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NASA NTRS2014

Test and Recommendation of Flight-forward Resistive Temperature Detector for Resource Prospector Mission

The Resource Prospector Mission (RPM) is an in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) technology demonstration mission planned to launch in 2018. The mission will use the Regolith and Environment Science & Oxygen and Lunar Volatile Extraction (RESOLVE) Payload to prospect for lunar volatiles such as water, oxygen, and carbon dioxide. These compounds will validate ISRU capability. The payload, particularly the Lunar Advanced Volatile Analysis (LAVA) subsystem, requires numerous temperature measurements to accurately control on-board heaters that keep the volatiles in the vapor phase to allow quantification and prevent the clogging of delivery lines. Previous spaceflight missions have proven that Resistive Temperature Detector (RTD) failure impedes mission success. The research resulted in a recommendation for a flight-forward RTD. The recommendation was based on accuracy, consistency, and ease of installation of RTDs procured from IST, QTI, and Honeywell.

LAVA↗

NASA NTRS2015

Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission Space Suit and EVA System Maturation

The Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission (ARCM) requires a Launch/Entry/Abort (LEA) suit capability and short duration Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA) capability from the Orion spacecraft. For this mission, the pressure garment that was selected, for both functions, is the Modified Advanced Crew Escape Suit (MACES) with EVA enhancements and the life support option that was selected is the Exploration Portable Life Support System (PLSS). The proposed architecture was found to meet the mission constraints, but much more work is required to determine the details of the required suit upgrades, the integration with the PLSS, and the rest of the tools and equipment required to accomplish the mission. This work has continued over the last year to better define the operations and hardware maturation of these systems. EVA simulations have been completed in the NBL and interfacing options have been prototyped and analyzed with testing planned for late 2014. For NBL EVA simulations, in 2013, components were procured to allow in-house build up for four new suits with mobility enhancements built into the arms. Boots outfitted with clips that fit into foot restraints have also been added to the suit and analyzed for possible loads. Major suit objectives accomplished this year in testing include: evaluation of mobility enhancements, ingress/egress of foot restraint, use of foot restraint for worksite stability, ingress/egress of Orion hatch with PLSS mockup, and testing with two crew members in the water at one time to evaluate the crew's ability to help one another. Major tool objectives accomplished this year include using various other methods for worksite stability, testing new methods for asteroid geologic sampling and improving the fidelity of the mockups and crew equipment. These tests were completed on a medium fidelity capsule mockup, asteroid vehicle mockup, and asteroid mockups that were more accurate for an asteroid type EVA than previous tests. Another focus was the design and fabrication of the interface between the MACES and the PLSS. The MACES was not designed to interface with a PLSS, hence an interface kit must accommodate the unique design qualities of the MACES and provide the necessary life support function connections to the PLSS. A prototype interface kit for MACES to PLSS has been designed and fabricated. Unmanned and manned testing of the interface will show the usability of the kit while wearing a MACES. The testing shows viability of the kit approach as well as the operations concept. The design will be vetted through suit and PLSS experts and, with the findings from the testing, the best path forward will be determined. As the Asteroid Redirect Mission matures, the suit/life support portion of the mission will mature along with it and EVA Tools & Equipment can be iterated to accommodate the overall mission objectives and compromises inherent in EVA Suit optimization. The goal of the EVA architecture for ARCM is to continue to build on the previously developed technologies and lessons learned, and accomplish the ARCM EVAs while providing a stepping stone to future missions and destinations.

Bowie, Jonathan T.↗

NASA NTRS2014

Anticipated Changes in Conducting Scientific Data-Analysis Research in the Big-Data Era

A Big-Data environment is one that is capable of orchestrating quick-turnaround analyses involving large volumes of data for numerous simultaneous users. Based on our experiences with a prototype Big-Data analysis environment, we anticipate some important changes in research behaviors and processes while conducting scientific data-analysis research in the near future as such Big-Data environments become the mainstream. The first anticipated change will be the reduced effort and difficulty in most parts of the data management process. A Big-Data analysis environment is likely to house most of the data required for a particular research discipline along with appropriate analysis capabilities. This will reduce the need for researchers to download local copies of data. In turn, this also reduces the need for compute and storage procurement by individual researchers or groups, as well as associated maintenance and management afterwards. It is almost certain that Big-Data environments will require a different "programming language" to fully exploit the latent potential. In addition, the process of extending the environment to provide new analysis capabilities will likely be more involved than, say, compiling a piece of new or revised code.We thus anticipate that researchers will require support from dedicated organizations associated with the environment that are composed of professional software engineers and data scientists. A major benefit will likely be that such extensions are of higherquality and broader applicability than ad hoc changes by physical scientists. Another anticipated significant change is improved collaboration among the researchers using the same environment. Since the environment is homogeneous within itself, many barriers to collaboration are minimized or eliminated. For example, data and analysis algorithms can be seamlessly shared, reused and re-purposed. In conclusion, we will be able to achieve a new level of scientific productivity in the Big-Data analysis environments.

Kuo, Kwo-Sen↗

NASA NTRS2013

Techport Input for Propulsive Descent Technologies (PDT) Project

The PDT project will investigate the use of retro propulsion during the supersonic phase of atmospheric entry for Mars missions. The project technical approach involves a combination of procurement and evaluation of commercially provided flight data, development of candidate vehicle configurations, and engineering calibration of computational fluid dynamics models to the available flight data.

Campbell, Charles H.↗

NASA NTRS2014

Conceptual Design Optimization of an Augmented Stability Aircraft Incorporating Dynamic Response and Actuator Constraints

Empirical sizing guidelines such as tail volume coefficients have long been used in the early aircraft design phases for sizing stabilizers, resulting in conservatively stable aircraft. While successful, this results in increased empty weight, reduced performance, and greater procurement and operational cost relative to an aircraft with optimally sized surfaces. Including flight dynamics in the conceptual design process allows the design to move away from empirical methods while implementing modern control techniques. A challenge of flight dynamics and control is the numerous design variables, which are changing fluidly throughout the conceptual design process, required to evaluate the system response to some disturbance. This research focuses on addressing that challenge not by implementing higher order tools, such as computational fluid dynamics, but instead by linking the lower order tools typically used within the conceptual design process so each discipline feeds into the other. In thisresearch, flight dynamics and control was incorporated into the conceptual design process along with the traditional disciplines of vehicle sizing, weight estimation, aerodynamics, and performance. For the controller, a linear quadratic regulator structure with constant gains has been specified to reduce the user input. Coupling all the disciplines in the conceptual design phase allows the aircraft designer to explore larger design spaces where stabilizers are sized according to dynamic response constraints rather than historical static margin and volume coefficient guidelines.

Welstead, Jason↗

NASA NTRS2014

Virtualization - A Key Cost Saver in NASA Multi-Mission Ground System Architecture

With science team budgets being slashed, and a lack of adequate facilities for science payload teams to operate their instruments, there is a strong need for innovative new ground systems that are able to provide necessary levels of capability processing power, system availability and redundancy while maintaining a small footprint in terms of physical space, power utilization and cooling.The ground system architecture being presented is based off of heritage from several other projects currently in development or operations at Goddard, but was designed and built specifically to meet the needs of the Science and Planetary Operations Control Center (SPOCC) as a low-cost payload command, control, planning and analysis operations center. However, this SPOCC architecture was designed to be generic enough to be re-used partially or in whole by other labs and missions (since its inception that has already happened in several cases!)The SPOCC architecture leverages a highly available VMware-based virtualization cluster with shared SAS Direct-Attached Storage (DAS) to provide an extremely high-performing, low-power-utilization and small-footprint compute environment that provides Virtual Machine resources shared among the various tenant missions in the SPOCC. The storage is also expandable, allowing future missions to chain up to 7 additional 2U chassis of storage at an extremely competitive cost if they require additional archive or virtual machine storage space.The software architecture provides a fully-redundant GMSEC-based message bus architecture based on the ActiveMQ middleware to track all health and safety status within the SPOCC ground system. All virtual machines utilize the GMSEC system agents to report system host health over the GMSEC bus, and spacecraft payload health is monitored using the Hammers Integrated Test and Operations System (ITOS) Galaxy Telemetry and Command (TC) system, which performs near-real-time limit checking and data processing on the downlinked data stream and injects messages into the GMSEC bus that are monitored to automatically page the on-call operator or Systems Administrator (SA) when an off-nominal condition is detected. This architecture, like the LTSP thin clients, are shared across all tenant missions.Other required IT security controls are implemented at the ground system level, including physical access controls, logical system-level authentication authorization management, auditing and reporting, network management and a NIST 800-53 FISMA-Moderate IT Security plan Risk Assessment Contingency Plan, helping multiple missions share the cost of compliance with agency-mandated directives.The SPOCC architecture provides science payload control centers and backup mission operations centers with a cost-effective, standardized approach to virtualizing and monitoring resources that were traditionally multiple racks full of physical machines. The increased agility in deploying new virtual systems and thin client workstations can provide significant savings in personnel costs for maintaining the ground system. The cost savings in procurement, power, rack footprint and cooling as well as the shared multi-mission design greatly reduces upfront cost for missions moving into the facility. Overall, the authors hope that this architecture will become a model for how future NASA operations centers are constructed!

Ground System Architecture↗

NASA NTRS2015

An Approach for Performance Based Glove Mobility Requirements

The Space Suit Assembly (SSA) Development Team at NASA Johnson Space Center has invested heavily in the advancement of rear‐entry planetary exploration suit design but largely deferred development of extravehicular activity (EVA) glove designs, and accepted the risk of using the current flight gloves, Phase VI, for exploration missions. However, as design reference missions mature, the risks of using heritage hardware have highlighted the need for developing robust new glove technologies. To address the technology gap, the NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate's Game‐Changing Development Program provided start‐up funding for the High Performance EVA Glove (HPEG) Element as part of the Next Generation Life Support (NGLS) Project in the fall of 2013. The overarching goal of the HPEG Element is to develop a robust glove design that increases human performance during EVA and creates pathway for implementation of emergent technologies, with specific aims of increasing pressurized mobility to 60% of barehanded capability, increasing the durability in on‐pristine environments, and decreasing the potential of gloves to cause injury during use. The HPEG Element focused initial efforts on developing quantifiable and repeatable methodologies for assessing glove performance with respect to mobility, injury potential, thermal conductivity, and abrasion resistance. The team used these methodologies to establish requirements against which emerging technologies and glove designs can be assessed at both the component and assembly levels. The mobility performance testing methodology was an early focus for the HPEG team as it stems from collaborations between the SSA Development team and the JSC Anthropometry and Biomechanics Facility (ABF) that began investigating new methods for suited mobility and fit early in the Constellation Program. The combined HPEG and ABF team used lessons learned from the previous efforts as well as additional reviews of methodologies in physical and occupational therapy arenas to develop a protocol that assesses gloved range of motion, strength, dexterity, tactility, and fit in comparative quantitative terms and also provides qualitative insight to direct hardware design iterations. The protocol was evaluated using five experienced test subjects wearing the EMU pressurized to 4.3psid with three different glove configurations. The results of the testing are presented to illustrate where the protocol is and is not valid for benchmark comparisons. The process for requirements development based upon the results is also presented along with suggested performance values for the High Performance EVA Gloves to be procured in fiscal year 2015.

Aitchison, Lindsay↗

NASA NTRS2012

Test and Recommendation of Flight-Forward Resistive Temperature Detector for Resource Prospector Mission

LAVA↗

NASA NTRS2014

Electrical Ground Support Equipment Fabrication, Specification for

This document specifies parts, materials, and processes used in the fabrication, maintenance, repair, and procurement of electrical and electronic control and monitoring equipment associated with ground support equipment (GSE) at the Kennedy Space Center (KSC).

EGSE↗

NASA NTRS2015

Ultimately Reliable Pyrotechnic Systems

This paper presents the methods by which NASA has designed, built, tested, and certified pyrotechnic devices for high reliability operation in extreme environments and illustrates the potential applications in the oil and gas industry. NASA's extremely successful application of pyrotechnics is built upon documented procedures and test methods that have been maintained and developed since the Apollo Program. Standards are managed and rigorously enforced for performance margins, redundancy, lot sampling, and personnel safety. The pyrotechnics utilized in spacecraft include such devices as small initiators and detonators with the power of a shotgun shell, detonating cord systems for explosive energy transfer across many feet, precision linear shaped charges for breaking structural membranes, and booster charges to actuate valves and pistons. NASA's pyrotechnics program is one of the more successful in the history of Human Spaceflight. No pyrotechnic device developed in accordance with NASA's Human Spaceflight standards has ever failed in flight use. NASA's pyrotechnic initiators work reliably in temperatures as low as -420 F. Each of the 135 Space Shuttle flights fired 102 of these initiators, some setting off multiple pyrotechnic devices, with never a failure. The recent landing on Mars of the Opportunity rover fired 174 of NASA's pyrotechnic initiators to complete the famous '7 minutes of terror.' Even after traveling through extreme radiation and thermal environments on the way to Mars, every one of them worked. These initiators have fired on the surface of Titan. NASA's design controls, procedures, and processes produce the most reliable pyrotechnics in the world. Application of pyrotechnics designed and procured in this manner could enable the energy industry's emergency equipment, such as shutoff valves and deep-sea blowout preventers, to be left in place for years in extreme environments and still be relied upon to function when needed, thus greatly enhancing safety and operational availability.

Scott, John H.↗

NASA NTRS2011

Source Inspection Scheduling Calendar

Quality is an essential component for creating flight hardware travelling through space since the hardware is extremely expensive and cannot be reworked or repaired once launched. An important step in this process is ensuring the quality of hardware procured from Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL) suppliers. An important element of determining supplier quality is source inspection. Source inspections are performed at suppliers' facilities by JPL employeesto ensure that hardware characteristics are acceptable before being covered up and/or delivered to JPL.

quality assurance↗

NASA NTRS2015

Initial Operation of the Nuclear Thermal Rocket Element Environmental Simulator

The Nuclear Thermal Rocket Element Environmental Simulator (NTREES) facility is designed to perform realistic non-nuclear testing of nuclear thermal rocket (NTR) fuel elements and fuel materials. Although the NTREES facility cannot mimic the neutron and gamma environment of an operating NTR, it can simulate the thermal hydraulic environment within an NTR fuel element to provide critical information on material performance and compatibility. The NTREES facility has recently been upgraded such that the power capabilities of the facility have been increased significantly. At its present 1.2 MW power level, more prototypical fuel element temperatures nay now be reached. The new 1.2 MW induction heater consists of three physical units consisting of a transformer, rectifier, and inverter. This multiunit arrangement facilitated increasing the flexibility of the induction heater by more easily allowing variable frequency operation. Frequency ranges between 20 and 60 kHz can accommodated in the new induction heater allowing more representative power distributions to be generated within the test elements. The water cooling system was also upgraded to so as to be capable of removing 100% of the heat generated during testing In this new higher power configuration, NTREES will be capable of testing fuel elements and fuel materials at near-prototypic power densities. As checkout testing progressed and as higher power levels were achieved, several design deficiencies were discovered and fixed. Most of these design deficiencies were related to stray RF energy causing various components to encounter unexpected heating. Copper shielding around these components largely eliminated these problems. Other problems encountered involved unexpected movement in the coil due to electromagnetic forces and electrical arcing between the coil and a dummy test article. The coil movement and arcing which were encountered during the checkout testing effectively destroyed the induction coil in use at the time and resulted in NTREES being out of commission for a couple of months while a new stronger coil was procured. The new coil includes several additional pieces of support structure to prevent coil movement in the future. In addition, new insulating test article support components have been fabricated to prevent unexpected arcing to the test articles. Additional activities are also now underway to address ways in which the radial temperature profiles across test articles may be controlled such that they are more prototypical of what they would encounter in an operating nuclear engine. The causes of the temperature distribution problem are twofold. First, the fuel element test article is isolated in NTREES as opposed to being in the midst of many other mostly identical fuel elements in a nuclear engine. As a result, the fuel element heat flux boundary conditions in NTREES are far from adiabatic as would normally be the case in a reactor. Second, induction heating skews the power distribution such that power is preferentially deposited near the outside of the fuel element. Nuclear heating, conversely, deposits its power much more uniformly throughout the fuel element. Current studies are now looking at various schemes to adjust the amount of thermal radiation emitted from the fuel element surface so as to essentially vary the thermal boundary conditions on the test article. It is hoped that by properly adjusting the thermal boundary conditions on the fuel element test article, it may be possible to substantially correct for the inappropriate radial power distributions resulting from the induction heating so as to yield a more nearly correct temperature distribution throughout the fuel element.

Emrich, William J., Jr.↗

NASA NTRS2015

Crew-Aided Autonomous Navigation Project

Manual capability to perform star/planet-limb sightings provides a cheap, simple, and robust backup navigation source for exploration missions independent from the ground. Sextant sightings from spacecraft were first exercised in Gemini and flew as the loss-of-communications backup for all Apollo missions. This study seeks to procure and characterize error sources of navigation-grade sextants for feasibility of taking star and planetary limb sightings from inside a spacecraft. A series of similar studies was performed in the early/mid-1960s in preparation for Apollo missions, and one goal of this study is to modernize and update those findings. This technique has the potential to deliver significant risk mitigation, validation, and backup to more complex low-TRL automated systems under development involving cameras.

Holt, Greg↗

NASA NTRS2008

Brassboard Astrometric Beam Combiner (ABC) Development for the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM)

The Astrometric Beam Combiner (ABC) is a critical element of the Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) that performs three key functions: coherently combine starlight from two siderostats; individually detect starlight for angle tracking; and disperse and detect the interferometric fringes. In addition, the ABC contains: a stimulus, cornercubes and shutters for in-orbit calibration; several tip/tilt mirror mechanisms for in-orbit alignment; and internal metrology beam launcher for pathlength monitoring. The detailed design of the brassboard ABC (which has the form, fit and function of the flight unit) is complete, procurement of long-lead items is underway, and assembly and testing is expected to be completed in Spring 2009. In this paper, we present the key requirements for the ABC, details of the completed optical and mechanical design as well as plans for assembly and alignment.

PlanetQuest↗

NASA NTRS2010

Mars Science Laboratory Rover Actuator Thermal Design

NASA will launch a 900 kg rover, part of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission, to Mars in October of 2011. The MSL rover is scheduled to land on Mars in August of 2012. The rover employs 31, electric-motor driven actuators to perform a variety of engineering and science functions including: mobility, camera pointing, telecommunications antenna steering, soil and rock sample acquisition and sample processing. This paper describes the MSL rover actuator thermal design. The actuators have stainless steel housings and planetary gearboxes that are lubricated with a "wet" lubricant. The lubricant viscosity increases with decreasing temperature. Warm-up heaters are required to bring the actuators up to temperature (above -55 C) prior to use in the cold wintertime environment of Mars (when ambient atmosphere temperatures are as cold as -113 C). Analytical thermal models of all 31 MSL actuators have been developed. The actuators have been analyzed and warm-up heaters have been designed to improve actuator performance in cold environments. Thermal hardware for the actuators has been specified, procured and installed. This paper presents actuator thermal analysis predicts, and describes the actuator thermal hardware and its operation. In addition, warm-up heater testing and thermal model correlation efforts for the Remote Sensing Mast (RSM) elevation actuator are discussed.

Novak, Keith S.↗

NASA NTRS2015

Commercial Crew Cost Estimating - A Look at Estimating Processes, Challenges and Lessons Learned

To support annual PPBE budgets and NASA HQ requests for cost information for commercial crew transportation to the International Space Station (ISS), the NASA ISS ACES team developed system development and per flight cost estimates for the potential providers for each annual PPBE submit from 2009-2014. This paper describes the cost estimating processes used, challenges and lessons learned to develop estimates for this key NASA project that diverted from the traditional procurement approach and used a new way of doing business

Battle, Rick↗

NASA NTRS2015

Characterization of Machine Variability and Progressive Heat Treatment in Selective Laser Melting of Inconel 718

The absence of an economy of scale in spaceflight hardware makes additive manufacturing an immensely attractive option for propulsion components. As additive manufacturing techniques are increasingly adopted by government and industry to produce propulsion hardware in human-rated systems, significant development efforts are needed to establish these methods as reliable alternatives to conventional subtractive manufacturing. One of the critical challenges facing powder bed fusion techniques in this application is variability between machines used to perform builds. Even with implementation of robust process controls, it is possible for two machines operating at identical parameters with equivalent base materials to produce specimens with slightly different material properties. The machine variability study presented here evaluates 60 specimens of identical geometry built using the same parameters. 30 samples were produced on machine 1 (M1) and the other 30 samples were built on machine 2 (M2). Each of the 30-sample sets were further subdivided into three subsets (with 10 specimens in each subset) to assess the effect of progressive heat treatment on machine variability. The three categories for post-processing were: stress relief, stress relief followed by hot isostatic press (HIP), and stress relief followed by HIP followed by heat treatment per AMS 5664. Each specimen (a round, smooth tensile) was mechanically tested per ASTM E8. Two formal statistical techniques, hypothesis testing for equivalency of means and one-way analysis of variance (ANOVA), were applied to characterize the impact of machine variability and heat treatment on six material properties: tensile stress, yield stress, modulus of elasticity, fracture elongation, and reduction of area. This work represents the type of development effort that is critical as NASA, academia, and the industrial base work collaboratively to establish a path to certification for additively manufactured parts. For future flight programs, NASA and its commercial partners will procure parts from vendors who will use a diverse range of machines to produce parts and, as such, it is essential that the AM community develop a sound understanding of the degree to which machine variability impacts material properties.

Prater, T.↗

NASA NTRS2015

Characterization of Machine Variability and Progressive Heat Treatment in Selective Laser Melting of Inconel 718

The absence of an economy of scale in spaceflight hardware makes additive manufacturing an immensely attractive option for propulsion components. As additive manufacturing techniques are increasingly adopted by government and industry to produce propulsion hardware in human‐rated systems, significant development efforts are needed to establish these methods as reliable alternatives to conventional subtractive manufacturing. One of the critical challenges facing powder bed fusion techniques in this application is variability between machines used to perform builds. Even with implementation of robust process controls, it is possible for two machines operating at identical parameters with equivalent base materials to produce specimens with slightly different material properties. The machine variability study presented here evaluates 60 specimens of identical geometry built using the same parameters. 30 samples were produced on machine 1 (M1) and the other 30 samples were built on machine 2 (M2). Each of the 30‐sample sets were further subdivided into three subsets (with 10 specimens in each subset) to assess the effect of progressive heat treatment on machine variability. The three categories for post‐processing were: stress relief, stress relief followed by hot isostatic press (HIP), and stress relief followed by HIP followed by heat treatment per AMS 5664. Each specimen (a round, smooth tensile) was mechanically tested per ASTM E8. Two formal statistical techniques, hypothesis testing for equivalency of means and one‐way analysis of variance (ANOVA), were applied to characterize the impact of machine variability and heat treatment on six material properties: tensile stress, yield stress, modulus of elasticity, fracture elongation, and reduction of area. This work represents the type of development effort that is critical as NASA, academia, and the industrial base work collaboratively to establish a path to certification for additively manufactured parts. For future flight programs, NASA and its commercial partners will procure parts from vendors who will use a diverse range of machines to produce parts and, as such, it is essential that the AM community develop a sound understanding of the degree to which machine variability impacts material properties.

Prater, Tracie↗