NASA’s Stennis Space Center near Bay St. Louis, Mississippi, has released its first-ever open-source software: a peer review tool to facilitate more efficient and collaborative creation of systems applications, particularly those used in its frontline government and commercial propulsion test work. “Everyone knows NASA Stennis as the nation’s premier rocket propulsion test site,” said David Carver, acting chief of the Office of Test Data and Information Management.
“We also are engaged in a range of key technology efforts. This latest open-source tool is an exciting example of that work, and one we anticipate will have a positive and widespread impact.”
The new NASA Data Acquisition System Peer Review Tool was developed over several years, based on lessons learned as site developers and engineers created software tools for use across the center’s sprawling test complex. It is designed to streamline the collaborative review process, allowing developers to build better and more effective software applications.
“We refined it over time, and it has significantly improved our process,” said Brandon Carver, a NASA Stennis software engineer. “In early efforts, we were doing reviews manually, but now our tool handles some of these steps for us. It has allowed us to focus more on reviewing key items in our software.”
Developers can improve time efficiency and address issues earlier when conducting software code reviews.
The result is a better, more productive product.
**Peer review tool boosts collaboration**
The NASA Stennis tool is part of the larger NASA Data Acquisition System created at the center to help monitor and collect propulsion test data.
It is designed to work with National Instruments LabVIEW, which is widely used by systems engineers and scientists to design applications. LabVIEW uses graphics (visible icon objects) instead of a text-based programming language to create applications, making it challenging to compare codes in a review process. “You cannot compare your code in the same way you do with a text-based language,” Brandon Carver said.
“Our tool offers a process that allows developers to review these LabVIEW-developed programs and focus more time on reviewing actual code updates.”
While LabVIEW features a comparison tool, NASA Stennis engineers identified ways to improve the process, including automating certain steps. The NASA Stennis tool makes it easier to post comments, pictures, and other elements in an online peer review to make discussions more effective. The result is what NASA Stennis developers hope is a more streamlined, efficient process.
“By providing it to the open-source community, they can take our tool, find better ways of handling things, and refine it,” Brandon Carver said. “We want to allow those groups to modify it and become a community around the tool, so it is continuously improved. Ultimately, a peer review is to make stronger software or a stronger product, and that is also true for this peer review tool.
It is a good feeling to be part of the process and to see something created at the center now out in the larger world across the agency.”
To access the peer review tool developed at NASA Stennis, visit NASA’s official website.
April Isaacs is a news contributor for DevX.com She is long-term, self-proclaimed nerd. She loves all things tech and computers and still has her first Dreamcast system. It is lovingly named Joni, after Joni Mitchell.
