Are there any “Third Order” acronyms used in space exploration?

Question

On a recent episode of the Planetary Radio podcast, the topic of Third-Order Acronyms was brought up. At NASA, there are many Second-order acronyms like SAFER - Simplified Aid For EVA Rescue, where there is an acronym inside of an acronym. Are there any acronyms inside of acronyms inside of acronyms (Third Order) used in space exploration?

EDIT: Initialisms are also accepted.

It's 48 minutes long, can you mention roughly where to start listening? I've often wished we had some special mechanism for puzzler questions or Space Golf (similar to Code Golf) and this would be a great candidate! Another example: Rockets with n-engines, for n = 1, 2, 3… you can see how many people participated before it was unilaterally shut-down :-( — uhoh, Sep 13 '19 at 08:28
Acronyms are a dime a dozen at NASA. I vaguely recall running across a fourth order acronym at some point in my career, but the recollection is vague. All I remember was "Wow. A fourth order acronym." — David Hammen, Sep 13 '19 at 17:02
I know of plenty of (often jocular) infinite-order acronyms. Not necessarily specific to space exploration, but possibly used by some people at NASA. Linux developers seem to love them, e.g. "PINE": "PINE Is Not ELM", or "GIMP": "GIMP Is Mainly Photoshop", etc. (I'm aware they have other meanings, Linux people are just like that sometimes.) Then there was Dilbert's "The TTP Project", where the second 'T' stands for "The TTP Project". — Darrel Hoffman, Sep 13 '19 at 18:48
@DarrelHoffman GIMP is a double-infinite acronym! GIMP is also named GNU Image Manipulation Program, where GNU is “GNU’s Not Unix” — CourageousPotato, Sep 14 '19 at 03:25
Space acronym trivia; https://www.cfa.harvard.edu/~gpetitpas/Links/Astroacro.html includes gems such as "Bright Infrared Galaxy All Sky Survey" — Clumsy cat, Sep 14 '19 at 15:15
@DarrelHoffman: Googling "GIMP Is Mainly Photoshop" returns exactly one result: your comment. — Eric Duminil, Sep 14 '19 at 19:20
@CourageousPotato: Also: It's time [to] explain the meaning of "Hurd". "Hurd" stands for "Hird of Unix-Replacing Daemons". And, then, "Hird" stands for "Hurd of Interfaces Representing Depth". We have here, to my knowledge, the first software to be named by a pair of mutually recursive acronyms. See here. — Eric Duminil, Sep 14 '19 at 19:22
@EricDuminil Hmm. I saw a few more results under "Mostly" instead of "Mainly". Obviously these things are totally unofficial, spread through word of mouth. Not sure how to do a search for "GIMP Is <some word that starts with 'M'> Photoshop". — Darrel Hoffman, Sep 14 '19 at 20:08
Double infinite... That's the point where mathematicians get curious... — Volker Siegel, Sep 14 '19 at 23:58
@EricDuminil Nice: That statement became wrong in the moment you posted it because it is right. — Volker Siegel, Sep 15 '19 at 00:01
@EricDuminil Please avoid code formatting for quotations or highlights; because it indicates “text for a computer rather than a person,” alternative browsing technologies (e.g. screen readers for the blind) have to try to render it in a way that would be intelligible as code—reading letter-by-letter is not unheard of, for example. Quotation marks, or bold or italics formatting, do their jobs quite well. — KRyan, Sep 15 '19 at 15:06

score 80 · Answer 1 · edited Sep 13 '19 at 17:31

80

Yes.

NUTI => NASCOM User Traffic Interface
NASCOM => NASA Communications
NASA => National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Found by parsing this list of over 14,000 NASA acronyms

It also contains a vast number of second order acronyms, but the example above is the only third order acronym I could find through initial analysis.

edited Sep 13 '19 at 17:31

Mad Physicist

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answered Sep 13 '19 at 11:10

SE - stop firing the good guys

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That's 14,000 Shuttle acronyms. It isn't a complete list of Shuttle-related acronyms, and it's only Shuttle-related acronyms. – David Hammen Sep 13 '19 at 17:07
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@DavidHammen One black swan disproves the "all swans are white" fallacy. The question asks "are there any", this shows there are. – Organic Marble Sep 13 '19 at 17:08
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@OrganicMarble I think David was taking issue with it being described as "NASA acronyms" when it is only a subset of Shuttle acronyms, but if so I'm not sure that hair splitting is relevant. The list is NASA acronyms, it just so happens to be a subset of NASA acronyms that only includes Shuttle acronyms. – called2voyage Sep 13 '19 at 17:55
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By the way, if you change "program=shuttle" to "program=station" in the URL, you got a long list of some Space Station acronyms. – called2voyage Sep 13 '19 at 20:49

Organic Marble · Answer 2 · 2020-04-04T21:24:17.477

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I gave an example of one a while back in this answer:

Alternate version by Magic Octopus Urn

Alternate version by Eric Duminil

edited Apr 04 '20 at 21:24

answered Sep 13 '19 at 12:55

Organic Marble

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Is there any way to draw this diagram that isn't a little bit confusing? – SE - stop firing the good guys Sep 13 '19 at 13:44
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Knock yourself out! – Organic Marble Sep 13 '19 at 13:51
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@Hohmannfan I guess if I had drawn it with the 1st acronym at the bottom and run the arrows up, I could have listed the words in forward instead of reverse order. That might have been a better choice. Odds of me redoing it are slim though. – Organic Marble Sep 13 '19 at 14:07
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@OrganicMarble. Make the arrows go left – Mad Physicist Sep 13 '19 at 16:53
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@MadPhysicist that would work too. I'm too top-down, left-to-right biased apparently. – Organic Marble Sep 13 '19 at 17:36
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Feel free to use this one if you think it's better. – Eric Duminil Sep 14 '19 at 19:32
@Hohmannfan the diagram looks perfectly understandable to me, and quite clever. – RonJohn Sep 16 '19 at 07:37
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‮ sey tub eht sdrow era ni esrever redro – SE - stop firing the good guys Sep 16 '19 at 10:12
@Hohmannfan That comment is really clever! How'd you reverse the order of everything? – CJ Dennis Sep 16 '19 at 12:35
Evolved Expendable Launch Vehicle Secondary Payload Adapter Augmented Geosynchronous Laboratory Experiment? EELVSPAAGLE. Oof, that gave me a headache trying to figure out. – Magic Octopus Urn Apr 04 '20 at 16:05
https://i.imgur.com/AX69B0C.png I made another version of the diagram, dunno if it's objectively "better". – Magic Octopus Urn Apr 04 '20 at 16:24
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@MagicOctopusUrn I like that one, will add to answer if that's OK. – Organic Marble Apr 04 '20 at 16:48
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@EricDuminil added your diagram to answer, hope that's OK. – Organic Marble Apr 04 '20 at 16:52
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@OrganicMarble sure, that's why I proposed it. – Eric Duminil Apr 04 '20 at 17:51
@MagicOctopusUrn: The presentation is fine, but I'd expect the arrows to be reversed. Maybe that's just me, I always complain that the arrows in UML diagrams are pointing in the wrong direction. – Eric Duminil Apr 04 '20 at 17:52
@EricDuminil Honestly I think I should've done it 1st, 2nd, 3rd. But I already closed the draw.io page I did it on. – Magic Octopus Urn Apr 04 '20 at 18:10
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I did one final one with Eric's notes, I found how to reopen the diagram to make edits, I think he's right it's more clear: https://i.imgur.com/NbiaeXD.png – Magic Octopus Urn Apr 04 '20 at 18:36
@MagicOctopusUrn: It seems more logical that way, yes. – Eric Duminil Apr 04 '20 at 19:20
@MagicOctopusUrn updated answer! – Organic Marble Apr 04 '20 at 21:24

score 19 · Answer 3 · answered Sep 13 '19 at 19:50

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While not exactly space exploration there is at least one fourth order acronym for NASA earth observation systems (mostly earth sensing satellites).

EPR - EED2 Program Roadmap
EED - EOSDIS Evolution and Development
EOSDIS - Earth Observation System(EOS) Data and Information System
EOS - Earth Observing System

NASA - EOSDIS Acronym List

answered Sep 13 '19 at 19:50

Art

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Is the last step really an expansion though? – SE - stop firing the good guys Sep 13 '19 at 21:32
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That’s just a third order - EOS is already expanded in EOSDIS. – Tim Sep 13 '19 at 22:39
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It kind of is, because "Earth Observation System Data and Information System" is lousy grammar, but "EOS Data and Information System" where "EOS" is a proper noun works nicely. So it really kind of "wants" to be unexpanded at the third level. – hobbs Sep 15 '19 at 01:53

score 6 · Answer 4 · answered Feb 20 '20 at 16:10

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There's a conference about satellite sounders called the

ITSC: International TOVS Study Conference

organised by the

ITWG: International TOVS Working Group

where

TOVS: TIROS Operational Vertical Sounder

where

TIROS: Television Infrared Observation Satellite

answered Feb 20 '20 at 16:10

gerrit

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any thoughts on Modelling point spectrometer energy to weigh DTM facets for spectral mapping? (was posted in Astronomy, now in Space SE) – uhoh Jun 13 '20 at 23:25

score 3 · Answer 5 · answered Jul 28 '20 at 10:25

VERITAS mission to Venus (proposed).

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VERITAS_(spacecraft)

VERITAS - Venus Emissivity, Radio science, InSAR, Topography And Spectroscopy

InSAR - Intrerferometric Synthetic Aperture Radar

Radar - Radio Detection And Ranging

Are there any “Third Order” acronyms used in space exploration?

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