Progression of an Open Architecture: from Orion to Altair and LSS

NASA has embarked on a very ambitious plan for space exploration over the next several decades. The cornerstone of this activity is the Constellation Program. Even with the retirement of the Space Shuttle and the NASA development budget growing from approximately $3.5 Billion to approximately $7 billion in 2011, this budget will require a different model for NASA implementation than was used on the Space Shuttle or the Space Station. The Constellation “system of systems” that contains seven major elements must be implemented within approximately twice the budget that a single space station element was implemented. Over the past decade, industry managers including NASA managers, have come to accept as axiomatic that the use of open systems reduces cost, decreases schedule, and eliminates risks to a program. However, the term, "open systems architecture" invokes a variety of interpretations. To some it implies no proprietary components. To others it implies adherence to documented standards. Still others see it as implying plug-and-play features. Honeywell has worked with NASA and other customers over the last five years to understand the voice of the customer relating to the benefits of varying level of open architecture. As Honeywell has developed the detailed architecture for the Orion vehicle, the team has strived to create an open architecture approach portable to Altair and beyond. This paper/presentation details the open features of the 6th Generation architecture and the ongoing enhancements to the Orion in work to finalize an open system to proposed throughout the Constellation architecture. In addition, the path to a real time computational platform useful throughout the Fault-Tolerant Spaceborne Computing community is extrapolated and discussed. This paper concludes with observed interpretations of the meaning of "open systems architecture" and the benefits to NASA within the long-life Constellation Program Constellation Background Over the decade there has been an evolving vision for the future of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) human space objectives. The first step in this evolution was the Space Launch Initiative (SLI). According to Art Stephenson, director of NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala. , "The Space Launch Initiative (was) a comprehensive R&D effort that provides technology developments that dramatically increase the safety, reliability and affordability of space transportation systems. The strategic goals of SLI were to develop concepts and the technologies to allow creation of a next-generation Reusable Launch Vehicle (RLV). This RLV would be designed such to reduce the risk of loss of crew to approximately 1 in 10,000 missions and to lower the cost of delivering payloads to low-Earth orbit to less than $1,000 per pound. In early 2003, the NASA refined their vision and funding to better support the SLI vision as shown in Figure 1. As part of this change, the broad SLI was split to focus on both short term and long term solutions. The short-term solution became know as the Orbital Space Plane (OSP) concept. The OSP was to focus on a system capable of providing crew rescue from the International Space Station (ISS) as early as 2008 and crew transfer in the 2010 time frame. Figure 1 – NASA 2003 Five Year Budget Plan The next evolution in the NASA manned space policy came on January 14, 2004 when President Bush announced the Exploration Systems vision as shown in Figure 2. This policy presented three goals. The first goal was to complete the International Space Station by 2010 and focus our