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.
"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.
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.
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.
|
|