Spacecraft Health Inference Engine (SHINE) is a software-development tool for knowledge-based systems, created by the Artificial intelligence Group, Information Systems Technology Section at NASA/JPL. The system is in use in basic and applied AI research at JPL. SHINE was designed to operate in a real-time environment. It is written in Common LISP, but able to be utilized by non-LISP applications written in conventional programming languages such as C and C++. These non-LISP applications can be running in a distributed computing environment on remote computers or on a computer that supports multiple programming languages. SHINE provides a variety of facilities for the development of software modules for the primary functions in knowledge-based reasoning engines. The system may be used to develop artificial intelligence applications as well as specialized tools for research efforts.
The original inventors of SHINE are Mark L. James and David J. Atkinson. SHINE is an expert system and inference engine based upon the experience, requirements and technology that were collected by the Artificial Intelligence Research group at NASA/JPL in developing expert systems for the diagnosis of spacecraft health.[1] SHINE is based on technology first developed by James and Atkinson for the "STAR*TOOL" system.[2] SHINE itself resulted from applying this technology in a project called "Spacecraft Health Automated Reasoning Pilot" (SHARP). SHARP aimed to automate and provide expert system consultation to space flight operations personnel who monitor and diagnose robotic spacecraft on science missions, such as the Voyager spacecraft.[3][4]