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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.
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In this hardware project, the students developed ideas for attaching objects to the surface of small moons or asteroids. A device was designed, and built in the university machine shop, that uses a projectile shot into concrete, thereby attaching a model spacecraft to the landing site.
The research into the advancement of software error compensation techniques is discussed in this video. Although these techniques were originally designed for coordinate measuring machines, they are now used for machine tools as well.
Whether a dike can propagate far from a magma reservoir depends upon the competition between the rate at which propagation widens the dike and the rate at which freezing constricts the aperture available for magma flow. Various formulations are developed for a viscous fluid at temperature T(sub m) intruding a growing crack in an elastic solid. The initial solid temperature equals T(sub m) at the source and decreases linearly with distance from the source. If T(sub m) is the unique freezing temperature of the fluid, dike growth is initially self-similar and an essentially exact solution is obtained; if T(sub m) is above the solidus temperature, the solution is approximate but is designed to overestimate the distance the dike may propagate. The ability of a dike to survive thermally depends primarily upon a single parameter that is a measure of the ratio of the dike frozen margin thickness to elastic thickness. Perhaps more intuitively, one may define a minimum distance from the essentially solid reservoir wall to the point at which the host rock temperature drops below the solidus, necessary for dikes to propagate far into subsolidus rock. It is concluded that for reasonable material properties and source conditions, most basalt dikes will have little difficulty leaving the source region, but most rhyolite dikes will be halted by freezing soon after the magma encounters rock at temperatures below the magma solidus. While these results can explain why granitic dikes are common near granitic plutons but rare elsewhere, the potentially large variation in magmatic systems makes it premature to rule out the possibility that most granites are transported through the crust in dikes. Nonetheless, these results highlight difficulties with such proposals and suggest that it may also be premature to rule out the possibility that most granite plutons ascend as more equidimensional bodies.
The current requirements for the Laboratory for Astronomy and Solar Physics, sends rocket satellites and in the near future will involve flights in the shuttle to the upper reaches of the Earth's atmosphere where they will be subjected to the atomic particles and electromagnetic radiation produced by the Sun and other cosmic radiation. It is therefore appropriate to examine the effect of neutrons, gamma rays, beta particles, and X-rays on the film currently being used by the Laboratory for current and future research requirements. It is also hoped by examining these particles in their effect that we will have simulated the space environment of the rockets, satellites, and shuttles. Several samples of the IIaO film were exposed to a neutron howitzer with a source energy of approximately 106 neutrons/steradians. We exposed several samples of the film to a 10 second blast of neutrons in both metal and plastic containers which exhibited higher density readings which indicated the possibility of some secondary nuclear interactions between neutrons and the aluminum container. The plastic container showed some variations at the higher densities. Exposure of the samples of IIaO film to a neutron beam of approximately 10 neutrons per steradians for eight minutes produces approximately a 13% difference in the density readings of the dark density grids. It is not noticeable that at the lighter density grid the neutrons have minimal effects, but on a whole the trend of the eight minute exposed IIaO film density grids at the darker end had a 7.1% difference than the control. Further analysis is anticipated by increasing the exposure time. Two sets of film were exposed to a beta source in a plastic container. The beta source was placed at the bottom so that the cone of rays striking the film would be conical for a period of seven days. It was observed in the films, designated 4a and 4b, a dramatic increase in the grid densities had occurred. The attenuation of beta particles due to the presence of air were observed. The darker density grids, whose positions were the furthest from the beta source, displayed minimal fluctuations as compared with the control. It is suspected that the orientation of the film in the cansister with the beta source is the key factor responsible for the dramatic increases of the lighter density grids. Emulsions 3a and 3b exposed for a period of six days with the grid orientation reserved produced substantial differences in the darker grids as shown in the graphs. There is a great deal of fluctuations in this sample between the beta exposed density grids and the control density grids. The lighter density grids whose orientations were reversed displays minimal fluctuations due to the presence of this beta source and the attenuation that is taking place.
Gravitational wave signals from a large number of astrophysical sources will be present in the LISA data. Information about as many sources as possible must be estimated from time series of strain measurements. Several types of signals are expected to be present: simple periodic signals from relatively stable binary systems, chirped signals from coalescing binary systems, complex waveforms from highly relativistic binary systems, stochastic backgrounds from galactic and extragalactic binary systems and possibly stochastic backgrounds from the early Universe. The orbital motion of the LISA antenna will modulate the phase and amplitude of all these signals, except the isotropic backgrounds and thereby give information on the directions of sources. Here we describe a candidate process for disentangling the gravitational wave signals and estimating the relevant astrophysical parameters from one year of LISA data. Nearly all of the sources will be identified by searching with templates based on source parameters and directions.
This note book contains the graduate course itinerary and schedule for the United States Air Force Academy.
Daily life for firefighters consists of working with life-threatening hazards in hostile environments. A major hazard is excessive ambient heat. New hazards have arisen from protective gear that was intended to increase survival time of firefighters while finding and rescuing victims. The insulation is so good now that a firefighter's metabolic heat buildup cannot escape. This forces body core temperatures to life threatening levels in about 20 minutes of moderate activity. Using NASA space suit technology, Oceaneering Space Systems developed a liquid cooling garment prototype that will remove up to 250 watts of metabolic heat. After testing and certification as an approved accessory for firefighter use, this garment will be available for use by any individual encapsulated in protective clothing. This demonstration will present a high surface area circulated liquid cooling garment displayed on a mannequin and available for attendees to try on to experience the effects of active cooling.
Radiative transfer calculations are performed to remove the effect of diffuse illumination on the color of the martian surface. We describe the methods and apply them to a radiometric calibration target, and to a superpan cube of the rock Yogi. Additional information is contained in the original extended abstract.
NASA's Discovery Program represents the implementation of NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin's vision of 'faster, better, cheaper' planetary missions; encompasses a series of low-cost solar system exploration missions intended to accomplish high quality, focused planetary science investigations using innovative, streamlined, and efficient approaches to assure the highest science value for the cost; and aims to enhance our understanding of the solar system by exploring the planets, their moons and other small bodies, either by traveling to them or remotely from the vicinity of Earth. The objectives of this program include the following: (1) Provide exciting and important scientific data to the global community; (2) Pursue new and innovative ways of doing business; (3) Encourage technological development by designing and testing new technologies and transferring them to the private sector; (4) Increase public awareness of, and appreciation for, solar system exploration through exciting education and public outreach activities; (5) Support national education initiatives through mission-specific programs; and (6) Ensure participation of small disadvantaged businesses, women-owned businesses, HBCUs, and other minority educational institutions in procurements.
Many performance monitoring tools are currently available to the super-computing community. The performance data gathered and analyzed by these tools fall under two categories: statistics and event traces. Statistical data is much more compact but lacks the probative power event traces offer. Event traces, on the other hand, can easily fill up the entire file system during execution such that the instrumented execution may have to be terminated half way through. In this paper, we propose an innovative methodology for performance data gathering and representation that offers a middle ground. The user can trade-off tracing overhead, trace data size vs. data quality incrementally. In other words, the user will be able to limit the amount of trace collected and, at the same time, carry out some of the analysis event traces offer using spacetime views for the entire execution. Two basic ideas are employed: the use of averages to replace recording data for each instance and "formulae" to represent sequences associated with communication and control flow. With the help of a few simple examples, we illustrate the use of these techniques in performance tuning and compare the quality of the traces we collected vs. event traces. We found that the trace files thus obtained are, in deed, small, bounded and predictable before program execution and that the quality of the space time views generated from these statistical data are excellent. Furthermore, experimental results showed that the formulae proposed were able to capture 100% of all the sequences associated with 11 of the 15 applications tested. The performance of the formulae can be incrementally improved by allocating more memory at run-time to learn longer sequences.
The MRO/HiRISE Operations Center provides a mechanism for Mars investigators to particaipate in selection of targets and access to the aquired images. Additional information is contained in the original extended abstract.
Over the past four years, NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center has built and tested the Triana observatory, which will be the first Earth observing science satellite to take advantage of the unique perspective offered by a Lissajous orbit about the first Earth-Sun Lagrange Point (L1). Triana was originally meant to fly on the U.S. Space Transportation System (a.k.a. the Space Shuttle but complications with the shuttle manifest have forced Triana into a 'wait and see' attitude. The observatory is currently being stored at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, where it waits for an appropriate launch opportunity to surface. To that end, several possible alternatives have been considered, including variations on the nominal shuttle deployment scenario, a high inclination Delta-type launch from Vandenberg Air Force Base, a Tsyklon class vehicle launched from Baikonur, Kazakhstan, and a ride on a French Ariane vehicle out of French Guiana into a somewhat arbitrary geostationary transfer orbit (GTO). This paper chronicles and outlines the pros and cons of how each of these opportunities could be used to send Triana on its way to L1.
With the help of Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) funding from NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center, of Greenbelt, Maryland, Clearwater Instrumentation, of Watertown, Massachusetts, created the ClearSat-Autonomous Drifting Ocean Station (ADOS). The multi-sensor array ocean drifting station was developed to support observations of Earth by NASA satellites. It is a low-cost device for gathering an assortment of data necessary to the integration of present and future satellite measurements of biological and physical processes. Clearwater Instrumentation developed its ADOS technology based on Goddard's Sea-viewing Wide Field-of-view Sensor (SeaWiFS) project, but on a scale that is practical for commercial use. ADOS is used for the in situ measuring of ocean surface layer properties such as ocean color, surface thermal structure, and surface winds. Thus far, multiple ADOS units have been sold to The Scripps Institution of Oceanography, where they are being applied in the field of academic science research. Fisheries can also benefit, because ADOS can locate prime cultivation conditions for this fast-growing industry.
NASA has licensed technology to a Washington state company for improving the performance, stability and control of helicopters. Under the agreement, Boundary Layer Research, Inc., Everett, Wash., will commercially market an aerodynamic device called "tailboom strakes." The license will allow the company to market the NASA-patented device to civil and military operators of single rotor helicopters. For the past year Boundary Layer Research has been working with NASA Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va., to explore the viability of helicopter strake technology developed by a NASA-Army team of researchers. The technology is applicable to all single rotor helicopters and is patented by NASA as a "Low Speed Anti-Torque System." The company has applied for Federal Aviation Administration certification to make the technology available to civil operators and owners.
Opto-Knowledge Systems, Inc. was founded in 1991 specifically to take advantage of the emergence of a new technology field related to spectral imaging. The technology has applications in diverse areas such as Earth remote sensing, agriculture, geology, medical diagnosis, manufacturing, forensics, and more. Under the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center STTR project, OKSI developed several major aspects to further the state of the art, resulting in several commercial products.
Assisted by Langley Research Center's Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) Program, IntegriNautics has developed a commercialized precision landing system. The idea finds its origins in Stanford University work on a satellite test of Einstein's General Theory of Relativity, where Stanford has designed a new high-performance altitude-determining hardware.
Positive Systems has worked in conjunction with Stennis Space Center to design the ADAR System 5500. This is a four-band airborne digital imaging system used to capture multispectral imagery similar to that available from satellite platforms such as Landsat, SPOT and the new generation of high resolution satellites. Positive Systems has provided remote sensing services for the development of digital aerial camera systems and software for commercial aerial imaging applications.
Through a Space Act Agreement, Diebold, Inc., acquired the exclusive rights to Glenn Research Center's patented video observation technology, originally designed to accelerate video image analysis for various ongoing and future space applications. Diebold implemented the technology into its AccuTrack digital, color video recorder, a state-of- the-art surveillance product that uses motion detection for around-the- clock monitoring. AccuTrack captures digitally signed images and transaction data in real-time. This process replaces the onerous tasks involved in operating a VCR-based surveillance system, and subsequently eliminates the need for central viewing and tape archiving locations altogether. AccuTrack can monitor an entire bank facility, including four automated teller machines, multiple teller lines, and new account areas, all from one central location.