Program for Viewing Remotely Generated Summary Data

The Beacon Visualization (BeaVis) computer program provides a ground-based computing environment for displaying, tracking, storing, and maneuvering through telemetric data streams that contain summaries of engineering data generated aboard a spacecraft. BeaVis can also serve as a general-purpose software tool for monitoring data of other specific types. In the original spacecraft-to-ground application, BeaVis enables the user to scroll through a graphical depiction of telemetry downlinks to select desired data. Summary data are represented graphically, with hypertext links to strip charts of sensor channels represented by summary data packets. BeaVis also generates time-line and tabular displays. A time line depicts when, during a spacecraft mission, summary downlinks and beacon tone detections have occurred. The tabular and strip-chart displays are available through hypertext links from the time-line display. BeaVis also provides graphical user interface elements that show such specific summary data components as changes in mission activities, snapshot telemetry, episode data, and user summary data. The program also includes a software tool for creating tables of parameters that are uploaded to a spacecraft.