(-07-) Date: Jan 6 13:12 PST
Subject: Cyberspace at JPL
From: NasaNews
Space flight controllers at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory may soon be
spending most of their time in cyberspace -- not to navigate the
Internet as most computer users would -- but to monitor real-world
spacecraft exploring new vistas in space billions of miles away.
The three-dimensional software tool that will make this possible --
called the Cyberspace Data Monitoring System -- is currently under
development at the Laboratory and being designed to monitor the health
and status of spacecraft and Earth-orbiting satellites.
The new software boasts colorful display grids of spacecraft
subsystems. Each grid can be rotated at different angles to give
controllers different dimensional views of the data. If the
information is being viewed at more than 100 percent on the screen, the
controller can "fly over" the data grid using a mouse and zoom in on
other subsystem information. Up to 20 or 30 individual spacecraft can
be monitored simultaneously with this new cyberspace feature.
"This graphical interface represents a next generation approach to
monitoring systems for a variety of space flight and terrestrial
applications," said Dr. Ursula Schwuttke, supervisor of the JPL Flight
Projects Office Information Systems Testbed, which is developing the
software interface.
"There are myriad advantages to displaying spacecraft subsystem
information in an abstract, visual way," she said. "Most importantly,
a visual software interface allows us to display a dramatically
increased amount of data all at the same time and it gives operators
immediate visual recognition of potential problems by using icons that
change in color or begin flashing when a situation is becoming serious
on board the craft."
The system is a departure from conventional text-based software
programs. Rather than displaying tables of alphanumeric data and text,
the cyberspace environment presents data in three dimensions, using
specified colors and shapes, such as squares, circles and diamonds, to
denote different data channels and values. Motion is used to denote
changes in status quo.
In the 3-D environment, flight controllers can pitch, yaw, roll, zoom
in and zoom out of data grids that are displaying information about the
status of spacecraft subsystems such as power, temperature, alarms and
star calibration reference points.
When a channel goes into alarm, its corresponding channel object or
icon changes color and position, said Robert Angelino, lead software
developer for the cyberspace project. Two types of alarms are detected
by the system: conventional limit-based alarms and trend alarms, which
have not typically been used in monitoring systems.
"Trend alarms display the rate of change of a channel value," Angelino
said. "If the rate of change exceeds a predefined magnitude over a
predefined time period, then the channel triggers a trend alarm. So,
for instance, if the temperature on board the spacecraft is heating up
to unusually high levels, or a gyro is beginning to drift off course,
the corresponding channel objects will change colors from yellow to
red. The channel objects will also spin if they are in yellow and flash
if they are being displayed in red.
"This scheme allows for the unambiguous display of all the various
alarm combinations," he said. "At any time, regardless of whether a
channel is in alarm, the user can click on a channel object using the
mouse and pop up a text window that displays all the information about
the channel that was selected, including its value and alarm status."
The software provides mission analysts with short- and long-term trend
analysis capabilities. Short-term trend analysis, consisting of the
trend alarming system of spinning and flashing motions and color
changes, occurs automatically. On-demand, long-term trend analysis
will provide detection of alarm conditions that manifest themselves
over extended periods of time and the ability to display plots of any
telemetry channel over the same time periods.
"Trend analysis is very important since JPL's Multimission Ground Data
System does not provide that capability and mission analysts currently
have access to trend information only if the analysis has been
performed by hand," Schwuttke said.
Cyberspace data monitoring software has been installed in JPL's mission
operations center and is being evaluated using real data from the
Magellan, Voyager 1 and Voyager 2 spacecraft. Data from all three
missions can be displayed in a single window and many more space flight
missions could be added to the system.
The software is also in the process of being installed at Kirtland Air
Force Base at the Phillips Lab Payload Operations Center in
Albuquerque, New Mexico, for the TAOS (Technology for Autonomous
Operational Survivability) mission, Schwuttke said. In addition, the
software is becoming increasingly popular within the Air Force. A
version of the program that displays data from TAOS, the Miniature
Seeker Technology Integration (MSTI-II) mission and other satellite
missions was demonstrated in November at Onizuka Air Force Base in
Sunnyvale, Calif.
The cyberspace interface is being developed as a generic monitoring
application that will be versatile and applicable to a variety of
ground-based industrial uses, such as monitoring levels of radiation in
nuclear power plants or levels of toxicity at chemical waste sites.
"The software clearly allows considerable flexibility in selecting the
classification and level of detail to be used for routine monitoring of
data," Schwuttke noted. "Cyberspace monitoring interfaces can also
work as a companion piece to other data processing tools for more
detailed data visibility."
Development of the Cyberspace Data Monitoring System is being carried
out with funding from the U.S. Air Force and the JPL Multimission
Operations Systems Office for NASA's Office of Space Science.
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