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Launch Processing System
The Launch Processing System (LPS) is an automated, computer-controlled system at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) which oversees and coordinates the processing and checkout of systems and components for the Space Shuttle launch vehicle and its payloads. The LPS automatically performs tests on much of the vehicle components as they are being readied for launch, and alerts operators if any anomalies are detected. The LPS also manages the launch countdown events, culminating in a successful launch. Function Early in the design of the Space Shuttle program, the expected launch rate was 12 flights per year. The LPS was designed to oversee and manage the parallel processing of multiple orbiters and their subsystems in order to meet this launch schedule. The LPS tracks and manages all components of the Space Shuttle launch vehicle from the time the individual components arrive at KSC, through checkout, integration, testing, installation, and finally culminating in a launch. Any time a compo ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Kennedy Space Center
The John F. Kennedy Space Center (KSC, originally known as the NASA Launch Operations Center), located on Merritt Island, Florida, is one of the NASA, National Aeronautics and Space Administration's (NASA) ten NASA facilities#List of field centers, field centers. Since 1968, KSC has been NASA's primary launch center of American spaceflight, research, and technology. Launch operations for the Apollo Program, Apollo, Skylab and Space Shuttle Program, Space Shuttle programs were carried out from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39 and managed by KSC. Located on the east coast of Florida, KSC is adjacent to Cape Canaveral Space Force Station (CCSFS). The management of the two entities work very closely together, share resources, and operate facilities on each other's property. Though the first Apollo flights and all Project Mercury and Project Gemini flights took off from the then-Cape Canaveral Air Force Station, the launches were managed by KSC and its previous organization, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Space Shuttle
The Space Shuttle is a retired, partially reusable launch system, reusable low Earth orbital spacecraft system operated from 1981 to 2011 by the U.S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) as part of the Space Shuttle program. Its official program name was the Space Transportation System (STS), taken from the 1969 plan led by U.S. vice president Spiro Agnew for a system of reusable spacecraft where it was the only item funded for development. The first (STS-1) of four orbital test flights occurred in 1981, leading to operational flights (STS-5) beginning in 1982. Five complete Space Shuttle orbiter vehicles were built and flown on a total of 135 missions from 1981 to 2011. They launched from the Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. Operational missions launched numerous satellites, interplanetary probes, and the Hubble Space Telescope (HST), conducted science experiments in orbit, participated in the Shuttle–Mir program, Shuttle-''Mir'' program with Russia, ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Countdown
A countdown is a sequence of backward counting to indicate the time remaining before an event is scheduled to occur. NASA commonly employs the terms "L-minus" and "T-minus" during the preparation for and anticipation of a rocket launch, and even "E-minus" for events that involve spacecraft that are already in space, where the "T" could stand for "Test" or "Time", and the "E" stands for "Encounter", as with a comet or some other space object, like a spacecraft. Other events for which countdowns are commonly used include the detonation of an explosive, the start of a race, the start of the New Year, or any anxiously anticipated event. An early use of a countdown once signaled the start of a Cambridge University rowing race. One of the first known associations with rockets was in the 1929 German science fiction movie '' Frau im Mond'' (English: ''Woman in the Moon'') written by Thea von Harbou and directed by Fritz Lang in an attempt to increase the drama of the launch sequence ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Sensor
A sensor is often defined as a device that receives and responds to a signal or stimulus. The stimulus is the quantity, property, or condition that is sensed and converted into electrical signal. In the broadest definition, a sensor is a device, module, machine, or subsystem that detects events or changes in its environment and sends the information to other electronics, frequently a computer processor. Sensors are used in everyday objects such as touch-sensitive elevator buttons ( tactile sensor) and lamps which dim or brighten by touching the base, and in innumerable applications of which most people are never aware. With advances in micromachinery and easy-to-use microcontroller platforms, the uses of sensors have expanded beyond the traditional fields of temperature, pressure and flow measurement, for example into MARG sensors. Analog sensors such as potentiometers and force-sensing resistors are still widely used. Their applications include manufacturing and machinery ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Instrumentation
Instrumentation is a collective term for measuring instruments, used for indicating, measuring, and recording physical quantities. It is also a field of study about the art and science about making measurement instruments, involving the related areas of metrology, automation, and control theory. The term has its origins in the art and science of Scientific instrument, scientific instrument-making. Instrumentation can refer to devices as simple as direct-reading thermometers, or as complex as multi-sensor components of industrial control systems. Instruments can be found in laboratories, refineries, factories and vehicles, as well as in everyday household use (e.g., smoke detectors and thermostats). Measurement parameters Instrumentation is used to measure many parameters (physical values), including: *Pressure, either Differential pressure transducer, differential or static pressure, static *Rate of fluid flow, Flow *Temperature measurement, Temperature *Level Measurement, L ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Apollo Program
The Apollo program, also known as Project Apollo, was the United States human spaceflight program led by NASA, which Moon landing, landed the first humans on the Moon in 1969. Apollo followed Project Mercury that put the first Americans in space. It was conceived in 1960 as a three-person spacecraft during President Presidency of Dwight D. Eisenhower, Dwight D. Eisenhower's administration. Apollo was later dedicated to President John F. Kennedy's national goal for the 1960s of "landing a man on the Moon and returning him safely to the Earth" in an address to United States Congress, Congress on May 25, 1961. It was the third American human spaceflight program to fly, preceded by Project Gemini conceived in 1961 to extend spaceflight capability in support of Apollo. Kennedy's goal was accomplished on the Apollo 11 mission when astronauts Neil Armstrong and Buzz Aldrin landed their Apollo Lunar Module (LM) on July 20, 1969, and walked on the lunar surface, while Michael Collins ( ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Minicomputer
A minicomputer, or colloquially mini, is a type of general-purpose computer mostly developed from the mid-1960s, built significantly smaller and sold at a much lower price than mainframe computers . By 21st century-standards however, a mini is an exceptionally large machine. Minicomputers in the traditional technical sense covered here are only small relative to generally even earlier and much bigger machines. The class formed a distinct group with its own software architectures and operating systems. Minis were designed for control, instrumentation, human interaction, and communication switching, as distinct from calculation and record keeping. Many were sold indirectly to original equipment manufacturers (OEMs) for final end-use application. During the two-decade lifetime of the minicomputer class (1965–1985), almost 100 minicomputer vendor companies formed. Only a half-dozen remained by the mid-1980s. When single-chip CPU microprocessors appeared in the 1970s, the defi ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Real-time Computing
Real-time computing (RTC) is the computer science term for Computer hardware, hardware and software systems subject to a "real-time constraint", for example from Event (synchronization primitive), event to Event (computing), system response. Real-time programs must guarantee response within specified time constraints, often referred to as "deadlines".Mordechai Ben-Ari, Ben-Ari, Mordechai; "Principles of Concurrent and Distributed Programming", ch. 16, Prentice Hall, 1990, , p. 164 The term "real-time" is also used in Computer simulation, simulation to mean that the simulation's clock runs at the same speed as a real clock. Real-time responses are often understood to be in the order of milliseconds, and sometimes microseconds. A system not specified as operating in real time cannot usually ''guarantee'' a response within any timeframe, although ''typical'' or ''expected'' response times may be given. Real-time processing ''fails'' if not completed within a specified deadline rela ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Mainframe Computer
A mainframe computer, informally called a mainframe or big iron, is a computer used primarily by large organizations for critical applications like bulk data processing for tasks such as censuses, industry and consumer statistics, enterprise resource planning, and large-scale transaction processing. A mainframe computer is large but not as large as a supercomputer and has more processing power than some other classes of computers, such as minicomputers, server (computing), servers, workstations, and personal computers. Most large-scale computer-system architectures were established in the 1960s, but they continue to evolve. Mainframe computers are often used as servers. The term ''mainframe'' was derived from the large cabinet, called a ''main frame'', that housed the central processing unit and main computer memory, memory of early computers. Later, the term ''mainframe'' was used to distinguish high-end commercial computers from less powerful machines. Design Modern mainfr ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Computer Cluster
A computer cluster is a set of computers that work together so that they can be viewed as a single system. Unlike grid computers, computer clusters have each node set to perform the same task, controlled and scheduled by software. The newest manifestation of cluster computing is cloud computing. The components of a cluster are usually connected to each other through fast local area networks, with each node (computer used as a server) running its own instance of an operating system. In most circumstances, all of the nodes use the same hardware and the same operating system, although in some setups (e.g. using Open Source Cluster Application Resources (OSCAR)), different operating systems can be used on each computer, or different hardware. Clusters are usually deployed to improve performance and availability over that of a single computer, while typically being much more cost-effective than single computers of comparable speed or availability. Computer clusters emerged as ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Launch Control Center
The Rocco A. Petrone Launch Control Center (commonly known as just the Launch Control Center or LCC) is a four-story building at NASA's Kennedy Space Center on Merritt Island, Florida, used to manage rocket launch, launches of launch vehicles from Kennedy Space Center Launch Complex 39. Attached to the southeast corner of the Vehicle Assembly Building, the LCC contains offices; telemetry, tracking, and instrumentation equipment; and firing rooms. LCC has conducted launches since the unmanned Apollo 4 (Apollo-Saturn 501) launch on November 9, 1967. LCC's first launch with a manned spaceflight , human crew was Apollo 8 on December 21, 1968. NASA's Space Shuttle program also used LCC. NASA has renovated the center for Space Launch System (SLS) missions, which began in 2022 with Artemis 1. In February 2022, the center was renamed after former director of launch operations Rocco Petrone, Rocco A. Petrone. Firing rooms Launch operations are supervised and controlled from several Co ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
Telemetry
Telemetry is the in situ collection of measurements or other data at remote points and their automatic transmission to receiving equipment (telecommunication) for monitoring. The word is derived from the Greek roots ''tele'', 'far off', and ''metron'', 'measure'. Systems that need external instructions and data to operate require the counterpart of telemetry: telecommand. Although the term commonly refers to wireless data transfer mechanisms (e.g., using radio, ultrasonic, or infrared systems), it also encompasses data transferred over other media such as a telephone or computer network, optical link or other wired communications like power line carriers. Many modern telemetry systems take advantage of the low cost and ubiquity of GSM networks by using SMS to receive and transmit telemetry data. A ''telemeter'' is a physical device used in telemetry. It consists of a sensor, a transmission path, and a display, recording, or control device. Electronic devices are widely u ... [...More Info...] [...Related Items...] OR: [Wikipedia] [Google] [Baidu] |
