ALBERT

Description: About 40% of the budget of a scientific spacecraft mission is usually consumed by Mission Operations & Data Analysis (MO&DA) with MO driving these costs. In the current practice, MO is separated from spacecraft design and comes in focus relatively late in the mission life cycle. As a result, spacecraft may be designed that are very difficult to operate. NASA centers have extensive MO expertise but often lessons learned in one mission are not exploited for other parallel or future missions. A significant reduction of MO costs is essential to ensure a continuing and growing access to space for the scientific community. We are addressing some of these issues with a highly automated payload operations and command system for an existing mission, the Extreme Ultraviolet Explorer (EUVE). EUVE is currently operated jointly by the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), responsible for spacecraft operations, and the Center for Extreme Ultraviolet Astrophysics (CEA) of the University of California, Berkeley, which controls the telescopes and scientific instruments aboard the satellite. The new automated system is being developed by a team including personnel from the NASA Ames Research Center (ARC), the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and the Center for EUV Astrophysics (CEA). An important goal of the project is to provide AI-based technology that can be easily operated by nonspecialists in AI. Another important goal is the reusability of the techniques for other missions. Models of the EUVE spacecraft need to be built both for planning/scheduling and for monitoring. In both cases, our modeling tools allow the assembly of a spacecraft model from separate sub-models of the various spacecraft subsystems. These sub-models are reusable; therefore, building mission operations systems for another small satellite mission will require choosing pre-existing modules, reparametrizing them with respect to the actual satellite telemetry information, and reassembling them in a new model. We briefly describe the EUVE mission and indicate why it is particularly suitable for the task. Then we briefly outline our current work in mission planning/scheduling and spacecraft and instrument health monitoring.

Description: DARWIN is a NASA developed, Internet-based system for enabling aerospace researchers to securely and remotely access and collaborate on the analysis of aerospace vehicle design data, primarily the results of wind-tunnel testing and numeric (e.g., computational fluid dynamics) model executions. DARWIN captures, stores and indexes data, manages derived knowledge (such as visualizations across multiple data sets) and provides an environment for designers to collaborate in the analysis of the results of testing. DARWIN is an interesting application because it supports high volumes of data, integrates multiple modalities of data display (e.g. images and data visualizations), and provides non-trivial access control mechanisms. DARWIN enables collaboration by allowing not only sharing visualizations of data, but also commentary about and view of data.

Description: We believe that the next evolutionary step in supporting wide-area application and services delivery to customers is a network framework that provides for collocation of applications and services at distinct sites in the network, an interconnection between these sites that is performance optimized for these applications, and value-added services for applications. We use the term IsoWAN to describe an advanced, isolated network interconnect services framework that will enable applications to be more secure, and able to access and be in use in both local and remote environments. The main functions of an IsoWAN are virtual localization of application services, an application service interface, coordinated delivery of applications and associated data to the customer, and supporting collaborative application development for customers. An initial pilot network between three NASA Centers: Ames Research Center, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory, and Marshall Space Flight Center, has been built and its properties will be discussed.

Description: To date, manned space flight has maintained the locus of control for the mission on the ground. Mission control performs tasks such as activity planning, system health management, resource allocation, and astronaut health monitoring. Future exploration missions require the locus of control to shift to on-board due light speed constraints and potential loss of communication. The lunar campaign must begin to utilize a shared control approach to validate and understand the limitations of the technology allowing astronauts to oversee and direct aspects of operation that require timely decision making. Crew-centered Operations require a system-level approach that integrates multiple technologies together to allow a crew-prime concept of operations. This paper will provide an overview of the driving mission requirements, highlighting the limitations of existing approaches to mission operations and identifying the critical technologies necessary to enable a crew-centered mode of operations. The paper will focus on the requirements, trade spaces, and concepts for fulfillment of this capability. The paper will provide a broad overview of relevant technologies including: Activity Planning and Scheduling; System Monitoring; Repair and Recovery; Crew Work Practices.

Description: The documentation of the Trajectory Generation and System Characterization Model for the Cislunar Low-Thrust Spacecraft is presented in Technical and User's Manuals. The system characteristics and trajectories of low thrust nuclear electric propulsion spacecraft can be generated through the use of multiple system technology models coupled with a high fidelity trajectory generation routine. The Earth to Moon trajectories utilize near Earth orbital plane alignment, midcourse control dependent upon the spacecraft's Jacobian constant, and capture to target orbit utilizing velocity matching algorithms. The trajectory generation is performed in a perturbed two-body equinoctial formulation and the restricted three-body formulation. A single control is determined by the user for the interactive midcourse portion of the trajectory. The full spacecraft system characteristics and trajectory are provided as output.

Description: The Closed Environmental Research Chamber (CERC) at the NASA Ames Research Center was created to investigate both components and complete systems for life support of advanced space exploration missions. This facility includes a Main Chamber, an Airlock, a Sample Transfer Lock, a Vacuum System, an Air Recompression System, a dedicated control room and a pit area for housing supporting and environmental control systems. The Main Chamber provides 310 sq ft of internal working/living space on two levels. It is planned that the CERC will be a human-rated facility for habitation simulation under mass balance closure conditions. The internal pressure will be variable over the range of 14.7 psia to 5 psia with accompanying capability for variation in atmosphere composition to maintain the oxygen partial pressure at 160 mm Hg. The CERC will be provided with a core set of primary life support subsystems for temperature and humidity control, C02 removal and trace contaminant control. Interfacing with external life support technology test b~ds with be provided, along with connection to centralized, microprocessor-based data acquisition and control systems. This paper will discuss the current status of the CERC facility and show how it is being used to address the advanced technology requirements necessary to implement an integrated working and living environment for a planetary habitat. In particular, it will be shown how the CERC, along with a human-powered centrifuge, a planetary terrain simulator and advanced displays and a virtual reality capability will work together to develop and demonstration applicable technologies for future planetary habitats. Artificial intelligence and expert system programming techniques will be used extensively to provide an automated environment for a 4-person crew. There will be several robotic mechanisms performing exploration tasks external to the habitat that will be controlled through the virtual environment to provide representative workloads for the crew. Finally, there will be a discussion of how effective are innovative new multidisciplinary test facilities to the investigation of the wide range of human and machine problems inherent in exploration missions.

Description: The Controlled Environment Research Chamber (CERC) at the NASA Ames Research Center was created for early-on investigation of promising new technologies for life support of advanced space exploration missions. The CERC facility is being used to address the advanced technology requirements necessary to implement an integrated working and living environment for a planetary habitat. The CERC, along with a human-powered centrifuge, a planetary terrain simulator, advanced displays, and a virtual reality capability, is able to develop and demonstrate applicable technologies for future planetary exploration. There will be several robotic mechanisms performing exploration taskes external to the habitat that will be controlled through the virtual environment to provide representative workloads for the crew. Finally, there will be a discussion of innovative new multidisciplinary test facilities, and how effective they are to the investigation of the wide range of human and machine problems inherent in exploration missions.

Description: DARWIN is a web-based system for presenting the results of wind-tunnel testing and computational model analyses to aerospace designers. DARWIN captures the data, maintains the information, and manages derived knowledge (e.g. visualizations, etc.) of large quantities of aerospace data. In addition, it provides tools and an environment for distributed collaborative engineering. We are currently constructing the third version of the DARWIN software system. DARWN's development history has, in some sense, tracked the development of web applications. The 1995 DARWIN reflected the latest web technologies--CGI scripts, Java applets and a three-layer architecture--available at that time. The 1997 version of DARWIN expanded on this base, making extensive use of a plethora of web technologies, including Java/JavaScript and Dynamic HTML. While more powerful, this multiplicity has proven to be a maintenance and development headache. The year 2000 version of DARWIN will provide a more stable and uniform foundation environment, composed primarily of Java mechanisms. In this paper, we discuss this evolution, comparing the strengths and weaknesses of the various architectural approaches and describing the lessons learned about building complex web applications.