant physical experimentation component to analytical and simulation tools. In addition to software modeling and simulation, the ability to exercise system solutions in a flight environment will be an essential aspect of validation. The NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC) Autonomy Incubator seeks to develop a flight simulation infrastructure for ab initio modeling and simulation that assumes no specific NAS architecture and models vehicle-to-vehicle behavior to examine interactions and emergent behaviors among hundreds of intelligent aerial agents exhibiting collaborative, cooperative, coordinative, selfish, and malicious behaviors. The air transportation system of the future will be a complex adaptive system (CAS) characterized by complex and sometimes unpredictable (or unpredicted) behaviors that result from temporal and spatial interactions among large numbers of participants. A CAS not only evolves with a changing environment and adapts to it, it is closely coupled to all systems that constitute the environment. Thus, the ecosystem that contains the system and other systems evolves with the CAS as well. The effects of the emerging adaptation and co-evolution are difficult to capture with only combined mathematical and computational experimentation. Therefore, an ab initio flight simulation environment must accommodate individual vehicles, groups of self-organizing vehicles, and large-scale infrastructure behavior. Inspired by Massively Multiplayer Online Role Playing Games (MMORPG) and Serious Gaming, the proposed ab initio simulation environment is similar to online gaming environments in which player participants interact with each other, affect their environment, and expect the simulation to persist and change regardless of any individual player's active participation.

Allen, B. Danette↗

NASA NTRS2016

Usable Translational Hand Controllers for NASA's Habitability Design Center

This summer I was given the opportunity to work at the Habitability Design Center (HDC). NASA Johnson Space Center's HDC is currently developing Cislunar and Mars spacecraft mockups. I contributed to this effort by designing from scratch low cost, functional translational hand controllers (THCs) that will be used in spacecraft mission simulation in low to medium fidelity exploration spacecraft mockups. This project fell under the category of mechatronics, a combination of mechanical, electrical, and computer engineering. Being an aerospace engineering student, I was out of my comfort zone. And that was a wonderful thing. The autonomy that my mentor, Dr. Robert Howard, allowed me gave me the opportunity to learn by trying, failing, and trying again. This project was not only a professional success for me, but a significant learning experience. I appreciated the freedom that I had to take the time to learn new things for myself rather than blindly follow instructions. I was the sole person working on this project, and was required to work independently to solve the many hardware and software challenges that the project entailed. I researched THCs that have been used on the ISS, the Space Shuttle, and the Orion MPVC and based my design off of these. I worked through many redesigns before finding an optimal configuration of the necessary mechanisms and electrical components for the THC. Once I had a functional hardware design, I dove into the challenge of getting an Arduino Uno, an extremely low cost and easily programmable microcontroller, to behave as a human interface device. The THCs I built needed to be able to integrate to a mission simulation designed by NASA's Graphics and Visualization Lab. This proved to be the most challenging aspect of the project. To accomplish this I learned how to change the firmware of the USB serial converter microcontroller. The process was very complicated as it involved multiple software programs and manual flashing of pins on the Arduino itself. When I successfully achieved the goal I wrote an instructions manual for the process so that the HDC will be able to do this easily in the future for any human interface device they may want to create. I also created a detailed CAD model of my THC design with construction instructions. My THC utilizes three ultrasonic sensors, one for each axis of motion. I wrote a code that stimulates these sensors continuously and feeds back values from each axis ranging from -%100 to %100 of the min/max position in relation to the neutral position of each axis. This was the data that the Graphics and Visualization Lab required to interface with their simulation. I truly enjoyed working in the HDC surrounded by passionate, proactive, and brilliantly creative people. I felt valued and respected as a part of their team. I was given the time and support of my mentor whenever I asked for it. Beyond my positive project experience, I was fortunate enough to be able to take advantage of many of the extra activities that JSC has to offer. I took Russian Phase One during my lunch break every day and can now read Russian and accomplish basic verbal communication. I was heavily involved with the co-tern music video, which led to numerous incredible experiences and friendships. I saw every facility, attended every lecture, and met everyone that I could. I had coffee with Lauri Hansen. I played on an intern volleyball team at the Gilruth. I traveled to Michoud, Stennis, NOLA, and Big Bend National Park. I had the time of my life and I fell in love with JSC. In the next month I will return to Maryland and start my senior year of my undergraduate degree. As I work through it I will remember that all of the studying I do, all of the concentration I give, and all of the sacrifices that I make for school are so that I can work at a place like JSC where I am proud and excited to go into work every day. This internship was an invaluable experience for me, both professionally and personally.

Westbrook, Kimberly↗

NASA NTRS2016

Guiding Requirements for Designing Life Support System Architectures for Crewed Exploration Missions Beyond Low-Earth Orbit

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) technology development roadmaps provide guidance to focus technological development in areas that enable crewed exploration missions beyond low-Earth orbit. Specifically, the technology area roadmap on human health, life support and habitation systems describes the need for life support system (LSS) technologies that can improve reliability and in-flight maintainability within a minimally-sized package while enabling a high degree of mission autonomy. To address the needs outlined by the guiding technology area roadmap, NASA's Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Program has commissioned the Life Support Systems (LSS) Project to lead technology development in the areas of water recovery and management, atmosphere revitalization, and environmental monitoring. A notional exploration LSS architecture derived from the International Space has been developed and serves as the developmental basis for these efforts. Functional requirements and key performance parameters that guide the exploration LSS technology development efforts are presented and discussed. Areas where LSS flight operations aboard the ISS afford lessons learned that are relevant to exploration missions are highlighted.

Perry, Jay L.↗

NASA NTRS2016

Open Source Radiation Hardened by Design Technology

The proposed technology allows use of the latest microcircuit technology with lowest power and fastest speed, with minimal delay and engineering costs, through new Radiation Hardened by Design (RHBD) techniques that do not require extensive process characterization, technique evaluation and re-design at each Moore's Law generation. The separation of critical node groups is explicitly parameterized so it can be increased as microcircuit technologies shrink. The technology will be open access to radiation tolerant circuit vendors. INNOVATION: This technology would enhance computation intensive applications such as autonomy, robotics, advanced sensor and tracking processes, as well as low power applications such as wireless sensor networks. OUTCOME / RESULTS: 1) Simulation analysis indicates feasibility. 2)Compact voting latch 65 nanometer test chip designed and submitted for fabrication -7/2016. INFUSION FOR SPACE / EARTH: This technology may be used in any digital integrated circuit in which a high level of resistance to Single Event Upsets is desired, and has the greatest benefit outside low earth orbit where cosmic rays are numerous.

Shuler, Robert↗

NASA NTRS2016

NASA HRP Plans for Collaboration at the IBMP Ground-Based Experimental Facility (NEK)

NASA and IBMP are planning research collaborations using the IBMP Ground-based Experimental Facility (NEK). The NEK offers unique capabilities to study the effects of isolation on behavioral health and performance as it relates to spaceflight. The NEK is comprised of multiple interconnected modules that range in size from 50-250m(sup3). Modules can be included or excluded in a given mission allowing for flexibility of platform design. The NEK complex includes a Mission Control Center for communications and monitoring of crew members. In an effort to begin these collaborations, a 2-week mission is planned for 2017. In this mission, scientific studies will be conducted to assess facility capabilities in preparation for longer duration missions. A second follow-on 2-week mission may be planned for early in 2018. In future years, long duration missions of 4, 8 and 12 months are being considered. Missions will include scenarios that simulate for example, transit to and from asteroids, the moon, or other interplanetary travel. Mission operations will be structured to include stressors such as, high workloads, communication delays, and sleep deprivation. Studies completed at the NEK will support International Space Station expeditions, and future exploration missions. Topics studied will include communication, crew autonomy, cultural diversity, human factors, and medical capabilities.

Cromwell, Ronita L.↗

NASA NTRS2017

Medical System Concept of Operations for Mars Exploration Missions

Future exploration missions will be the first time humanity travels beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) since the Apollo program, taking us to cis-lunar space, interplanetary space, and Mars. These long-duration missions will cover vast distances, severely constraining opportunities for emergency evacuation to Earth and cargo resupply opportunities. Communication delays and blackouts between the crew and Mission Control will eliminate reliable, real-time telemedicine consultations. As a result, compared to current LEO operations onboard the International Space Station, exploration mission medical care requires an integrated medical system that provides additional in-situ capabilities and a significant increase in crew autonomy. The Medical System Concept of Operations for Mars Exploration Missions illustrates how a future NASA Mars program could ensure appropriate medical care for the crew of this highly autonomous mission. This Concept of Operations document, when complete, will document all mission phases through a series of mission use case scenarios that illustrate required medical capabilities, enabling the NASA Human Research Program (HRP) Exploration Medical Capability (ExMC) Element to plan, design, and prototype an integrated medical system to support human exploration to Mars.

Urbina, M.↗

NASA NTRS2016

Design, Development, and Testing of a UAV Hardware-in-the-Loop Testbed for Aviation and Airspace Prognostics Research

The airspace is becoming more and more complicated, and will continue to do so in the future with the integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), autonomy, spacecraft, other forms of aviation technology into the airspace. The new technology and complexity increases the importance and difficulty of safety assurance. Additionally, testing new technologies on complex aviation systems & systems of systems can be very difficult, expensive, and sometimes unsafe in real life scenarios. Prognostic methodology provides an estimate of the health and risks of a component, vehicle, or airspace and knowledge of how that will change over time. That measure is especially useful in safety determination, mission planning, and maintenance scheduling. The developed testbed will be used to validate prediction algorithms for the real-time safety monitoring of the National Airspace System (NAS) and the prediction of unsafe events. The framework injects flight related anomalies related to ground systems, routing, airport congestion, etc. to test and verify algorithms for NAS safety. In our research work, we develop a live, distributed, hardware-in-the-loop testbed for aviation and airspace prognostics along with exploring further research possibilities to verify and validate future algorithms for NAS safety. The testbed integrates virtual aircraft using the X-Plane simulator and X-PlaneConnect toolbox, UAVs using onboard sensors and cellular communications, and hardware in the loop components. In addition, the testbed includes an additional research framework to support and simplify future research activities. It enables safe, accurate, and inexpensive experimentation and research into airspace and vehicle prognosis that would not have been possible otherwise. This paper describes the design, development, and testing of this system. Software reliability, safety and latency are some of the critical design considerations in development of the testbed. Integration of HITL elements in the development phases and veri cation/ validation are key elements to this report.

HITL↗

NASA NTRS2011

Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Power, Avionics, and Software (PAS) 101

EVA systems consist of a spacesuit or garment, a PLSS, a PAS system, and spacesuit interface hardware. The PAS system is responsible for providing power for the suit, communication of several types of data between the suit and other mission assets, avionics hardware to perform numerous data display and processing functions, and information systems that provide crewmembers data to perform their tasks with more autonomy and efficiency. Irimies discussed how technology development efforts have advanced the state-of-the-art in these areas and shared technology development challenges.

Irimies, David↗

NASA NTRS2016

Architectural and Behavioral Systems Design Methodology and Analysis for Optimal Habitation in a Volume-Limited Spacecraft for Long Duration Flights

As our human spaceflight missions change as we reach towards Mars, the risk of an adverse behavioral outcome increases, and requirements for crew health, safety, and performance, and the internal architecture, will need to change to accommodate unprecedented mission demands. Evidence shows that architectural arrangement and habitability elements impact behavior. Net habitable volume is the volume available to the crew after accounting for elements that decrease the functional volume of the spacecraft. Determination of minimum acceptable net habitable volume and associated architectural design elements, as mission duration and environment varies, is key to enabling, maintaining, andor enhancing human performance and psychological and behavioral health. Current NASA efforts to derive minimum acceptable net habitable volumes and study the interaction of covariates and stressors, such as sensory stimulation, communication, autonomy, and privacy, and application to internal architecture design layouts, attributes, and use of advanced accommodations will be presented. Furthermore, implications of crew adaptation to available volume as they transfer from Earth accommodations, to deep space travel, to planetary surface habitats, and return, will be discussed.

Human Space Flight↗

NASA NTRS2016

Intelligent (Autonomous) Power Controller Development for Human Deep Space Exploration

As NASAs Evolvable Mars Campaign and other exploration initiatives continue to mature they have identified the need for more autonomous operations of the power system. For current human space operations such as the International Space Station, the paradigm is to perform the planning, operation and fault diagnosis from the ground. However, the dual problems of communication lag as well as limited communication bandwidth beyond GEO synchronous orbit, underscore the need to change the operation methodology for human operation in deep space. To address this need, for the past several years the Glenn Research Center has had an effort to develop an autonomous power controller for human deep space vehicles. This presentation discusses the present roadmap for deep space exploration along with a description of conceptual power system architecture for exploration modules. It then contrasts the present ground centric control and management architecture with limited autonomy on-board the spacecraft with an advanced autonomous power control system that features ground based monitoring with a spacecraft mission manager with autonomous control of all core systems, including power. It then presents a functional breakdown of the autonomous power control system and examines its operation in both normal and fault modes. Finally, it discusses progress made in the development of a real-time power system model and how it is being used to evaluate the performance of the controller and well as using it for verification of the overall operation.

Power Systems↗

NASA NTRS2017

Medical System Concept of Operations for Mars Exploration Missions

Future exploration missions will be the first time humanity travels beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) since the Apollo program, taking us to cis-lunar space, interplanetary space, and Mars. These long-duration missions will cover vast distances, severely constraining opportunities for emergency evacuation to Earth and cargo resupply opportunities. Communication delays and blackouts between the crew and Mission Control will eliminate reliable, real-time telemedicine consultations. As a result, compared to current LEO operations onboard the International Space Station, exploration mission medical care requires an integrated medical system that provides additional in-situ capabilities and a significant increase in crew autonomy. The Medical System Concept of Operations for Mars Exploration Missions illustrates how a future NASA Mars program could ensure appropriate medical care for the crew of this highly autonomous mission. This Concept of Operations document, when complete, will document all mission phases through a series of mission use case scenarios that illustrate required medical capabilities, enabling the NASA Human Research Program (HRP) Exploration Medical Capability (ExMC) Element to plan, design, and prototype an integrated medical system to support human exploration to Mars.

Urbina, Michelle↗

NASA NTRS2017

A Virtual Laboratory for Aviation and Airspace Prognostics Research

Integration of Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), autonomy, spacecraft, and other aviation technologies, in the airspace is becoming more and more complicated, and will continue to do so in the future. Inclusion of new technology and complexity into the airspace increases the importance and difficulty of safety assurance. Additionally, testing new technologies on complex aviation systems and systems of systems can be challenging, expensive, and at times unsafe when implementing real life scenarios. The application of prognostics to aviation and airspace management may produce new tools and insight into these problems. Prognostic methodology provides an estimate of the health and risks of a component, vehicle, or airspace and knowledge of how that will change over time. That measure is especially useful in safety determination, mission planning, and maintenance scheduling. In our research, we develop a live, distributed, hardware- in-the-loop Prognostics Virtual Laboratory testbed for aviation and airspace prognostics. The developed testbed will be used to validate prediction algorithms for the real-time safety monitoring of the National Airspace System (NAS) and the prediction of unsafe events. In our earlier work1 we discussed the initial Prognostics Virtual Laboratory testbed development work and related results for milestones 1 & 2. This paper describes the design, development, and testing of the integrated tested which are part of milestone 3, along with our next steps for validation of this work. Through a framework consisting of software/hardware modules and associated interface clients, the distributed testbed enables safe, accurate, and inexpensive experimentation and research into airspace and vehicle prognosis that would not have been possible otherwise. The testbed modules can be used cohesively to construct complex and relevant airspace scenarios for research. Four modules are key to this research: the virtual aircraft module which uses the X-Plane simulator and X-PlaneConnect toolbox, the live aircraft module which connects fielded aircraft using onboard cellular communications devices, the hardware in the loop (HITL) module which connects laboratory based bench-top hardware testbeds and the research module which contains diagnostics and prognostics tools for analysis of live air traffic situations and vehicle health conditions. The testbed also features other modules for data recording and playback, information visualization, and air traffic generation. Software reliability, safety, and latency are some of the critical design considerations in development of the testbed.

LVC-DE↗

NASA NTRS2017

Lessons Learned from Applying Design Thinking in a NASA Rapid Design Study in Aeronautics

In late 2015, NASA's Aeronautics Research Mission Directorate (ARMD) funded an experiment in rapid design and rapid teaming to explore new approaches to solving challenging design problems in aeronautics in an effort to cultivate and foster innovation. This report summarizes several lessons learned from the rapid design portion of the study. This effort entailed learning and applying design thinking, a human-centered design approach, to complete the conceptual design for an open-ended design challenge within six months. The design challenge focused on creating a capability to advance experimental testing of autonomous aeronautics systems, an area of great interest to NASA, the US government as a whole, and an entire ecosystem of users and developers around the globe. A team of nine civil servant researchers from three of NASA's aeronautics field centers with backgrounds in several disciplines was assembled and rapidly trained in design thinking under the guidance of the innovation and design firm IDEO. The design thinking process, while used extensively outside the aerospace industry, is less common and even counter to many practices within the aerospace industry. In this report, several contrasts between common aerospace research and development practices and design thinking are discussed, drawing upon the lessons learned from the NASA rapid design study. The lessons discussed included working towards a design solution without a set of detailed design requirements, which may not be practical or even feasible for management to ascertain for complex, challenging problems. This approach allowed for the possibility of redesigning the original problem statement to better meet the needs of the users. Another lesson learned was to approach problems holistically from the perspective of the needs of individuals that may be affected by advances in topic area instead of purely from a technological feasibility viewpoint. The interdisciplinary nature of the design team also provided valuable experience by allowing team members from different technological backgrounds to work side-by-side instead of dividing into smaller teams, as is frequently done in traditional multidisciplinary design. The team also learned how to work with qualitative data obtained primarily through the 70-plus interviews that were conducted over the course of this project, which was a sharp contrast to using quantitative data with regards to identifying, capturing, analyzing, storing, and recalling the data. When identifying potential interviewees who may have useful contributions to the design subject area, the team found great value in talking to non-traditional users and potential beneficiaries of autonomous aeronautics systems whose impact on the aeronautics autonomy ecosystem is growing swiftly. Finally, the team benefitted from using "sacrificial prototyping," which is a method of rapidly prototyping draft concepts and ideas with the intent of enabling potential users to provide significant feedback early in the design process. This contrasts the more common approach of using expensive prototypes that focus on demonstrating technical feasibility. The unique design approach and lessons learned by the team throughout this process culminated in a final design concept that was quite different than what the team originally assumed would be the design concept initially. A summary of the more usercentered final design concept is also provided.

McGowan, Anna-Maria↗

NASA NTRS2017

Developing a Robust, Interoperable GNSS Space Service Volume (SSV) for the Global Space User Community

For over two decades, researchers, space users, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) service providers, and international policy makers have been working diligently to expand the space-borne use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and, most recently, to employ the full complement of GNSS constellations to increase spacecraft navigation performance. Space-borne Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) applications employing GNSS are now ubiquitous in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). GNSS use in space is quickly expanding into the Space Service Volume (SSV), the signal environment in the volume surrounding the Earth that enables real-time PNT measurements from GNSS systems at altitudes of 3000 km and above. To support the current missions and planned future missions within the SSV, initiatives are being conducted in the United States and internationally to ensure that GNSS signals are available, robust, and yield precise navigation performance. These initiatives include the Interagency Forum for Operational Requirements (IFOR) effort in the United States, to support GPS SSV signal robustness through future design changes, and the United Nations-sponsored International Committee on GNSS (ICG), to coordinate SSV development across all international GNSS constellations and regional augmentations. The results of these efforts have already proven fruitful, enabling new missions through radically improved navigation and timing performance, ensuring quick recovery from trajectory maneuvers, improving space vehicle autonomy and making GNSS signals more resilient from potential disruptions. Missions in the SSV are operational now and have demonstrated outstanding PNT performance characteristics; much better than what was envisioned less than a decade ago. The recent launch of the first in a series of US weather satellites will employ the use of GNSS in the SSV to substantially improve weather prediction and public-safety situational awareness of fast moving events, including hurricanes, flash floods, severe storms, tornados and wildfires. Thus, the benefits of the GNSS expansion and use into the SSV are tremendous, resulting in orders of magnitude return in investment to national governments and extraordinary societal benefits, including lives saved and critical infrastructure and property protected. However, this outstanding success is tempered by dual challenges: that for GPS, the current SSV specifications do not adequately protect SSV future use; and that for GNSS, the capabilities that are currently available are not protected in the future by specifications.

Bauer, Frank H.↗

NASA NTRS2017

Developing a Robust, Interoperable GNSS Space Service Volume (SSV) for the Global Space User Community

For over two decades, researchers, space users, Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) service providers, and international policy makers have been working diligently to expand the space-borne use of the Global Positioning System (GPS) and, most recently, to employ the full complement of GNSS constellations to increase spacecraft navigation performance. Space-borne Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) applications employing GNSS are now ubiquitous in Low Earth Orbit (LEO). GNSS use in space is quickly expanding into the Space Service Volume (SSV), the signal environment in the volume surrounding the Earth that enables real-time PNT measurements from GNSS systems at altitudes of 3000 km and above. To support the current missions and planned future missions within the SSV, initiatives are being conducted in the United States and internationally to ensure that GNSS signals are available, robust, and yield precise navigation performance. These initiatives include the Interagency Forum for Operational Requirements (IFOR) effort in the United States, to support GPS SSV signal robustness through future design changes, and the United Nations-sponsored International Committee on GNSS (ICG), to coordinate SSV development across all international GNSS constellations and regional augmentations. The results of these efforts have already proven fruitful, enabling new missions through radically improved navigation and timing performance, ensuring quick recovery from trajectory maneuvers, improving space vehicle autonomy and making GNSS signals more resilient from potential disruptions. Missions in the SSV are operational now and have demonstrated outstanding PNT performance characteristics; much better than what was envisioned less than a decade ago. The recent launch of the first in a series of US weather satellites will employ the use of GNSS in the SSV to substantially improve weather prediction and public-safety situational awareness of fast moving events, including hurricanes, flash floods, severe storms, tornados and wildfires. Thus, the benefits of the GNSS expansion and use into the SSV are tremendous, resulting in orders of magnitude return in investment to national governments and extraordinary societal benefits, including lives saved and critical infrastructure and property protected. However, this outstanding success is tempered by dual challenges: that for GPS, the current SSV specifications do not adequately protect SSV future use; and that for GNSS, the capabilities that are currently available are not protected in the future by specifications.

Bauer, Frank H.↗

NASA NTRS2016

ICAROUS: Integrated Configurable Architecture for Unmanned Systems

NASA's Unmanned Aerial System (UAS) Traffic Management (UTM) project aims at enabling near-term, safe operations of small UAS vehicles in uncontrolled airspace, i.e., Class G airspace. A far-term goal of UTM research and development is to accommodate the expected rise in small UAS traffic density throughout the National Airspace System (NAS) at low altitudes for beyond visual line-of-sight operations. This video describes a new capability referred to as ICAROUS (Integrated Configurable Algorithms for Reliable Operations of Unmanned Systems), which is being developed under the auspices of the UTM project. ICAROUS is a software architecture comprised of highly assured algorithms for building safety-centric, autonomous, unmanned aircraft applications. Central to the development of the ICAROUS algorithms is the use of well-established formal methods to guarantee higher levels of safety assurance by monitoring and bounding the behavior of autonomous systems. The core autonomy-enabling capabilities in ICAROUS include constraint conformance monitoring and autonomous detect and avoid functions. ICAROUS also provides a highly configurable user interface that enables the modular integration of mission-specific software components.

Consiglio, Maria C.↗

NASA NTRS2017

The Space Mobile Network

The definition and development of the next generation space communications and navigation architecture is underway. The primary goals are to remove communications and navigations constraints from missions and to enable increased autonomy. The Space Mobile Network (SMN) is an architectural concept that includes new technology and operations that will provide flight systems with an similar user experience to terrestrial wireless mobile networks. This talk will describe the SMN and its proposed new features, such as Disruption Tolerant Networking (DTN), optical communications, and User Initiated Services (UIS).

Spacecraft Communications↗