Internet Solution Beyond Real Time
solution for software to monitor and control numerous experiments onboard the International Space Station (ISS) and from several locations on Earth has led to the first real-time embedded hypertext transfer protocol server designed for space flight. Using a commercially availabletechnology, the solution was cost-efficient and brought forth some revolutionary commercial applications.
Engineers at NASA's Lewis Research Center in Cleveland developed the Embedded Web Technology (EWT) program to bridge the gap between traditional non–real-time Internet technology and the real-time embedded controls environment. This solved a cost-prohibitive problem: writing a specific graphical user interface (GUI) for each of the numerous individual experiments and then modifying the GUI to accommodate every user platform.
GUIs and custom platform interfaces offer a solution that works for single-user environments, but the development of the interface for the ISS requires that scientists throughout the world and astronauts aboard the ISS, using different computer platforms (personal computers, Macintoshes, UNIX workstations, and so on), be able to interact with their experiments.
To leverage the expanding technology in the ISS, Lewis engineers developed the EWT program, which has the potential for significant software development cost savings for both flight and ground software. For commercial applications, EWT can save product developers and their customers money by eliminating the need for custom user interface hardware and by simplifying the interface between the embedded software and the GUI. By following publicly available standards, hardware changes and upgrades have less of an impact on the software.
The Lewis software team developed Tempest, a web server that provides a real-time application over a separate port. It is the first real-time hypertext transfer protocol server designed for space flight. Tempest, when loaded into a control processor, allows the processor to act as a "remote web site." Authorized users, using a browser, could interact with the control processor to retrieve an applet, which will be the GUI through which the user views data and controls the experiment.
Another innovative concept is to serve Java applets from an embedded web server. The user could download the desired applets through a browser to a local computer, whatever it may be, and use Java's portability to run the same GUI as someone on a different platform. This alone has the potential for enormous cost savings over developing many specific GUIs and is directly applicable to the original "problem" of support for many undefined users on multiple platforms.
EWT offers unlimited product opportunities by enabling embedded devices to be linked, then connected to a higher order, multipurpose processor and plugged into the Internet. EWT puts expertise and equipment in one location and performs over the Internet real-time solutions, adjustments, maintenance and product upgrades to machines located anywhere. This technology has already spun off additional NASA applications, such as the Virtual Interactive Classroom, which enables students to interact with scientific equipment over the Internet.
EWT also has many commercial and nonspace applications in terms of products in which a microprocessor is used for control. The developed software has been loaded into a control computer for a small wind tunnel. The wind tunnel, controlled via the Internet, will demonstrate the technology at an EWT workshop at Lewis Research Center, sponsored by the Great Lakes Industrial Technology Center, a NASA technology center managed by Battelle. The May 5, 1998, workshop fostered technology transfer to commercial businesses.
For more information on EWT, contact David York at Lewis Research Center.
Call (216) 433-3162, E-mail: David.W.York@lerc.nasa.gov For more information on
the EWT workshop, contact Priscilla Diem at the Great Lakes Industrial Technology Center.
Call (440) 734-1186. Or visit the Great Lakes web site at http://fcfsrvl.lerc.nasa.gov/public/techxfer/wkshop9805.html
Please mention you read about it in Innovation.
With a miniature wind tunnel, NASA Lewis
software engineers
created Internet interface
software for future use with the
International
Space Station, keeping costs down and
adding applications.
NASA Pilot Project Names Earth Science Partners wo categories of 12 proposals, Types 2 and 3, have been selected from all sources, including industry and academia, as part of NASA's Earth Science Information Partners (ESIPs) pilot project, to develop working prototypes of innovative uses and applications of its Earth science data and related research. Type 3 ESIPs, expected to be financially self-sustaining at the pilot project's end, are responsible for developing the information for a broader user community. Type 2 ESIPs focus on data and information products in support of global change research that are developmental or research oriented, with an emphasis on flexibility and creativity in meeting advanced scientific applications.
From 50 Type 2 proposals submitted, NASA has selected proposals focusing on land-cover and land-use change issues, oceanography or hydrology, atmospheric research data and integration of interdisciplinary issues, including environmental factors in public health. From 65 Type 3 proposals submitted, NASA has selected proposals in nearly 15 scientific disciplines: regional applications, agriculture, coastal and marine applications, education and public outreach, and special applications to extend Earth Science Enterprise data to non-Earth science research communities. NASA's Earth Science Enterprise (formerly called Mission to Planet Earth) is a long-term research program designed to study Earth's land, oceans, air, ice and life as a total environmental system. For more information, contact Michael Mewhinney at Ames Research Center. Call (650) 604-3937, Fax: (650) 604-3953, E-mail: mmewhinney@mail.arc.nasa.gov Please mention you read about it in Innovation.
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