A General-Purpose System for Data Acquisition and Instrument Control

Sophisticated laboratory equipment, ground-based instruments and scientific instruments produced for space flight require ground support equipment (GSE) systems for instrument checkout and data analysis. The increasing complexity of flight instruments and the short time scales proposed for Shuttle instrument development, integration and flight require a fresh approach to instrument GSE systems design. Several groups throughout NASA have proposed that the GSE system should accompany each flight instrument throughout its life as an instrument specific integration support, control center support, and post-launch quick-look data analysis system. Such a system has been developed at the Laboratory for High Energy Astrophysics of the Goddard Space Flight Center. It consists of a minicomputer system with a modular hardware interface and a standardized modular software system and console language which are easily adaptable to a wide range of flight instruments. This paper relates thehistory of that effort, states the basic objectives of the system and describes the hardware and software which were developed to meet these objectives. The Experiment Command Interactive Language (ECIL) used to configure and control the instrument is described, and an example is given of its use.