Visual Communication of Potential Anomalies with Boundary Lines in ISS Mission Control
Zixu Zhang, Paul Parsons · 2022
Boundary lines for telemetry data have been used widely among International Space Station (ISS) flight controllers on their displays. These programmable lines are used as important references to aid in anomaly detection and response. Investigating how ISS flight controllers currently use boundary lines helps us understand how potentially anomalous data is handled under conditions of uncertainty and ambiguity. In future deep space exploration missions, anomalies are expected to occur despite our best efforts to avoid them. As crews get farther away from Earth, significant communication delays will be inevitable, and as real-time support becomes less practical, more responsibility will need to be placed on autonomous monitoring and anomaly response. It is unclear what role visualization might play in situation awareness for these future missions. Can visualization techniques be used to alert users to potentially worrisome data values when continuous monitoring is not possible?