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At least 1,585 records · Page 88

The SIR-C/X-SAR synthetic aperture radar system

SIR-C/X-SAR, a three-frequency radar to be flown on the Space Shuttle in September 1993, is described. The SIR-C system is a two-frequency radar operating at 1250 MHz (L-band) and 5300 MHz (C-band), and is designed to get four-polarization radar imagery at multiple surface angles. The X-SAR system is an X-band imaging radar operating at 9600 MHz. The discussion covers the mission concept; system design; hardware; RF electronics; digital electronics; command, timing, and telemetry; and testing.

Jordan, Rolando L.↗

Inhibiting multiple mode vibration in controlled flexible systems

Prior research has led to the development of input command pre-shapers that can significantly reduce residual vibration. These shapers exhibit marked insensitivity to errors in natural frequency estimates and can be used to minimize vibration at more than one frequency. A method is outlined for the development of multiple mode input shapers. An examination is made of the results of shaper performance tests conducted on linear and non-linear computer models of MACE, an MIT/NASA experimental flexible structure.

Hyde, James M.↗

Sensor fusion III: 3-D perception and recognition; Proceedings of the Meeting, Boston, MA, Nov. 5-8, 1990

The volume on data fusion from multiple sources discusses fusing multiple views, temporal analysis and 3D motion interpretation, sensor fusion and eye-to-hand coordination, and integration in human shape perception. Attention is given to surface reconstruction, statistical methods in sensor fusion, fusing sensor data with environmental knowledge, computational models for sensor fusion, and evaluation and selection of sensor fusion techniques. Topics addressed include the structure of a scene from two and three projections, optical flow techniques for moving target detection, tactical sensor-based exploration in a robotic environment, and the fusion of human and machine skills for remote robotic operations. Also discussed are K-nearest-neighbor concepts for sensor fusion, surface reconstruction with discontinuities, a sensor-knowledge-command fusion paradigm for man-machine systems, coordinating sensing and local navigation, and terrain map matching using multisensing techniques for applications to autonomous vehicle navigation.

Schenker, Paul S.↗

Orbital Anomalies in Goddard Spacecraft for Calendar Year 1994

This report summarizes and updates the annual on-orbit performance between January I and December 31, 1994, for spacecraft built by or managed by the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). During 1994, GSFC had 27 active orbiting satellites and I Shuttle-launched and retrieved 'free flyer.' There were 310 reported anomalies among 21 satellites and one GSFC instrument (TOMS). GOES-8 accounted for 66 anomalies, and SAMPES reported 155 'anomalies'. Of the 155 anomalies reported for all but SAMPEX, only 4 affected the spacecraft missions 'substantially' or greater, that is, presented a loss of more than 33% of the total missions. The most frequent subsystem anomalies were Instrument/Payload(44), Timing Command and Control(40), and Attitude Control Systems(33). Of the non-SAMPEX anomalies, 29% had no effect on the missions and 28% caused subsystem or instrument degradation and, for another 28%, no anomaly effect on the mission could be determined. Fifty-three percent of non-SAMPEX anomalies could not be classified according to 'type'; the other most common types were 'systemic'(35), 'random'(19), and 'normal or expected operation'(15). Forty percent of the anomalies were not classified according to failure category; the remaining most frequent occurrences were 'design problems'(50) and 'other known problems'(35).

Thomas, Walter B.↗

The Global File System

The global file system (GFS) is a prototype design for a distributed file system in which cluster nodes physically share storage devices connected via a network-like fiber channel. Networks and network-attached storage devices have advanced to a level of performance and extensibility so that the previous disadvantages of shared disk architectures are no longer valid. This shared storage architecture attempts to exploit the sophistication of storage device technologies whereas a server architecture diminishes a device's role to that of a simple component. GFS distributes the file system responsibilities across processing nodes, storage across the devices, and file system resources across the entire storage pool. GFS caches data on the storage devices instead of the main memories of the machines. Consistency is established by using a locking mechanism maintained by the storage devices to facilitate atomic read-modify-write operations. The locking mechanism is being prototyped in the Silicon Graphics IRIX operating system and is accessed using standard Unix commands and modules.

Soltis, Steven R.↗

Remote Agent Experiment

Remote Agent (RA) is a model-based, reusable artificial intelligence (At) software system that enables goal-based spacecraft commanding and robust fault recovery. RA was flight validated during an experiment on board of DS1 between May 17th and May 21th, 1999.

Benard, Doug↗

An Initial Examination of Roll-Lateral Coordination Motion Requirements in Flight Simulation

A piloted simulation that examined the effects of uncoordinated roll-lateral motion cues from a coordinated math model was conducted. The vehicle model represented a typical helicopter with satisfactory handling qualities in the roll-lateral axes. The task was a two-degree-of-freedom horizontal sidestep, where the pilot controlled lateral position through roll angle. The motion platform commands were varied via two motion control system gains. One gain reduced the ratio between platform roll angle to math model (and thus visual) roll angle. The other gain was placed on how much lateral platform movement would result from platform roll attitude in an attempt to align the apparent gravity vector vertically relative to the pilot. Gains from one to zero were examined in both axes. Thus, the true 1:1 motion case, where the motion cues matched the visual cues was evaluated. Pilots subjective ratings of motion fidelity matched well against an earlier developed motion fidelity criteria. Significant differences were noted in the fixed-base versus motion base configurations.

Schroeder, Jeffery A.↗

Corps battle simulation

CBS is a computerize battle simulation system driven by Army Corps and Division Command Post Exercises and Battle Command Training Program War Fighter exercises.

simulation training Army↗

Closed-Loop Evaluation of an Integrated Failure Identification and Fault Tolerant Control System for a Transport Aircraft

Formal robustness analysis of aircraft control upset prevention and recovery systems could play an important role in their validation and ultimate certification. Such systems developed for failure detection, identification, and reconfiguration, as well as upset recovery, need to be evaluated over broad regions of the flight envelope or under extreme flight conditions, and should include various sources of uncertainty. To apply formal robustness analysis, formulation of linear fractional transformation (LFT) models of complex parameter-dependent systems is required, which represent system uncertainty due to parameter uncertainty and actuator faults. This paper describes a detailed LFT model formulation procedure from the nonlinear model of a transport aircraft by using a preliminary LFT modeling software tool developed at the NASA Langley Research Center, which utilizes a matrix-based computational approach. The closed-loop system is evaluated over the entire flight envelope based on the generated LFT model which can cover nonlinear dynamics. The robustness analysis results of the closed-loop fault tolerant control system of a transport aircraft are presented. A reliable flight envelope (safe flight regime) is also calculated from the robust performance analysis results, over which the closed-loop system can achieve the desired performance of command tracking and failure detection.

Shin, Jong-Yeob↗

Mated Flight Control Issues for Space Exploration Systems

Several unique issues related to mated flight control have been broadly identified. These issues include redundancies in subsystems, controllability, command and control authority distribution, information flow across elements, and changes and variability in system characteristics due to variable mated configurations during operations. Architectural options for mated flight control are discussed in the context of evolving space systems.

Lim, Kyong B.↗

TRIGA: Telecommunications Protocol Processing Subsystem Using Reconfigurable Interoperable Gate Arrays

We present the Telecommunications protocol processing subsystem using Reconfigurable Interoperable Gate Arrays (TRIGA), a novel approach that unifies fault tolerance, error correction coding and interplanetary communication protocol off-loading to implement CCSDS File Delivery Protocol and Datalink layers. The new reconfigurable architecture offers more than one order of magnitude throughput increase while reducing footprint requirements in memory, command and data handling processor utilization, communication system interconnects and power consumption.

protocol processing hardware engine↗

Reconstructed Flight Performance of the Powered Descent Guidance and Control System for the Mars 2020 Perseverance Mission

On February 18th, 2021, the Mars 2020 mission successfully landed the “Perseverance” rover at Jezero crater on Mars. The Powered Descent Guidance and Control (PDGC) system was inherited from the Mars Science Laboratory mission and its parameters were tuned to support Terrain Relative Navigation for the Mars 2020 mission. The PDGC system architecture consists of a trajectory and an attitude commander, six feedback control loops and thruster allocation logic. The PDGC commands eight throttleable Mars Lander Engines to actively guide and control the vehicle during each powered flight phase. This paper describes the design and the as-flown performance of the PDGC system.

Way, David W.↗

Automatic commanding of the Mars Observer Camera

Mars Observer, launched in September 1992, was intended to be a 'survey-type' mission that acquired global coverage of Mars from a low, circular, near-polar orbit during an entire Martian year. As such, most of its instruments had fixed data rates, wide fields of view, and relatively low resolution, with fairly limited requirements for commanding. An exception is the Mars Observer Camera, or MOC. The MOC consists of a two-color Wide Angle (WA) system that can acquire both global images at low resolution (7.5 km/pixel) and regional images at commandable resolutions up to 250 m/pixel. Complementing the WA is the Narrow Angle (NA) system, that can acquire images at 8 resolutions from 12 m/pixel to 1.5 m/pixel, with a maximum crosstrack dimension of 3 km. The MOC also provides various forms of data compression (both lossless and lossy), and is designed to work at data rates from 700 bits per second (bps) to over 80k bps. Because of this flexibility, developing MOC command sequences is much more difficult than the routine mode-changing that characterizes other instrument operations. Although the MOC cannot be pointed (the spacecraft is fixed nadir-pointing and has no scan platform), the timing, downlink stream allocation, compression type and parameters, and image dimensions of each image must be commanded from the ground, subject to the constraints inherent in the MOC and the spacecraft. To minimize the need for a large operations staff, the entire command generation process has been automated within the MOC Ground Data System. Following the loss of the Mars Observer spacecraft in August 1993, NASA intends to launch a new spacecraft, Mars Global Surveyor (MGS), in late 1996. This spacecraft will carry the MOC flight spare (MOC 2). The MOC 2 operations plan will be largely identical to that developed for MOC, and all of the algorithms described here are applicable to it.

Caplinger, Michael↗

Creative Analytics of Mission Ops Event Messages

Historically, tremendous effort has been put into processing and displaying mission health and safety telemetry data; and relatively little attention has been paid to extracting information from missions time-tagged event log messages. Todays missions may log tens of thousands of messages per day and the numbers are expected to dramatically increase as satellite fleets and constellations are launched, as security monitoring continues to evolve, and as the overall complexity of ground system operations increases. The logs may contain information about orbital events, scheduled and actual observations, device status and anomalies, when operators were logged on, when commands were resent, when there were data drop outs or system failures, and much much more. When dealing with distributed space missions or operational fleets, it becomes even more important to systematically analyze this data. Several advanced information systems technologies make it appropriate to now develop analytic capabilities which can increase mission situational awareness, reduce mission risk, enable better event-driven automation and cross-mission collaborations, and lead to improved operations strategies: Industry Standard for Log Messages. The Object Management Group (OMG) Space Domain Task Force (SDTF) standards organization is in the process of creating a formal standard for industry for event log messages. The format is based on work at NASA GSFC. Open System Architectures. The DoD, NASA, and others are moving towards common open system architectures for mission ground data systems based on work at NASA GSFC with the full support of the commercial product industry and major integration contractors. Text Analytics. A specific area of data analytics which applies statistical, linguistic, and structural techniques to extract and classify information from textual sources. This presentation describes work now underway at NASA to increase situational awareness through the collection of non-telemetry mission operations information into a common log format and then providing display and analytics tools to provide in-depth assessment of the log contents. The work includes: Common interface formats for acquiring time-tagged text messages Conversion of common files for schedules, orbital events, and stored commands to the common log format Innovative displays to depict thousands of messages on a single display Structured English text queries against the log message data store, extensible to a more mature natural language query capability Goal of speech-to-text and text-to-speech additions to create a personal mission operations assistant to aid on-console operations. A wide variety of planned uses identified by the mission operations teams will be discussed.

events↗

Introduction to the computational structural mechanics testbed

The Computational Structural Mechanics (CSM) testbed software system based on the SPAR finite element code and the NICE system is described. This software is denoted NICE/SPAR. NICE was developed at Lockheed Palo Alto Research Laboratory and contains data management utilities, a command language interpreter, and a command language definition for integrating engineering computational modules. SPAR is a system of programs used for finite element structural analysis developed for NASA by Lockheed and Engineering Information Systems, Inc. It includes many complementary structural analysis, thermal analysis, utility functions which communicate through a common database. The work on NICE/SPAR was motivated by requirements for a highly modular and flexible structural analysis system to use as a tool in carrying out research in computational methods and exploring computer hardware. Analysis examples are presented which demonstrate the benefits gained from a combination of the NICE command language with a SPAR computational modules.

Lotts, C. G.↗

Satellite auxiliary-propulsion selection techniques. Applications of selection techniques to the ATS-H satellite

The analysis required to estimate auxiliary-propulsion system requirements for a mission which includes tipoff rate reduction, acquisitions, disturbance torques, orbital disturbances, and spacecraft commanded maneuvers is presented. The comparison of several candidate auxiliary-propulsion systems and system combinations for an advanced applications technology satellite (ATS-H) is described. A generalized auxiliary-propulsion system tradeoff, based on mission cost effectiveness criteria, is examined. The specific mission assumptions for the ATS-H spacecraft are included, along with a discussion of the sensitivity of the final selection to these assumptions.

Holcomb, L. B.↗

Automated control of hierarchical systems using value-driven methods

An introduction is given to the Value-driven methodology, which has been successfully applied to solve a variety of difficult decision, control, and optimization problems. Many real-world decision processes (e.g., those encountered in scheduling, allocation, and command and control) involve a hierarchy of complex planning considerations. For such problems it is virtually impossible to define a fixed set of rules that will operate satisfactorily over the full range of probable contingencies. Decision Science Applications' value-driven methodology offers a systematic way of automating the intuitive, common-sense approach used by human planners. The inherent responsiveness of value-driven systems to user-controlled priorities makes them particularly suitable for semi-automated applications in which the user must remain in command of the systems operation. Three examples of the practical application of the approach in the automation of hierarchical decision processes are discussed: the TAC Brawler air-to-air combat simulation is a four-level computerized hierarchy; the autonomous underwater vehicle mission planning system is a three-level control system; and the Space Station Freedom electrical power control and scheduling system is designed as a two-level hierarchy. The methodology is compared with rule-based systems and with other more widely-known optimization techniques.

Pugh, George E.↗