As part of NASA's Partnership Seed Fund program, Goddard Space Flight Center is integrating the ILIADS software, a geospatial information system (GIS) it developed for lunar applications, with Questus(TM), a management and planning software tool developed by United Space Alliance (USA) for space shuttle operations. The integration will result in a new decision-making application that NASA can use to plan and carry out future robotic and crewed missions to the Moon.
Using internal research and development funding, Goddard technologists modified commercial off-the-shelf GIS software typically used in terrestrial applications to design ILIADS (Integrated Lunar Information Architecture for Decision Support). It gives users access to 3D lunar crater scenes, topographic contour maps, surface distance and elevation measurements, in situ resource and hazard maps, and historical mission data and other useful datasets.
The ILIADS-Questus software will let mission planners directly apply scientific data gathered from remote-sensing satellites and other sources to select potential landing and habitat sites. Ultimately, the tool will support human exploratory sorties on the lunar surface later in the next decade. USA can commercialize the new product, particularly in its work developing NASA's next-generation trans- portation system, the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). Goddard and USA expect to complete the integration of ILIADS and Questus in time for the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO), a Goddard-led mission that will spend a year mapping the Moon after its launch in 2008.
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