Operational computer graphics in the flight dynamics environment

Over the past five years, the Flight Dynamics Division of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA's) Goddard Space Flight Center has incorporated computer graphics technology into its operational environment. In an attempt to increase the effectiveness and productivity of the Division, computer graphics software systems have been developed that display spacecraft tracking and telemetry data in 2-d and 3-d graphic formats that are more comprehensible than the alphanumeric tables of the past. These systems vary in functionality from real-time mission monitoring system, to mission planning utilities, to system development tools. Here, the capabilities and architecture of these systems are discussed

SAGA: A project to automate the management of software production systems

The Software Automation, Generation and Administration (SAGA) project is investigating the design and construction of practical software engineering environments for developing and maintaining aerospace systems and applications software. The research includes the practical organization of the software lifecycle, configuration management, software requirements specifications, executable specifications, design methodologies, programming, verification, validation and testing, version control, maintenance, the reuse of software, software libraries, documentation, and automated management

A Logic Programming Elucidation of ODA - Document Descriptions and Processes

We are pursuing a programme of research in document representation. The principal aim of this research is to develop a document description language that has a precise formal semantics, that is fully expressive of the constructs typical of traditional (procedural) document description languages, that is constraint-based, and that cleanly separates specifications of form and content. The research is currently in the first of three envisioned three phases. In the first phase we are formalising the Office Document Architecture (ODA) by faithfully translating ODA document descriptions into logic programmes. The transition utilizes highly restricted forms of Prolog programmes.1 In the second phase we will explore various enhancements of ODA\u27s expressive power that are immediately apparent upon freeing the translation from having to adhere to the initial restrictive conventions. Finally, we will explore and articulate a constraint logic programming language having “built-in constructs for expressing both primitive and composite document description concepts. In the present essay we sketch our translation (into a DCG framework) of ODA document descriptions and (layout) processes. As it turns out the resulting translation is closely related to so called functional attribute grammars [4]. Indeed, we hope eventually to exploit that relationship to enable efficient interpretation of the resulting translation. For now, however, we hope to convince our readers that (definite clause) grammars are a natural and powerful generalisation of the ODA framework, and that the ODA layout process can be specified entirely by declarative means by appealing to properties of the grammars in question

Automating the teaching of artificial language using production systems

The work to be described here is an investigation into the means whereby the learning of programming languages may be made easier. The role of formal definitions of programming languages is studied and a system is described which utilises production systems as the basis for generating an environment in which students may test their understanding of programming languages. This system for automating the teaching of programming languages provides an experimental testbed for carrying out further investigations into programming behaviour

Parallel Architectures for Planetary Exploration Requirements (PAPER)

The Parallel Architectures for Planetary Exploration Requirements (PAPER) project is essentially research oriented towards technology insertion issues for NASA's unmanned planetary probes. It was initiated to complement and augment the long-term efforts for space exploration with particular reference to NASA/LaRC's (NASA Langley Research Center) research needs for planetary exploration missions of the mid and late 1990s. The requirements for space missions as given in the somewhat dated Advanced Information Processing Systems (AIPS) requirements document are contrasted with the new requirements from JPL/Caltech involving sensor data capture and scene analysis. It is shown that more stringent requirements have arisen as a result of technological advancements. Two possible architectures, the AIPS Proof of Concept (POC) configuration and the MAX Fault-tolerant dataflow multiprocessor, were evaluated. The main observation was that the AIPS design is biased towards fault tolerance and may not be an ideal architecture for planetary and deep space probes due to high cost and complexity. The MAX concepts appears to be a promising candidate, except that more detailed information is required. The feasibility for adding neural computation capability to this architecture needs to be studied. Key impact issues for architectural design of computing systems meant for planetary missions were also identified