Artificial gravity: head movements during short-radius centrifugation.

Short-radius centrifugation is a potential countermeasure to long-term weightlessness. Unfortunately, head movements in a rotating environment induce serious discomfort, non-compensatory vestibulo-ocular reflexes, and subjective illusions of body tilt. In two experiments we investigated the effects of pitch and yaw head movements in participants placed supine on a rotating bed with their head at the center of rotation, feet at the rim. The vast majority of participants experienced motion sickness, inappropriate vertical nystagmus and illusory tilt and roll as predicted by a semicircular canal model. However, a small but significant number of the 28 participants experienced tilt in the predicted plane but in the opposite direction. Heart rate was elevated following one-second duration head turns. Significant adaptation occurred following a series of head turns in the light. Vertical nystagmus, motion sickness and illusory tilt all decreased with adaptation. Consequences for artificial gravity produced by short-radius centrifuges as a countermeasure are discussed. Grant numbers: NCC 9-58.     

Electronic Logbook for Space System Integration & Test Operations

In the highly technological aerospace world, paper is still widely used to document space system integration and test (I&T) operations. E-Logbook (electronic logbook) is a new technology designed to replace current documentation processes of space system I&T operations, such as connector mate and demate, flight hardware and flight software component installation, material mixes or electronic ground support equipment (EGSE) validation. It also includes new documentation concepts, such as the shift log, which improves project awareness and optimizes the shift hand-over process, and the configuration log, which instantly reports on the global I&T state of the space system and greatly enhances information gathering prior to major test events or project reviews. The design of E-Logbook focuses not only on a reliable and efficient relational database, but also on an ergonomic human-computer interactive (HCI) system of graphical user interfaces (GUI) that can help reduce human error and improve I&T discipline and management oversight. E-Logbook has been used for the I&T of the large area telescope (LAT) of the gamma-ray large area space telescope (GLAST) scientific satellite at the Stanford Linear Accelerator Center (SLAC). After 19 months of operation, more than 41,000 records have been created for the different documentation components or I&T Logs, with no data having been corrupted or critically lost. 94% of the operators and 100% of the management exposed to E-Logbook prefer it to paper logbooks and recommend its use in the aerospace industry.