Interactive displays for trajectory planning and proximity operations

Rendezvous, docking, and other Space Station proximity operations (PROX OPS) will be conducted routinely in space. Real-time interactive visual aids and planning tools will be helpful, if not necessary* for future missions both in preflight training and on orbit. Two such displays, eivaN and Navie, are currently available for examination and human factors testing. A study was conducted in which data were collected from eight test subjects. Solution times for both devices decreased rapidly with experience. Neither fuel usage nor the number of waypoints (burns) decreased with experience. With Navie, medians of solution time and fuel consumption totaled over all subjects peaked at one of two starting points above the V-bar with monotonically decreasing values in both directions. This pattern did not appear with eivaN values. Since the docking tasks were fundamentally different with each device, and because Navie imposed more constraints on the users than eivaN did, the orbital mechanics effects had a more pronounced effect on the Navie results than on the eivaN data.