A software program enables a user to track a scene or a spot on Earth from space (such as from the ISS) using an innovative algorithm. This robust and highly accurate software allows a scene to be tracked that can be not only the shifted version of a previous scene,...

The task of producing Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) personnel schedules is daunting. Through automation, the labor and number of mistakes made are reduced when compared to the manual process. This software not only allows for common constraints to be expressed,...

Planning area coverage observations is a challenge in an architecture with a framing imager affixed to a bus that can be moved, and a mirror or other device that allows for small, but fast, observation of adjacent areas along the boresight of a telescope. The telescope boresight can slew slowly...

Apaper reports a method of converting distributed curvature measurements into a three-dimensional shape by combining elastic rod theory and differential geometry to arrive at a three-dimensional solution of the Frenet-Serret formulas. A new method of calculating the...

Low-Density Parity-Check (LDPC) codes are the best error-correcting codes known for a wide variety of communications applications. The AR4JA code family encompasses encoders and decoders for nine error-correcting codes. These include Accumulate, Repeat-by-4, and Jagged Accumulate (AR4JA) codes...

The prediction of a conserved scalar is important in many fields of study. For example, in modeling of combustion processes, if a conserved scalar exists, the mathematical problem can be greatly simplified. Inert gases transported in mixtures of other gases are also...

The Dictionary Management System (DMS) is a Web-based tool to develop and store a project command and telemetry dictionary. The dictionary defines a project’s flight/ground interface. In recent years, dictionaries have become very large, making it hard to maintain traditional methods of flat-file storage and manual...

Currently, there are no programmatic methods to query the NIST National Vulnerability Database (NVD) without downloading the entire database in XML format, parsing the content, loading the resulting data into a self-hosted database, and then developing an interface for querying the content. This tool...

A software framework on top of Hadoop Streaming enables both the processing of binary data in the cloud, and the freedom for the developer to implement his or her mapper and reducer programs in any language, rather than re-implementing existing solutions in Java, or...

One of the highly desired enhancements to the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) and Phoenix flight missions was the centralized coordinate transform database maintained onboard. Without the database, there are quite a few operations that require cumbersome, error-prone manual calculations on the ground such as...

SIVO-PyD gathers and automatically installs (in various computing platforms) a collection of Python-related packages for scientific computing and visualization. All of the packages in distribution are accessible within the Python framework. The distribution is self-contained and...

Success in mission operations relies on achieving consensus amongst a wide variety of personnel with diverse backgrounds and education. Previously, NASA missions relied on disparate tools with a variety of inconsistent interfaces. These tools greatly influence how members of the mission communicate with each other, increasing confusion and...

The analysis and simulation of gases expanding from sources such as rocket nozzles into vacuum, or the effects plumes from these sources create when they interact with solid surfaces, present a considerable challenge to the scientific and engineering communities. As a...

Model-Based System Engineering is becoming widely adopted at JPL and in industry because model-centric systems introduce improved methods of system engineering. As systems with ever-increasing complexity are developed at JPL, model-centric engineering be comes essential for design,...

The Uninhabited Aerial Vehicle Synthetic Aperture Radar (UAVSAR) is an Earth imaging radar that flies on a Gulf-Stream Jet. Its mission is to collect data for NASA scientists who are using Synthetic Aperture Radar to develop methods for monitoring changes in the Earth’s surface. As with many...

The spherical empirical mode decomposition algorithm is an adaptation in the spherical space of the 2D empirical mode decomposition in Euclidian space. This algorithm is a signal analysis method for any spherical data, such as orbital measurements. The two primary advantages of this innovation are the absence...

The NASA Space Telecommunications Radio System (STRS) specification cites a plan for an application repository, similar to an “app store,” but with a wide variety of licensing restrictions on access to different applications, and even different parts of...

Geometry Manipulation Protocol (GMP) is a library that serializes data types between XML and ANSI C data structures to support computational fluid dynamics (CFD) applications. This library currently provides a description of geometric configurations, general moving-body scenarios (prescribed...

An integrated ground support equipment (GSE) tracking and management tool is designed for tracking and managing GSE data used in support of KSC/Ground Systems Development and Operations (GSDO) planning and launch campaigns. This software (the Ground Hardware Management Tool, GHMT) will be fully...

Originating as the Aerodynamics Division Software Library of the 1980s and -90s, this software is a collection of more than 100 software applications, many of them for manipulating the grids and flow solutions associated with computational fluid dynamics (CFD). Underlying these applications are about 30 libraries...

FIAT v3 simulates one-dimensional thermal energy transport through a multilayer stack of thermal protection materials, bonding materials, metallic or composite structures, air gaps, and/or insulations. The outer surface encounters aerothermal heating from hypersonic flow, and...

A complex organization with many tasks and sub-tasks, many phases, and many workers often will have an associated database with many users and groups, each of whom has a limited “need to know” (e.g. fine-grained security access controls) that does not extend to all information in the database. A group...

This tool supports the development of table loads required to inform the flight software of new on-the-fly packet definitions. The main outcome of the processing includes all the database products needed by the ground system to process the newly created packets. The tool ingests...

This hardware-independent, Web-based service provides the capabilities to improve software assurance by streamlining the management of the analysis tools, the code being analyzed, and the results that are generated. The service is a GUI (graphical user interface) application that addresses the needs of software developers and supporting...

Previously, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) did not allow observations to go beyond the end of a planning period. However, opportunities for observing the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) rover occur close enough to these boundaries to require the...

The Integrated Science Instrument Module (ISIM) Ground Support System (IGSS) Equation Processor (IEP) allows for the general production of “derived” telemetry products in the Raytheon Eclipse ground system used to support the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) project. The IEP works...

Perilog measures the degree of contextual association of large numbers of term pairs in text to produce network models that capture the structure of the text and, by virtue of Perilog’s validated theory of iconicity, the structure of the domains, situations, and concerns expressed by the author of the text. Given alphanumeric...

BAT is a Web-based application used for the assembly and inspection of critical flight and associated ground support hardware for JPL missions that are developed in-house. It is used to capture and communicate data that is unique to a part or assembly that cannot be captured...