Making Space for NASA\u27s Core Flight System Applications

NASA’s core Flight System (cFS) is an open-source flight software framework that runs successful space missions. However, even with growing adoption, cFS can have a challenging learning curve and incomplete documentation. Our new Base Camp toolkit is a new open-source approach developed to help remedy these problems for cFS applications. Base Camp combines NASA Glenn Research Center’s cFS Electronic Data Sheet (EDS) toolchain and refactored components from the author’s OpenSatKit (OSK) to provide a lightweight, portable, python-based toolkit. This toolkit allows users to graphically interact with a cFS target running an OSK Runtime App Suite that provides essential functionality like command ingest, telemetry output, file transfer, and onboard file management. EDS is a Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems (CCSDS) standard that is used to define app interfaces. The Base Camp toolchain uses EDS to automatically generate artifacts for the python ground system. This model enables automated app integration and provides the infrastructure for a cFS community app exchange. The Runtime App Suite is compatible with NASA’s cFS Caelum, the same cFS version used by the NASA Artemis Gateway program. Base Camp is a parallel effort with OpenSatKit. OpenSatKit goes further by combining Ball Aerospace’s COSMOS ground system, NASA’s cFS, and NASA’s 42 dynamic simulator to create an end-to-end cFS-based reference system. And it includes 20+ preconfigured applications. While helpful to users whose goal is a cFS-based space mission, OSK’s complexity can be daunting for user’s who have much simpler goals, such as a cFS-based STEM educational project. Base Camp comes preconfigured with an app suite that facilitates cFS education. From there, OSK apps have been moved to individual git repositories allowing users to decide which apps to integrate into their Base Camp project. Base Camp also includes tools that generate Hello World apps and tutorials that step students through a series of lessons that teach more advanced cFS features. These tutorials have been successfully used for virtual training classes, in-person training classes, and for independent learning. Educators can use Base Camp or step advanced students up to OSK, either of which can run on low-cost Raspberry Pi configurations. This paper describes Base Camp’s features and illustrates how they allow NASA’s cFS framework to be utilized for flight missions as well as STEM education. Base Camp allows students to develop skills and apply them to meet their educational needs that will transfer into marketable skills as they enter the technical workplace

cFS Basecamp: A Flight Software STEM Education Ecosystem

The open-source core Flight System (cFS) Basecamp ecosystem includes several cFS-based STEM educational projects and provides the infrastructure for users to create their own. Basecamp\u27s tool suite and app repositories function much like a smartphone\u27s App Store model. The initial cFS Basecamp installation includes several built-in tutorials that help users learn NASA\u27s cFS application environment and shorten their path to productivity. Online resources describe Basecamp\u27s goal-oriented software/hardware projects. These projects are designed so students understand how to create app-based solutions to meet a particular goal. This approach evolved after years of being engaged with teaching the cFS and learning which teaching methods were most effective. Users began by installing a lightweight Python GUI with minimal external dependencies. This approach helps avoid platform-specific issues so Basecamp can be used in classroom settings where students have diverse computing platforms. With Basecamp\u27s GUI installed, students are ready to work on projects. A preinstalled demonstration app in conjunction with a self-guided tutorital helps users understand an app\u27s command/telemetry interface and the cFS application runtime environment. A built-in app generation tool creates a Hello World app to help students take a first step into cFS app development. From there, they can work through Code-As-You-Go (CAYG) lessons that introduce topics. Each new topic is reinforced with hands-on exercises. These lessons are more suitable for instructor-led classes that can be held virtually or in person. The next level of projects requires Basecamp\u27s github app repositories. Using the GUI, students can select and install Basecamp cFS apps from github with only a few mouse clicks. For example, the General-Purpose Input/Output (GPIO) Demo project requires a cFS Raspberry Pi interface library and an app to control an LED connected to a Raspberry Pi through the GPIO connector. To implement this project, students first connect an LED to a Raspberry Pi, install Basecamp on the Pi, download/install the library/app, and rebuild/run the cFS. A second Basecamp instance installed on a separate computer can remotely control the Raspberry Pi. This is achieved by using Basecamp\u27s MQTT Gateway app. This app utilizes the Internet of Things (IoT) MQTT messaging service that has freely available broker services. Basecamp\u27s modular approach with plug \u27n play cFS apps make it an ideal platform for creating STEM educational projects. These projects will help students learn valuable hardware/software skills while using NASA\u27s award-winning flight software that has a large user base in the aerospace community

RealitySketch: Embedding Responsive Graphics and Visualizations in AR through Dynamic Sketching

We present RealitySketch, an augmented reality interface for sketching interactive graphics and visualizations. In recent years, an increasing number of AR sketching tools enable users to draw and embed sketches in the real world. However, with the current tools, sketched contents are inherently static, floating in mid air without responding to the real world. This paper introduces a new way to embed dynamic and responsive graphics in the real world. In RealitySketch, the user draws graphical elements on a mobile AR screen and binds them with physical objects in real-time and improvisational ways, so that the sketched elements dynamically move with the corresponding physical motion. The user can also quickly visualize and analyze real-world phenomena through responsive graph plots or interactive visualizations. This paper contributes to a set of interaction techniques that enable capturing, parameterizing, and visualizing real-world motion without pre-defined programs and configurations. Finally, we demonstrate our tool with several application scenarios, including physics education, sports training, and in-situ tangible interfaces.Comment: UIST 202

Connecting Research and Practice: An Experience Report on Research Infusion with SAVE

NASA systems need to be highly dependable to avoid catastrophic mission failures. This calls for rigorous engineering processes including meticulous validation and verification. However, NASA systems are often highly distributed and overwhelmingly complex, making the software portion of these systems challenging to understand, maintain, change, reuse, and test. NASA's systems are long-lived and the software maintenance process typically constitutes 60-80% of the total cost of the entire lifecycle. Thus, in addition to the technical challenges of ensuring high life-time quality of NASA's systems, the post-development phase also presents a significant financial burden. Some of NASA's software-related challenges could potentially be addressed by some of the many powerful technologies that are being developed in software research laboratories. Many of these research technologies seek to facilitate maintenance and evolution by for example architecting, designing and modeling for quality, flexibility, and reuse. Other technologies attempt to detect and remove defects and other quality issues by various forms of automated defect detection, architecture analysis, and various forms of sophisticated simulation and testing. However promising, most such research technologies nevertheless do not make the transition from the research lab to the software lab. One reason the transition from research to practice seldom occurs is that research infusion and technology transfer is difficult. For example, factors related to the technology are sometimes overshadowed by other types of factors such as reluctance to change and therefore prohibits the technology from sticking. Successful infusion might also take very long time. One famous study showed that the discrepancy between the conception of the idea and its practical use was 18 years plus or minus three. Nevertheless, infusing new technology is possible. We have found that it takes special circumstances for such research infusion to succeed: 1) there must be evidence that the technology works in the practitioner's particular domain, 2) there must be a potential for great improvements and enhanced competitive edge for the practitioner, 3) the practitioner has to have strong individual curiosity and continuous interest in trying out new technologies, 4) the practitioner has to have support on multiple levels (i.e. from the researchers, from management, from sponsors etc), and 5) to remain infused, the new technology has to be integrated into the practitioner's processes so that it becomes a natural part of the daily work. NASA IV&V's Research Infusion initiative sponsored by NASA's Office of Safety & Mission Assurance (OSMA) through the Software Assurance Research Program (SARP), strives to overcome some of the problems related to research infusion

Public Perceptions of Wildlife-Associated Disease: Risk Communication Matters

Wildlife professionals working at the interface where conflicts arise between people and wild animals have an exceptional responsibility in the long-term interest of sustaining society’s support for wildlife and its conservation by resolving human–wildlife conflicts so that people continue to view wildlife as a valued resource. The challenge of understanding and responding to people’s concerns about wildlife is particularly acute in situations involving wildlife-associated disease and may be addressed through One Health communication. Two important questions arise in this work: (1) how will people react to the message that human health and wildlife health are linked?; and (2) will wildlife-associated disease foster negative attitudes about wildlife as reservoirs, vectors, or carriers of disease harmful to humans? The answers to these questions will depend in part on whether wildlife professionals successfully manage wildlife disease and communicate the associated risks in a way that promotes societal advocacy for healthy wildlife rather than calls for eliminating wildlife because they are viewed as disease-carrying pests. This work requires great care in both formal and informal communication. We focus on risk perception, and we briefly discuss guidance available for risk communication, including formation of key messages and the importance of word choices. We conclude that the risk perception and communication research available is helpful but inadequate, and that thoughtful practice with respect to message and word choice is needed

Jupiter’s auroras during the Juno approach phase as observed by the Hubble Space Telescope

We present movies of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) observations of Jupiter’s FUV auroras observed during the Juno approach phase and first capture orbit, and compare with Juno observations of the interplanetary medium near Jupiter and inside the magnetosphere. Jupiter’s FUV auroras indicate the nature of the dynamic processes occurring in Jupiter’s magnetosphere, and the approach phase provided a unique opportunity to obtain a full set of interplanetary data near to Jupiter at the time of a program of HST observations, along with the first simultaneous with Juno observations inside the magnetosphere. The overall goal was to determine the nature of the solar wind effect on Jupiter’s magnetosphere. HST observations were obtained with typically 1 orbit per day over three intervals: 16 May – 7 June, 22-30 June and 11-18 July, i.e. while Juno was in the solar wind, around the bow shock and magnetosphere crossings, and in the mid-latitude middle-outer magnetospheres. We show that these intervals are characterised by particularly dynamic polar auroras, and significant variations in the auroral power output caused by e.g. dawn storms, intense main emission and poleward forms. We compare the variation of these features with Juno observations of interplanetary compression regions and the magnetospheric environment during the intervals of these observations

The New Horizons Spacecraft

The New Horizons spacecraft was launched on 19 January 2006. The spacecraft was designed to provide a platform for seven instruments that will collect and return data from Pluto in 2015. The design drew on heritage from previous missions developed at The Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) and other missions such as Ulysses. The trajectory design imposed constraints on mass and structural strength to meet the high launch acceleration needed to reach the Pluto system prior to the year 2020. The spacecraft subsystems were designed to meet tight mass and power allocations, yet provide the necessary control and data handling finesse to support data collection and return when the one-way light time during the Pluto flyby is 4.5 hours. Missions to the outer solar system require a radioisotope thermoelectric generator (RTG) to supply electrical power, and a single RTG is used by New Horizons. To accommodate this constraint, the spacecraft electronics were designed to operate on less than 200 W. The spacecraft system architecture provides sufficient redundancy to provide a probability of mission success of greater than 0.85, even with a mission duration of over 10 years. The spacecraft is now on its way to Pluto, with an arrival date of 14 July 2015. Initial inflight tests have verified that the spacecraft will meet the design requirements.Comment: 33 pages, 13 figures, 4 tables; To appear in a special volume of Space Science Reviews on the New Horizons missio

Protecting High Energy Barriers: A New Equation to Regulate Boost Energy in Accelerated Molecular Dynamics Simulations

Molecular dynamics (MD) is one of the most common tools in computational chemistry. Recently, our group has employed accelerated molecular dynamics (aMD) to improve the conformational sampling over conventional molecular dynamics techniques. In the original aMD implementation, sampling is greatly improved by raising energy wells below a predefined energy level. Recently, our group presented an alternative aMD implementation where simulations are accelerated by lowering energy barriers of the potential energy surface. When coupled with thermodynamic integration simulations, this implementation showed very promising results. However, when applied to large systems, such as proteins, the simulation tends to be biased to high energy regions of the potential landscape. The reason for this behavior lies in the boost equation used since the highest energy barriers are dramatically more affected than the lower ones. To address this issue, in this work, we present a new boost equation that prevents oversampling of unfavorable high energy conformational states. The new boost potential provides not only better recovery of statistics throughout the simulation but also enhanced sampling of statistically relevant regions in explicit solvent MD simulations

Overview of HST observa7ons of Jupiter’s ultraviolet aurora during Juno orbits 3 to 7

Jupiter’s permanent ultraviolet auroral emissions have been systematically monitored from Earth orbit with the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) during an 8-month period. The Girst part of this HST large program (GO-14634) was meant to support the NASA Juno prime mission during orbits PJ03 through PJ07. The HST program will resume in Feb 2018, in time for Juno’s PJ11 perijove, right after HST’s solar and lunar avoidance periods. HST observations are designed to provide a Jovian auroral activity background for all instruments on-board Juno and for the numerous ground based and space based observatories participating to the Juno mission. In particular, several HST visits were programmed in order to obtain as many simultaneous observations with Juno-UVS as possible, sometimes in the same hemisphere, sometimes in the opposite one. In addition, the timing of some HST visits was set to take advantage of Juno’s multiple crossings of the current sheet and of the magnetic Gield lines threading the auroral emissions. These observations are obtained with the Space Telescope Imaging Spectrograph (STIS) in time-tag mode, they consist in spatially resolved movies of Jupiter’s highly dynamic aurora with timescales ranging from seconds to several days. Here, we present an overview of the present -numerous- HST results. They demonstrate that while Jupiter is always showing the same basic auroral components, it is also displaying an ever-changing auroral landscape. The complexity of the auroral morphology is such that no two observations are alike. Still, in this apparent chaos some patterns emerge. This information is giving clues on magnetospheric processes at play at the local and global scales, the latter being only accessible to remote sensing instruments such as HST