DATA ACQUISITION SYSTEM ARCHITECTURE AND CAPABILITIES AT NASA GRC PLUM BROOK STATION’S SPACE ENVIRONMENT TEST FACILITIES

摘要

Very large space environment test facilities present unique engineering challenges in the designof facility data systems. Data systems of this scale must be versatile enough to meet the wide range ofdata acquisition and measurement requirements from a diverse set of customers and test programs, butalso must minimize design changes to maintain reliability and serviceability. This paper presents anoverview of the common architecture and capabilities of the facility data acquisition systems available attwo of the world’s largest space environment test facilities located at the NASA Glenn Research Center’sPlum Brook Station in Sandusky, Ohio; namely, the Space Propulsion Research Facility (commonlyknown as the B-2 facility) and the Space Power Facility (SPF). The common architecture of the datasystems is presented along with details on system scalability and efficient measurement systems analysisand verification. The architecture highlights a modular design, which utilizes fully-remotely managedcomponents, enabling the data systems to be highly configurable and support multiple test locations witha wide-range of measurement types and very large system channel counts.