Baran Sahin - Academia.edu (original) (raw)

Papers by Baran Sahin

SpaceOps 2008 Conference, 2008

The Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) spacecraft was developed as part of the NASA New Millennium Program ... more The Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) spacecraft was developed as part of the NASA New Millennium Program (NMP). In December 2001, NASA Headquarters approved the EO-1 program to begin an Extended Mission operations phase. The Extended Mission seeks to maximize the infusion of EO-1 technology through increased utilization of the satellite and reduce the cost of operations through a Continuous Improvement Program (CIP). A key objective of the CIP is to reduce operations costs by increasing automation use. The threeperson EO-1 Flight Operations Team (FOT) is responsible for four main tasks: flight dynamics processing, mission planning, real-time engineering, and engineering analysis. Both automation and meta-automation-using an additional layer of automation to control separate automated processes-are utilized by the FOT. Techniques and strategies for implementing automation are discussed. Criteria are presented to judge the appropriateness of a procedure for automation. They are grouped into categories: ease of implementation, return on investment, and degree of feedback. Factors that affect the design of an automation scheme include: available operating systems, strengths of commercial and inhouse tools, tool familiarity, desired error checking structure, and desired nature of operator feedback. Unit testing, acceptance testing, parallel operations, documentation, training, and configuration management are necessary to implement automation in flight operations. Automation lowers labor costs, but also benefits an FOT by standardizing procedures. However, negative consequences can occur as a result of implementation, including loss of knowledge, operators trusting process over output, inappropriate use of automated procedures, and increased system administration issues. The automation implemented by the EO-1 FOT is also discussed. For flight dynamics processing, the orbit determination and prediction procedure has been automated piecewise. Manually, this procedure required approximately three hours; automated, the procedure lasts 30 minutes, during which the user can intermittently leave the workstation to perform other tasks. Automation has been applied to the command load generation procedure, where appropriate. Most importantly, the real-time support procedure has been fully automated and can receive, process, deliver, and confirm commands without human input. The system also monitors telemetry and sends notifications to the FOT, signaling nominal or anomalous operations. While conducting engineering analysis, the FOT performs operations requiring extensive human judgment and custom processes, including analyzing telemetry, designing spacecraft maneuvers, and designing new command sequences. The time savings obtained through automation allows the FOT time to perform these more dynamic tasks. Throughout the course of implementing automation, the EO-1 FOT has learned lessons useful to other flight operation teams. These include the importance of each of the following: 1) configuration management; 2) redundancy in FOT being capable of repairing automation; 3) tool familiarity; 4) adequacy of new employee training; 5) occasionally conducting manual processes; 6) extensive documentation; 7) combining tools of increasing complexity; 8) the ability to automate GUI input; 9) continuing process improvement throughout the mission; and 10) not viewing automation purely as a labor-saving device.

SpaceOps 2008 Conference, 2008

The Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) spacecraft was developed as part of the NASA New Millennium Program ... more The Earth Observing-1 (EO-1) spacecraft was developed as part of the NASA New Millennium Program (NMP). In December 2001, NASA Headquarters approved the EO-1 program to begin an Extended Mission operations phase. The Extended Mission seeks to maximize the infusion of EO-1 technology through increased utilization of the satellite and reduce the cost of operations through a Continuous Improvement Program (CIP). A key objective of the CIP is to reduce operations costs by increasing automation use. The threeperson EO-1 Flight Operations Team (FOT) is responsible for four main tasks: flight dynamics processing, mission planning, real-time engineering, and engineering analysis. Both automation and meta-automation-using an additional layer of automation to control separate automated processes-are utilized by the FOT. Techniques and strategies for implementing automation are discussed. Criteria are presented to judge the appropriateness of a procedure for automation. They are grouped into categories: ease of implementation, return on investment, and degree of feedback. Factors that affect the design of an automation scheme include: available operating systems, strengths of commercial and inhouse tools, tool familiarity, desired error checking structure, and desired nature of operator feedback. Unit testing, acceptance testing, parallel operations, documentation, training, and configuration management are necessary to implement automation in flight operations. Automation lowers labor costs, but also benefits an FOT by standardizing procedures. However, negative consequences can occur as a result of implementation, including loss of knowledge, operators trusting process over output, inappropriate use of automated procedures, and increased system administration issues. The automation implemented by the EO-1 FOT is also discussed. For flight dynamics processing, the orbit determination and prediction procedure has been automated piecewise. Manually, this procedure required approximately three hours; automated, the procedure lasts 30 minutes, during which the user can intermittently leave the workstation to perform other tasks. Automation has been applied to the command load generation procedure, where appropriate. Most importantly, the real-time support procedure has been fully automated and can receive, process, deliver, and confirm commands without human input. The system also monitors telemetry and sends notifications to the FOT, signaling nominal or anomalous operations. While conducting engineering analysis, the FOT performs operations requiring extensive human judgment and custom processes, including analyzing telemetry, designing spacecraft maneuvers, and designing new command sequences. The time savings obtained through automation allows the FOT time to perform these more dynamic tasks. Throughout the course of implementing automation, the EO-1 FOT has learned lessons useful to other flight operation teams. These include the importance of each of the following: 1) configuration management; 2) redundancy in FOT being capable of repairing automation; 3) tool familiarity; 4) adequacy of new employee training; 5) occasionally conducting manual processes; 6) extensive documentation; 7) combining tools of increasing complexity; 8) the ability to automate GUI input; 9) continuing process improvement throughout the mission; and 10) not viewing automation purely as a labor-saving device.