Diane Davis

Biography

Dr. Diane Davis is an astrodynamicist and principal systems engineer with NASA and USAF aerospace industry leader a.i. solutions. She designs spacecraft orbits with the Future Capabilities Team at Johnson Space Center in Houston, TX, and previously navigated spacecraft to Mars and comets at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. She is the lead researcher for the Deep Space Trajectory Explorer, a JavaFX - based, Duke’s Choice Award winning design and visualization software for interplanetary orbit analysis.

Designing and Visualizing Deep Space Manned Missions
Humanity is entering a new age of space exploration focusing beyond Earth orbit. Deep space mission design organizations such as NASA face new mission goals with complex custom computing and visualization requirements. Modern technology platforms such as JavaFX and Java 8 enable these intricate workflows. The complexities of trajectory design within deep space regimes will be discussed. Examples range from missions to liquid-rich worlds such as Europa and Enceladus, but also humanity's return to the Moon via excursion missions to the planned Deep Space Gateway. Science orbits in these vicinities involve significant computational challenges due to complex gravitational effects. Demonstrations will include the Deep Space Trajectory Explorer (DSTE), software designed completely in JavaFX and Java 8 providing rapid parallel search and filtration capabilities. Custom hardware-accelerated visualizations are used to visually identify trajectory solutions that exploit these dense gravity fields. The DSTE immerses the user within the design space, letting the data be the interface to the user. Data visualizations will feature a mix of custom multilayered 2D plots and interactive 3D tools.