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A painted polymer part containing a conductive polymer composition containing at least one polymer and a modified graphite oxide material, which is a thermally exfoliated graphite oxide with a surface area of from about 300 sq m/g to 2600 sq m/g, wherein the painted polymer part has been electrospray painted.
A design for silicon microfabricated emitter arrays was developed for electrospray thrusters for indium propellant in compact architectures with scalable thrust, low mass and volume, high specific impulse and high efficiency operation. The design elements include tip height, height uniformity across the array, tip radii, axial groove depth, tip angle, emitter shank sidewall angle and number of emitters. They were derived from commercial liquid metal ion source designs and modeling, fabrication and test results. The most critical results of the emitter array design analysis suggest that microfabricated silicon emitter array emitters should have a height greater than 280 microns with a height uniformity of +/-10 microns, a tip half angle of 49° for uniform turn-on voltages and current across the array, low beam divergence and high mass utilization efficiency. Elements of the design were fabricated and demonstrated in single emitter and in 400 element emitter arrays to validate the design, fabrication and performance capability. The design height and uniformity of arrays was demonstrated for 85% of the emitters in a prototype array. Required tip and sidewall angles and groove depths have been microfabricated. Single microfabricated silicon emitters demonstrated better performance in current and voltage characteristics than commercially available liquid metal ion sources. Microfabricated emitters and arrays demonstrated the required current and stability performance to enable the MEP thruster development for indium propellant.
The potential of an Electrospray Ionization/Ion Mobility Spectrometer/Cylindrical Ion Trap Mass spectrometer as analytical instrument for analyzing material extracted from rock and soil samples will be demonstrated.
Developed an enclosure with a custom high voltage nozzle that electrosprays wire "roots" with milliliters (mL) of water in real time by measuring the charge sprayed onto the roots. It uses the spray’s charge to mass from previous measurements with the same nozzle (and the density of water) to convert the display to volume. To deliver water to the nozzle consistently and programmatically, the syringe pump performed the best for experiments because the diaphragm pump created a stuttered flow and the pressurized reservoir’s pressure controller was more complex than the syringe pump’s commercial LabVIEW software that direct controls flow rate.
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One of the primary goals of the current NASA thrust in Astrobiology is the detection and identification of organic molecules as part of an in-situ lander platform on the surface of Mars or Europa. The identification of these molecules should help determine whether indigenous organisms exist on the surface of Mars or in an undersea environment on Europa. In addition, a detailed organic chemical inventory of surface and near surface molecules will help elucidate the possibilities of life elsewhere in the Universe. Terrestrial life has, as its backbone, the family of molecules known as the amino acids (AA), and while AA can be found in the terrestrial environments as part of more complex molecules, such as peptides, and proteins, they also exist as individual molecules due to of the hydrolyses of biopolymers. In terrestrial biochemistry, there are 20 principal amino acids which are necessary for life. However, some forms of these molecules can be found in nature synthesized via abiotic process. For example, they are known to exist extraterrestrially as a component of carbonaceous meteorites. The idea that amino acids are readily created by abiotic means has been demonstrated by their positive identification in the Murchison CM2 meteorite, which fell in 1969. This meteorite was analyzed before contamination by terrestrial microbes could result. Three laboratories individually tested parts of the meteorite and concluded that the amino acids present in them were indigenous to the meteorite because, among other reasons, they had equal L- and D- enantiomers. Final identification of the constituents of the Murchison included 33 amino acids which have no known biotic source, 11 amino acids which have limited distribution and 8 (Glycine, Alanine, Valine, Proline, Leucine, Isoleucine, Aspartic Acid, and Glutamic Acid), which readily occur in terrestrial proteins.
One of the primary goals of the current NASA thrust in astrobiology is the detection and identification of organic molecules as part of an in-situ lander platform on the surface of Mars or Europa.
Continued search for organics on Mars will require the development of simplified procedures for handling and processing of soil or rock core samples prior to analysis by onboard instrumentation.
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