An Intelligent Advisory System for Pre-Launch Processing

In order to process Space Shuttle vehicles for launch, the various Shuttle systems are subjected to various test and checkout procedures prior to launch. The system of interest in this paper is the Shuttle Data Processing System (DPS) and, in particular, the DPS Multi-Function CRT Display System (MCDS). Due to the complexity of the Shuttle as a whole and DPS in particular, the system may at times behave in an unpredictable yet benign manner in respect to normal operations. Therefore, it is difficult for even experienced systems engineers to determine whether an annunciated error is truly a failure or a benign anomaly. An automated, prototype diagnostic tool is to be described in order to provide a solution to the labor intensive and time consuming diagnostic techniques currently used. The MCDS Diagnostic Tool (MDT) will be capable of monitoring the MCDS system real time, recognizing and analyzing failures giving the user a probable cause of the failure. The MDT is considered to be a pioneering diagnostic system for all DPS subsystems diagnostics.