Exploration Technologies for Operations

Abstract

Although the International Space Station (ISS) assembly has been completed, the Operations support teams continue to seek more efficient and effective ways to prepare for and conduct the ISS operations and future exploration missions beyond low earth orbit. This search for improvement has led to a significant collaboration between the NASA research and advanced software development community at NASA Ames Research Center and the Mission Operations community at NASA Johnson Space Center. Since 2001, NASA Ames Research Center has been developing and applying its advanced intelligent systems and human systems integration research to mission operations tools for several of the unmanned Mars missions operations. Since 2006, NASA Ames Research Center has also been developing and applying its advanced intelligent systems and human systems integration research to mission operations tools for manned operations support with the Mission Operations Directorate at NASA Johnson Space Center. This paper discusses the completion of the development and deployment of a variety of intelligent and human systems technologies adopted for manned mission operations. The technologies associated with the projects include advanced software systems for operations and human-centered computing. Human-centered computing looks to the processes and procedures that people do to perform any given job, then attempts to identify opportunities to improve these processes and procedures. In particular, for mission operations, improvements are quantified by specifically identifying how a tool can increase a person's efficiency, enhance a person's functional capability, and/or improve the assurance of a person's decisions. The Ames development team has collaborated with the Mission Operations team to identify areas of efficiencies through technology infusion applications in support of the "Plan, Train, and Fly" activities of human-spaceflight mission operations. The specific applications discussed in this paper are in the areas of mission planning systems, mission operations design modeling and workflow automation, advanced systems monitoring, mission control technologies, search tools, training management tools, spacecraft solar array management, spacecraft power management, and spacecraft attitude planning. We discuss these specific projects between the Ames Research Center and the Johnson Space Center's Mission Operations Directorate, and how these technologies and projects are enhancing the mission operations support for the International Space Station. We also discuss the challenges, problems, and successes associated with long-distance and multi-year development projects between the research team at Ames and the Mission Operations customers at Johnson Space center. Finally, we discuss how these technology infusion applications and underlying technologies might be used in the future to support on-board 2 operations of the crew and spacecraft systems as human exploration expands beyond low earth orbit to destinations in the solar system where communic...

Integrating human performance measures into space operations: Beyond our scheduling capabilities?

“…They use Score as their main planning and scheduling tool [5]. Score has similar scheduling and planning capabilities like PLATO, though Score emphasizes integrated activity resource modeling while PLATO has more sophisticated planning analysis functions.…”

“…There are many aspects of ISS space operations that are planned and scheduled [4,5]. Among these are: extravehicular activities (i.e., EVA or spacewalks); power availability and consumption; attitude control and maneuvers; active environmental, life support, and thermal control; communication, command, and data handling; and crew and payload schedules.…”

“…This information is integrated into the many complex models of operation the PROs (and other flight controller) disciplines have their disposal. Power analysis is computed through various custom-made models that are all integrated through a single software user interface, Power Planning Analysis Tool (PLATO) [5].…”

Preliminary Work Domain Analysis For Human Extravehicular Activity

“…There has also been efforts to enhance astronaut capability via prototype cuff display (Carr, Schwartz, & Rosenberg, 2002;Hodgson et al, 2003) and helmet display development (Jacobs, Di Capua, Husain, Mirvis, & Akin, 2011;Stolen, Dillow, Jacobs, & Akin, 2008). Various other software advances have also been developed recently including prototype automated timeline tracking, activity scheduling, and fault-detection (See Smith et al, (2014) for a summary). However, there has been limited research utilizing a formative framework to inform decision support system (DSS) design for EVA (Marquez, 2007).…”