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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 19 records
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2018

Ground Autonomy for an Aging Spacecraft

As it approaches the sixteenth of a 5 year prime mission, NASA's Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) mission continues to meet and exceed all science requirements while operating with severely degraded batteries. By 2013, the batteries had degraded such that the On Board Computer (OBC) could not be powered through eclipse. This prevents science data collection in eclipse and erases over 99% of all stored science and engineering telemetry. To mitigate these problems, the Flight Operations Team (FOT) at the Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) adopted a new operations scheme. "Daylight Only Operations" (DO-OP) transitions the spacecraft from safemode to science mode every orbit. This involved heavily automating the transition process using ground autonomy to improve spacecraft recovery time to 6 minutes - down from 3 orbits of manual commanding. While highly successful, this method of operations poses daily challenges that must be overcome using increasingly complex ground software.

Autonomous Operations↗
NASA NTRS2012

Onboard Autonomy and Ground Operations Automation for the Intelligent Payload Experiment (IPEX) CubeSat Mission

The Intelligent Payload Experiment (IPEX) is a cubesat manifested for launch in October 2013 that will flight validate autonomous operations for onboard instrument processing and product generation for the Intelligent Payload Module (IPM) of the Hyperspectral Infra-red Imager (HyspIRI) mission concept. We first describe the ground and flight operations concept for HyspIRI IPM operations. We then describe the ground and flight operations concept for the IPEX mission and how that will validate HyspIRI IPM operations. We then detail the current status of the mission and outline the schedule for future development.

project data planning↗
NASA NTRS1998

An AI Approach to Ground Station Autonomy for Deep Space Communications

This paper describes an architecture for an autonomous deep space tracking station (DS-T). The architecture targets fully automated routine operations encompassing scheduling and resource allocation, antenna and receiver predict generation. track procedure generation from service requests, and closed loop control and error recovery for the station subsystems. This architecture has been validated by the construction of a prototype DS-T station, which has performed a series of demonstrations of autonomous ground station control for downlink services with NASA's Mars Global Surveyor (MGS).

Fisher, Forest↗
NASA NTRS2003

Pseudo Linear Gyro Calibration

Previous high fidelity onboard attitude algorithms estimated only the spacecraft attitude and gyro bias. The desire to promote spacecraft and ground autonomy and improvements in onboard computing power has spurred development of more sophisticated calibration algorithms. Namely, there is a desire to provide for sensor calibration through calibration parameter estimation onboard the spacecraft as well as autonomous estimation on the ground. Gyro calibration is a particularly challenging area of research. There are a variety of gyro devices available for any prospective mission ranging from inexpensive low fidelity gyros with potentially unstable scale factors to much more expensive extremely stable high fidelity units. Much research has been devoted to designing dedicated estimators such as particular Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) algorithms or Square Root Information Filters. This paper builds upon previous attitude, rate, and specialized gyro parameter estimation work performed with Pseudo Linear Kalman Filter (PSELIKA). The PSELIKA advantage is the use of the standard linear Kalman Filter algorithm. A PSELIKA algorithm for an orthogonal gyro set which includes estimates of attitude, rate, gyro misalignments, gyro scale factors, and gyro bias is developed and tested using simulated and flight data. The measurements PSELIKA uses include gyro and quaternion tracker data.

Harman, Richard↗
NASA NTRS2001

Autonomy of SOHO ground operations

The Solar and Heliospheric Observatory (SOHO) project [1] is being carried out by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a cooperative effort between the two agencies in the framework of the Solar Terrestrial Science Program (STSP) comprising SOHO and other missions. SOHO was launched on December 2, 1995.

autonomy↗
NASA NTRS2001

Autonomy for SOHO Ground Operations

The SOLAR and HELIOSPHERIC OBSERVATORY (SOHO) project [SOHO Web Page] is being carried out by the European Space Agency (ESA) and the US National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as a cooperative effort between the two agencies in the framework of the Solar Terrestrial Science Program (STSP) comprising SOHO and other missions. SOHO was launched on December 2, 1995. The SOHO spacecraft was built in Europe by an industry team led by Matra, and instruments were provided by European and American scientists. There are nine European Principal Investigators (PI's) and three American ones. Large engineering teams and more than 200 co-investigators from many institutions support the PI's in the development of the instruments and in the preparation of their operations and data analysis. NASA is responsible for the launch and mission operations. Large radio dishes around the world, which form NASA's Deep Space Network (DSN), are used to track the spacecraft beyond the Earths orbit. Mission control is based at Goddard Space Flight Center in Maryland. The agent group at the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, in collaboration with JPL, is currently involved with the design and development of an agent-based system to provide intelligent interactions with the control center personnel for SOHO. The basic approach that is being taken is to develop a sub-community of agents for each major subsystem of SOHO and to integrate these sub-communities into an overall SOHO community. Agents in all sub-communities will be capable of advanced understanding (deep reasoning) of the associated spacecraft subsystem.

Truszkowski, Walt↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

MPATH (Measuring Performance for Autonomy Teaming with Humans) Ground Control Station: Design Approach and Initial Usability Results

Envisioned future Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) operations will require a transition of aircraft command and control from onboard pilots to remote operators. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has developed a research ground control station (GCS) software called MPATH (Measuring Performance for Autonomy Teaming with Humans) to study the human factors of remote operators in a representative AAM environment, where small uncrewed aerial systems (sUAS; simulated or real) act as surrogates for larger AAM aircraft. A primary focus of the research being conducted with the MPATH GCS is scalability (i.e., one human managing multiple vehicles). MPATH has demonstrated to be a useful capability for human factors research and remote operations. Two initial usability studies and a multi-vehicle control assessment were recently conducted, and usability data and operator feedback were collected. Generally, participants rated MPATH high on usability and interface quality, whereas information quality was rated slightly lower. These results were supported by specific feedback. Several generalized GCS design recommendations are proposed based on the results and feedback from these flight activities. Future updates to MPATH will incorporate the proposed recommendations. In practice, these recommendations could be used by any GCS software designer or developer to promote usability and safety.

Advanced Air Mobility↗
NASA NTRS2017

Application of Human-Autonomy Teaming to an Advanced Ground Station for Reduced Crew Operations

Within human factors there is burgeoning interest in the "human-autonomy teaming" (HAT) concept as a way to address the challenges of interacting with complex, increasingly autonomous systems. The HAT concept comes out of an aspiration to interact with increasingly autonomous systems as a team member, rather than simply use automation as a tool. The authors, and others, have proposed core tenets for HAT that include bi-directional communication, automation and system transparency, and advanced coordination between human and automated teammates via predefined, dynamic task sequences known as "plays." It is believed that, with proper implementation, HAT should foster appropriate teamwork, thus increasing trust and reliance on the system, which in turn will reduce workload, increase situation awareness, and improve performance. To this end, HAT has been demonstrated and/or studied in multiple applications including search and rescue operations, healthcare and medicine, autonomous vehicles, photography, and aviation. The current paper presents one such effort to apply HAT. It details the design of a HAT agent, developed by Human Automation Teaming Solutions, Inc., to facilitate teamwork between the automation and the human operator of an advanced ground dispatch station. This dispatch station was developed to support a NASA project investigating a concept called Reduced Crew Operations (RCO); consequently, we have named the agent R-HATS. Part of the RCO concept involves a ground operator providing enhanced support to a large number of aircraft with a single pilot on the flight deck. When assisted by R-HATS, operators can monitor and support or manage a large number of aircraft and use plays to respond in real-time to complicated, workload-intensive events (e.g., an airport closure). A play is a plan that encapsulates goals, tasks, and a task allocation strategy appropriate for a particular situation. In the current implementation, when a play is initiated by a user, R-HATS determines what tasks need to be completed and has the ability to autonomously execute them (e.g., determining diversion options and uplinking new routes to aircraft) when it is safe and appropriate. R-HATS has been designed to both support end users and researchers in RCO and HAT. Additionally, R-HATS and its underlying architecture were developed with generalizability in mind as a modular software applicable outside of RCO/aviation domains. This paper will also discuss future further development and testing of RHATS.

automation↗
NASA NTRS1993

PTTI-aided ephemeris calculation and rapid data link acquisition for manned space flight

Complexity of future manned space flight mission control can be significantly reduced by integrating GPS, the PTTI source, into telemetry, tracking, and command (TT&C). Future telecommunications, space tracking electronic intelligence, metrology, navigation, and data acquisition will thereby be served, including: on-board ephemeris determination, reduced synchronization time for time division multiple access (TDMA) links, and in-flight clock calibration, increasing on-board autonomy and reducing ground support costs. Manned space transportation through the first quarter of the 21st century will probably depend on a mix of vehicles, including the Advanced Manned Launch System (AMLS), the Personnel Launch System (PLS), and continued use of the Shuttle Fleet. Precise Ephemeris is important on-board for mission success, status monitoring, also for rendezvous and docking. Use of GPS can eliminate ground based tracking/processing, enhancing autonomy and reducing communications bandwidth. GPS time can simplify complicated functions used in bandwidth efficient time division multiple access (TDMA) communications, such as: precise and realtime synchronization of receive reference timing, transmit-timing and acquisition control, unique synchronization word (UW) detection, and elastic buffering. High clock accuracy provides increased signal-to-noise (S/N) ratio during acquisition, permitting narrower acquisition frequency and time windows. Spaceborne systems requirements to provide capabilities such as: refinement of the GEM-72 gravity model based on satellite tracking observations from ATS-6 to GEOS-3, relativistic clock experiments, NASA crustal dynamics program for developing space geodetic techniques to study the earth's crust, its gravity field, and earthquake mechanisms, and multi-disciplinary space geodetic tracking for studying global climatic changes are also reviewed.

Anderman, Alfred↗
NASA NTRS1997

Advanced Simulation Environment for Autonomous Spacecraft

NASA is developing technology to increase spacecraft on-board autonomy, in an effort to reduce overall mission cost and mission operations resources. Achievement of this objective requires the development of a new class of ground-based autonomy testbeds that can enable rapid development, test, and integration of the new autonomous spacecraft flight software.

cost Autonomy Testbed Environment↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Towards a Measure of Situation Awareness for Space Mission Schedulers

The success of space flight missions relies on support provided to astronauts through specialist knowledge of ground-based personnel. One of the many essential tasks that ground personnel provide is the scheduling of flight crew daily activities. Future long duration exploration missions will require astronauts to assume planning and scheduling responsibilities in order to facilitate increased autonomy from ground support. Although situation awareness is critical to the scheduling task, a sufficient measure for this domain has not been developed. This paper documents the approach and process by which the authors developed a framework for measuring situation awareness in space mission schedulers and presents the measure applications’ initial results.

human factors in spaceflight↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Towards a Measure of Situation Awareness for Space Mission Schedulers

The success of space flight missions relies on support provided to astronauts through specialist knowledge of ground-based personnel. One of the many essential tasks that ground personnel provide is the scheduling of flight crew daily activities. Future long duration exploration missions will require astronauts to assume planning and scheduling responsibilities in order to facilitate increased autonomy from ground support. Although situation awareness is critical to the scheduling task, a sufficient measure for this domain has not been developed. This paper documents the approach and process by which the authors developed a framework for measuring situation awareness in space mission schedulers and presents the measure applications’ initial results.

human factors in spaceflight↗
NASA NTRS2002

Reusable Autonomy

Currently, spacecraft ground systems have a well defined and somewhat standard architecture and operations concept. Based on domain analysis studies of various control centers conducted over the years it is clear that ground systems have core capabilities and functionality that are common across all ground systems. This observation alone supports the realization of reuse. Additionally, spacecraft ground systems are increasing in their ability to do things autonomously. They are being engineered using advanced expert systems technology to provide automated support for operators. A clearer understanding of the possible roles of agent technology is advancing the prospects of greater autonomy for these systems. Many of their functional and management tasks are or could be supported by applied agent technology, the dynamics of the ground system's infrastructure could be monitored by agents, there are intelligent agent-based approaches to user-interfaces, etc. The premise of this paper is that the concepts associated with software reuse, applicable in consideration of classically-engineered ground systems, can be updated to address their application in highly agent-based realizations of future ground systems. As a somewhat simplified example consider the following situation, involving human agents in a ground system context. Let Group A of controllers be working on Mission X. They are responsible for the command, control and health and safety of the Mission X spacecraft. Let us suppose that mission X successfully completes it mission and is turned off. Group A could be dispersed or perhaps move to another Mission Y. In this case there would be reuse of the human agents from Mission X to Mission Y. The Group A agents perform their well-understood functions in a somewhat but related context. There will be a learning or familiarization process that the group A agents go through to make the new context, determined by the new Mission Y, understood. This simplified scenario highlights some of the major issues that need to be addressed when considering the situation where Group A is composed of software-based agents (not their human counterparts) and they migrate from one mission support system to another. This paper will address: - definition of an agent architecture appropriate to support reuse; - identification of non-mission-specific agent capabilities required; - appropriate knowledge representation schemes for mission-specific knowledge; - agent interface with mission-specific knowledge (a type of Learning); development of a fully-operational group of cooperative software agents for ground system support; architecture and operation of a repository of reusable agents that could be the source of intelligent components for realizing an autonomous (or nearly autonomous) agent-based ground system, and an agent-based approach to repository management and operation (an intelligent interface for human use of the repository in a ground-system development activity).

Truszkowski, Walt↗
NASA NTRS1983

Space station needs, attributes and architectural options. Volume 4, task 2 and 3: Mission implementation and cost

An overview of the basic space station infrastructure is presented. A strong case is made for the evolution of the station using the basic Space Transportation System (STS) to achieve a smooth transition and cost effective implementation. The integrated logistics support (ILS) element of the overall station infrastructure is investigated. The need for an orbital transport system capability that is the key to servicing and spacecraft positioning scenarios and associated mission needs is examined. Communication is also an extremely important element and the basic issue of station autonomy versus ground support effects the system and subsystem architecture.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2002

Teamwork Reasoning and Multi-Satellite Missions

NASA is rapidly moving towards the use of spatially distributed multiple satellites operating in near Earth orbit and Deep Space. Effective operation of such multi-satellite constellations raises many key research issues. In particular, the satellites will be required to cooperate with each other as a team that must achieve common objectives with a high degree of autonomy from ground based operations. The multi-agent research community has made considerable progress in investigating the challenges of realizing such teamwork. In this report, we discuss some of the teamwork issues that will be faced by multi-satellite operations. The basis of the discussion is a particular proposed mission, the Magnetospheric MultiScale mission to explore Earth's magnetosphere. We describe this mission and then consider how multi-agent technologies might be applied in the design and operation of these missions. We consider the potential benefits of these technologies as well as the research challenges that will be raised in applying them to NASA multi-satellite missions. We conclude with some recommendations for future work.

Marsella, Stacy C.↗
NASA NTRS1998

Spacecraft Autonomy and the Missions of Exploration

Practitioners of artificial intelligence are being engaged to help develop the next generation of flight software for NASA missions, in partnership with other computer scientists, mission designers, operations personnel, spacecraft engineers, systems engineers, software engineers, and scientists.

artificial intelligence spacecraft autonomy ground↗