SBIR-STTR Award

Plans to distribute International Space Station (ISS) downlink video to Remote Principle Investigators (RPI) requires Internet 2/Abilene connections, multicast network capability, and 4 Mbps+ bandwidth capacity. Our goal is to make ISS downlink video much more accessible to RPI?s, NASA centers, and education/public outreach sites by converting the downlink video to lower resolutions, unicast, and widely used commercial-off-the shelf (COTS) formats. The approach will utilize low-cost personal computers and existing NASA, public, and research networks. The innovation is a low-cost, manageable, automated scheme for routing video in a standards-based computational grid environment. Phase I will evaluate widely-used systems and codecs that are both proprietary and open standards-based for video distribution. The feasibility of coordinated Internet-based scheduling mechanisms to simplify operations in a grid environment will be evaluated. A demonstration will distribute experiment video in a networked environment. In Phase II the most promising capabilities will be incorporated into a prototype video distribution system and tested with larger groups in a grid environment, including researchers performing "live" ISS telescience and NASA educational audiences. Also, the feasibility of incorporating the video distribution system into a Space Operations Grid supporting a variety of payload carriers will be investigated. POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS A successful Internet Protocol (IP)-based video system will provide cost-effective telescience support to the experimenter as well as provide excellent Web-based viewing opportunities for education and public outreach. The immediate market is hundreds of International Space Station experiment telescience users over the next decade. Additional markets are other NASA missions, as well as military and commercial mission operations applications. Mission operations-related modules that provide additional functionality to COTS products, such as RealSystema, can be marketed as third-party add-ons.

___(NOTE: Note: no official Abstract exists of this Phase II projects. Abstract is modified by idi from relevant Phase I data. The specific Phase II work statement and objectives may differ)___ Plans to distribute International Space Station (ISS) downlink video to Remote Principle Investigators (RPI) requires Internet 2/Abilene connections, multicast network capability, and 4 Mbps+ bandwidth capacity. Our goal is to make ISS downlink video much more accessible to RPI?s, NASA centers, and education/public outreach sites by converting the downlink video to lower resolutions, unicast, and widely used commercial-off-the shelf (COTS) formats. The approach will utilize low-cost personal computers and existing NASA, public, and research networks. The innovation is a low-cost, manageable, automated scheme for routing video in a standards-based computational grid environment. Phase I will evaluate widely-used systems and codecs that are both proprietary and open standards-based for video distribution. The feasibility of coordinated Internet-based scheduling mechanisms to simplify operations in a grid environment will be evaluated. A demonstration will distribute experiment video in a networked environment. In Phase II the most promising capabilities will be incorporated into a prototype video distribution system and tested with larger groups in a grid environment, including researchers performing "live" ISS telescience and NASA educational audiences. Also, the feasibility of incorporating the video distribution system into a Space Operations Grid supporting a variety of payload carriers will be investigated. POTENTIAL COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS A successful Internet Protocol (IP)-based video system will provide cost-effective telescience support to the experimenter as well as provide excellent Web-based viewing opportunities for education and public outreach. The immediate market is hundreds of International Space Station experiment telescience users over the next decade. Additional markets are other NASA missions, as well as military and commercial mission operations applications. Mission operations-related modules that provide additional functionality to COTS products, such as RealSystema, can be marketed as third-party add-ons.