Information Sharing Protocol Advanced Tool of Math (ISPATOM) is an application program allowing for the streamlined generation of "comps," which subscribe to streams of incoming telemetry data, perform any necessary computations on the data, then send the data to other programs for display and/or further processing in NASA mission control centers (see figure). Heretofore, the development of comps was difficult, expensive, and time-consuming: Each comp was custom written manually, in a low-level computing language, by a programmer attempting to follow requirements of flight controllers.

Overview of ISPATOM application flow structure.
ISPATOM enables a flight controller who is not a programmer to write a comp by simply typing in one or more equation( s) at a command line or retrieving the equation(s) from a text file. ISPATOM then subscribes to the necessary input data, performs all of necessary computations, and sends out the results. It sends out new results whenever the input data change. The use of equations in ISPATOM is no more difficult than is entering equations in a spreadsheet. The time involved in developing a comp is thus limited to the time taken to decide on the necessary equations. Thus, ISPATOM is a real-time dynamic calculator.

This work was done by Adam Dershowitz of United Space Alliance for Johnson Space Center.

Topics:
Data acquisition and handling Real-time data Software Telecommunications Telemetry Tools and equipment
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NASA Tech Briefs Magazine

This article first appeared in the September, 2007 issue of NASA Tech Briefs Magazine (Vol. 31 No. 9).

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