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 Dave Van Buren and I are now developing a next-generation MOO client, based in part on our experiences with Jupiter and AstroVR. This is part of a larger project to develop a reusable collaborative environment for spaceflight project development, starting with the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM). This work is funded through the NASA Applied Information Systems Research Program, grant NRA-96-10-OSS-055.

 More details will be made public as they become available. Some of our design goals include:

 Supernova is written in Java, and some features are already operational. The protocol Supernova uses to communicate with the MOO is called Nova (to avoid confusion with the client), and is based on the MOO Client Protocol used by Jupiter.

 This project also involves writing a new core database; the existing cores are difficult to use and develop, not easily scalable to large (possibly distributed) systems, poorly documented, in the case of LambdaCore evolved - not designed, lack integrated fancy client support and are in general unsuitable to our purposes. We will use the lessons learned from AstroVR (and in some cases, such as the AstroVR Web Core, the code itself) to guide this process, which is also already underway.

 This general-purpose core database will be specialized to the SIM Collaboratory, which will be a
user-friendly environment for SIM development. IMOS tools, used in conjunction with the teleconferencing tools, will provide a powerful mechanism for project engineers to explore the dynamics of the SIM spacecraft in a collaborative mode, even though some may be located in distant industrial facilities. Other features may include annotation overlays for the SIM document database, and interfaces to the science simulation software being developed by the science team.



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