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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 703 records · Page 39

Launch and Commissioning of the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO)

The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) launched on June 18, 2009 from the Cape Canaveral Air Force Station. LRO, designed, built, and operated by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, MD, is gathering crucial data on the lunar environment that will help astronauts prepare for long-duration lunar expeditions. To date, the Guidance, Navigation and Control (GN&C) subsystem has operated nominally and met all requirements. However, during the early phase of the mission, the GN&C Team encountered some anomalies. For example, during the Solar Array and High Gain Antenna deployments, one of the safing action points tripped, which was not expected. Also, the spacecraft transitioned to its safe hold mode, SunSafe, due to encountering an end of file for an ephemeris table. During the five-day lunar acquisition, one of the star trackers triggered the spacecraft to transition into a safe hold configuration, the cause of which was determined. These events offered invaluable insight to better understand the performance of the system they designed. An overview of the GN&C subsystem will be followed by a mission timeline. Then, interesting flight performance as well as anomalies encountered by the GN&C Team will be discussed in chronological order.

Shah, Neerav↗

Capabilities, Design, Construction and Commissioning of New Vibration, Acoustic, and Electromagnetic Capabilities Added to the World's Largest Thermal Vacuum Chamber at NASA's Space Power Facility

NASA s human space exploration plans developed under the Exploration System Architecture Studies in 2005 included a Crew Exploration Vehicle launched on an Ares I launch vehicle. The mass of the Crew Exploration Vehicle and trajectory of the Ares I coupled with the need to be able to abort across a large percentage of the trajectory generated unprecedented testing requirements. A future lunar lander added to projected test requirements. In 2006, the basic test plan for Orion was developed. It included several types of environment tests typical of spacecraft development programs. These included thermal-vacuum, electromagnetic interference, mechanical vibration, and acoustic tests. Because of the size of the vehicle and unprecedented acoustics, NASA conducted an extensive assessment of options for testing, and as result, chose to augment the Space Power Facility at NASA Plum Brook Station, of the John H. Glenn Research Center to provide the needed test capabilities. The augmentation included designing and building the World s highest mass capable vibration table, the highest power large acoustic chamber, and adaptation of the existing World s largest thermal vacuum chamber as a reverberant electromagnetic interference test chamber. These augmentations were accomplished from 2007 through early 2011. Acceptance testing began in Spring 2011 and will be completed in the Fall of 2011. This paper provides an overview of the capabilities, design, construction and acceptance of this extraordinary facility.

Motil, Susan M.↗

SOFIA Science Instruments: Commissioning, Upgrades and Future Opportunities

The Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy (SOFIA) is the world's largest airborne observatory, featuring a 2.5 meter telescope housed in the aft section of a Boeing 747sp aircraft. SOFIA's current instrument suite includes: FORCAST (Faint Object InfraRed CAmera for the SOFIA Telescope), a 5-40 μm dual band imager/grism spectrometer developed at Cornell University; HIPO (High-speed Imaging Photometer for Occultations), a 0.3-1.1 micron imager built by Lowell Observatory; FLITECAM (First Light Infrared Test Experiment CAMera), a 1-5 micron wide-field imager/grism spectrometer developed at UCLA; FIFI-LS (Far-Infrared Field-Imaging Line Spectrometer), a 42-210 micron IFU grating spectrograph completed by University Stuttgart; and EXES (Echelon-Cross- Echelle Spectrograph), a 5-28 micron high-resolution spectrometer being completed by UC Davis and NASA Ames. A second generation instrument, HAWC+ (Highresolution Airborne Wideband Camera), is a 50-240 micron imager being upgraded at JPL to add polarimetry and new detectors developed at GSFC. SOFIA will continually update its instrument suite with new instrumentation, technology demonstration experiments and upgrades to the existing instrument suite. This paper details instrument capabilities and status as well as plans for future instrumentation, including the call for proposals for 3rd generation SOFIA science instruments.

FLITECAM↗