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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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At least 253 records · Page 14
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2018

Space QUEST Mission Proposal: Experimentally Testing Decoherence Due to Gravity

Models of quantum systems on curved space-times lack sufficient experimental verification. Some speculative theories suggest that quantum properties, such as entanglement, may exhibit entirely different behavior to purely classical systems. By measuring this effect or lack thereof, we can test the hypotheses behind several such models. For instance, as predicted by Ralph and coworkers [T C Ralph, G J Milburn, and T Downes, Phys. Rev. A, 79(2):22121, 2009; T C Ralph and J Pienaar, New Journal of Physics, 16(8):85008, 2014], a bipartite entangled system could decohere if each particle traversed through a different gravitational field gradient. We propose to study this effect in a ground to space uplink scenario. We extend the above theoretical predictions of Ralph and coworkers and discuss the scientific consequences of detecting/failing to detect the predicted gravitational decoherence. We present a detailed mission design of the European Space Agency's (ESA) Space QUEST (Space - Quantum Entanglement Space Test) mission, and study the feasibility of the mission schema.

Entanglement↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Open Science at the Onset of JWST

The characterization of a diverse set of atmospheres, ranging from brown dwarfs to hot gas giants to small temperate rocky worlds will be part of the legacy of JWST and future NASA missions. These technological innovations will enable a plethora of discoveries, unveiling a variety of new chemical and physical regimes that could even point to the first detection of life beyond Earth. However, our ability to fully interpret these results will hinge on how well we can link observations to numerous complex theoretical models that describe, for example, the chemistry and climate. An immediate demonstration of this was executed in the analysis of JWST’s very first exoplanet spectrum. An open collaboration of more than 300 students, postdocs, faculty, and researchers worldwide worked together to analyze the exquisite dataset. The result was the first identification of carbon dioxide in a planet beyond our own Solar System. I will discuss how NASA’s open science guiding principles are centered in our Early Release Science team, supporting an inclusive, transparent, and collaborative scientific process. And ultimately, I will showcase the science that was born from this open process.

Natasha Batalha↗
NASA NTRS2022

Importance of Different Parameterization Changes for the Updated Dust Cycle Modeling in the Community Atmosphere Model (Version 6.1)

The Community Atmosphere Model (CAM6.1), the atmospheric component of the Community Earth System Model (CESM; version 2.1), simulates the life cycle (emission, transport, and deposition) of mineral dust and its interactions with physio-chemical components to quantify the impacts of dust on climate and the Earth system. The accuracy of such quantifications relies on how well dust-related processes are represented in the model. Here we update the parameterizations for the dust module, including those on the dust emission scheme, the aerosol dry deposition scheme, the size distribution of transported dust, and the treatment of dust particle shape. Multiple simulations were undertaken to evaluate the model performance against diverse observations, and to understand how each update alters the modeled dust cycle and the simulated dust direct radiative effect. The model–observation comparisons suggest that substantially improved model representations of the dust cycle are achieved primarily through the new more physically-based dust emission scheme. In comparison, the other modifications induced small changes to the modeled dust cycle and model–observation comparisons, except the size distribution of dust in the coarse mode, which can be even more influential than that of replacing the dust emission scheme. We highlight which changes introduced here are important for which regions, shedding light on further dust model developments required for more accurately estimating interactions between dust and climate.

mineral dust parameterizations↗
NASA NTRS2022

Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover SHERLOC Instrument Isolation System

The NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) successfully landed the Mars 2020 Perseverance Rover at Jezero Crater on the Martian surface. Perseverance’s main mission objective is to cache Martian rock and regolith samples in hermetically sealed tubes to be brought back to Earth by future missions. To achieve this goal the rover is equipped with a 2-meter-long Robotic Arm (RA) which manipulates the Turret to interact with the surface. The Turret is comprised of science instruments and tools that enable surface sampling and science. The backbone of the Turret hardware is the Rotary Percussive Coring Drill. The science instruments, which are directly mounted to the structural housing of this drill, must be able to withstand not only the launch and entry, descent and landing (EDL) loads of the vehicle but also the dynamic percussive environment, induced by the drill throughout surface operations. This paper discusses the technical hardware design, development and testing of a vibration isolation system to protect the Scanning Habitable Environments with Raman and Luminescence for Organics and Chemicals (SHERLOC) Instrument from these dynamic environments. The hardware design aspect of this problem was limited by both size and mass constraints. The Turret is tightly configured and the physical space in which hardware can reside is restricted due to multiple axes of surface interaction points. Another driving requirement is the extreme range of thermal non-operational environment from -135C to +90C. This, in addition to SHERLOC being a heavier instrument than previously integrated on a turret, made the use of isolation systems employed on previous rover missions problematic. The final design incorporates custom wire mesh springs preloaded within titanium hexapod struts equipped with flexure ends. Custom versions of commercially available wire mesh springs were designed and tested. These custom springs differed in dimension, density and stiffness from the off the shelf options. The newly designed springs went through various stages of flight acceptance testing. Detailed physics-based modeling to understand what loads the isolation system would experience was used to define the test conditions for the springs and entire isolation subsystem. The testing program developed around this was extensive to fully characterize the isolation performance over cleanliness levels, temperature and life. Another major aspect of this work was developing a method of replicating the drill’s percussive environment for performance and life testing of Turret mounted hardware. Attaching the instrument to an operating drill for testing was not a viable option. A method of using a Highly Accelerated Life Test (HALT) table was developed and applied across the project as the most representative and tunable option to physically simulate this new environment. This method, along with launch environment random vibration testing, was used to build an entire dynamic qualification and flight hardware test program. The results of the design, modeling, testing and analysis of the SHERLOC Isolation System is described throughout the following paper.

Krafchak, Todd↗
NASA NTRS2019

After LM: NASA Lunar Lander Concepts Beyond Apollo

As this document is being compiled in 2019, NASA is once again planning a return to the Moon, and new lunar lander designs are being generated. Compared to Apollo, crews are projected to be larger (at least four per mission) and stay times longer (beginning at 6.5 days). However, it is expected that the landers will look much like the designs in this document because, as stated in the introduction, lunar lander design is a response to the simple physics that governs the tasks they are asked to perform. Design is also a living thing. New crewed lander designs will continue to emerge up until the point that humans return to the Moon, and even beyond. New players from different countries and commercial providers will create new designs based on new technologies and new requirements. Until some breakthrough technology or new physics principle is created, each lander will respond to the current physics of lunar landing. There may come a time, generations from now, when future engineers are paging through a digital copy of this catalog and reflecting on the early work of lunar lander designers. “Those Apollo guys were really smart, given that they started with nothing as a reference. The Lunar Module – now THAT was a great lunar lander design.”

Altair spacecraft↗
NASA NTRS2008

Magnetic Reconfiguration in Explosive Solar Activity

A fundamental property of the Sun's corona i s that it is violently dynamic. The most spectacular and most energetic manifestations of this activity are the giant disruptions that give rise to coronal mass ejections (CME) and eruptive flares. These major events are of critical importance, because they drive the most destructive forms of space weather at Earth and in the solar system, and they provide a unique opportunity to study, in revealing detail, the interaction of magnetic field and matter, in particular, magnetohydrodynamic instability and nonequilibrium -- processes that are at the heart of laboratory and astrophysical plasma physics. Recent observations by a number of NASA space missions have given us new insights into the physical mechanisms that underlie coronal explosions. Furthermore, massively-parallel computation have now allowed us to calculate fully three-dimensional models for solar activity. In this talk I will present some of the latest observations of the Sun, including those from the just-launched Hinode and STEREO mission, and discuss recent advances in the theory and modeling of explosive solar activity.

Antiochos, Spiro K.↗
NASA NTRS2020

Metrics for Improved Reanalyses in Polar Regions

Atmospheric reanalyses are widely used for a variety of scientific endeavors in the Arctic and Antarctic. Reanalyses are used as boundary conditions for a regional and process-based models, for climate model validation, and for diagnostic analysis of physical processes, weather and climatic events. However, reanalyses are typically global and often do not account for specific, regional considerations, such as for polar regions. In this work, we provide a brief evaluation of a prototype for a new GMAO reanalysis, which incorporates higher spatial resolution, an updated approach for data assimilation, and a revised atmospheric model. We identify differences in the representation of the Arctic atmosphere in comparison to recent reanalyses. Furthermore, we provide a forum for Arctic scientists to consider the future improvements for reanalyses, and seek feedback for the following questions: 1) What are important performance factors to consider in evaluating new reanalyses? 2) What physical processes should be incorporated into new reanalyses? 3) What spatio-temporal scales should be considered?

Parker, Chelsea L.↗
NASA NTRS2021

A Summary of Normal Incidence Tube Tests of NASA'S Bio-inspired Broadband Acoustic Absorber

Motivated by the need to reduce noise pollution from aircraft engines, NASA has continued to design, manufacture and test recently patented structures that mimic the geometry and the broadband and low frequency acoustic absorption of assemblies of natural reeds. This report documents a screening test, which is a precursor to more controlled modelling experiments. The purpose of this experiment was to identify variables and prototype design features that might play a dominant role in the acoustic performance of these structures. To date, twenty-four prototypes, each with an overall shape of a cube (nominally 50 mm x 50 mm x 50 mm), were designed and additively manufactured from thermoplastics using a Fused Filament Fabrication technique. The prototypes were tested in the NASA Glenn and Langley Normal Incidence Tubes to experimentally determine the acoustic absorption as a function of frequency from 400 Hz to 3000 Hz. Results indicate that a variety of structures exhibit substantial acoustic absorption in that frequency range, with an average absorption coefficient greater than 0.6, especially in the frequency range of 400 Hz to 1000 Hz. Six basic prototype designs were chosen to inform future modeling research. Results of these experiments can be used to evaluate existing physics-based models of the interaction of sound waves with these structures or to develop new models. Validated physics-based models of these structures can help engineers optimize the designs for different commercial noise control applications.

Acoustics↗
NASA NTRS2013

Electrodynamic Dust Shield Demonstrator

The objective of the project was to design and manufacture a device to demonstrate a new technology developed by NASA's Electrostatics and Surface Physics Laboratory. The technology itself is a system which uses magnetic principles to remove regolith dust from its surface. This project was to create an enclosure that will be used to demonstrate the effectiveness of the invention to The Office of the Chief Technologist. ONE of the most important challenges of space exploration is actually caused by something very small and seemingly insignificant. Dust in space, most notably on the moon and Mars, has caused many unforeseen issues. Dirt and dust on Earth, while a nuisance, can be easily cleaned and kept at bay. However, there is considerably less weathering and erosion in space. As a result, the microscopic particles are extremely rough and abrasive. They are also electrostatically charged, so they cling to everything they make contact with. This was first noted to be a major problem during the Apollo missions. Dust would stick to the spacesuits, and could not be wiped off as predicted. Dust was brought back into the spacecraft, and was even inhaled by astronauts. This is a major health hazard. Atmospheric storms and other events can also cause dust to coat surfaces of spacecraft. This can cause abrasive damage to the craft. The coating can also reduce the effectiveness of thermal insulation and solar panels.' A group of engineers at Kennedy Space Center's Electrostatics and Surface Physics Laboratory have developed a new technology, called the Electrodynamic Dust Shield, to help alleviate these problems. It is based off of the electric curtain concept developed at NASA in 1967. "The EDS is an active dust mitigation technology that uses traveling electric fields to transport electrostatically charged dust particles along surfaces. To generate the traveling electric fields, the EDS consists of a multilayer dielectric coating with an embedded thin electrode grid running a multiphase low frequency AC signal. Electrostatically charged particles, such as those encountered on the moon, Mars, or an asteroid, are carried along by the traveling field due to the action of Coulomb and dielectrophoretic forces."2 The technical details have been described in a separate article. This document details the design and construction process of a small demonstration unit. Once finished, this device will go to the Office of the ChiefTechnologist at NASA headquarters, where it will be used to familiarize the public with the technology. 1 NASA KSC FO Intern, Prototype Development Laboratory, Kennedy Space Center, University of Central Florida Kennedy Space

Stankie, Charles G.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Cosmic rays: Physics and astrophysics. A research briefing

Some recent results in cosmic-ray physics are summarized, and how they raise new questions of interest for both physics and astrophysics is described. An important technical advance, the recently demonstrated capability of long-duration balloon flights of heavy payloads, will offer a great advantage for achieving some of these goals.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2001

Cloud Physics Lidar Measurements During the SAFARI-2000 Field Campaign

A new remote sensing instrument, the Cloud Physics Lidar (CPL) has been built for use on the ER-2 aircraft. The first deployment for CPL was the SAFARI-2000 field campaign during August-September 2000. The CPL is a three-wavelength lidar designed for studies of cirrus, subvisual cirrus, and boundary layer aerosols. The CPL utilizes a high repetition rate, low pulse energy laser with photon counting detectors. A brief description of the CPL instrument will be given, followed by examples of CPL data products. In particular, examples of aerosol backscatter, including boundary layer smoke and cirrus clouds will be shown. Resulting optical depth estimates derived from the aerosol measurements will be shown. Comparisons of the CPL optical depth and optical depth derived from microPulse Lidar and the AATS-14 sunphotomer will be shown.

McGill, Matthew↗
NASA NTRS1994

The physics of intact capture

The ability to capture projectiles intact at hypervelocities in underdense media open a new area of study in physics. Underdense material behaves markedly different than solid, liquid, or gas upon hypervelocity impact. This new phenomenon enables applications in science that would either not be possible or would be very costly by other means. This phenomenon has been fully demonstrated in the laboratory and validated in space. Even more interesting is the fact that this hypervelocity intact capture was accomplished passively. A better understanding of the physics of intact capture will lead to improvements in intact capture. A collection of physical observations of this phenomenon is presented here.

Tsou, Peter↗
NASA NTRS1992

Development of a structural optimization capability for the aeroelastic tailoring of composite rotor blades with straight and swept tips

This paper describes the development of a new structural optimization capability aimed at the aeroelastic tailoring of composite rotor blades with straight and swept tips. The primary objective is to reduce vibration levels in forward flight without diminishing the aeroelastic stability margins of the blade. In the course of this research activity a number of complicated tasks have been addressed: (1) development of a new, aeroelastic stability and response analysis; (2) formulation of a new comprehensive sensitive analysis, which facilitates the generation of the appropriate approximations for the objective and the constraints; (3) physical understanding of the new model and, in particular, determination of its potential for aeroelastic tailoring, and (4) combination of the newly developed analysis capability, the sensitivity derivatives and the optimizer into a comprehensive optimization capability. The first three tasks have been completed and the fourth task is in progress.

Friedmann, P. P.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

New Methods to Determine the Electromagnetic Effects from Precipitation Static

The Electrostatics and Surface Physic Laboratory has devised a new method to determine the electromagnetic effects from precipitation static or p-static as its commonly called. P-static occurs as a result of triboelectric charging of granular materials or ice crystals bombarded onto the surfaces of air and/or space vehicles at high speeds. The electrostatic charge that builds up on the outer surface can have deleterious effects that arise during discharge events. These discharges can cause loss of communication to and from the vehicle from ground stations, EMI interference, radio frequency noise, etc… There are even cases of total loss of vehicles caused by p-static charging. We have developed a method to simulate the extensive tribocharging of insulating materials that occurs during p-static through the use of corona charging which allows testing to occur within a lab environment. These tests simulate the discharges that occur on rocket vehicles during ascent as a result of gas breakdown by performing the corona charging tests inside a vacuum chamber and subsequently removing the air. The simultaneous gas discharges emit electromagnetic interference (EMI) which can be captured and monitored.

Charles R Buhler↗
NASA NTRS2002

Global Plasmaspheric Imaging: A New "Light" Focusing on Familiar Questions

Until recently plasmaspheric physics, for that matter, magnetospheric physics as a whole, has relied primarily on single point in-situ measurement, theory, modeling, and a considerable amount of extrapolation in order to envision the global structure of the plasmasphere. This condition changed with the launch of the IMAGE satellite in March 2000. Using the Extreme Ultraviolet (EUV) imager on WAGE, we can now view the global structure of the plasmasphere bathed in the glow of resonantly scattered 30.4 nm radiation allowing the space physics community to view the dynamics of this global structure as never before. This talk will: (1) define the plasmasphere from the perspective of plasmaspheric physics prior to March 2000; (2) present a review of EUV imaging optics and the IMAGE mission; and focus on efforts to understand an old and familiar feature of plasmaspheric physics, embedded plasmaspheric density troughs, in this new global light with the assistance of forward modeling.

Adrian, M. L.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Striding Towards Better Physical Therapy

This paper presents a discussion on a new rehabilitative device that promises to improve physical therapy for patients working to regain the ability to walk after facing traumatic injuries or a degenerative illness. Produced by Enduro Medical Technology, of East Hartford, Connecticut, the Secure Ambulation Module (S.A.M.) creates a stable and secure environment for patients as they stand during ambulation therapy.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1994

Accurate modeling of F-region electron densities

In the past year, we have made considerable progress in a number of areas including algorithm development, completion of two major case studies, and the development of a new EUV flux model. As a result, there has been a major improvement in our ability to model global emissions in support of NASA's imaging plans. Activity highlights include the following: developed a new algorithm to allow physical models to reproduce observed NmF2; investigated the relationship between NmF2 and F10.7 at Millstone Hill during 1990; developed a new solar EUV flux model; statistical survey of anomalously high nighttime electron T(sub e) at Millstone Hill; conducted a case study of the March 1990 magnetic storm; and conducted a comparison between theory and data of magnetically quiet behavior of the winter ionosphere at Millstone Hill.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2007

Challenges in 21st Century Physics

We are truly fortunate to live in one of the great epochs of human discovery, a time when science is providing new visions and understanding about ourselves and the world in which we live. At last, we are beginning to explore the Universe itself. One particularly exciting area of advancement is high-energy physics where several existing concepts will be put to the test. A brief survey will be given of accomplishments in 20th Century physics. These include relativity and quantum physics which have produced breakthroughs in cosmology, astrophysics, and high-energy particle physics. The current situation is then assessed, combining the last 100 years of progress with new 21st Century challenges about unification and where to go next. Finally, the future is upon us. The next frontier in experimental high-energy physics, the Large Hadron Collider (LHC) at CERN in Geneva, is scheduled to begin coming online this year (2007). The potential for the LHC to address several of the significant problems in physics today will be discussed, as this great accelerator examines the predictions of the Standard Model of particle physics and even cosmology. New physics and new science will surely emerge and a better vision of the world will unfold.

Wilson, Thomas L.↗