Systems Engineering & Integration

ZIN Technologies has experience developing complex aerospace systems for a wide range of carrier vehicles and has proven that development cost can only be effectively controlled by rigorous systems engineering and integration expertise. All requirements (external and internal) are carefully analyzed to determine the impact on system complexity (performance, cost, and schedule) to ensure that they provide beneficial constraints on the system design. Once accepted, these requirements are carefully tracked throughout the design process and verified.

Integration activities include requirement negotiation with carriers and safety. In addition, crew training, carrier data products, and launch-site support agreements are created.

Ground System Design & Operations

ZIN Technologies has extensive experience in the development, operation and maintenance of telescience support centers for operation of instruments on the Space Shuttle and the International Space Station with over ten years experience with the Huntsville Operations Support Center (HOSC) at the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, and the Telescience Support Center (TSC) at the NASA Glenn Research Center. During that period, the TSC has developed from a limited control center for display of data, to a fully functional command and control center supporting complete control of flight instruments. The TSC includes an array of ground support equipment, including commanding; telemetry receipt, distribution and archiving; multiple audio channels; multiple video channels; and secure and public web and file servers.

In development support of the TSC, ZIN Technologies has contributed to the development of requirements, system architecture, specifications, and procurement of hardware and software, implementation of the systems, and formal verification of operability. ZIN Technologies has specific strengths in data acquisition, distribution, and storage. ZIN Technologies has worked closely with various NASA (MSFC, GFSC and GRC) organizations in developing and testing the technologies, interfaces and protocols required to support the needs of payload developers that use these facilities. In particular, the recent development of the capabilities to support operations on the ISS have required the development and testing of many new interfaces, with iterative development by all participating organizations.

The data systems have been developed to address the competing constraints of minimizing development and operating costs; maximizing availability, operability and restorability; and addressing the concerns of security and the proprietary nature of some data.

Verification

 A verification program is conducted to ensure that all verification requirements (program/science, safety, assurance, interface and operational) for the space flight payload are satisfied. Upon inception, verification requirements are provided by the facility, vehicle or governing NASA center, but may also be imposed by the payload itself. Science requirements from investigators and scientists typically evolve into requirements and "desirements," which must also be verified. Payload development teams begin to develop hardware that can meet those needs, as well as stay within good engineering practices established through years of space flight experience.   Knowing how the payload should be designed and tested directs the team to define their own set of requirements that may not be contractually required, but will provide confidence for the design, assembly and testing of the payload.  

Safety and assurance requirements are of the highest priority in verification identification, tracking and completion. These requirements may not only affect the safety of the astronauts and crew, but the ground team and project assigned to build and test the payload as well. These requirements are developed from the governing vehicle documentation, which are updated on a frequent basis.  

Verification tracking activities are not completed until stowage on-board the launch vehicle, and sometimes later. Tracking the many elements of the payload, by location, purpose, and physical status is an important part of the verification process. This continues through launch and on-orbit operations, and will identify if re-verification on-orbit is necessary.