Evaluation of the Space Shuttle Cockpit Avionics Upgrade (CAU) Displays
In 1999, NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) initiated a Cockpit Avionics Upgrade (CAU) project to increase shuttle mission safety by improving the crew's situation awareness, reducing their workload, and improving their performance. The primary focus of the project was a complete redesign of the current cockpit displays. To determine the effectiveness of the redesigns, a human-centered evaluation was conducted in the Shuttle Mission Simulator (SMS) at NASA JSC in 2003 and 2004. Measures of crew situation awareness, workload, and nominal and off-nominal task handling performance were made in a series of simulations of off-nominal flight situations during the dynamic flight phases of ascent and entry. The redesigned display formats yielded dramatic increases in situation awareness, reductions in workload, and improvements in performance.
Integrating Planning, Execution and Diagnosis to Enable Autonomous Mission Operations
NASA’s Advanced Exploration Systems Autonomous Mission Operations (AMO) project conducted an empirical investigation of the impact of time delay on today’s mission operations, and of the effect of processes and mission support tools designed to mitigate time-delay related impacts. Mission operation scenarios were designed for NASA’s Deep Space Habitat (DSH), an analog spacecraft habitat, covering a range of activities including nominal objectives, DSH system failures, and crew medical emergencies. The scenarios were simulated at time delay values representative of Lunar (1.2-5 sec), Near Earth Object (NEO) (50 sec) and Mars (300 sec) missions. Each combination of operational scenario and time delay was tested in a Baseline configuration, designed to reflect present-day operations of the International Space Station, and a Mitigation configuration in which a variety of software tools, information displays, and crewground communications protocols were employed to assist both crews and Flight Control Team (FCT) members with the longdelay conditions. This paper describes the mitigation configuration, with specific attention on the plan and procedure execution tracking and fault detection, isolation and recovery software.
Development of New Displays for the Cockpit of the Space Shuttle
Jeffrey W. McCandless, Ph.D. San Jose State University Foundation and NASA Ames Research Center Address: Mail Stop 262-2, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000 Phone: 650-604-1162 Fax: 650-604-3323 Email: jmccandless@mail.arc.nasa.gov Robert S. McCann, Ph.D. NASA Ames Research Center Address: Mail Stop 262-4, NASA Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, CA 94035-1000 Phone: 650-604-0052 Fax: 650-604-3323 Email: rmccann@mail.arc.nasa.gov