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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 595 records · Page 33
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2012

Aerosol Remote Sensing

This book gives a much needed explanation of the basic physical principles of radia5tive transfer and remote sensing, and presents all the instruments and retrieval algorithms in a homogenous manner. For the first time, an easy path from theory to practical algorithms is available in one easily accessible volume, making the connection between theoretical radiative transfer and individual practical solutions to retrieve aerosol information from remote sensing. In addition, the specifics and intercomparison of all current and historical methods are explained and clarified.

Lenoble, Jacqueline↗
NASA NTRS2022

A Central Asia Hydrologic Monitoring Dataset for Food and Water Security Applications in Afghanistan

From the Hindu Kush mountains to the Registan Desert, Afghanistan is a diverse landscape where droughts, floods, conflict, and economic market accessibility pose challenges for agricultural livelihoods and food security. The ability to remotely monitor environmental conditions is critical to support decision making for humanitarian assistance. The Famine Early Warning Systems Network (FEWS NET) Land Data Assimilation System (FLDAS) global and Central Asia data streams provide information on hydrologic states for routine integrated food security analysis. While developed for a specific project, these data are publicly available and useful for other applications that require hydrologic estimates of the water and energy balance. These two data streams are unique because of their suitability for routine monitoring, as well as for being a historical record for computing relative indicators of water availability. The global stream is available at ∼ 1-month latency, and monthly average outputs are on a 10 km grid from 1982–present. The second data stream, Central Asia (21–56°N, 30–100°E), at ∼ 1 d latency, provides daily average outputs on a 1 km grid from 2000–present. This paper describes the configuration of the two FLDAS data streams, background on the software modeling framework, selected meteorological inputs and parameters, and results from previous evaluation studies. We also provide additional analysis of precipitation and snow cover over Afghanistan. We conclude with an example of how these data are used in integrated food security analysis. For use in new and innovative studies that will improve understanding of this region, these data are hosted by U.S. Geological Survey data portals and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). The Central Asia data described in this paper can be accessed via the NASA repository at https://doi.org/10.5067/VQ4CD3Y9YC0R (Jacob and Slinski, 2021), and the global data described in this paper can be accessed via the NASA repository at https://doi.org/10.5067/5NHC22T9375G (McNally, 2018).

Amy McNally↗
NASA NTRS1995

Bringing "Scientific Expeditions" Into the Schools

Two new technologies, the FASTexpedition and Remote FAST, have been developed that provide remote, 3D, high resolution, dynamic, interactive viewing of scientific data (such as simulations or measurements of fluid dynamics). The FASTexpedition permits one to access scientific data from the World Wide Web, take guided expeditions through the data, and continue with self controlled expeditions through the data. Remote FAST permits collaborators at remote sites to simultaneously view an analysis of scientific data being controlled by one of the collaborators. Control can be transferred between sites. These technologies are now being used for remote collaboration in joint university, industry, and NASA projects in computational fluid dynamics (CFD) and wind tunnel testing. Also, NASA Ames Research Center has initiated a project to make scientific data and guided expeditions through the data available as FASTexpeditions on the World Wide Web for educational purposes. Previously, remote visualiZation of dynamic data was done using video format (transmitting pixel information) such as video conferencing or MPEG movies on the Internet. The concept for this new technology is to send the raw data (e.g., grids, vectors, and scalars) along with viewing scripts over the Internet and have the pixels generated by a visualization tool running on the viewer's local workstation. The visualization tool that is currently used is FAST (Flow Analysis Software Toolkit). The advantages of this new technology over using video format are: 1. The visual is much higher in resolution (1280xl024 pixels with 24 bits of color) than typical video format transmitted over the network. 2. The form of the visualization can be controlled interactively (because the viewer is interactively controlling the visualization tool running on his workstation). 3. A rich variety of guided expeditions through the data can be included easily. 4. A capability is provided for other sites to see a visual analysis of one site as the analysis is interactively performed. Control of the analysis can be passed from site to site. 5. The scenes can be viewed in 3D using stereo vision. 6. The network bandwidth used for the visualization using this new technology is much smaller than when using video format. (The measured peak bandwidth used was 1 Kbit/sec whereas the measured bandwidth for a small video picture was 500 Kbits/sec.)

Watson, Val↗
NASA NTRS2003

Universal Payload Information Management

As the overall manager and integrator of International Space Station (ISS) science payloads, the Payload Operations Integration Center (POIC) at Marshall Space Flight Center has a critical need to provide an information management system for exchange and control of ISS payload files as well as to coordinate ISS payload related operational changes. The POIC's information management system has a fundamental requirement to provide secure operational access not only to users physically located at the POIC, but also to remote experimenters and International Partners physically located in different parts of the world. The Payload Information Management System (PIMS) is a ground-based electronic document configuration management and collaborative workflow system that was built to service the POIC's information management needs. This paper discusses the application components that comprise the PIMS system, the challenges that influenced its design and architecture, and the selected technologies it employs. This paper will also touch on the advantages of the architecture, details of the user interface, and lessons learned along the way to a successful deployment. With PIMS, a sophisticated software solution has been built that is not only universally accessible for POIC customer s information management needs, but also universally adaptable in implementation and application as a generalized information management system.

Elmore, Ralph B.↗
NASA NTRS2022

Remote sensing-based vegetation and soil moisture constraints reduce irrigation estimation uncertainty

Understanding the human water footprint and its impact on the hydrological cycle is essential to inform water management under climate change. Despite efforts in estimating irrigation water withdrawals in earth system models, uncertainties and discrepancies exist within and across modeling systems conditioned by model structure, irrigation parameterization, and the choice of input datasets. Achieving model reliability could be much more challenging for data-sparse regions, given limited access to ground truth for parameterization and validation. Here, we demonstrate the potential of utilizing remotely sensed vegetation and soil moisture observations in constraining irrigation estimation in the Noah-MP land surface model. Results indicate that the two constraints together can effectively reduce model sensitivity to the choice of irrigation parameterization by 7%–43%. It also improves the characterization of the spatial patterns of irrigation and its impact on evapotranspiration and surface soil moisture by correcting for vegetation conditions and irrigation timing. This study highlights the importance of utilizing remotely sensed soil moisture and vegetation measurements in detecting irrigation signals and correcting for vegetation growth. Integrating the two remote sensing datasets into the model provides an effective and less feature engineered approach to constraining the uncertainty of irrigation modeling. Such strategies can be potentially transferred to other modeling systems and applied to regions across the globe.

Wanshu Nie↗
DOE OSTI2018

Navajo residential solar energy access as a global model

Here, this case study focuses on the Navajo Nation’s efforts to provided residential power access through solar photovoltaic systems to some of its approximately 34,000 remote off-grid tribal members. The solution the Nation has adopted in collaboration with Sandia National Laboratories offers insights into how the Navajo Tribal Utility Authority’s work could serve as a residential model to meet the needs of the 1.2 billion people globally who are without electrical residential power.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2021

GNPS Dashboard: collaborative exploration of mass spectrometry data in the web browser

Access to web-based platforms has enabled scientists to perform research remotely. A critical aspect of mass spectrometry data analysis is the inspection, analysis, and visualization of the raw data to validate data quality and confirm statistical observations. We developed the GNPS Dashboard, a web-based data visualization tool, to facilitate synchronous collaborative inspection, visualization, and analysis of private and public mass spectrometry data remotely.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2024

Electronic Visualization Laboratory's 50th Anniversary Retrospective: Look to the Future, Build on the Past

September 2023 marks the 50th anniversary of the Electronic Visualization Laboratory (EVL) at University of Illinois Chicago (UIC). EVL's introduction of the CAVE Automatic Virtual Environment in 1992, the first widely replicated, projection-based, walk-in, virtual-reality (VR) system in the world, put EVL at the forefront of collaborative, immersive data exploration and analytics. However, the journey did not begin then. Since its founding in 1973, EVL has been developing tools and techniques for real-time, interactive visualizations—pillars of VR. But EVL's culture is also relevant to its successes, as it has always been an interdisciplinary lab that fosters teamwork, where each person's expertise contributes to the development of the necessary tools, hardware, system software, applications, and human interface models to solve problems. Over the years, as multidisciplinary collaborations evolved and advanced scientific instruments and data resources were distributed globally, the need to access and share data and visualizations while working with colleagues, local and remote, synchronous and asynchronous, also became important fields of study. This paper is a retrospective of EVL's past 50 years that surveys the many networked, immersive, collaborative visualization and VR systems and applications it developed and deployed, as well as lessons learned and future plans.

Johnson, Andrew E.↗
NASA NTRS1989

Applications of Landsat Thematic Mapper and ground-based spectrometer data to a study of the Skaergaard and other mafic intrusions of East Greenland

Landsat TM data have been used in conjunction with field spectrometer data to map the lithologic units associated with a series of gabbroic intrusions in the East Greenland Tertiary Igneous Province. The general lack of vegetation combined with the difficulty of access to these intrusions make them ideal candidates for lithologic mapping using remote sensing techniques. In addition, these bodies are of interest as possible precious metal ore deposits. The intrusions are spectrally distinct from the surrounding Precambrian gneisses; however, subpixel contamination by snow, oxide surface coatings, and lichen cover and severe topography limit the discrimination of lithologic units within the gabbro. The spectral nature of the surface contaminants was evaluated with a Barringer Hand Held Ratioing Radiometer (HHRR). These HHRR data indicate that bare rock exposures have distinct TM signatures for each lithologic unit but that even small amounts of subpixel contamination are enough to mask these differences because of the large differences between the TM signatures of the rocks and the contaminants.

Birnie, Richard W.↗
NASA NTRS1997

Human Migration and Agricultural Expansion: An Impending Threat to the Maya Biosphere Reserve

Evidence is presented of the current threats to the Maya Biosphere Reserve in northern Guatemala as derived through time-series Landsat Thematic Mapper observations and analysis. Estimates of deforestation rates and trends are examined for different management units within the reserve and buffer zones. The satellite imagery was used to quantify and monitor rates, patterns, and trends of forest clearing during a time period corresponding to new road construction and significant human migration into the newly accessible forest region. Satellite imagery is appropriate technology in a vast and remote tropical region where aerial photography and extensive field-based methods are not cost-effective and current, timely data is essential for establishing conservation priorities.

Sader, Steven↗
NASA NTRS2000

Remotely Operating a Fourier Transform Spectrometer for Atmospheric Remote Sensing

This paper describes how the MkIV instrument was adapted for remote operation from the Barcroft site, where the harsh winter conditions make access difficult. Some of the main technical challenges will be discussed including, (i) operation from solar panels and batteries, (ii) cooling the detectors with LN2, (iii) instrument control and monitoring over a cellular phone, and (iv) data storage, processing and analysis. Finally, MkIV spectra measured from Barcroft and compared with those measured from JPL to highlight the advantages of the higher altitude site.

Blavier, J.-F.↗
NASA NTRS2000

Ground-Based Measurements of Stratospheric Composition from Mt. Barcroft, California

The MkIV is an FTIR spectrometer designed and built at JPL in the 1980's for remote sensing the composition of the Earth's atmosphere by solar absorption spectrometry. Optically, MkIV is very similar to the JPL ATMOS instrument, which flew three times on the Space Shuttle. Both use double-passed configurations with a KBr beamsplitter and compensator, in order to cover the mid-infrared. The main advantage of the MkIV is that it uses two detectors in parallel, a HgCdTe photoconductor for the long wavelengths and an InSb photodiode for the short wavelengths, allowing the entire 650 to 5650/cm region to be measured simultaneously. At a 10 kHz sampling rate, each 130 cm OPD interferogram takes 3 minutes to acquire. This paper describes how the MkIV instrument was adapted for remote operation from the Barcroft site, where the harsh winter conditions make access difficult. Some of the main technical challenges will be discussed including, (i) operation from solar panels and batteries, (ii) cooling the detectors with LN2, (iii) instrument control and monitoring over a cellular phone, and (iv) data storage, processing and analysis. Finally, MkIV spectra measured from Barcroft are compared with those measured from JPL to highlight the advantages of the higher altitude site.

Toon, G. C.↗
NASA NTRS2000

National General Aviation Roadmap for a Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS)

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), Federal Aviation Administration, as well as state, industry, and academia partners have joined forces to pursue the NASA National General Aviation Roadmap leading to a Small Aircraft Transportation System (SATS). This long-term strategic undertaking has a goal to bring next-generation technologies and improve air access to small communities. The envisioned outcome is to improve travel between remote communities and transportation centers in urban areas by utilizing a new generation of single-pilot light planes for personal and business transportation between the nation's 5,400 public use general aviation airports. Current NASA investments in aircraft technologies are enabling industry to bring affordable, safe, and easy-to-use features to the marketplace, including "Highway in the Sky" glass cockpit operating capabilities, affordable crash worthy composite airframes, more efficient IFR flight training, and revolutionary engines. To facilitate this initiative, a comprehensive upgrade of public infrastructure must be planned, coordinated, and implemented within the framework of the national air transportation system. State partnerships are proposed to coordinate research support in key public infrastructure areas. Ultimately, SATS may permit more than tripling aviation system throughput capacity by tapping the under-utilized general aviation facilities to achieve the national goal of doorstep-to-destination travel at four times the speed of highways for the nation's suburban, rural, and remote communities.

Holmes, Bruce J.↗
NASA NTRS2005

STS-114: Discovery Day 8 Mission Status Briefing

Paul Hill, STS 114 Lead Shuttle Flight Director, David Wolf, Extravehicular Activity (EVA) Branch Chief, JSC from the Astronaut Office, and Kelly Beck, STS-114 Team 4 Flight Director are seen on the 8th day of the Space Shuttle Discovery Mission. Paul Hill presents and explains charts of the Gap Fillers that Steve Robinson will be pulling off during his EVA. The charts include: 1) Protruding Gap Fillers; 2) Starboard Worksite Access; 3) Protruding Chine Gap Filler; 4) Port Gap Filler Space Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SSRMS) Position; and 5) Port Gap Filler Close-up View. Kelly Beck talks about how the plan for the gap fillers were arranged, and presents the tools and techniques that Steve Robinson will be using during the EVA. David Wolf demonstrates how the EVA will be performed using forceps and a hacksaw to remove the gap fillers. The presentation ends with a question and answer period from the news media.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2019

Preparing Students to Work in Diverse Settings and Across Distance: Inter-University, Interdisciplinary Capstone Teams

NASA's Psyche Mission is engaged with a growing number of capstone teams pursuing topics relevant to the mission, including partnering with four universities to trial cross-university teaming. Creating interdisciplinary capstone teams with students from different universities provides an opportunity to prepare students to engage with a diversity of disciplines and collaborate in remote teams in the workplace. Additionally, through such capstones, universities may gain access to non-local, specialized technical mentors and to disciplines not offered at their institutions. An added benefit is providing greater fidelity to NASA space missions, which involve teams working together at a distance. We discuss early lessons learned from the first three inter-university, interdisciplinary capstone teams participating with the Psyche mission and discuss plans for improvement and future expansion.

Bowman, C. D. D.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Changes in Characteristics of Future Climate Across the U.S.: Time Series Analysis of Climate Model Data by NASA POWER

NASA’s Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resource (POWER) project facilitates the use of NASA Earth Science data holdings within the energy, agricultural, and building heating/cooling design industries. POWER packages solar and meteorological data at various temporal levels from several NASA projects in a user friendly GIS-enabled web services system (https://power.larc.nasa.gov). Data users can access these data either through an intuitive data viewer, image services fully integrable with GIS analysis, connections in the cloud through an Amazon Web Services S3 Bucket, or fully customizable access through an API. Data provided by POWER has been used to remotely monitor solar array fields and integrated in a sizing tool for off-grid solar and storage systems. POWER data has also been coupled with key building decision tools to support design and retrofitting of building energy systems for energy efficiency and reduction of greenhouse gases. POWER is now developing capabilities to provide time series of the projected future evolution of surface quantities important to future energy production and use, such as heating/cooling degree days, temperature, wind speed, and downwelling solar flux. We present here a range of possible future changes in these quantities at locations throughout the continental United States. We show how both average and extreme values of the quantities will evolve from present-day to future climate conditions. We plan to provide these projections for users in the energy and sustainable energy communities.

Bradley M. Hegyi↗
NASA NTRS2024

Overview of Two Decision-Support Systems for Viticulture

Sustainable water management is one of the most challenging issues of our time, especially in the arid western U.S. Adequate water supplies are crucial to maintaining the health of communities, rivers, and wildlife, and nothing is more important to agriculture’s ability to produce food for the world’s growing population. Maximizing the benefits of our water supplies requires careful measurement of their availability and use. For irrigated agriculture, satellite-based estimates of evapotranspiration (ET) provide a measure of the water used to grow food — the biggest share of water consumption in most arid environments around the world. However, access to ET data has been limited and expensive, keeping it out of the hands of most water users and decision-makers. OpenET provides open, easily accessible satellite-based ET data for water management support. The OpenET collaborative includes leading national and international experts in remote sensing of ET, cloud computing, and water policy, partnered with nationally recognized web development teams and leaders in the western agriculture and water management communities. The system can be accessed at https://openetdata.org/.

Overview↗