Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Tech Transfer
Automation for Vehicle and Crew Operations
Project Description
Modern space systems such as the International Space Station (ISS) and the proposed Constellation vehicles and habitats are complex entities with hundreds of thousands of individual telemetry items. Monitoring the health of these systems, troubleshooting their faults, developing maintenance plan and schedule, and aiding to restore system functionality are key tasks that flight controllers must perform. The current suite of tools for assisting with these tasks is not tightly integrated with the telemetry stream, the commanding process or other tools that flight controllers use. In the proposed effort, Qualtech Systems Inc. in collaboration with TRACLabs Inc. will develop an advanced health monitoring, capability assessment, and opportunistic maintenance planning tool that tightly integrates with the future mission control telemetry stream and displays. Our tool will be a plug-in to the future Mission Control Technology display software that will be deployed over the next several years in NASA's Mission Control Center (MCC). As such it will share capabilities and features with all of the other MCT applications such as plotting, procedure execution, commanding and evaluators (comps). The benefit to NASA will be a fully integrated health monitoring, capability assessment, and maintenance planning tool that reduces flight controller workload by sharing information with other MCC applications. This tool will also be vital in enhancement of safety, mission success probability and freeing up crew and controller time that is currently dedicated towards performing unscheduled maintenance/repairs.
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Anticipated Benefits
Among the other agencies, DoD and Air-force and Navy are the most potential customer for the resulting technologies. Large scale military systems (systems of systems) such as NORAD, Space Command ground segments, the Joint Strike Fighter fleet, the Navy shipboard platforms, Submarine Commands and ballistic missile defense (BMD) systems can be potential areas to field the proposed technology. In addition, UAVs, UMGs and other unmanned submersible vehicle markets could also be potential target for the proposed technology. The product is also expected to be of commercial value to the manufacturers of DoD and military's remotely guided weapons and reconnaissance systems.
The technology proposed for development in this Phase I and a subsequent Phase II effort will result in a novel software solution that can utilize, in real-time, sensor data from telemetry streams, from data repositories or simply from files; generate a comprehensive health assessment of the system; provide relevant condition assessment information to the user instead of inundating the user with too much data; allow the user to execute procedures for further troubleshooting or generating more detailed health assessment, and finally use the health assessment and mission requirements information to develop and display mission satisfiability metrics to the appropriate user for improved mission control. NASA's current vision to enhance the level of autonomy for vehicle health management and mission planning makes the proposed effort worthy of funding from several branches within it. Clearly establishing the technology and the software so that it readily operates as part of NASA's next generation Mission Control Technology allows NASA, primarily Johnson Space Center, which is in charge of Mission Control Center, to utilize the continuous health assessment and mission satisfiability information from our tool for improved mission execution and re-configuration while improving safety, mission success probability and reducing flight controller and crew workload. More »
The technology proposed for development in this Phase I and a subsequent Phase II effort will result in a novel software solution that can utilize, in real-time, sensor data from telemetry streams, from data repositories or simply from files; generate a comprehensive health assessment of the system; provide relevant condition assessment information to the user instead of inundating the user with too much data; allow the user to execute procedures for further troubleshooting or generating more detailed health assessment, and finally use the health assessment and mission requirements information to develop and display mission satisfiability metrics to the appropriate user for improved mission control. NASA's current vision to enhance the level of autonomy for vehicle health management and mission planning makes the proposed effort worthy of funding from several branches within it. Clearly establishing the technology and the software so that it readily operates as part of NASA's next generation Mission Control Technology allows NASA, primarily Johnson Space Center, which is in charge of Mission Control Center, to utilize the continuous health assessment and mission satisfiability information from our tool for improved mission execution and re-configuration while improving safety, mission success probability and reducing flight controller and crew workload. More »
Project Library
Primary U.S. Work Locations and Key Partners
| Organizations Performing Work | Role | Type | Location |
|---|---|---|---|
| Qualtech Systems, Inc. | Lead Organization |
Industry
Minority-Owned Business,
Small Disadvantaged Business (SDB)
|
Rocky Hill, Connecticut |
Ames Research Center
(ARC)
|
Supporting Organization | NASA Center | Moffett Field, California |
Primary U.S. Work Locations
-
California
-
Connecticut
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This is a historic project that was completed before the creation of TechPort on October 1, 2012. Available data has been included. This record may contain less data than currently active projects.