Electronics & Software

A computer program called “Hunter” accepts, as input, a colloquial-English description of a set of policy-based-management rules, and parses that description into a form useable by policy-based enterprise management (PBEM) software.

A computer program enables generation, in the form of graphical representations of process flows with embedded natural-language policy statements, input to a suite of policy-, process-, and performance-based management (P3BM) software developed at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory. Like the program...

A quality system database (QSD), and software to administer the database, were developed to support recording of administrative nonconformance activities that involve requirements for documentation of corrective and/or preventive actions, which can include ISO 9000 internal quality audits and customer complaints. [“ISO...

The latest release of the Optimal Trajectories by Implicit Simulation (OTIS4) allows users to simulate and optimize aerospace vehicle trajectories. With OTIS4, one can seamlessly generate optimal trajectories and parametric vehicle designs simultaneously. New features also allow OTIS4 to solve non-aerospace...

A K-shell UNIX script enables the International Space Station (ISS) Flight Control Team (FCT) operators in NASA’s Mission Control Center (MCC) in Houston to transfer an entire or partial computer software configuration item (CSCI) from a flight software...

This innovation is an efficient algorithm designed to perform bit-to-symbol and symbol-to-bit likelihood mappings that represent a significant portion of the complexity of an error-correction code decoder for high-order constellations. Recent implementation of the algorithm in hardware has yielded an...

A crater-detection algorithm has been conceived to enable automation of what, heretofore, have been manual processes for utilizing images of craters on a celestial body as landmarks for navigating a spacecraft flying near or landing on that body. The images are acquired by an electronic camera...

A two-stage predictive method was developed for lossless compression of calibrated hyperspectral imagery. The first prediction stage uses a conventional linear predictor intended to exploit spatial and/or spectral dependencies in the data. The compressor tabulates counts of the...

Data Flow Diagram – Petri Net (DFPN) is a software tool for analyzing other software to be developed. The full name of this program reflects its design, which combines the benefit of data-flow diagrams (which are typically favored by software analysts) with the power and precision of...

A computer program reduces data generated by NASA Earth-science missions into representative clusters characterized by centroids and membership information, thereby reducing the large volume of data to a level more amenable to analysis. The program effects an autonomous data-reduction/clustering...

A microwave aeronautical-telemetry receiver system includes an antenna comprising a seven-element planar array of receiving feed horns centered at the focal point of a paraboloidal dish reflector that is nominally aimed at a single aircraft or at multiple aircraft flying in formation....

A power supply for battery-powered systems has been designed with an embedded controller that is capable of monitoring and maintaining batteries, charging hardware, while maintaining output power. The power supply is primarily designed for rovers and other remote science and engineering vehicles, but...

A parallel-processing algorithm and a hardware architecture to implement the algorithm have been devised for timeslot synchronization in the reception of pulse-position-modulated (PPM) optical or radio signals. As in the cases of some prior algorithms and architectures for parallel, discrete-time,...

It has been proposed to develop arrays of strain gauges as arrays of ordinary metal film resistors and associated electronic readout circuitry on printed-circuit boards or other suitable substrates. This proposal is a by-product of a development of instrumentation utilizing metal film resistors on...

The Atmospheric Infra-Red Sounder (AIRS) Science Processing System (SPS) is a collection of computer programs, known as product generation executives (PGEs). The AIRS SPS PGEs are used for processing measurements received from the AIRS suite of infrared and microwave instruments orbiting the Earth...

Automated User’s Training Operations Facility Utilization Request (AutoFUR) is prototype software that administers a Web-based system for requesting and allocating facilities and equipment for astronaut-training classes in conjunction with scheduling the classes. AutoFUR also has potential for...

Version 5.0 of the AutoGen software has been released. Previous versions, variously denoted “Autogen” and “autogen,” were reported in two articles: “Automated Sequence Generation Process and Software” (NPO-30746), Software Tech Briefs (Special Supplement to NASA Tech Briefs), September 2007, page 30, and “Autogen...

Time-Tag Generation Script (TTaGS) is an application program, written in the AWK scripting language, for generating commands for aiming one Ku-band antenna and two S-band antennas for communicating with spacecraft. TTaGS saves between 2 and 4 person-hours per every 24 hours by automating the repetitious process of...

TES Product File Reader software extracts data from publicly available Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES) HDF (Hierarchical Data Format) product data files using publicly available format specifications for scientific analysis in IDL (interactive data language). In this innovation, the...

A suite of computer programs, called “seq diff suite,” reports differences between the products of other computer programs involved in the generation of sequences of commands for spacecraft. These products consist of files of several types: replacement sequence of events (RSOE), DSN...

The Joint Execute Package Development and Integration tool is a Web utility program that provides an integrated capability to generate and manage messages and “execute” package data for members of a space shuttle and the International Space Station (ISS). (An “execute” package...