Anuradha Koratkar (Space Telescope Science Institute), Sandra Grosvenor (Federal Data Corporation)
Reference URL: http://aaaprod.gsfc.nasa.gov/SEA
Technological advances such as widespread use of the Internet, multi-platform visual development tools such as Java and CORBA, and overall increases in the power of desktop hardware are allowing for significant improvements in user support tools. Consequently, many of us are expending considerable effort developing or rewriting observing tools to take advantage of these advances.
The Next Generation Space Telescope (NGST) is no exception. An important research and development effort for NGST is investigating new approaches for proposal development with the goal of significantly reducing the costs of supporting the general observer program. The Space Telescope Science Institute (ST ScI) and the Advanced Architectures and Automation Branch of Goddard Space Flight Center's (GSFC) Information Systems Center are protoyping a Scientist's Expert Assistant (SEA), that combines visual and expert system tools to reduce the time and effort involved in developing observing proposals for both scientists and the telescope operations staff.
We will present what we think are the key challenges and issues facing the developers of the Next Generation Support Tools. We will describe how SEA team is approaching these challenges. And we will discuss recent efforts to explore collaboration possibilities for developing observing tools with other observatories.