Rock Talk

Washington, District of Columbia | Lunar Surface Operations: Real-Time Collaboration

Rock Talk

High-Level Project Summary

Rock Talk is a real-time logging platform designed to bring together NASA flight controllers and the broader scientific community as they collaborate and compare notes on live mission data. Users can see all logs as they are created, or form channels to quickly focus on the logs that matter to them. Features such as related logs, additional data fields, and search make it easy to find log entries related to your interests.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://youtu.be/KBP6CLsUmdA

Link to Final Project

https://rocktalk.xyz/

Detailed Project Description

Mission Goals

Currently, members of the flight control team are left to record their mission logs in isolation. This denies them the opportunity to collaborate and compare notes in real-time with their colleagues at NASA, other space agencies throughout the world, and the broader scientific community.

Rock Talk aims to solve this problem by addressing the following goals:

Provide a streamlined interface for creating logs and adding relevant information
Offer an intuitive way to create views of logs relevant to the task at hand
Allow hundreds of users to update and view logs simultaneously

Introducing Rock Talk

Mission Log Screen

The heart of Rock Talk is the Mission Log screen, where users can create and view log entries.

1) Channel shortcuts

Channel shortcuts allow users to effortlessly switch the logs displayed in their view area between collections of people focused on different subjects.

2) Now Viewing section

The Now Viewing section displays a list of the logs currently shown in the viewing area. From here, users can choose logs to make visible and save views as new channels.

3) Lock Posts button

Clicking this button will ask users to confirm that they are ready to lock all of their open log entries. Locked log entries will no longer be editable.

4) Search

Users can search logs for keywords with the Search Bar, or use Advanced Search to filter their results by criteria like author or time stamp.

5) View area

Entries from selected logs will appear chronologically in the viewing area as soon as they are submitted.

6) Input area

The input area allows users to create new log entries and edit entries before they are locked.

Creating Log Entries

Scenario 1

Tom is a Tool Owner interested in all parts of the mission related to the Drill System (ALSD). When a drill is used during an EVA he adds a note in his log and makes sure that the tool's name, the time it was used, and the coordinates where it was used are all clearly indicated.

1) Logger name and time

The log entry's author and the time when they started typing the log are captured automatically without any need for user input. However, the log's author can choose to change the time at any point before the log entry is locked.

2) Log entry text

The main text of a log entry is displayed here.

3) Tags and metadata

Users can add fields to log entries to highlight key information. Rock Talk will pull in standardized tags and metadata to promote standardization across logs.

4) File attachments

Users can upload files to log entries. Image files will display as a thumbnail.

5) Linked log entries

Users have the option to link their log entries to related posts. A preview of the linked post can be seen within the log entry.

6) Copy post ID button

This button will allow users to easily copy the information they need to link to this log entry in a new post.

7) Edit button

The Edit button will allow users to update a log entry. Locked log entries and log entries that were not created by the user will not show an Edit button.

Viewing Log Entries

Scenario 2

Flight Director Wing is viewing his EVA flight crew channel as astronauts collect samples from the moon's surface. He knows the samples from this EVA will be vital for Experiment 12, so he decides to add the Experiment Owner's logs to his view area.

1) Groups

Groups are collections of individual users that are related in some key way. Examples of groups could be all users who share a console in mission control, all users who are involved in a certain experiment, or all users who are active during a certain activity.

2) Users

Individual users can be added to a view or channel when a user doesn't need to see all of the members of a large group.

Scenario 3

Rachel is a geochemist working with NASA on analyzing the results of Experiment 12. She notices that a log entry from one of her colleagues references a tool that she's never heard of. She clicks the tool's tag and Rock Talk provides a brief description and a shortcut to view other logs that reference that tool.

1) Equipment information

Information about equipment has been collected by reviewing data made available by NASA.

2) Link to log entries with this tag

Clicking this link will bring users to a view filtered to show all log entries with this tag.

Making it all come together

Rock Talk uses several modern web technologies to provide a seamless user experience. Websockets enable the user to feel connected at all times by updating the screen automatically as other users make updates.

The burden of remembering acronyms, names, and data is alleviated by Rock Talk's use and provision of NASA data to loggers via the PrimeVue component library which provides searchable drop-downs when entering logs.

Vue 3 Vite makes it possible to offer a single page application experience to the user, which makes navigating, posting, and filtering faster than almost all other frameworks.

Source code: https://github.com/alexjharrison/rock-talk

To Monday, and Beyond!

The next steps needed to put the finishing touches on Rock Talk include the following:

User testing with members of NASA and the broader scientific community to confirm assumptions made during the design process
Streamlining post creation by allowing users to "pin" frequently used fields
Development of an Admin role that would be responsible for creating the groups and tags related to a mission
Implement the functionality for joining a mission and relevant groups
Providing the Public Affairs Officer (PAO) with a method for sharing approved and exciting log entries over social media

Space Agency Data

Apollo Lunar Surface Journal Geology Tools webpage: examples of equipment used during a lunar mission

Lunar and Planetary Institute: information on lunar experiments from Apollo 17 and Artemis

Hackathon Journey

Why Lunar Surface Operations?

We came into the Space Apps Challenge hoping to flex our design, programming, and story telling skills. The Lunar Surface Operations: Real-Time Collaboration challenge required the perfect mix of all three. Creating Rock Talk allowed each team member to split their time between diving deep into their areas of expertise and pushing themselves to learn new things.

What did we learn?

The hackathon has served as a crash course in a variety of topics. We learned enough about how NASA runs missions and lunar operations to design a solution with the potential to improve the status quo. We increased our knowledge of the tools we used throughout the weekend, such as Adobe Premier, Figma, Docker, and Hasura. Finally, we learned how we work best as a group, navigating how to communicate ideas, set priorities, and reach compromises.

Who do we have to thank?

The Subject Matter Experts in the challenge chat, especially Jaclyn L. Kagey and Edwin J. Montalvo, provided invaluable feedback in understanding the context behind the project requirements. Our local lead Fig O'Reilly was a great help in determining how to incorporate data from NASA and navigating project submission.