Technologies for Large-Scale Numerical Simulation

This proposal demonstrates how the parallel discrete-event simulation technology of the WarpIV Kernel can be used to effectively solve large-scale numerical simulations related to NASA problems. Four diverse applications will be demonstrated: (1) modeling planetary rings as an N-body gravitational system, (2) modeling space debris and possible collisions with satellites or rocket launches, (3) modeling RF propagation for monitoring weak spacecraft signal strengths in noisy RF environments, and (4) producing non-spherical high-resolution gravity models. The most important of these demonstrations is the planetary ring model that was originally proposed by Dr. Steinman at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 1995 prior to the launch of the Cassini mission. This proposal shows how N-body gravitational models can achieve orders of magnitude improvements to performance using discrete-event techniques (as opposed to time stepped techniques) while also producing more accurate results.