The DRACO Door: Design, Test, and Integration of the Mechanism on the DART Spacecraft

The Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) mission is NASA's first planetary defense mission to demonstrate the viability of kinetically impacting an asteroid and deflecting its trajectory. The DART spacecraft successfully launched on November 24, 2021 from the Vandenberg Space Force Base and successfully made impact on Dimorphos, the smaller asteroid in the Didymos system, on September 26, 2022. The DART spacecraft has one instrument called Didymos Reconnaissance and Asteroid Camera for Optical navigation (DRACO). DRACO is an imaging telescope that, in conjunction with the SMART Navigation algorithm, autonomously guided the DART spacecraft to the asteroid. Because DRACO is a mission critical and light sensitive instrument, the DRACO Door mechanism was designed as the protective cover. The door functions to shield DRACO from stray light during launch, to deploy in space once when commanded, and to stay 180 degrees open for the duration of the mission. The DRACO Door went through several iterations during the design phase with decisions on various components such as Frangibolts ®, torsion springs, hardstops, and latches. After fabrication and assembly, the door went through a rigorous environmental testing plan, which included deployment testing, vibration testing, and thermal vacuum testing. After successful qualification of the mechanism, the door was installed and integrated into the DART spacecraft. It should be noted that during the fabrication of the mechanism piece-parts, the COVID-19 pandemic began, and the effects of the pandemic were seen in the challenges faced during the DRACO door assembly and testing. Under the constraints of the pandemic, the DART spacecraft was successfully built, tested, and launched, and the DRACO door was successfully deployed on December 7, 2021. The door has continued to function as intended. This paper will discuss the design choices behind the door components, the environmental qualification test program, and the installation of the door onto the DART spacecraft. In addition, this paper will discuss the lessons learned and the challenges of fabricating and testing the flight hardware. © 2023 IEEE.

Impact of Modality on Workload among Engineering Undergraduates during the COVID-19 Pandemic

The COVID-19 pandemic created unprecedented disruptions in models for engineering student training. At The Citadel, an undergraduate-focused college in the Southeastern United States, a variety of modalities were implemented following the onset of the pandemic, including emergency online and Hyflex learning. We conducted a longitudinal study to analyze the cognitive load among our undergraduate engineering students throughout changing modalities. Using data from the NASA Task Load Index (TLX) and open-ended reflections on student challenges, we found that total workload (a surrogate for cognitive load) was generally highest during emergency online learning in the second half of Spring 2020 semester, with experiences possibly varying across different demographic and academic groups. Emergency online challenges were often related to time management, personal organization, and responsibility for learning. In contrast, HyFlex challenges were often related to technology and communication challenges. While emergency online learning was a cognitive load disruption, that disruption was often associated with personal and/or academic development. HyFlex learning mediated cognitive load disruption;although, student challenges may have been simple nuisances rather than mediators of developmental change. © 2023 American Society of Civil Engineers.

Pandemic Asteroid Defense: DART Integration and Test in the time of COVID-19

NASA's Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART) successfully intercepted the asteroid Didymos on September 26th of 2022, potentially changing its orbital period with a deflection by kinetic impact. The spacecraft launched aboard a SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket on November 24th, 2021. DART's Integration and Test (I&T) campaign was scheduled to commence in April of 2020 at the Johns Hopkins University Applied Physics Laboratory (JHU/APL) in Laurel, Maryland. In March of that year, one month prior to beginning I&T, the rapid spread of the Coronavirus (COVID-19) forced JHU/APL to rethink how to assemble, test and deliver a spacecraft on schedule during a very challenging period of time. This paper will discuss the details of the successful I&T strategy used by the DART team during the COVID-19 lockdown and subsequent return to post-lockdown life. The team learned how to effectively meet virtually, how to integrate hardware, and how to operate the spacecraft with the least amount of people required. Communication was key in keeping the various DART team members, who were located across the country, connected and safe. The team had also moved documentation online for the first time, which turned out to be very instrumental in keeping everyone on track. A variety of tools to collaborate and document test procedures and results proved valuable for record keeping. Creative solutions were implemented during the test campaign for scheduling both remote and in person monitoring. This paper will conclude with DART lessons learned and recommendations for future I&T programs. © 2023 IEEE.

Dual-band Air-Ground Radio Performance: Example Flight Test Results

We recently concluded a four-year University Leadership Initiative (ULI) project sponsored by NASA, which investigated multiple aviation communications technology areas aimed at enhancing future aviation safety. These areas were dual-band air-ground communications for air traffic management, detection and interdiction of small drones, and high-capacity terrestrial airport communications networking. In this paper we report on flight test results of our dual-band radios. These radios were designed to use a spectrally efficient multi-carrier modulation, filterbank multicarrier (FBMC), which we had previously shown to improve resilience to high-power distance measurement equipment (DME) adjacent-channel interference, in comparison to existing orthogonal frequency division multiplexing (OFDM) schemes. In our NASA project, we designed the FBMC radios to extend performance even further, using the following techniques: (i) simultaneous dual-band transmission and reception;(ii) ground station (GS) spatial diversity;(iii) higher-order modulation for a factor of 5 capacity increase over QPSK;(iv) a Doppler-resilient option using a smaller number of subcarriers;and, (v) 5-MHz bandwidth C-band transmissions for an order of magnitude capacity increase over existing 500-kHz channel schemes. To our knowledge, these are novel achievements for civil aviation, and our flight test results attained a technology readiness level (TRL) of 5. In this paper we briefly describe the project history, in which we spent approximately one year working with Boeing to participate in one of their Eco-Demonstrator flight trials, and obtained special temporary authorizations to transmit in both the L-band and C-band, from the FAA, the FCC, and the DoD. When COVID-19 dispersed worldwide, Boeing was no longer able to support us, so we revised our plans and teamed with the South Carolina Civil Air Patrol (SC CAP) to conduct smaller-scale flight tests. This paper summarizes the radio designs and the novel features we employed, as well as analyses, computer simulations, and laboratory tests prior to terrestrial mobile testing, all of which culminated in our successful flight tests. We show example flight test results that serve as proof of concept for all the five aforementioned radio performance enhancements. Example results include signal-to-noise ratio and bit error ratio, diversity gains, and throughput gains through both higher-order modulation and wider bandwidth channels. We also report on some lessons learned, and some ideas for future advancement of our work. © 2023 IEEE.

Night-time Human Mobility during Pandemic in the Philippines as Observed by VIIRS Satellite

Recent research has analyzed and studied the growing literature on human mobility during quarantine periods using various methodology and techniques. There are several ways to use light pollution to assess mobility. The data from the VIIRS satellite can be used to quantify light pollution and human mobility in the Philippines during quarantine. The data utilized in this study came from NASA's EOSDIS Worldview website. The number of cases and pixels count increases from early April 2020 to late August 2020. However, the cases increased from February to April 2021. This could be attributed to the active human mobility seen between December 2020 and January 2021. Human interactions have been intense since August 2020, causing an increase in COVID cases that peaked between March and April 2021, before dropping in May 2021. Following the conclusion of this study, light pollution VIIRS satellite pictures can be used to identify possible COVID- 19 cases. There are many more factors and variables to consider when writing a comprehensive paper. With the relaxed quarantine time has been achieved beyond June 2021, additional dates may be explored since there may be a direct relationship between light pollution and COVID-19 instances. © 2022 IEEE.

Personal protective equipment for COVID-19 among healthcare workers in an emergency department: An exploratory survey of workload, thermal discomfort and symptoms of heat strain.

OBJECTIVES: To examine workload, thermal discomfort and heat-related symptoms among healthcare workers (HCWs) in an Australian ED during the COVID-19 pandemic. METHODS: A cross-sectional study design was employed among HCWs in an ED at a metropolitan hospital in Brisbane, Australia. Respondents provided demographic information including their self-reported age, sex, height, weight, role (e.g. doctor, nurse), and whether they wore personal protective equipment (PPE) during their shift, rated as either Full PPE, Partial PPE, or usual uniform or scrubs. The workload of HCWs was assessed with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration's task load index (NASA-TLX). Thermal discomfort was evaluated using scales from the International Organisation for Standardisation. Responders rated their subjective heat illness using the Environmental Symptoms Questionnaire. RESULTS: Fifty-nine HCWs completed the survey (27 male, 31 female, one prefer not to answer). Overall workload from the NASA-TLX was 64.6 (interquartile range [IQR] 56.5-73.3) for doctors, 72.5 (IQR 63.3-83.3) for nurses and 66.7 (IQR 58.3-74.17) for other staff, representing moderate to high ratings. Eighty-one percent reported thermal sensation to be slightly warm, warm, or hot, and 88% reported being uncomfortable, ranging from slightly to extremely. Ninety-seven percent reported at least one heat-strain symptom. More than 50% reported light-headedness or headache and approximately 30% reported feeling dizzy, faint, or weak. CONCLUSIONS: ED HCWs experience thermal discomfort when wearing PPE. Combined with their workloads, HCWs experienced symptoms related to heat strain. Therefore, careful consideration should be given to managing heat strain among HCWs when wearing PPE in an ED.

The Nasa Earth Venture Instrument, Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (Emit)

The NASA Earth Venture Instrument mission, Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation ( EMIT), is planned for launch to the International Space Station on a SpaceX rocket in May of 2022. EMIT's science objectives are to reduce uncertainty in the direct radiative forcing effect of mineral dust in the Earth system today and assess future changes in the effect under a range of climate scenarios. The development of the EMIT imaging spectrometer instrumentation and other systems has proceeded successfully despite the severe impacts of the COVID pandemic. The status and plans for the imaging spectrometer, calibration, ground system, in-orbit checkout, and prime science measurement observation phase are reported.

Robotic Manipulation System Design and Control for Non-Contact Remote Diagnosis in Otolaryngology: Digital Twin Approach

The COVID-19 pandemic has emphasized the need for non-contact medical robots to alleviate the heavy workload and emotional stress experienced by healthcare professionals while preventing infection. In response, we propose a non-contact robotic diagnostic system for otolaryngology clinics, utilizing a digital twin model for initial design optimization. The system employs a master-slave robot architecture, with the slave robot comprising a flexible endoscope manipulation robot and a parallel robot arm for controlling additional medical instruments. The novel 4 degrees of freedom (DOF) control mechanism enables the single robotic arm to handle the endoscope, facilitating the process compared to the traditional two-handed approach. Phantom experiments were conducted to evaluate the effectiveness of the proposed flexible endoscope manipulation system in terms of diagnosis completion time, NASA task load index (NASA-TLX), and subjective risk score. The results demonstrate the system's usability and its potential to alternate conventional diagnosis. © 2013 IEEE.

Cold Warrior Magic, Africana Science, and NASA Space Race Religion, Part One: Laura Nader's Contrarian Anthropology for Afrofuturist Times

"Cold Warrior Magic, Africana Science, and NASA Space Race Religion, Part One” uses anthropological studies of Cold War space exploration to reveal how post–World War II funding launched hegemonies of racial capitalism into the 1950s, putting white men on the Moon in the 1960s and 1970s. In these Covidien times since 1619, billionaires replace government treasuries to finance voyages into the heavens, while Black anthropologists enter discourse on space with Afrofuturist revisions of past pains. Orbiting Silent-Generation anthropologist Laura Nader, this chapter connects new worldviews from contrarian anthropology to moral ethical logic (MEL), developed at the Margaret Walker Center in Mississippi. While the author hoped to launch research into his Melungeon Maroon ancestors from 1619 Angola on par with Walker's mid-1960s, ground-breaking work Jubilee, a pre-COVID lecture on NASA's Stennis Space Center at Two Mississippi Museums propelled MEL in a realm of urgent intertextual critical analysis. © Oxford University Press 2023. All rights reserved.

Learning on Health Fairness and Environmental Justice via Interactive Visualization

This paper introduces an interactive visualization interface with a machine learning consensus analysis that enables the researchers to explore the impact of atmospheric and socioeconomic factors on COVID-19 clinical severity by employing multiple Recurrent Graph Neural Networks. We designed and implemented a visualization interface that leverages coordinated multi-views to support exploratory and predictive analysis of hospitalizations and other socio-geographic variables at multiple dimensions, simultaneously. By harnessing the strength of geometric deep learning, we build a consensus machine learning model to include knowledge from county-level records and investigate the complex interrelationships between global infectious disease, environment, and social justice. Additionally, we make use of unique NASA satellite-based observations which are not broadly used in the context of climate justice applications. Our current interactive interface focus on three US states (California, Pennsylvania, and Texas) to demonstrate its scientific value and presented three case studies to make qualitative evaluations. © 2022 IEEE.

Integrating Two-Level Reinforcement Learning Process for Enhancing Task Scheduling Efficiency in a Complex Problem-Solving Environment

Task scheduling scenarios require the system designers to have complete information about the resources and their capabilities, along with the tasks and their application-specific requirements. An effective task-to-resource mapping strategy will maximize resource utilization under constraints, while minimizing the task waiting time, which will in-turn maximize the task execution efficiency. In this work, a two-level reinforcement learning algorithm for task scheduling is proposed. The algorithm utilizes a deep-intensive learning stage to generate a deployable strategy for task-to-resource mapping. This mapping is re-evaluated at specific execution breakpoints, and the strategy is re-evaluated based on the incremental learning from these breakpoints. In order to perform incremental learning, real-time parametric checking is done on the resources and the tasks;and a new strategy is devised during execution. The mean task waiting time is reduced by 20% when compared with standard algorithms like Dynamic and Integrated Resource Scheduling, Improved Differential Evolution, and Q-learning-based Improved Differential Evolution;while the resource utilization is improved by more than 15%. The algorithm is evaluated on datasets from different domains like Coronavirus disease (COVID-19) datasets of public domain, National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) datasets and others. The proposed method performs consistently on all the datasets. © 2023 IETE.

Visibility Improvement in Air Pollution Scene by Joint Sharpness - Contrast Enhanced Dehazing

In the latter half of the 1980s, PM2.5 pollution in Beijing became a serious problem, and there were concerns about health hazards. It was expected that China's emissions must be reduced from 2013 to 2016, and the lockdown effect of Covid-19 would bring about an end, but it is still reluctant to regulate CO2 emissions. Again, in Beijing in November 2021, a visibility of 500 m or less has been observed, then road traffic is dangerous in addition to health. After that, the center of pollution has moved from India to Mongolia, and now Nepal, Qatar and Saudi Arabia. The situation is still serious in developing countries. Image restoration to remove the effects of haze and fog has been a long-standing concern of NASA, and their original Visual Servo has been put into practical use. Though the mainstream moved to the technique based on atmospheric physics. He et al.'s Dark Channel Priority (DCP) logic has had a certain effect on heavily polluted PM 2.5 scenes, but there is a limit to the restoration of detailed visibility. The observed images are affected by two spatial inhomogeneities of 1) atmospheric layer and 2) illumination. As a countermeasure, we have improved DCP process with the help of Retinex and introduced the veil coefficient as reported in CIC24. Recently, a variety of improvements in single image Dehazing, using FFA-net, BPP-net, LCA-net, or Vision-based model are in progress. However, in each case, visibility of details is still a common problem. This paper proposes an improvement in detail visibility by (1) joint sharpness-contrast preprocess (2) adjustment in Dehaze effect with veil coefficient v Lastly, we challenge numerical evaluation of improvement in detail visibility by the two ways of attenuation of high-frequency Fourier spectrum and the expansion rate of the color gamut. © 2022 Society for Imaging Science and Technology.

The Evaluation of Cognitive Load Significance for Mobile Learning Application via User Interface Design Violations

COVID-19 has changed how the world operates, and education is one of the sectors that are highly affected by these changes. Previously, mobile learning is just an optional or a supplementary learning method. However, with the increased in the number of COVID-19 cases around the world, education system has switched from the traditional face-to-face mode in a classroom setting, to an online learning environment. Learning using a mobile device or mobile learning is a concept that is new to most learners, especially those who have never before experienced an online learning setting. One of the prevalent factors that leads to ineffective mobile learning process is badly designed user interfaces that will disengage learners from learning materials presented, and increase the cognitive load of the learners. Among the factors that results in bad user interface is the violation of a user interface guideline/framework. Therefore, the main objective of this research-work is to evaluate the learners' cognitive load significance for mobile learning application by identifying Nielsen's Heuristics' violation. By implementing this study, important user interface design (UID) attributes that increase learner's cognitive load can be identified. Understanding how UID can affect the learners' cognitive load can assist designers in deciding which user interface designs that can improve or minimize learners' cognitive load. The outcome of this research will enable mobile learning application designers, developers, educators, teachers and people who are interested in developing a mobile learning application to deliver an effective mobile learning experience to learners. © 2022 IEEE.

A Telecommuting Experience Service Design Decision Model Based on BP Neural Network.

Introduction: The telecommuting experience and job performance have been significantly impacted by the COVID-19 pandemic, and job performance stability of telecommuting employees has become a critical concern. Objective: A decision model for telecommuting experience service design was constructed based on a backpropagation (BP) neural network to provide a theoretical basis for enterprises to evaluate telework performance and the psychological health of employees. Methods: The analytic hierarchy process (AHP) was used to determine the core stakeholders. The grey relational analysis (GRA) method and the NASA Task Load Index (NASA-TLX) scale were used to measure the factors affecting employees' telecommuting experience and job performance. A BP neural network relationship model of employees' telecommuting experience was established to predict its impact on employees' job performance. Results: Based on the model prediction results, a service system map was created, and the potential to enhance the telework performance of employees was evaluated. Discussion: It was concluded that the factors affecting the telecommuting experience were diverse, but emotions had the dominant influence. Significant positive correlations were found between emotional impact and temporal perception, execution difficulty, and communication barriers. Conclusion: The proposed decision model for telecommuting experience service design accurately predicted the impact of telecommuting efficiency, providing an effective approach for innovative remote management.

Impacts of Emergency Online Instruction on Engineering Students' Perceived Cognitive Load during Learning Assessments

CONTEXT A primarily undergraduate military college shifted from face-to-face instruction to emergency online instruction in Spring 2020 due to the COVID-19 pandemic. We are examining student experiences with the shift using Cognitive Load Theory (CLT), which asserts that learning is hindered when cognitive load overwhelms finite working memory capacity. At the onset of the pandemic, we hypothesized that the need to manage learning in new and changing modalities may increase students' cognitive load and development. PURPOSE OR GOAL We seek to triangulate a previous finding that middle-years students experienced more cognitive load demands than either freshmen or seniors during the Spring 2020 semester. In this study, we examine cognitive load experienced by students in sophomore-, junior-, and senior-level civil engineering courses when engaging in various types of summative assessments. Our goal was to understand how academic course level and assessment type (closed-ended vs. open-ended) may have impacted cognitive load among students. APPROACH OR METHODOLOGY/METHODS We are engaged in a longitudinal mixed-methods study to explore the impacts of changing modalities on cognitive load and student development during the pandemic. For this study, we measured cognitive load experienced during five assessments administered across civil engineering courses of different academic levels using the NASA Task Load Index (TLX). The TLX is a rigorously-developed instrument that quantifies workload (a surrogate for cognitive load) across six dimensions: mental demand, physical demand, temporal demand, performance, effort, and frustration. We used non-parametric analysis to identify differences in cognitive workload by course level and assessment type. We supplemented interpretation of findings through analysis of open-ended questions and focus group transcripts. ACTUAL OR ANTICIPATED OUTCOMES Sophomores and juniors experienced summative assessments differently than seniors, a finding that is consistent with our previous publications suggesting that modality changes may have disproportionately impacted middle-years students. Analysis of TLX data showed that sophomores and juniors reported highest time-demand and frustration, respectively, during closed-ended assessments. Open-ended assessments elicited significant frustration among juniors, a trend that was not observed for seniors. Qualitatively, both sophomores and juniors discussed workload-associated aspects of the modality shift more than seniors. CONCLUSIONS/RECOMMENDATIONS/SUMMARY We seek to further understand the unique experiences of middle-years students as a means for developing recommendations for managing cognitive load during online engineering courses - whether planned or unplanned. Copyright © Mary K. Watson, Elise Barrella, Kevin Skenes, Benjamin Kicklighter and Aidan Puzzio, 2021.

Assessment Of Mental Workload And Stress Levels During Covid19 Among Doctors

Background: Health care providers health and safety are crucial not only for continuous and safe patient care, but also for control of any pandemic. Aim/Objectives: Our study assessed the mental workload status of doctors who are catering to mainly industrial workforce.Methodology: A cross sectional study was carried out in a tertiary care hospital for three months during the pandemic. Data was collected and assessed using NASA TASK LOAD INDEX containing 6 dimensions, and stress levels were assessed using perceived stress scale. Result(s):A total of 104 participants responded to the survey;of which 40(38.5%)were female and 64(61.5%) were male. The percentage of people with high mental demand were 68(65.4%), the overall major contributor to this high workload seen in the participants was Effort demand . The participants with higher levels of workload were 90(86.5%). Among them females were 37.8 % and males were 62.2 %. The perceived stress scale showed 2(1.9%) of participants were in low stress, 80(76.9%) were in moderate stress and 22(21.2%) were in high stress. The calculated overall workload mean scores was 66.23+15.383 and perceived stress was 22.01+5.55 which is positively correlated and statistically significant. Conclusion(s):A considerate proportion of doctors experience high workload and stress levels. Doctors being Frontline workers were more vulnerable for mental health problems which are still underreported and is expected to be very considerate. There is a need to implant ways to decrease the stress levels of doctors and for better patient care. Copyright © 2022 Wolters Kluwer Medknow Publications. All rights reserved.

Postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome and orthostatic hypotension in post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 during pregnancy: a case report.

Background: Patients with post-acute sequelae of COVID-19 (PASC) often experience the addition of new symptoms after recovery from COVID-19 illness. These may include orthostatic intolerance and autonomic dysfunction, and postural orthostatic tachycardia syndrome has been described to occur in a proportion of patients with PASC. Case summary: In this report, we present a 32-year-old pregnant woman (G3P2) who experiences severe orthostatic symptoms as part of her PASC syndrome, which is decoupled from normal physiologic changes of pregnancy. At 25 weeks of gestation, she was evaluated for increasing episodes of dyspnoea, marked tachycardia with minimal exertion, intermittent non-exertional chest pain, and presyncope. This patient had a moderate course of COVID-19 at 12 weeks of gestation, for which she received monoclonal antibody therapy (casirivimab/imdevimab). The patient then had complete resolution of COVID-19 symptoms and felt well for 1 month prior to developing orthostatic symptoms at 25 weeks of gestation. Evaluation with a NASA Lean Test revealed marked orthostatic tachycardia, as well as delayed orthostatic hypotension. Given her COVID-19 illness 4 months prior, PASC involving autonomic dysfunction was diagnosed. Discussion: Patients with orthostatic symptoms in PASC should be carefully evaluated with dedicated active stand tests, such as the NASA Lean Test, to characterize the autonomic response to standing. In pregnant patients, an understanding of normal pregnancy physiology is crucial to correctly identify abnormal findings in such tests.

Psyche Project Implementation During the COVID Pandemic

In January 2017, 'Psyche: Journey to a Metal World' was selected for implementation as part of NASA's Discovery program. The Psyche mission will utilize electric propulsion with SPT-140 Hall thrusters to rendezvous and orbit the metal-rich asteroid (16) Psyche, in the main asteroid belt between Mars and Jupiter. The Psyche spacecraft requires no chemical propulsion and, when launched in 2022, will be the first mission to use Hall thrusters beyond lunar orbit. The Psyche spacecraft is a hybrid development with Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL)-provided deep-space avionics and communications equipment mounted on a high-heritage MAXAR (formerly Space Systems Loral) Solar-Electric Propulsion (SEP) Chassis, based on their 1300 series of GEO communications satellites. The spacecraft is equipped to support a suite of science instruments, as well as a demonstration of the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) technology. The spacecraft has sufficient onboard resources, autonomy, redundancy, and operability to complete a 3.5-year cruise to 16 Psyche, followed by a 20-month campaign of science investigations while orbiting the asteroid. The mission's early concept design and progress through Preliminary Design Review (PDR) has been described in previous work. The paper will cover the recent mission progress from the Critical Design Review (CDR) through the start of Spacecraft Environmental Testing, which took place during the COVID pandemic. The authors will highlight the successful remote collaboration between the major partners: ASU, JPL, MAXAR, and the Payload teams that led to the initiation of the Assembly, Test, Launch, Operations Phase (ATLO) in early March 2021. Emphasis will be placed on the effects that the COVID-19 pandemic had on the work environment over the last 16+ months, including challenges to delivery of flight hardware and test equipment. In addition to the COVID-19 challenges, other significant anomalies discovered during design and test will be described along with any impacts to the overall science capability of the mission. © 2022 IEEE.

Heliophysics Environmental & Radiation Measurement Experiment Suite (HERMES): A Small External Payload for Gateway with Big Challenges

Currently scheduled for liftoff in 2024, Gateway will be an outpost orbiting the moon for astronauts headed to and from the lunar surface and will serve as a staging point for deep space exploration. In January 2020, NASA Headquarters contacted Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) with a request that they provide a Heliophysics instrumentation package for Gateway. This package would later become known as the Heliophysics Environmental & Radiation Measurement Experiment Suite (HERMES). HERMES consists of four high-heritage instruments-a Miniaturized Electron pRoton Telescope (MERIT), an Electron Electrostatic Analyzer (EEA), a Solar Probe Analyzer-Ions (SPAN-I), and Noise Eliminating Magnetometer Instrument in a Small Integrated System (NEMISIS), which consists of one fluxgate and two magneto-inductive magnetometers. Launching HERMES with Gateway would provide an opportunity to conduct early science experiments on Gateway, but the plan to develop HERMES concurrently with Gateway and launch with the co-manifested vehicle brought numerous technical challenges for the pathfinder payload. HERMES was intended to be a low-cost, tailored Class-D mission, and maintaining that programmatic position proved difficult as the technical challenges grew. The effects of Coronavirus Disease 2019 (COVID-19) were not factored in from the beginning and also created programmatic challenges. This paper will discuss what's being done to overcome the technical and programmatic challenges to put HERMES on track for a 2024 Launch Readiness Date (LRD). © 2022 IEEE.

How businesses are working together to deliver NASA/JPL-designed ventilators to the world in the fight against COVID-19.

In response to the COVID-19 pandemic, NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) engineers had embarked on an ambitious project to design a reliable, easy-to-use, and low-cost ventilator that was made of readily available parts to address the unexpected global shortage of these lifesaving devices. After successfully designing and building the VITAL (Ventilator Intervention Technology Accessible Locally) ventilator in record time, FDA Emergency Use Authorization (EUA) was obtained and then the license to manufacture and sell these ventilators was made available to select companies through a competitive process. STARK Industries, LLC (STARK), located in Columbus, OH, USA, was one of only eight U.S. companies to be selected to receive this worldwide license. Motivated by its mission to improve human health and well-being through innovated medical technologies, STARK accepted the challenge of further developing the VITAL technology and manufacturing the ventilators in large quantities and making them available to those in need around the world. To this end, Spiritus Medical, Inc (Spiritus) was spun off from STARK to focus on the ventilator business. Through collaborative efforts with various corporate, academic, governmental, and non-profit partners, Spiritus was able to successfully begin manufacturing and selling its ventilators. Due to its low-cost nature and its straightforward design, this ventilator is ideal for use in developing countries where ventilators are in short supply and affordability is a major consideration. This is a story of how NASA's ingenuity, based on space-based know-how and experience, was used to rapidly design this innovative ventilator. And by forging partnerships with highly qualified and motivated partners such as STARK and Spiritus, NASA has succeeded in translating this work into technology that could potentially save thousands of lives in the fight against the COVID-19 pandemic.