"Flying to the sky to realize the dream" Massive information interaction without worries, let you know about the efficient and intelligent "ship secretary"

The Mengtian laboratory module of the space station has been operating stably in orbit for nearly a month since its successful launch and docking with the core module on October 31. "Decoding Mengtian" takes you to learn about the efficient and intelligent "ship secretary".

“Ship secretary”, where does the identity come from?

Thirty years ago, China's manned space program was officially launched. The first task the development team received was to develop the "onboard secretary" of the Shenzhou spacecraft - the system controller and multi-function display. The combination of the two will establish a human-machine interface for astronauts to interact with the spacecraft. After unmanned verification, it will directly assist astronauts in completing space experiments, extravehicular activities, docking and other spacecraft tasks during the final manned flight. It is a comprehensive electronic application system with a high starting point, high technical difficulty and involving multiple disciplines.

The parameters of all subsystems on the Shenzhou series spacecraft must be forwarded to the spacecraft instruments through the data management subsystem. The "onboard secretary" can transform complex parameters into intuitive numerical values ​​that astronauts can grasp, and is an important system that directly interacts with astronauts. Specifically, when the subsystems of the spacecraft start to operate, the data generated will be collected in the data management subsystem. The intelligent administrator will summarize the data, convert it into content that astronauts can intuitively identify and operate, and display it on the instrument. In this way, astronauts can intuitively understand all parameters related to the spacecraft through the instruments on the spacecraft, and always grasp the operating status of each part of the spacecraft.

In addition, the "onboard secretary" can provide pages showing the status of various parts of the spacecraft, as well as the world map, the physical condition of astronauts and other related content. It uses a unique graphic display technology to display the spacecraft's trajectory, attitude, flight status and information of each subsystem in the form of text, graphics and animation. This unique graphic display technology can not only obtain a novel instrument controller display effect, but also realize the spatial intelligence of the processing and display of graphics and text in the instrument, providing a clear, intuitive and comfortable display interface for astronauts to perform their tasks.

In 2003, the Shenzhou V spacecraft was to realize its first manned flight, and the "ship secretary" was to truly perform the mission with the astronauts. The entire spacecraft system attached great importance to the life safety of astronauts during the mission, and put forward almost stringent requirements on the safety and reliability of the product. In order to ensure the reliability of the system controller and multi-function display software, every data displayed must be accurate; in order to provide astronauts with a more friendly human-machine interface, the designers overcame the impact of the SARS epidemic, faced the challenge, and carried out detailed optimization tests and joint tests on the software in accordance with more stringent requirements.

Early system controller and multi-function display development site

"Ship Secretary" moves towards a bigger "stage"!

From the first manned Shenzhou V spacecraft to the current Shenzhou XIV spacecraft, from the Tiangong-1 target spacecraft and Tiangong-2 space laboratory to the current Tiangong space station, a number of key technologies have been continuously "added" including in-orbit software updates, Chinese character input method, and autonomous emergency return... The research and development team not only successfully completed each task, but also accumulated valuable research and development experience in large-capacity space information processing, embedded display, and autonomous software updates.

For the space station, the instrument computer application software is the central system for data processing of the laboratory cabin instruments. It plays an important role as the "ship secretary" for astronauts to process information in the Mengtian laboratory cabin. After the local government sends instructions to the Mengtian laboratory cabin, the "ship secretary" officially begins to operate autonomously. Because the instruments in the laboratory cabin need to process large amounts of data, and the methods of solving data information are different, the relationship between parameters is complicated, especially the communication load required by the bus is huge. To solve this problem, the research and development team effectively solved the problems of high bus communication throughput and high real-time performance through reasonable task allocation and optimization algorithms.

The "ship secretary" of the Mengtian laboratory module has added data interaction with the core module and the Wentian laboratory module on the basis of the unchanged functions of the core module, which greatly increases the amount of data and makes the software more powerful. This means that after the Mengtian laboratory module is docked with the core module, the three modules will form a "working group" to realize information interaction.

In addition, the "onboard secretary" also realized the on-orbit software coefficient and code update technology through injection, and adopted a number of reliability measures to ensure the reliability and security of the updated software. The normal operation of the software will not be affected during the update process, ensuring that it can maintain stable operation during the space station's operation phase of more than ten years.

The basic "T" configuration of the three-cabin space station