Docked emulation system

• US 20080070196A1
• Filed: 08/23/2006
• Published: 03/20/2008
• Est. Priority Date: 08/23/2006
• Status: Abandoned Application

• Current Assignee: United Space Alliance LLC
• Original Assignee: United Space Alliance LLC
• Inventors: Luty, Roger A., Morsics, Jonathan F., McDill, David J., Ahrens, Susan B.
• Application Number:
  US11/509,473
• Publication Number:
  US 20080070196A1
• Time in Patent Office: Days
• US Class Current: 434/34
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 19/16 Control of vehicles or other craft simulators G09B9/02
• CPC Class Codes: G09B 9/52 for teaching control of an outer space vehicle

Abstract

A docked emulation system is provided which accesses real flight software and emulates the hardware interaction between an outpost system and a second system docking thereto. The system includes a MIL-STD-1553B software application that accesses data on an emulated MIL-STD-1553B bus to drive external MIL-STD-1553B applications in the second docking system. The system further includes software portal applications that access data traffic on emulated data buses to interface a data exchange between the outpost flight software and simulation models for outpost craft avionics and other components. A telemetry server in the system provides raw data from the flight software into a format complying with control center applications. The docked emulation system allows analysis of an emulated docking interaction between two outpost systems from a PC workstation without requiring access to actual flight computers of either system.

Claims

1. An outpost docked simulator for simulating hardware interaction between an outpost spacecraft computer system and a second spacecraft computer system, comprising:

a general purpose 1553 application module for interfacing with MIL-STD-1553 applications operating on the second spacecraft computer system;

an emulated MIL-STD-1553 bus providing a data pathway between the 1553 application module and flight software for the outpost spacecraft computer system; and

portal application modules for configuring and interfacing data exchanges between the flight software and simulation models for the outpost spacecraft computer system.

2. The outpost docked simulator of claim 1, further comprising a telemetry server for providing a real-time telemetry connection to external applications.

3. The outpost docked simulator of claim 2, wherein the telemetry server converts unmodified data from the flight software into a format suitable for the external applications.

4. The outpost docked simulator of claim 3, wherein the external applications are running at a remote control center.

5. The outpost docked simulator of claim 1, further comprising a user application for allowing a user to connect to the outpost docked simulator to simulate hardware interaction between the outpost spacecraft computer system and the second spacecraft computer system.

6. The outpost docked simulator of claim 1, wherein the portal applications provide an interface for the flight software and the simulations models designed to operate in different respective computing environments to communicate with each other.

7. The outpost docked simulator of claim 6, wherein the portal applications are generally configurable to serve as an interface between any two computing environments for the flight software and simulation models.