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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 55 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2001

Deep Space 1 Ion Engine Completed a 3-Year Journey

A xenon ion engine and power processor system, which was developed by the NASA Glenn Research Center in partnership with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory and Boeing Electron Dynamic Devices, completed nearly 3 years of operation aboard the Deep Space 1 spacecraft. The 2.3-kW ion engine, which provided primary propulsion and two-axis attitude control, thrusted for more than 16,000 hr and consumed more than 70 kg of xenon propellant. The Deep Space 1 spacecraft was launched on October 24, 1998, to validate 12 futuristic technologies, including the ion-propulsion system. After the technology validation process was successfully completed, the Deep Space 1 spacecraft flew by the small asteroid Braille on July 29, 1999. The final objective of this mission was to encounter the active comet Borrelly, which is about 6 miles long. The ion engine was on a thrusting schedule to navigate the Deep Space 1 spacecraft to within 1400 miles of the comet. Since the hydrazine used for spacecraft attitude control was in short supply, the ion engine also provided two-axis attitude control to conserve the hydrazine supply for the Borrelly encounter. The comet encounter took place on September 22, 2001. Dr. Marc Rayman, project manager of Deep Space 1 at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory said, "Deep Space 1 plunged into the heart of the comet Borrelly and has lived to tell every detail of its spinetingling adventure! The images are even better than the impressive images of comet Halley taken by Europe's Giotto spacecraft in 1986." The Deep Space 1 mission, which successfully tested the 12 high-risk, advanced technologies and captured the best images ever taken of a comet, was voluntarily terminated on December 18, 2001. The successful demonstration of the 2-kW-class ion propulsion system technology is now providing mission planners with off-the-shelf flight hardware. Higher power, next generation ion propulsion systems are being developed for large flagship missions, such as outer planet explorers and sample-return missions.

Sovey, James S.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Exploration Extravehicular Mobility Unit (xEMU) Pressure Garment System (PGS) Cycle Testing Overview and Results

With the development of NASA’s next generation spacesuit, the hardware life expectations for the new spacesuit required evaluation. The xPGS team designed and performed a test series to assess the new hardware against the life requirements. The EMU on the International Space Station (ISS) today tests the life of the suit and new components by performing isometric individual joint cycle motions with the requirements based on previously performed Extra-Vehicular Activities (EVAs). The xPGS includes new designs for suit components to provide increased mobility for performance of lunar operations, thus the requirements for the life cycle of the suit had to be developed and tested with these new operations in mind. Cycle requirements shifted to cycles of functional tasks in lieu of isometric cycles to better understand the life of the suit. Manned cycle testing of the xPGS was conducted by performing repetitions of a series of tasks that reflect predicted Lunar EVA operations. The test series utilized a gravity offload system to simulate Lunar gravity environment. Cycle testing concluded after 30 test days in October of 2022 with lessons learned that will be critical for future spacesuit design. Specific lessons learned with regards to suit performance and test methodology will be provided.

spacesuit↗
DOE OSTI2020

On the Computational Viability of Quantum Optimization for PMU Placement

Using optimal phasor measurement unit placement as a prototypical problem, we assess the computational viability of the current generation D-Wave Systems 2000Q quantum annealer for power systems design problems. We reformulate minimum dominating set for the annealer hardware, solve the reformulation for a standard set of IEEE test systems, and benchmark solution quality and time to solution against the CPLEX optimizer and simulated annealing. For some problem instances the 2000Q outpaces CPLEX. For instances where the 2000Q underperforms with respect to CPLEX and simulated annealing, we suggest hardware improvements for the next generation of quantum annealers.

hardware↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Next Generation Durability and Damage Tolerance to Support Certification of Flight Hardware

Durability and Damage Tolerance (D&DT), as currently applied to flight hardware throughout the Agency, is based on continuum and similitude assumptions and does not consider local material properties, environments and responses. These limitations impact our ability to support certification of new component designs, material systems and manufacturing approaches. The primary concern in this Engineering R&A plan is related to the imminent proliferation of parts produced by additive manufacturing (AM). These parts are being advocated by NASA’s suppliers for use on a myriad of flight hardware because of their design flexibility and cost advantages. AM provides opportunities to reduce part counts through complex geometry and reduce manufacturing costs of low volume parts. However, AM materials have some notable metallurgical and microstructural differences compared to traditionally fabricated materials. One of the challenges for the acceptance of AM is the greater tendency for a deleterious defect state, most commonly in the form of porosity, to exist in AM parts. Though this defect state is typically reduced through a hot isostatic pressing (HIP) processing step, the structural performance risks associated with the remaining defects and HIP-healed features is not known. Potential fracture control issues that must be resolved stem from the real possibility that an unhealed defect or a closed defect with less than pristine strength remains at a fracture critical location after HIP. As a result, NASA and the entire aerospace community have been confronted with the need to develop a robust and relevant certification methodology to enable safe implementation of these components. The present work is an important step toward positioning NASA to credibly respond to vendors’ push to implement this new AM materials technology by improving our understanding of AM processing and performance and transitioning that research-based understanding to next-generation engineering capabilities.

Edward H Glaessgen↗
DOE OSTI2025

Energy Program Innovation Cluster for Equity and Health in Grid-Interactive Efficient Buildings (Final Technical Report)

The EPIC Buildings program was created to target Central New York’s (CNY) Energy Program Innovation Cluster, focused on developing energy hardware innovations for next-generation grid-interactive efficient buildings (GEB). The goals of the program were to establish and grow a sustainable regional innovation cluster for GEB in CNY and support the ambitious transition to achieve net-zero emissions by 2050.

32 ENERGY CONSERVATION, CONSUMPTION, AND UTILIZATI↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA's Development of Advanced Space Suits for Lunar Exploration

Significant work has been completed recently at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in the Space Suit and Crew Survival Systems Branch to design and mature an advanced exploration EVA (Extra-Vehicular Activity) architecture. This effort culminated in the xEMU (eXploration Extra-vehicular Mobility Unit) space suit, which was completed in 2022 and tested extensively through 2023, including human performance, cycle life performance and thermal vacuum testing. An overview of the xEMU design and test campaign is provided, as well as its value as the government reference design supporting the transition to EVA commercial services for the Artemis program. Lastly, a development roadmap is discussed which outlines NASA’s identified strategy to enable the next generation of exploration EVA hardware for sustaining-class Lunar and Mars missions.

Shane M McFarland↗
DOE OSTI2018

Neutrino Oscillations in Supernovae

A (core-collapse) supernova is the final death call of a massive star during which a gigantic amount of a special kind of elementary particles known as neutrinos are released for a brief period of time. An earlier work by the PI and his collaborators has shown that the dense neutrino gas deep inside the supernova can experience "flavor transformation" or "oscillations" in a collective fashion, a macroscopic quantum phenomenon spanning over distances of 100-1000 kilometers. During this process neutrinos of different energies and propagation directions change their identities simultaneously. This phenomenon may be a key to understanding the mechanism of supernova explosion and the origin of many of the chemical elements found on the earth which were produced in the supernovae exploded in the past. The previous understanding of neutrino oscillations in supernovae was based on a stationary 3-dimensional model with 1 spatial dimension and 2 momentum dimensions. In this "neutrino bulb model" neutrinos are emitted from a spherically symmetric surface and they are decoupled from the motion of matter and the production of chemical elements. In order to accurately model the neutrino oscillations in supernovae and determine its physical consequences, sophisticated 7-dimensional (1 temporal dimension + 3 spatial dimensions + 3 momentum dimensions) modelling of neutrino transport must be performed self-consistently together with the hydrodynamic simulation of the flow of energy and matter inside the supernova and with the calculation of the production and destruction of chemical elements through a large nucleosynthesis network. Although it will be long journey to achieve the lofty goal, our project has made important progress in three different fronts towards this goal. In the first front we explored new computing hardware on which the next generation simulation codes may be run. We ported the neutrino bulb code to the platform of Graphics Processing Unit (GPU) and then later developed a new bulb code that can be run on supercomputers equipped with the Intel Xeon CPUs and/or the Xeon Phi coprocessors. In the second front we developed new algorithms that can be used towards computing neutrino oscillations in multi-dimensional models. We have developed a moment expansion method which is approximately 10 times more efficient than the old algorithm. We have also developed numerical codes to solve neutrino oscillations in toy models with two spatial dimensions. In the last front we used analytic methods to study neutrino oscillations in more sophisticated models, e.g. of multiple spatial dimensions and/or with time dependence. By analyzing the neutrino oscillations in toy models with two spacial dimensions we found that the approximate spacial translation symmetry, which is similar to the spherical symmetry in the neutrino bulb model, can be broken spontaneously as neutrino oscillations begin. By analyzing a time-dependent neutrino bulb model we found that certain modes of neutrino oscillations that are suppressed in the stationary model can become active in the time-dependent model. We have also developed theories which give insights to how ordinary matter may affect neutrino oscillations in supernovae and other astrophysical environments.

Duan, Huaiyu↗
DOE OSTI2023

Evaluating Portable Parallelization Strategies for Heterogeneous Architectures in High Energy Physics

High-energy physics (HEP) experiments have developed millions of lines of code over decades that are optimized to run on traditional x86 CPU systems. However, we are seeing a rapidly increasing fraction of floating point computing power in leadership-class computing facilities and traditional data centers coming from new accelerator architectures, such as GPUs. HEP experiments are now faced with the untenable prospect of rewriting millions of lines of x86 CPU code, for the increasingly dominant architectures found in these computational accelerators. This task is made more challenging by the architecture-specific languages and APIs promoted by manufacturers such as NVIDIA, Intel and AMD. Producing multiple, architecture-specific implementations is not a viable scenario, given the available person power and code maintenance issues. The Portable Parallelization Strategies team of the HEP Center for Computational Excellence is investigating the use of Kokkos, SYCL, OpenMP, std::execution::parallel and alpaka as potential portability solutions that promise to execute on multiple architectures from the same source code, using representative use cases from major HEP experiments, including the DUNE experiment of the Long Baseline Neutrino Facility, and the ATLAS and CMS experiments of the Large Hadron Collider. This cross-cutting evaluation of portability solutions using real applications will help inform and guide the HEP community when choosing their software and hardware suites for the next generation of experimental frameworks. We present the outcomes of our studies, including performance metrics, porting challenges, API evaluations, and build system integration.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
NASA NTRS2007

Next Generation Wiring

Wiring is a major operational component on aerospace hardware that accounts for substantial weight and volumetric space. Over time wire insulation can age and fail, often leading to catastrophic events such as system failure or fire. The next generation of wiring must be reliable and sustainable over long periods of time. These features will be achieved by the development of a wire insulation capable of autonomous self-healing that mitigates failure before it reaches a catastrophic level. In order to develop a self-healing insulation material, three steps must occur. First, methods of bonding similar materials must be developed that are capable of being initiated autonomously. This process will lead to the development of a manual repair system for polyimide wire insulation. Second, ways to initiate these bonding methods that lead to materials that are similar to the primary insulation must be developed. Finally, steps one and two must be integrated to produce a material that has no residues from the process that degrades the insulating properties of the final repaired insulation. The self-healing technology, teamed with the ability to identify and locate damage, will greatly improve reliability and safety of electrical wiring of critical systems. This paper will address these topics, discuss the results of preliminary testing, and remaining development issues related to self-healing wire insulation.

Medelius, Petro↗
DOE OSTI2020

SODA: a New Synthesis Infrastructure for Agile Hardware Design of Machine Learning Accelerators

Next generation systems, such as edge devices, will have to provide efficient processing of machine learning (ML) algorithms along several metrics, including energy, performance, area, and latency. However, the quickly evolving field of ML makes it extremely difficult to generate accelerators able to support a wide variety of algorithms. At the same time, designing accelerators in hardware description languages (HDLs) by hand is hard and time consuming, and does not allow quick exploration of the design space. This paper discusses the SODA synthesizer, an automated open source high-level ML framework-to-Verilog compiler targeting ML Application-Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) chiplets based on the LLVM infrastructure. The SODA synthesizers will allow implementing optimal designs by combining templated and fully tunable IPs and macros, and fully custom components generated through high-level synthesis. All these components will be provided through an extendable resource library, characterized with both commercial and open source logic design flows. Through a closed loop design space exploration engine, developers will be able to quickly explore their hardware designs along different dimension

Minutoli, Marco↗
NASA NTRS2012

Surface, Water, and Air Biocharacterization (SWAB) Flight Experiment

The determination of risk from infectious disease during spaceflight missions is composed of several factors including both the concentration and characteristics of the microorganisms to which the crew are exposed. Thus, having a good understanding of the microbial ecology aboard spacecraft provides the necessary information to mitigate health risks to the crew. While preventive measures are taken to minimize the presence of pathogens on spacecraft, medically significant organisms have been isolated from both the Mir and International Space Station (ISS). Historically, the method for isolation and identification of microorganisms from spacecraft environmental samples depended upon their growth on culture media. Unfortunately, only a fraction of the organisms may grow on a specific culture medium, potentially omitting those microorganisms whose nutritional and physical requirements for growth are not met. To address this bias in our understanding of the ISS environment, the Surface, Water, and Air Biocharacterization (SWAB) Flight Experiment was designed to investigate and develop monitoring technology to provide better microbial characterization. For the SWAB flight experiment, we hypothesized that environmental analysis using non-culture-based technologies would reveal microorganisms, allergens, and microbial toxins not previously reported in spacecraft, allowing for a more complete health assessment. Key findings during this experiment included: a) Generally, advanced molecular techniques were able to reveal a few organisms not recovered using culture-based methods; however, there is no indication that current monitoring is "missing" any medically significant bacteria or fungi. b) Molecular techniques have tremendous potential for microbial monitoring, however, sample preparation and data analysis present challenges for spaceflight hardware. c) Analytical results indicate that some molecular techniques, such as denaturing gradient gel electrophoresis (DGGE), can be much less sensitive than culture-based methods. d) More sensitive molecular techniques, such as quantitative polymerase chain reaction (QPCR), were able to identify viral DNA from ISS environments, suggesting potential transfer of the organism between crewmembers. In addition, the hardware selected for this experiment represented advances for next-generation sample collection. The advanced nature of this collection hardware was noted, when the Sartorius MD8 Air Port air sampler from the SWAB experiment remained on board ISS at the request of JAXA investigators, who intend to use it in completion of their microbial ecology experiment.

Castro, V. A.↗
DOE OSTI2019

Characterizing and Improving the Data Reduction Pipeline for the Keck OSIRIS Integral Field Spectrograph

OSIRIS is a near-infrared (1.0–2.4 μm) integral field spectrograph operating behind the adaptive optics system at Keck Observatory and one of the first lenslet-based integral field spectrographs. Since its commissioning in 2005, it has been a productive instrument, producing nearly half the laser guide star adaptive optics papers on Keck. The complexity of its raw data format necessitated a custom data reduction pipeline (DRP) delivered with the instrument in order to iteratively assign flux in overlapping spectra to the proper spatial and spectral locations in a data cube. Other than bug fixes and updates required for hardware upgrades, the bulk of the DRP has not been updated since initial instrument commissioning. We report on the first major comprehensive characterization of the DRP using on-sky and calibration data. We also detail improvements to the DRP, including characterization of the flux assignment algorithm, exploration of spatial rippling in the reduced data cubes, and improvements to several calibration files, including the rectification matrix, bad-pixel mask, and wavelength solution. We present lessons learned from over a decade of OSIRIS data reduction that are relevant to the next generation of integral field spectrograph hardware and data reduction software design.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
NASA NTRS2008

Lockable Knee Brace Speeds Rehabilitation

Marshall Space Flight Center develops key transportation and propulsion technologies for the Space Agency. The Center manages propulsion hardware and technologies of the space shuttle, develops the next generation of space transportation and propulsion systems, oversees science and hardware development for the International Space Station, manages projects and studies that will help pave the way back to the Moon, and handles a variety of associated scientific endeavors to benefit space exploration and improve life here on Earth. It is a large and diversified center, and home to a great wealth of design skill. Some of the same mechanical design skill that made its way into the plans for rocket engines and advanced propulsion at this Alabama-based NASA center also worked its way into the design of an orthotic knee joint that is changing the lives of people with weakened quadriceps.

Source record↗
DOE OSTI2015

Performance analysis of data intensive cloud systems based on data management and replication: a survey

As we delve deeper into the ‘Digital Age’, we witness an explosive growth in the volume, velocity, and variety of the data available on the Internet. For example, in 2012 about 2.5 quintillion bytes of data was created on a daily basis that originated from myriad of sources and applications including mobiledevices, sensors, individual archives, social networks, Internet of Things, enterprises, cameras, software logs, etc. Such ‘Data Explosions’ has led to one of the most challenging research issues of the current Information and Communication Technology era: how to optimally manage (e.g., store, replicated, filter, and the like) such large amount of data and identify new ways to analyze large amounts of data for unlocking information. It is clear that such large data streams cannot be managed by setting up on-premises enterprise database systems as it leads to a large up-front cost in buying and administering the hardware and software systems. Therefore, next generation data management systems must be deployed on cloud. The cloud computing paradigm provides scalable and elastic resources, such as data and services accessible over the Internet Every Cloud Service Provider must assure that data is efficiently processed and distributed in a way that does not compromise end-users’ Quality of Service (QoS) in terms of data availability, data search delay, data analysis delay, and the like. In the aforementioned perspective, data replication is used in the cloud for improving the performance (e.g., read and write delay) of applications that access data. Through replication a data intensive application or system can achieve high availability, better fault tolerance, and data recovery. In this paper, we survey data management and replication approaches (from 2007 to 2011) that are developed by both industrial and research communities. The focus of the survey is to discuss and characterize the existing approaches of data replication and management that tackle the resource usage and QoS provisioning with different levels of efficiencies. Moreover, the breakdown of both influential expressions (data replication and management) to provide different QoS attributes is deliberated. Furthermore, the performance advantages and disadvantages of data replication and management approaches in the cloud computing environments are analyzed. Open issues and future challenges related to data consistency, scalability, load balancing, processing and placement are also reported.

Malik, Saif Ur Rehman↗
DOE OSTI2016

A survey on software methods to improve the energy efficiency of parallel computing

Energy consumption is one of the top challenges for achieving the next generation of supercomputing. Codesign of hardware and software is critical for improving energy efficiency (EE) for future large-scale systems. Many architectural power-saving techniques have been developed, and most hardware components are approaching physical limits. Accordingly, parallel computing software, including both applications and systems, should exploit power-saving hardware innovations and manage efficient energy use. In addition, new power-aware parallel computing methods are essential to decrease energy usage further. This article surveys software-based methods that aim to improve EE for parallel computing. It reviews the methods that exploit the characteristics of parallel scientific applications, including load imbalance and mixed precision of floating-point (FP) calculations, to improve EE. In addition, this article summarizes widely used methods to improve power usage at different granularities, such as the whole system and per application. In particular, it describes the most important techniques to measure and to achieve energy-efficient usage of various parallel computing facilities, including processors, memories, and networks. Overall, this article reviews the state-of-the-art of energy-efficient methods for parallel computing to motivate researchers to achieve optimal parallel computing under a power budget constraint.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS1975

Electrochemical carbon dioxide concentrator advanced technology tasks

Technology advancement studies are reported on the basic electrochemical CO2 removal process to provide a basis for the design of the next generation cell, module and subsystem hardware. An Advanced Electrochemical Depolarized Concentrator Module (AEDCM) is developed that has the characteristics of low weight, low volume, high CO2, removal, good electrical performance and low process air pressure drop. Component weight and noise reduction for the hardware of a six man capacity CO2 collection subsystem was developed for the air revitalization group of the Space Station Prototype (SSP).

Schneider, J. J.↗