NESTA: NASA Engineering Shuttle Telemetry Agent

The Electrical Systems Division at the NASA Kennedy Space Center has developed and deployed an agent-based tool to monitor the space shuttle's ground processing telemetry stream. The agent provides autonomous monitoring of the telemetry stream and automatically alerts system engineers when predefined criteria have been met. Sandia National Labs' Java Expert System Shell is employed as the rule engine. This article discusses the rule-based telemetry agent used for space shuttle ground processing and explains the problem domain, development of the agent software, benefits of AI technology, and deployment and sustaining engineering of the product.