Magazine

Multi-Mission Power Analysis Tool (MMPAT) Version 2 simulates spacecraft power generation, use, and storage in order to support spacecraft design, mission planning, and spacecraft operations. It can simulate all major aspects of a spacecraft power subsystem. It is parametrically driven to reduce or eliminate the...

An emerging approach in the field of aircraft engine controls and system health management is the inclusion of real-time, onboard models for the inflight estimation of engine performance variations. This technology, typically based on Kalman-filter concepts,...

Future remote sensing instruments will require focal plane spectrometer arrays with higher resolution at high frequencies. One of the major components of spectrometers are the local oscillator (LO) signal sources that are used to drive mixers to down-convert received radio-frequency...

Earth science research often requires crustal deformation measurements at a variety of time scales, from seconds to decades. Although satellites have been used for repeat-track interferometric (RTI) synthetic-aperture-radar (SAR) mapping for close to 20 years, RTI is much more difficult to...

Approved as a Wallops control center backup system, the Wallops Ship Surveillance Software is a day-of-launch risk analysis tool for spaceport activities. The system calculates impact probabilities and displays ship locations relative to boundary lines. It enables rapid analysis of possible flight paths to preclude...

The Rendezvous and Proximity Operations Program (RPOP) is realtime guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) domain piloting-aid software that provides 3D Orbiter graphics and runs on the Space Shuttle’s Criticality-3 Payload and General Support Computer (PGSC) in the crew cockpit. This software...

Source Lines Counter (SLiC) is a software utility designed to measure software source code size using logical source statements and other common measures for 22 of the programming languages commonly used at NASA and the aerospace industry. Such metrics can be used in a wide variety of applications, from...

This software is a component in an unmanned ground vehicle (UGV) perception system that builds compact, single-frame terrain maps for distribution to other systems, such as a world model or an operator control unit, over a local area network (LAN). Each cell in the map encodes an elevation...

The design process often involves the use of Excel files during project development. To facilitate communications of the information in the Excel files, drawings are often generated. During the design process, the Excel files are updated often to reflect new input. The problem is that the drawings often lag the...

Software has been designed to schedule remote sensing with the Earth Observing One spacecraft. The software attempts to satisfy as many observation requests as possible considering each against spacecraft operation constraints such as data volume, thermal, pointing maneuvers, and others. More complex constraints such...

The CCSDS (Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems) File Delivery Protocol for Interplanetary Overlay Network (CFDP-ION) is an implementation of CFDP that uses ION’s DTN (delay tolerant networking) implementation as its UT (unit-data transfer) layer. Because the DTN protocols effect automatic,...

XvicImage is a high-performance X-Windows (Motif-compliant) user interface widget for displaying images. It handles all aspects of low-level image display. The fully Motif-compliant image display widget handles the following tasks:

An all-solid-state replacement for high-frequency Gunn diode oscillators (GDOs) has been proposed for use in NASA’s millimeter- and submillimeter-wave sensing instruments. Highly developed microwave oscillators are used to achieve a low-noise and highly stable reference signal in the 10–40-GHz band....

Binary communication through long cables, opto-isolators, isolating transformers, or repeaters can become distorted in characteristic ways. The usual solution is to slow the communication rate, change to a different method, or improve the communication media. It would help if the characteristic distortions could be...