Application of NASA core Flight System to Telescope Control Software for 2017 Total Solar Eclipse Observation

Abstract

The core Flight System (cFS), developed by NASA, is a reusable software framework and a set of pluggable software applications that take advantage of the rich heritage of NASA’s successful space missions. We applied the cFS to the development of telescope control software for the observation of the 2017 total solar eclipse. Four main modules were developed: imaging control, mechanism control, data handling, and automated observation. Other modules, such as communication and scheduler, were reused from the cFS. Using an integrated observation system, we successfully observed the total solar eclipse, in which the linearly polarized brightness of the solar corona and sky background were measured at four different wavelengths. In this study, we demonstrated the usefulness of the cFS to develop telescope control software through an eclipse observation system, the so-called DICE (DIagnostic Coronagraph Experiment) mission. Our experience and knowledge of the cFS were expanded to a flight software BITSE (Balloon-borne Investigation of Temperature and Speed of Electrons in the corona), the high-altitude scientific balloon mission in 2019. We plan to apply this approach to future solar coronagraph observations, such as CODEX (COronal Diagnostic EXperiment), on the International Space Station. We expect that the cFS can also be applied in telescope control software for ground-and space-based observations.

Large-aperture Telescope Tracking Control Based on Time-synchronization Strategy

“…A reliable software platform can effectively improve the operational efficiency of equipment, such as the core Flight System (cFS) proposed by McComas (McComas et al 2016;McComas 2018). Researchers are trying to use it for telescope control software for ground-based and space-based observations (Park et al 2022). The software system of the TMT consists of a software infrastructure called TMT Common Software (CSW) (Gillies et al 2020) that interact with each other to satisfy the function of the various parts of the telescope, such as the pointing and tracking system and Alignment and Phasing System (APS) (Troy et al 2016).…”