NASA's Ames, JPL Win NASA Software of Year Award

July 22, 2008

Sonja Alexander
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1761
sonja.r.alexander@xxxxxxxx

Rachel Prucey
Ames Research Center, Moffett Field, Calif.
650-604-0643
rachel.l.prucey@xxxxxxxx

Rhea Borja
Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena
818-354-0850
rhea.borja@xxxxxxxxxxxx

RELEASE: 08-182

NASA'S AMES, JPL WIN NASA SOFTWARE OF YEAR AWARD

WASHINGTON -- Computer programs that are used to define safety
margins
for fiery spacecraft re-entries and help detect planets outside our
solar system are co-winners of NASA's 2007 Software of the Year
Award.

Software engineers at NASA's Ames Research Center at Moffett Field,
Calif., developed the Data-Parallel Line Relaxation, or DPLR, which
is used to analyze and predict the extreme environments human and
robotic spacecraft experience during super high-speed entries into
planetary atmospheres.

At NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, Calif., software
engineers developed the Adaptive Modified Gerchberg-Saxton Phase
Retrieval program. The software uses a telescope's science camera
with innovative and robust algorithms to characterize possible errors
that limit its imaging performance. The software has been integrated
into calibration control loops to correct those errors, and can
achieve orders of magnitude improvement in sensitivity and
resolution.

The DPLR simulates the intense heating, shear stresses, and pressures
a spacecraft endures as it travels through atmospheres to land on
Earth or other planets. It is capable of creating a highly accurate,
simulated entry environment that exceeds the capability of any test
facility on Earth, allowing engineers to design and apply thermal
protection materials suited to withstand such intense heating
environments.

The DPLR team members include Michael J. Wright, James Brown, David
Hash, Matt MacLean, Ryan McDaniel, David Saunders, Chun Tang and
Kerry Trumble.

JPL's software can be applied to other sciences and systems that use
light, such as laser communications and extrasolar planet detection.

JPL's Adaptive Modified Gerchberg-Saxton Phase Retrieval software
already is in use at the California Institute of Technology's Palomar
Observatory, in northern San Diego County. The software played a
significant role in designing such next-generation telescopes as
NASA's James Webb Space Telescope, scheduled to launch in 2013.

An eight-person team from JPL is responsible for the Adaptive
Modified
Gerchberg-Saxton Phase Retrieval software: Scott Basinger,
Siddarayappa Bikkannavar, David Cohen, Joseph Green, Catherine Ohara,
David Redding and Fang Shi.

Early work for the software was based on efforts to correct the
vision
of NASA's Hubble Space Telescope. After initial images came back
blurry, engineers worked for months to determine the problem.
Eventually, astronauts traveled to the telescope to install a
corrective lens based on telescope-imaging errors.

A NASA Software Advisory Panel reviews entries and recommends winners
to NASA's Inventions and Contributions Board for confirmation.
Entries are nominated for developing innovative technologies that
significantly improve the agency's exploration of space and maximize
scientific discovery.

Both Ames and JPL have won or been co-winner of the award seven
times,
including three out of the past four years, since the NASA Software
of the Year Award was initiated in 1994.

For more information about NASA's Inventions and Contributions Board,
visit:

http://icb.nasa.gov

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov


-end-
.