Supporting Human-Robot Teams in Space Missions Using ePartners and Formal Abstraction Hierarchies

Human space flight is a prototypical example of a complex, dynamic, and safety-critical domain in which missions are performed by collaborative teams of humans and technical systems. In such domains, intelligent electronic partners (ePartners) can play a useful role in supporting human-robot teams in their problem solving process whenever a non...

Situated cognitive engineering for crew support in space

Space crews are in need for excellent cognitive support to perform nominal and off-nominal actions. This paper presents a coherent cognitive engineering methodology for the design of such support, which may be used to establish adequate usability, context-specific support that is integrated into astronaut's task performance and/or electronic...

Interferometry for picometer-level dimensional stability measurements

The accuracy of high-end industrial equipment and the reliability of produced goods can be limited by dimensional drift phenomena. Examples are the life cycle stability of instrumentation for space missions and the tight requirements for measurement uncertainty in the integrated circuit semiconductor industry. Re-calibration intervals of...

Assessing Human-Agent Teams for Future Space Missions

Running computer simulations of work practices early on lets researchers test humanagent teams in dangerous, complex environments by incrementally increasing fidelity, adding realistic features, and incorporating human participants.

The E-NIS instrument on-board the ESA Euclid Dark Energy Mission: a general view after positive conclusion of the assesment phase

The Euclid Near-Infrared Spectrometer (E-NIS) Instrument was conceived as the spectroscopic probe on-board the ESA Dark Energy Mission Euclid. Together with the Euclid Imaging Channel (EIC) in its Visible (VIS) and Near Infrared (NIP) declinations, NIS formed part of the Euclid Mission Concept derived in assessment phase and submitted to the...

The MECA project: Ontology-based data portability for space missions

This article describes the authors' experiences with a pragmatic, ontology-based approach to data portability and knowledge sharing, as used in the first Mission Execution Crew Assistant (MECA) Proof-of-concept demonstrator software. © 2009 IEEE.

High accuracy absolute long distance metrology using Femto-Second lasers: Optical heterodyning, electrical heterodyning and applying FSL-systems

Femto-Second based Laser (FSL) systems enable a large range of concepts for distance measurement that can easily be used for formation flying. ESA has acknowledged this by initiating two parallel studies (HAALDM) to investigate the full range of possibilities. TNO leads one of the two study teams, as manufacturer of space optical systems. To...

Design and performance testing of the 5 degree of freedom formation flying sensor

Formation flying of spacecraft nowadays is acknowledged to be an important technology for many future space missions. TNO underlines the importance and has therefore designed and tested a general use sensor system that is modular and can be used and adapted to the specific needs of a variety of missions. The sensor system is designed to be...

Space sickness on earth

During the first days in space, i.e., after a transition from 1G to 0G, more than 50% of the astro- (and cosmonauts) suffer from the Space Adaptation Syndrome (SAS).The symptoms of SAS, like nausea and dizziness, are especially provoked by head movements. Astronauts have mentioned close similarities between the symptoms of SAS and the symptoms...

Human-machine collaboration for long duration missions: Crew assistant concept

In the space domain, the plans for manned missions to the Moon and Mars set substantial challenges for developing crew support. For such long-duration missions, there is a need for a Mission Execution Crew Assistant (MECA) that supports (groups of) humans and machines to act in a distributed, autonomous but cooperative way. The objective of MECA...