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Timelines are critical in space exploration. Timelines facilitate planning, resource management, and automation of uncrewed missions. As NASA and other space agencies increasingly rely on timelines for autonomous spacecraft operations, ensuring their understandability and verifiability is essential for mission success. However, interdisciplinary design teams face challenges in interpreting timelines due to variations in cultural and educational backgrounds, leading to communication barriers and potential system mismatches. This work-in-progress research explores time-oriented data visualizations to improve timeline comprehension in space systems. We contribute (1) a survey of visualization techniques, identifying patterns and gaps in historic time-oriented data visualizations and industry tools, (2) a focus group pilot study analyzing user interpretations of timeline visualizations, and (3) a novel method for visualizing aggregate runs of a timeline on a complex system, including identification of key features for usability of aggregate-data visuals. Our findings inform future visualization strategies for debugging and verifying timelines in uncrewed systems. While focused on space, this research has broader implications for aerospace, robotics, and emergency response systems.more » « lessFree, publicly-accessible full text available June 21, 2026
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