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At least 55 records · Page 3

Genesis Solar Wind – Capture, Return, Curate and Analyze: Looking Backward and Creating a Timeline

Introduction: In 1997 NASA’S Discovery Program selected the Genesis mission proposal to return solar wind samples to Earth for laboratory analyses. Principal Investigator Donald S. Burnett and the science team defined the purity of collector materials and ability to analyze solar wind composition to the precision required for planetary science. As a small mission, focused on a well-defined science goal, yet needing careful attention to engineering details, the communication among scientists and engineers, nurtured by Don Burnett, was exceptional. Genesis Mission and Curation Legacy: Genesis, as the first U. S. spacecraft to return astromaterial samples since Apollo, not only integrated the mission planning and flight teams, but also the science and sample curation teams during the mission development period. Since Genesis is a sample return mission, the Science Team was essential in certifying the collectors (sample containers for solar atoms). From inception, Genesis established mission funding for returned sample curation. JSC was lead in contamination control during mission preparation, including establishment of an ISO 4 cleanroom facility and use of ultrapure water (UPW) for cleaning flight hardware (and, as it turned out, for cleaning collectors after the mishap). Reliable, fast communication among scientists, engineers and curators at the hands-on level established deep respect among team members and efficient decision-making. JSC’s 50-years of astromaterial sample curation provided experienced sample processors onsite during recovery in Utah (a deep bench for emergency response). Post-recovery curation included iterative collaboration with science sample users to clean or verify cleanliness of samples. The science legacy from Genesis is addressed by Burnett and Jurewicz, this volume. In The Beginning: After Apollo sample return, Burnett and Marcia Neugebauer at JPL began discussing a solar wind sample return, with Neugebauer arguing that separate collection of solar wind regimes was essential science. By 1992 a solar wind sample return mission was presented at a workshop, and by 1994 a mission was proposed named Suess-Urey. The mission was re-proposed under a new name GENESIS and selected in 1997. Susan Niebur captured the Genesis mission history and stories, from high level management documents and from many interviews with participants [2]. Her account lets readers glimpse personality of participants in quotations from interviews. Need and Scope for Detailed Technical Timeline: A timeline constructed from lower level task documents has been initiated to document the resources and skills actually used, as well as task sequence or concurrency. Timelines for high level mission events are captured in two documents [1] [2] and for detailed re-entry events in [3]. A detailed technical timeline for Genesis mission and curation activities will provide data points for lower level tasks, such as ISO 4 curation facility construction time, preparation for nominal sample field recovery, mishap recovery, and UPW expansion. Changes in technology context 1990-2024: Semiconductor technologies were easily accessible in the U.S.A. (1990-1999), and the Genesis team used those resources for cleanroom design and UPW system expansion. Image documentation was changing from film to digital during cleanroom construction and payload cleaning (1997-2001). Engineering design was done using computer aided design proprietary software, making more difficult the archiving of payload configuration and materials. Email of documents, tracked delivery service and virtual meeting capability greatly improved communication efficiency. Information sources – Pre-launch mission preparation: Examples of mission science, engineering and contamination control are collector purity testing, payload design/fabrication and ISO 4 cleanroom construction. Information on timing of these activities comes from facility readiness reviews, management reviews, shipping documents, procurement documents, test reports, travel documents, laboratory logs, Quality Assurance documents, dates on images, participant notebooks and emails. Information sources – Sample return re-entry and field recovery activities: Information comes from event timelines produced by Mid-Air Recovery team, Lockheed team lead notes and from chase video, JPL Quality Assurance. Information also comes from images and logbooks from UTTR cleanroom operations and from curatorial documents. Information sources – Resulting science and sample cleaning processes: Agendas from the annual gatherings of the science team initially trace testing for collector purity/cleanliness, and after sample recovery, include collector cleaning and cleanliness assessment. Post-recovery documents include curatorial orders and procedures, sample allocation documents and LPSC abstracts. Timeline Objectives: A simple spreadsheet timeline with headers DATE, EVENT, PEOPLE, COMMENT, INFORMATION SOURCE has been initiated and currently has over 90 entries. While this is not definitive historical research, it is a quick look at the evolution of Genesis curation with pointers to documents or people with information. Engineers for future missions may find useful points of comparison for development of facilities. References:[1] Genesis Mission Reference Document, (2011) JPL D-62382.[2] Niebur S. M., edited by Brown D. W. (2023) NASA’s Discovery Program: The First 20 Years of Competitive Planetary Exploration, NASA-SP-2023-4238.[3] Genesis Mishap Investigation Board Report, Vol. 1 (July 2005).

solar wind↗

Improving human health outcomes with a low-cost intervention to reduce exposures from lead acid battery recycling: Dong Mai, Vietnam

Highlights: • A low-cost soil lead mitigation project in Vietnam is detailed and assessed. • The effort resulted in substantial declines in biological and environmental lead levels. • The approach could be replicated elsewhere to address a commonly occurring issue. This study details the first comprehensive evaluation of the efficacy of a soil lead mitigation project in Dong Mai village, Vietnam. The village's population had been subject to severe lead poisoning for at least a decade as a result of informal Used Lead Acid Battery (ULAB) recycling. Between July 2013 to February 2015, Pure Earth and the Centre for Environment and Community Development (Hanoi, Vietnam) implemented a multi-faceted environmental and human health intervention. The intervention consisted of a series of institutional and low-cost engineering controls including the capping of lead contaminated surface soils, cleaning of home interiors, an education campaign and the construction of a work-clothes changing and bathing facility. The mitigation project resulted in substantial declines in human and environmental lead levels. Remediated home yard and garden areas decreased from an average surface soil concentration of 3940 mg/kg to <100 mg/kg. One year after the intervention, blood lead levels in children (<6 years old) were reduced by an average of 67%—from a median of 40.4 μg/dL to 13.3 μg/dL. The Dong Mai project resulted in significantly decreased environmental and biological lead levels demonstrating that low-cost, rapid and well-coordinated interventions could be readily applied elsewhere to significantly reduce preventable human health harm.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Monopropellant hydrazine resistojet model specification

The specifications for the electrothermal hydrazine thruster model are presented including performance, design and qualification requirements, and product configuration and acceptance tests. The contamination control procedures, acceptance test plan, and engineering drawings are included.

Grabbi, R.↗

Land-use planning scenarios for contaminated land: comparing EPA, state, and tribal scenarios - 15642

Land-use planning focusing on future disposition of public lands, forests and, former agricultural or industrial land, must take into account demographic and economic factors as well as future needs and availability of recreational open space, arable land, and water for growing populations. Planning requires the balancing of competing interests for 'growth', open space, and preservation of cultural, ecological and natural resources Landscapes with soil, surface water, and groundwater contaminated by former military, industrial, mining or agricultural uses, pose special challenges, many of which have been addressed under the rubric of 'brown-fields'. Land-use decisions or recommendations can be based mainly on economic/social interests taking into account projected demographic changes, or they can be based mainly on environmental issues taking into account contamination levels, remediation costs and technologies, and health risk issues. Future land-use is interwoven with cleanup goals. Where unrestricted future land-use is anticipated or desired, cleanup levels for soil and groundwater must be low enough to allow such uses without unacceptable health risks. Where such cleanup levels are unattainable for fiscal or technological reasons, residual contamination will remain, and future uses, particularly for groundwater, must be restricted, requiring engineered barriers and institutional controls to interdict future exposure pathways from contaminated environmental media to receptors (residents, recreationists, employees). Although contamination and hazard may persist for centuries, planning beyond a generation or two incurs great uncertainties in demographics, policies, economic, and climate-related changes. The Environmental Protection Agency and various states have established categories of clean-up levels corresponding to future industrial, recreational and residential use, with variations on these themes. This paper examines the spectrum of land-uses, and emphasizes a distinctions between -residential- and -unrestricted- as applied to future land-uses, particularly involving groundwater. Land-use determinations can be proposed and evaluated by a myriad of regulatory policies, guidance documents, and processes, including comprehensive land-use planning documents, Baseline Risk Assessments, Remedial Investigation/Feasibility documents and Records of Decision - which are not the focus of this study. This study instead focuses on gradations in different residential, recreational and industrial land-use scenarios and their relation to contamination of soil and groundwater. The Consortium for Risk Evaluation with Stakeholder Participation (CRESP) instituted this study to help understand the varying land-use versus clean-up decisions at the Department of Energy's environmental management sites, particularly Hanford (Washington State). (authors)

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Clean room survey and assessment, volume 5, appendix H

The scope of this task is to perform a comparative analysis of the various Environmental Control Life Support System (ECLSS) options for different growth scenarios. The Space Station Freedom ECLSS design and existing ground-based clean room facilities are used as a baseline for comparison. Specifically addressed here are the ground based clean room facilities at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). Given here is an evaluation of the facilities, equipment, technologies, and procedures used to maintain specified environments in typical aerospace industrial areas. Twenty-five specific clean rooms are evaluated. The objectives were to collect, compare, and catalog data for each specified facility in the areas of engineering and design, construction materials, work stations, contamination control, particulate elimination, entry systems, and instrumentation, and to make recommendations concerning enhancements required to assure an efficient and orderly evolution of MSFC clean room environmental control facilities.

Source record↗

Scientific Opportunities for Monitoring of Environmental Remediation Sites (SOMERS) - 12224

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is responsible for risk reduction and cleanup of its nuclear weapons complex. DOE maintains the largest cleanup program in the world, currently spanning over a million acres in 13 states. The inventory of contaminated materials includes 90 million gallons of radioactive waste, 6.4 trillion liters of groundwater, and 40 million cubic meters of soil and debris. It is not feasible to completely restore many sites to pre-disposal conditions. Any contamination left in place will require monitoring, engineering controls and/or land use restrictions to protect human health and environment. Research and development efforts to date have focused on improving characterization and remediation. Yet, monitoring will result in the largest life-cycle costs and will be critical to improving performance and protection. Through an inter-disciplinary effort, DOE is addressing a need to advance monitoring approaches from sole reliance on cost- and labor-intensive point-source monitoring to integrated systems-based approaches such as flux-based approaches and the use of early indicator parameters. Key objectives include identifying current scientific, technical and implementation opportunities and challenges, prioritizing science and technology strategies to meet current needs within the DOE complex for the most challenging environments, and developing an integrated and risk-informed monitoring framework. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Site closeout of the Linde FUSRAP Site, Tonawanda, New York - 15441

The US Army Corps of Engineers (USACE) Buffalo District, with assistance from Argonne National Laboratory (Argonne), prepared a Site Closeout Report (SCOR) for the Linde Formerly Utilized Sites Remedial Action Program (FUSRAP) Site in accordance with Engineer Regulation (ER) 200-1-4 [1]. Under FUSRAP, USACE is authorized to investigate, and clean up or control sites contaminated as the result of actions by the Atomic Energy Commission (AEC) and its predecessor, the Manhattan Engineer District (MED), in support of the nation's early atomic energy and weapons program. The SCOR documents response actions conducted at the Linde FUSRAP Site between 1996 and 2013. These response actions include two non-time-critical removal actions and long-term remedies associated with the three operable units (OUs) at the site: 1) soils and structure surfaces (except Building 14), 2) Building 14, and 3) groundwater. The report summarizes the site history, previous investigations, selected remedies, remedial actions, waste disposal, community involvement, monitoring results, recycling, quality assurance/quality control practices, post-remediation dose assessment, remedial costs, and five year review requirements. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Scientific Opportunities for Monitoring of Environmental Remediation Sites (SOMERS)

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is responsible for risk reduction and cleanup of its nuclear weapons complex. DOE maintains the largest cleanup program in the world, currently spanning over a million acres in 13 states. The inventory of contaminated materials includes 90 million gallons of radioactive waste, 6.4 trillion liters of groundwater, and 40 million cubic meters of soil and debris. It is not feasible to completely restore many sites to predisposal conditions. Any contamination left in place will require monitoring, engineering controls and/or land use restrictions to protect human health and environment. Research and development efforts to date have focused on improving characterization and remediation. Yet, monitoring will result in the largest life-cycle costs and will be critical to improving performance and protection. Through an inter-disciplinary effort, DOE is addressing a need to advance monitoring approaches from sole reliance on cost- and labor-intensive point-source monitoring to integrated systems-based approaches such as flux-based approaches and the use of early indicator parameters. Key objectives include identifying current scientific, technical and implementation opportunities and challenges, prioritizing science and technology strategies to meet current needs within the DOE complex for the most challenging environments, and developing an integrated and risk-informed monitoring framework.

Bunn, Amoret L↗

Scientific Opportunities for Monitoring of Environmental Remediation Sites - (SOMERS)

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is responsible for risk reduction and cleanup of its nuclear weapons complex. DOE maintains the largest cleanup program in the world, currently spanning over a million acres in 13 states. The inventory of contaminated materials includes 90 million gallons of radioactive waste, 6.4 trillion liters of groundwater, and 40 million cubic meters of soil and debris. It is not feasible to completely restore many sites to predisposal conditions. Any contamination left in place will require monitoring, engineering controls and/or land use restrictions to protect human health and environment. Research and development efforts to date have focused on improving characterization and remediation. Yet, monitoring will result in the largest life-cycle costs and will be critical to improving performance and protection. Through an inter-disciplinary effort, DOE is addressing a need to advance monitoring approaches from sole reliance on cost- and labor-intensive point-source monitoring to integrated systems-based approaches such as flux-based approaches and the use of early indicator parameters. Key objectives include identifying current scientific, technical and implementation opportunities and challenges, prioritizing science and technology strategies to meet current needs within the DOE complex for the most challenging environments, and developing an integrated and risk-informed monitoring framework.

environmental restoration↗

Scientific Opportunities for Monitoring of Environmental Remediation Sites (SOMERS)

The US Department of Energy (DOE) is responsible for risk reduction and cleanup of its nuclear weapons complex. DOE maintains the largest cleanup program in the world, currently spanning over a million acres in 13 states. The inventory of contaminated materials includes 90 million gallons of radioactive waste, 6.4 trillion liters of groundwater, and 40 million cubic meters of soil and debris. It is not feasible to completely restore many sites to predisposal conditions. Any contamination left in place will require monitoring, engineering controls and/or land use restrictions to protect human health and environment. Research and development efforts to date have focused on improving characterization and remediation. Yet, monitoring will result in the largest life-cycle costs and will be critical to improving performance and protection. Through an inter-disciplinary effort, DOE is addressing a need to advance monitoring approaches from sole reliance on cost- and labor-intensive point-source monitoring to integrated systems-based approaches such as flux-based approaches and the use of early indicator parameters. Key objectives include identifying current scientific, technical and implementation opportunities and challenges, prioritizing science and technology strategies to meet current needs within the DOE complex for the most challenging environments, and developing an integrated and risk-informed monitoring framework.

Bunn, Amoret L.↗

Final Report of the COSPAR Meeting Series on Knowledge Gaps in Planetary Protection for Crewed Missions to Mars

The international scientific community has, through a Committee on Space Research (COSPAR) meeting series, participated in a seven-year review of knowledge gaps in planetary protection for crewed missions to Mars. This meeting series first identified a prioritized list of knowledge gaps that, if addressed, would permit development of an implementable planetary protection policy for the initial crewed Mars mission. Next, a consideration of the available venues (ground, LEO, deep space, planetary surfaces) yielded a roadmap of potential future investigations needed to close the knowledge gaps. Finally, the meeting series evaluated topic-specific measurements that are essential to establishing the figures of merit needed for hardware engineering design requirements. The three main topic threads considered within the meeting series were: microbial and human health monitoring; natural transport of terrestrial biological contamination on Mars, and; technologies and operations for contamination control (of spacecraft systems). Participants at the meeting series included engineers, scientists, managers and various subject matter experts from space agencies, academic and research institutions, commercial companies, and other government departments. This paper provides a detailed summary review of the findings of the meeting series, including descriptions of the basis for each of the figures of merit (where they were identified), and considerations of how planetary protection implementation and policy for crewed missions may progress from the current state of the art.

J Andy Spry↗

Freeze range of a condensing gas propagating in a liquid helium-cooled tube

Understanding air propagation and condensation following a catastrophic vacuum break in particle accelerator beamlines cooled by liquid helium is crucial for maintaining the operational safety of these facilities. Previous experimental investigations on nitrogen gas propagation in both normal liquid helium (He I) and superfluid helium (He II) cooled copper tubes unveiled a nearly exponential deceleration of the gas propagation. A comprehensive theoretical model incorporating gas dynamics, heat transfer, and condensation mechanisms has been developed, which effectively reproduces various key experimental observations. An intriguing phenomenon uncovered in our model simulation is that the gas propagation appears to nearly stop beyond a certain distance from the location where condensation starts. We refer to this distance as the freeze range. In this paper, we present our systematic study of the freeze range at various inlet mass fluxes and tube diameters. We show that the results can be well described by a simple correlation. The underlying physical mechanism that supports this useful correlation is explained. Knowing the freeze range may allow accelerator engineers to develop protocols for controlling frost-layer contamination in the beamline tubes, which is of great practical importance.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Decrease the Number of Glovebox Glove Breaches and Failures

Los Alamos National Laboratory (LANL) is committed to the protection of the workers, public, and environment while performing work and uses gloveboxes as engineered controls to protect workers from exposure to hazardous materials while performing plutonium operations. Glovebox gloves are a weak link in the engineered controls and are a major cause of radiation contamination events which can result in potential worker exposure and localized contamination making operational areas off-limits and putting programmatic work on hold. Each day of lost opportunity at Technical Area (TA) 55, Plutonium Facility (PF) 4 is estimated at $1.36 million. Between July 2011 and June 2013, TA-55-PF-4 had 65 glovebox glove breaches and failures with an average of 2.7 per month. The glovebox work follows the five step safety process promoted at LANL with a decision diamond interjected for whether or not a glove breach or failure event occurred in the course of performing glovebox work. In the event that no glove breach or failure is detected, there is an additional decision for whether or not contamination is detected. In the event that contamination is detected, the possibility for a glove breach or failure event is revisited.

61 RADIATION PROTECTION AND DOSIMETRY↗

Inertia-induced mixing and reaction maximization in laminar porous media flows

Solute transport and biogeochemical reactions in porous and fractured media flows are controlled by mixing, as are subsurface engineering operations such as contaminant remediation, geothermal energy production, and carbon sequestration. Porous media flows are generally regarded as slow, so the effects of fluid inertia on mixing and reaction are typically ignored. Here, we demonstrate through microfluidic experiments and numerical simulations of mixing-induced reaction that inertial recirculating flows readily emerge in laminar porous media flows and dramatically alter mixing and reaction dynamics. An optimal Reynolds number that maximizes the reaction rate is observed for individual pore throats of different sizes. This reaction maximization is attributed to the effects of recirculation flows on reactant availability, mixing, and reaction completion, which depend on the topology of recirculation relative to the boundary of the reactants or mixing interface. Recirculation enhances mixing and reactant availability, but a further increase in flow velocity reduces the residence time in recirculation, leading to a decrease in reaction rate. The reaction maximization is also confirmed in a flow channel with grain inclusions and randomized porous media. Interestingly, the domain-wide reaction rate shows a dramatic increase with increasing Re in the randomized porous media case. This is because fluid inertia induces complex three-dimensional flows in randomized porous media, which significantly increases transverse spreading and mixing. This study shows how inertial flows control reaction dynamics at the pore scale and beyond, thus having major implications for a wide range of environmental systems.

Chen, Michael A. (ORCID:0000000294614710)↗

Oxygen/Alcohol Dual Thrust RCS Engines

A non-toxic dual thrust RCS engine offers significant operational, safety, and performance advantages to the space shuttle and the next generation RLVs. In this concept, a single engine produces two thrust levels of 25 and 870 lbf. The low thrust level is provided by the spark torch igniter, which, with the addition of 2 extra valves, can also be made to function as a vernier. A dual thrust RCS engine allows 38 verniers to be packaged more efficiently on a vehicle. These 38 vemiers improve translation and reduce cross coupling, thereby providing more pure roll, pitch, and yaw maneuvers of the vehicle. Compared to the 6 vemiers currently on the shuttle, the 38 dual thrust engines would be 25 to 40% more efficient for the same maneuvers and attitude control. The vernier thrust level also reduces plume impingement and contamination concerns. Redundancy is also improved, thereby improving mission success reliability. Oxygen and ethanol are benign propellants which do not create explosive reaction products or contamination, as compared to hypergolic propellants. These characteristics make dual-thrust engines simpler to implement on a non-toxic reaction control system. Tests at WSTF in August 1999 demonstrated a dual-thrust concept that is successful with oxygen and ethanol. Over a variety of inlet pressures and mixture ratios at 22:1 area ratio, the engine produced between 230 and 297 sec Isp, and thrust levels from 8 lbf. to 50 lbf. This paper describes the benefits of dual-thrust engines and the recent results from tests at WSTF.

Angstadt, Tara↗

Containment at the Source during Waste Volume Reduction of Large Radioactive Components Using Oxylance High-Temperature Cutting Equipment - 13595

As a waste-volume reduction and management technique, highly contaminated Control Element Drive Mechanism (CEDM) housings were severed from the Reactor Pressure Vessel Head (RPVH) inside the San Onofre Unit 2 primary containment utilizing Oxylance high-temperature cutting equipment and techniques. Presented are relevant data concerning: - Radiological profiles of the RPVH and individual CEDMs; - Design overviews of the engineering controls and the specialized confinement housings; - Utilization of specialized shielding; - Observations of apparent metallurgical-contamination coalescence phenomena at high temperatures resulting in positive control over loose-surface contamination conditions; - General results of radiological and industrial hygiene air sampling and monitoring; - Collective dose and personnel contamination event statistics; - Lessons learned. (author)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Advancements in Lunar Dust Mitigation and Leveraging the Contamination Control Community

Lunar Dust Contamination: As we get closer to putting landers, rovers, payloads, and astronauts on the Moon, dust mitigation is becoming more critical than ever. To address the many challenges of dust mitigation on the surface, engineers and scientists are looking at various technologies that may have relevance for the contamination control community. This includes active, passive, architectural, and operational solutions. There have been advances in coatings for dust mitigation at NASA and through commercial partnerships (see Wiesner, Wohl, et al). There have been advancements to previous solutions as well as novel solutions to address dust mitigation on the surface and on-orbit. There have been several efforts to better understand the effectiveness of various terrestrial and dust mitigation solutions with much of this data published in recent years. In the area of dust mitigation, dust contamination or infiltration refers to the impingement or contact of planetary dust with items not normally dusty and whose operation may therefore be compromised. Recent Advancements in Dust Mitigation: Dust mitigation strategies are becoming more common for hardware heading to the Moon, with most major programs implementing lunar dust contamination requirements for human health and equipment. In the last couple of years, NASA has created more guidance to assist hardware developers with dust mitigation. This includes NASA-STD-1008 (Classifications and Requirements for Testing Systems and Hardware to be Exposed to Dust in Planetary) and NASA TP 20220018746 (Lunar Dust Mitigation Guide and Reference). Several projects are testing hardware in relevant dusty environments to understand their tolerance to lunar dust. There has been a significant increase in the amount of testing with lunar simulants, with the NASA Simulant Advisory Committee serving a resource for NASA and our partners. There are new solutions for detecting and monitoring the dust internally and externally. Learning from the contamination control community: In addition to sharing potentially relevant solutions at the workshop, the dust mitigation community is also interested in learning from the contamination control community on ways to address lunar dust. For instance, a major aspect of managing the dust is monitoring and detection. This is critical for understanding when maintenance is needed and to inform future missions. Another challenge of working with lunar dust is quantifying and characterizing the smallest of particles. There are also challenges in modeling lunar dust and its behavior. The dust mitigation community can also leverage lessons learned from the planetary protection community.

dust mitagation↗