NASA has awarded funding for 20 new investigations in information systems technology development under the Advanced Information Systems Technology (AIST) Program.
The proposals, selected from more than 200 submissions, focus on high-priority information technology areas: on-board processing, space-based communications networks, mission automation, and high-end computing technologies for modeling. The total funding for these investigations, over a period of three years, is approximately $19.4 million. Investigators hail from 14 states and Washington.
Through the AIST Program, NASA invests in research and development of new and innovative information technologies. The research supports and enhances NASA’s Earth science enterprise and applications objectives as part of the agency’s mission to understand and protect our home planet. AIST focuses on: creating mature technologies that will lead to smaller flight systems that can be built quickly and efficiently, since they will be less resource-intensive and less expensive. AIST investment leads also to more efficient ground-based processing and modeling systems that make the use of Earth science data for the good of humankind.
The investigations selected by NASA’s Office of Earth Science are:
* Mohammed Atiquzzaman (University of Oklahoma, Norman, Okla.): Seamless Handover in Space Networks
* Marcos Bergamo (BBN Technologies, Cambridge, Mass.): Multi-Satellite Virtual Private Network for Space-Based Applications (SpaceVPN)
* Eric Byler (Lockheed Martin Aerospace Corporation, Palo Alto, Calif.): Realtime-Reconfigurable Distributed-Computing for Adaptive Science Operations in Satellite Formations using Heterogeneous CPUs and Heterogeneous Connectivity
* Liping Di (George Mason University, Fairfax, Va.): Integration of OGC and Grid Technologies for Earth Science Modeling and Applications
* Andrea Donnellan (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.): Complexity Computational Environments: Data Assimilation SERVO Grid
* Stephen Durden (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.): An On-Board Processor for a Spaceborne Doppler Precipitation Radar
* Andrew Gray (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.): Reconfigurable Protocol Chip for Satellite Networks
* Jeffery Herath (NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va.): Radiation Tolerant Intelligent Memory Stack (RTIMS)
* James Joseph (Spectrum Astro, Gilbert, Ariz.): TCP/IP Router Board (TRB) with Ethernet Interfaces
* Stephan Kolitz (Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Cambridge, Mass.): Mission Automation for “A Train” Correlative Measurements Using the Earth Phenomena Observing Systems
* Jacqueline LeMoigne (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.): A Reconfigurable Computing Environment for On-Board Data Compression and Cloud Reduction
* Mike Lin (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.): 10/100 Mb/sec Flight Ready Ethernet Hardware
* Yunling Lou (NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, Calif.): On-Board Processor for Direct Distribution of Change Detection Data Products
* Daniel Mandl (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.): Hybrid Ground Phased Array Prototype for Low Earth Orbiting Satellite Communications
* Robert Morris (NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.): Planning and Scheduling of Coordinated Science Observations
* Kara Nance (University of Alaska, Fairbanks, Alaska): Intelligent Dataset Identification, Assimilation, Collection and Transformation System
* Christa Peters-Lidard (NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Md.): Coupling High Resolution Earth System Models Using Advanced Computational Technologies
* Russell Rew (University Corporation for Atmospheric Research/National Center for Atmospheric Research, Boulder, Colo.): Merging the NetCDF and HDF5 Libraries to Achieve Gains in Performance and Interoperability
* Brian Schott (University of Southern California, Arlington, Va.): Reconfigurable Hardware in Orbit
* Peter Thornton (National Center for Atmospheric Research Boulder, Colo.): Implementing an Efficient Supercomputer-Based Grid Compute Engine for End-to-end Operation of a High-Resolution, High Data-Volume Terrestrial Carbon Cycle Model
* Daniel Weigand, (ITT, Reston, Va.): RF Agile Low-Power Transceiver (LPT) Technology for future Space-Based Communications Networks