HUNTSVILLE, Ala. — NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala., has presented a pair of technology achievement awards for work benefiting its spaceflight mission.

The 2009 “Software of the Year” award was presented to three employees of AI Signal Research Inc. of Huntsville, or ASRI: Dr. Jen-Yi Jong, chairman and director of research and development; Thein A. Maung, senior analyst; and Jess H. Jones, senior staff engineer. The “Invention of the Year” award for 2009 was given to NASA engineers Richard Howard, Michael Book and Thomas Bryan, all of the Marshall Center’s Engineering Directorate.

Both awards were presented during the Marshall Center’s recent annual Honor Awards ceremony.

‘Software of the Year’ award

ASRI’s award-winning software, a dynamic signal analysis technique called PC-SIGNAL® Pseudo Key Phasor, or PKP, was developed in cooperation with the Marshall Center’s Engineering Directorate. The analysis technique was developed by Jong. Maung served as programmer and Jones led testing and evaluation of the software. They have been developing the PC-Signal family of software since ASRI was founded in 1990.

PKP is one of several diagnostic tools in the company’s PC-Signal software package, which is being used in space shuttle vibration and acoustical analysis and in the design of NASA’s Ares I rocket — the next-generation launch vehicle that will carry explorers to the moon and beyond in coming years.

Typically, Jong said, vibration signal analysis relies on intrusive sensor installation to gather engine speed data. To analyze more sensitive systems, such as the space shuttle main engine, PKP’s signal processing technique offers a simpler solution. “It allows reconstruction of precise speed information directly from external vibration measurements, thereby enabling all other analyses techniques that require speed data,” Jong said.

The software is used to perform dynamic data analysis and diagnostic evaluation of the shuttle main engines, and to review and analyze engine health data from shuttle missions. First, PKP is applied to post-flight data analysis to reconstruct speed information. That critical data then enables other diagnostic analyses, including study of the health and condition of bearings and other engine components. “The overall result,” Jong said, “is enhanced safety for NASA propulsion systems.”

When used to process and analyze data during rocket development and testing, the software system enables engineers to more quickly and easily identify potential design issues related to vibration and oscillation. Previously, Jones said, it would have required a much more advanced computer processor, more human resources and far more time to analyze test data accumulated for a shuttle launch or rocket development effort.

“It was extremely tedious and time consuming in NASA’s early days to do this kind of processing,” Jones said. “Now it’s on a laptop, you can carry it with you and it provides a wealth of advanced signal analysis tools and processing speeds needed to process extremely large volumes of data.”

As the software winner for the Marshall Center, ASRI now will represent the center to compete with all other NASA centers for the agency’s “Software of the Year” Award.

‘Invention of the Year’ award

The Marshall’s Center’s 2009 “Invention of the Year” award was presented to Howard, Book and Bryan, all members of the center’s Advanced Vehicle Sensors team, for their development of the “Control Method for Video Guidance Sensor System.” The technology is a new refinement to a system of hardware and software that uses lasers and long-distance light reflection to provide precise readings of distance, angle of approach and alignment for two moving objects in space.

The work is critical to NASA’s development of an automated rendezvous and docking system, used to remotely link two orbiting vehicles or satellites in space for transfer of fuel, cargo or other activities — without direct human contact.

“The purpose of this system is to determine where our primary vehicle is and how it’s oriented relative to the target spacecraft,” Howard said. “With that data in place, we can program a control system to fly automatically.”

The system works much like a camera and bicycle reflectors. Lasers installed on one orbiting vehicle project light toward retro-reflectors mounted on the second vehicle. The reflectors bounce the light back to the primary craft. The new, award-winning control system captures the image and immediately analyzes the distance, direction, yaw, pitch and roll of the approaching spacecraft.

NASA engineers began developing the advanced sensor system in 1987. The technology has since been tested on the ground and during two space shuttle flights: the Demonstration of Autonomous Rendezvous Technology, or DART, mission in 2005; and Orbital Express, a joint 2007 mission with the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency.

NASA hopes the technology may serve NASA’s next-generation launch vehicles and future missions to the International Space Station and beyond — including the Orion crew capsule, intended to carry future explorers to space, and the Altair lunar lander, the transport vehicle that will ferry them to the surface of the moon.

“Now that the team has achieved the advanced precision and distance that this control system allows, it’s our goal to aid other engineers at Marshall and NASA in the production of an automated rendezvous and docking system that will suit Orion and Altair,” Howard said.

For more information about the NASA’s automated rendezvous and docking system development, visit: http://ard.msfc.nasa.gov

For more information about AI Signal Research Inc., visit: http://www.aisignal.com