NASA's Inductive Monitoring System (IMS) is a new computer program that monitors gyroscopes that keep the International Space Station properly oriented in space. Engineers will add the new software to a group of existing tools to identify and track problems related to the gyroscopes. If the software detects warning signs, it will quickly warn the space station's mission control center.

Developed by David Iverson, a computer scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California, IMS looks at archived data and analyzes that to build up a model of how the system is expected to behave. It has been used in F-18 fighter jets, on the space shuttle, and for electric power plant and water quality monitoring, and has applications wherever there are a number of data parameters that need to be tracked. These include power grid monitoring, production lines, and petroleum refineries.


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