Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland 20771 

ENGINEERING COLLOQUIUM 

Monday, May 22, 2000 / 3:30 PM, Building 3 Auditorium 

Ron Parise

ABSTRACT -- Over the years, NASA and other government agencies have developed numerous protocols designed to efficiently transfer data from spacecraft to the ground and also between various points on the ground.  This work eventually sparked the commercial development of what we now know as the Internet.  NASA has taken advantage of this commercial development for all data distribution functions except the space-to-ground segment.  Goddard's Operating  Missions as Nodes on the Internet (OMNI) project is demonstrating the many advantages of extending the use of these protocols to include the spacecraft itself.  OMNI's demonstrations through TDRSS including the very successful webcast of the August 99 solar eclipse from the Black Sea as well as the current UoSAT-12 flight tests will be discussed.

SPEAKER -- From 1979 through 1984, Dr. Parise was involved in developing avionics requirements definitions and performing failure mode analyses for NASA missions, was section manager of the International Ultraviolet Explorer (IUE) hard copy facility, and had responsibilities in flight hardware and software development, electronic system design, and mission planning for the Ultraviolet Imaging Telescope (UIT) project.  In 1984 he was selected as a payload specialist astronaut and was involved in mission planning, simulator development, integration and test activities, flight procedure development, and scientific data analysis.  He has logged 615 hours in space as a member of the STS-35 and STS-67 crews.  In 1996 Dr. Parise assumed a communications engineering support role for Mir, International Space Station (ISS), and the X-38 project.  In 1997 Dr. Parise also began working with the OMNI project as a scientific liaison and systems architect.