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NASA NTRS1959

1958 NASA/USAF Space Probes (Able-1): Summary - Volume 1

Early in calendar year 1958 Space Technology Laboratories, Inc. (STL) (then Space Technology Laboratories, a division of the Ramo-Wooldridge Corp.) developed for the Air Force Ballistic Missile Division (AFBMD) an Advanced Re-entry Test Vehicle (ARTV) for the purpose of testing ballistic missile nose cones at the full range of 5500 nautical miles. The two-stage ARTV utilized the Thor ballistic missile and the second stage propulsion system developed for the Vanguard program. In late 1957 and early 1958, STL/AFBMD prepared studies of various missile combinations which could be utilized for space testing. The Thor, in combination with the Vanguard second and third stages, was one of the vehicles considered which offered a very early capability of placing a reasonable payload in a lunar orbit. These STL/AFBMD studies were presented to various appropriate groups including the Killian, Millikan, H. J . Stewart Committees; Headquarters, Air Research and Development Command, and ARDC Centers. Subsequently the Advanced Research Projects Agency (ARPA) contacted STL relative to the availability of hardware for an early lunar shot. By utilizing existing spares already purchased for the ARTV, and by making use of the ARTV contractors already in being, it appeared feasible to launch by the third quarter of calendar year 1958 a payload which would be captured by the moon's gravitational force. On 27 March 1958, ARPA directed STL to proceed with a program of three lunar shots. As much as possible, these shots were to utilize existing ARTV spare hardware and impose no interference with the ballistic missile programs. In September this program was transferred to the direction of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA). On 17 August 1958 the first launching of the Able-1 vehicle was attempted, but the flight was terminated by a propulsion failure of the first stage. Subsequent launchings were attempted on 13 October and 8 November 1958. Of these launchirigs the October attempt was the most successful. Although the payload did not reach the vicinity of the moon, a maximum altitude of 71,700 was attained, and useful scientific data was obtained from the instrumentation.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS1999

GPS Sounding Rocket Developments

Sounding rockets are suborbital launch vehicles capable of carrying scientific payloads several hundred miles in altitude. These missions return a variety of scientific data including; chemical makeup and physical processes taking place In the atmosphere, natural radiation surrounding the Earth, data on the Sun, stars, galaxies and many other phenomena. In addition, sounding rockets provide a reasonably economical means of conducting engineering tests for instruments and devices used on satellites and other spacecraft prior to their use in more expensive activities. The NASA Sounding Rocket Program is managed by personnel from Goddard Space Flight Center Wallops Flight Facility (GSFC/WFF) in Virginia. Typically around thirty of these rockets are launched each year, either from established ranges at Wallops Island, Virginia, Poker Flat Research Range, Alaska; White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico or from Canada, Norway and Sweden. Many times launches are conducted from temporary launch ranges in remote parts of the world requi6ng considerable expense to transport and operate tracking radars. An inverse differential GPS system has been developed for Sounding Rocket. This paper addresses the NASA Wallops Island history of GPS Sounding Rocket experience since 1994 and the development of a high accurate and useful system.

Bull, Barton↗

NASA NTRS1999

GPS Sounding Rocket Developments

Bull, Barton↗

NASA NTRS1999

Education and Public Outreach to Support the HESSI Mission: Raising Public Awareness

The current upswing in solar activity bodies well for accomplishing the goals of the upcoming HESSI mission. The solar community is making good use of the increased activity through coordinated observations, both in space and on the ground. Ground-based measurements will provide crucial context observations and complementary measurements of the high-energy p,,ocesses which HESSI will observe; vector magnetographs will provide information on the morphology and strength of active region magnetic fields. At the time of the launch of HESSI, we will provide scientific data to the community with the MSFC vector magnetograph and will use the facilities to enhance the educational experience of the local community. In the meantime, to raise public consciousness about the solar cycle and to prepare for HESSI observations, we have prepared lesson plans and activities which are currently being distributed via the internet. Further, to inform the educational community about our activities, our teacher partners disseminate the information by attending teacher conferences. This poster will review what we have already accomplished and what we plan for the next, few pre-launch months.

Adams, M. L.↗

NASA NTRS1999

Characterization of Settled Atmospheric Dust by the DART Experiment

The DART ("Dust Accumulation and Removal Test") package is an experiment which will fly as part of the MIP experiment on the Mars-2001 Surveyor Lander. Dust deposition could be a significant problem for photovoltaic array operation for long duration emissions on the surface of Mars. Measurements made by Pathfinder showed 0.3% loss of solar array performance per day due to dust obscuration. The DART experiment is designed to quantify dust deposition from the Mars atmosphere, measure the properties of settled dust, measure the effect of dust deposition on the array performance, and test several methods of mitigating the effect of settled dust on a solar array. Although the purpose of DART (along with its sister experiment, MATE) is to gather information critical to the design of future power systems on the surface of Mars, the dust characterization instrumentation on DART will also provide significant scientific data on the properties of settled atmospheric dust.

Landis, Geoffrey A.↗

NASA NTRS2000

An Assessment of Gigabit Ethernet Technology and Its Applications at the NASA Glenn Research Center

This paper describes Gigabit Ethernet and its role in supporting R&D programs at NASA Glenn. These programs require an advanced high-speed network capable of transporting multimedia traffic, including real-time visualization, high- resolution graphics, and scientific data. GigE is a 1 Gbps extension to 10 and 100 Mbps Ethernet. The IEEE 802.3z and 802.3ab standards define the MAC layer and 1000BASE-X and 1000BASE-T physical layer specifications for GigE. GigE switches and buffered distributors support IEEE 802.3x flow control. The paper also compares GigE with ATM in terms of quality of service, data rate, throughput, scalability, interoperability, network management, and cost of ownership.

Bakes, Catherine Murphy↗

NASA NTRS1999

Autonomous Science Decision Making for Mars Sample Return

In the near future NASA intends to explore Mars in preparation for a sample return mission using robotic devices such as landers, rovers, orbiters, airplanes, and/or balloons. Such platforms will likely carry imaging devices to characterize the surface morphology, and a variety of analytical instruments intended to evaluate the chemical and mineralogical nature of the environment(s) that they encounter. Historically, mission operations have involved the following sequence of activities: (1) return of scientific data from the vehicle; (2) evaluation of the data by space scientists; (3) recommendations of the scientists regarding future mission activity; (4) transmission of commands to the vehicle to achieve this activity; and (5) new activity by the vehicle in response to those commands. This is repeated for the duration of the mission, with command opportunities once or perhaps twice per day. In a rapidly changing environment, such as might be encountered by a rover traversing hundreds of meters a day or an airplane soaring over several hundred of kilometers, this traditional cycle of data evaluation and commands is not amenable to rapid long range traverses, discovery of novelty, or rapid response to any unanticipated situations. In addition, to issues of response time, the nature of imaging and/or spectroscopic devices are such that tremendous data volumes can be acquired, for example during a traverse. These data volumes can rapidly exceed on-board memory capabilities prior to an opportunity to transmit it to Earth.

Roush, Ted L.↗

NASA NTRS1999

Autonomous Science Decisions for Mars Sample Return

In the near future NASA intends to explore Mars in preparation for a sample return mission using robotic devices such as landers rovers, orbiters, airplanes, and/or balloons. Such platforms will likely carry imaging devices to characterize the surface morphology, and a variety of analytical instruments intended to evaluated the chemical and mineralogical nature of the environment(s) that they encounter. Historically, mission operations have involved the following sequence of activities: (1) return of scientific data from the vehicle; (2) evaluation of the data by space scientists; (3) recommendations of the scientists regarding future mission activity; (4) transmission of commands to the vehicle to achieve this activity; and (5) new activity by the vehicle in response to those commands.

Roush, T. L.↗

NASA NTRS2000

A Real Time Differential GPS Tracking System for NASA Sounding Rockets

Sounding rockets are suborbital launch vehicles capable of carrying scientific payloads to several hundred miles in altitude. These missions return a variety of scientific data including: chemical makeup and physical processes taking place in the atmosphere, natural radiation surrounding the Earth, data on the Sun, stars, galaxies and many other phenomena. In addition, sounding rockets provide a reasonably economical means of conducting engineering tests for instruments and devices to be used on satellites and other spacecraft prior to their use in these more expensive missions. Typically around thirty of these rockets are launched each year, from established ranges at Wallops Island, Virginia; Poker Flat Research Range, Alaska; White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico and from a number of ranges outside the United States. Many times launches are conducted from temporary launch ranges in remote parts of the world requiring considerable expense to transport and operate tracking radars. In order to support these missions, an inverse differential GPS system has been developed. The flight system consists of a small, inexpensive receiver, a preamplifier and a wrap-around antenna. A rugged, compact, portable ground station extracts GPS data from the raw payload telemetry stream, performs a real time differential solution and graphically displays the rocket's path relative to a predicted trajectory plot. In addition to generating a real time navigation solution, the system has been used for payload recovery, timing, data timetagging, precise tracking of multiple payloads and slaving of optical tracking systems for over the horizon acquisition. This paper discusses, in detail, the flight and ground hardware, as well as data processing and operational aspects of the system, and provides evidence of the system accuracy.

Bull, Barton↗

NASA NTRS2001

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory is the X-ray component of NASA's Great observatories which also includes the recently decommissioned Compton Gamma Ray Observatory, the Hubble Space Telescope, and the soon to be launched Space Infra Red Telescope Facility. Chandra is a unique X-ray astronomy facility for high-resolution imaging and for high-resolution spectroscopy. Chandra's performance advantage over other X-ray observatories is analogous to that of the Hubble Space Telescope over ground-based observatories. Chandra is a NASA facility that provides scientific data to the international astronomical community in response to proposals for its use. Data becomes public one year after the observation. The Observatory is the product of the efforts of many commercial, academic, and government organizations in the United States and Europe. NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) manages the Project and provides Project Science; TRW Space and Electronics Group served as prime contractor responsible for providing the spacecraft, the telescope, and assembling and testing the observatory; the Smithsonian Astrophysical Observatory (SAO) provides technical support and is responsible for ground operations.

Weisskopf, M. C.↗

NASA NTRS1986

FASAC Technical Assessment Report: Soviet Space Science Research

This report is the work of a panel of eight US scientists who surveyed and assessed Soviet research in the spare sciences. All of the panelists were very familiar with Soviet research through their knowledge of the published scientific literature and personal contacts with Soviet and other foreign colleagues. In addition, all of the panelists reviewed considerable additional open literature--scientific, and popular, including news releases. The specific disciplines of Soviet space science research examined in detail for the report were: solar-terrestrial research, lunar and planetary research, space astronomy and astrophysics, and, life sciences. The Soviet Union has in the past carried out an ambitious program in lunar exploration and, more recently, in studies of the inner planets, Mars and especially Venus. The Soviets have provided scientific data about the latter planet which has been crucial for studies of the planet's evolution. Future programs envision an encounter with Halley's Comet, in March 1986, and missions to Mars and asteroids. The Soviet programs in the life sciences and solar-terrestrial research have been long-lasting and systematically pursued. Much of the ground-based and space-based research in these two disciplines appears to be motivated by the requirement to establish long-term human habitation in near-Earth space. The Soviet contributions to new discoveries and understanding in observational space astronomy and astrophysics have been few. This is in significant contrast to the very excellent theoretical work contributed by Soviet scientists in this discipline.

Lanzerotti, L. J.↗

NASA NTRS2001

Telemetry Tracking & Control (TT&C) - First TDRSS, then Commercial GEO & Big LEO and Now Through LEO

The advent of low earth orbit (LEO) commercial communication satellites provides an opportunity to dramatically reduce Telemetry, Tracking and Control (TT&C) costs of launch vehicles, Unpiloted Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), Research Balloons and spacecraft by reducing or eliminating ground infrastructure. Personnel from the Goddard Space Flight Center's Wallops Flight Facility (GSFC\WFF) have successfully used commercial Geostationary Earth Orbit (GEO) and Big LEO communications satellites for Long Duration Balloon Flight TT&C. The Flight Modem is a GSFC\WFF Advanced Range Technology initiative (ARTI) designed to streamline TT&C capability in the user community of these scientific data gathering platforms at low cost. Making use of existing LEO satellites and adapting and ruggedized commercially available components; two-way, over the horizon communications may be established with these vehicles at great savings due to reduced infrastructure. Initially planned as a means for permitting GPS data for tracking and recovery of sounding rocket and balloon payloads, expectations are that the bandwidth can soon be expanded to allow more comprehensive data transfer. The system architecture which integrates antennas, GPS receiver, commercial satellite packet data modem and a single board computer with custom software is described and technical challenges are discussed along with the plan for their resolution. A three-phase testing and development plan is outlined and the current results are reported. Results and status of ongoing flight tests on aircraft and sounding rockets are reported. Future applications on these platforms and the potential for satellite support are discussed along with an analysis of cost effectiveness of this method vs. other tracking and data transmission schemes.

Morgan, Dwayne R.↗

NASA NTRS2000

Getting Involved with the Discovery Program

NASA's Discovery Program represents the implementation of NASA Administrator Daniel Goldin's vision of 'faster, better, cheaper' planetary missions; encompasses a series of low-cost solar system exploration missions intended to accomplish high quality, focused planetary science investigations using innovative, streamlined, and efficient approaches to assure the highest science value for the cost; and aims to enhance our understanding of the solar system by exploring the planets, their moons and other small bodies, either by traveling to them or remotely from the vicinity of Earth. The objectives of this program include the following: (1) Provide exciting and important scientific data to the global community; (2) Pursue new and innovative ways of doing business; (3) Encourage technological development by designing and testing new technologies and transferring them to the private sector; (4) Increase public awareness of, and appreciation for, solar system exploration through exciting education and public outreach activities; (5) Support national education initiatives through mission-specific programs; and (6) Ensure participation of small disadvantaged businesses, women-owned businesses, HBCUs, and other minority educational institutions in procurements.

Asplund, Shari↗

NASA NTRS1995

3D Graphics Through the Internet: A "Shoot-Out"

3D graphics through the Internet needs to move beyond the current lowest common denominator of pre-computed movies, which consume bandwidth and are non-interactive. Panelists will demonstrate and compare 3D graphical tools for accessing, analyzing, and collaborating on information through the Internet and World-wide web. The "shoot-out" will illustrate which tools are likely to be the best for the various types of information, including dynamic scientific data, 3-D objects, and virtual environments. The goal of the panel is to encourage more effective use of the Internet by encouraging suppliers and users of information to adopt the next generation of graphical tools.

Watson, Val↗

NASA NTRS2001

An Overview of the Performance and Scientific Results From the Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO)

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO), the x-ray component of NASA's Great Observatories, was launched on 1999, July 23 by the Space Shuttle Columbia. After satellite systems activation, the first x-rays focused by the telescope were observed on 1999, August 12. Beginning with the initial observation it was clear that the telescope had survived the launch environment and was operating as expected. Despite an initial surprise due to the discovery that the telescope was far more efficient for concentrating CCD-damaging low-energy protons than had been anticipated, the observatory is performing well and is returning superb scientific data. Together with other space observatories, most notably XMM-Newton, it is clear that we have entered a new era of discovery in high-energy astrophysics.

Weisskopf, M. C.↗

NASA NTRS2001

A Unique Power System For The ISS Fluids And Combustion Facility

Unique power control technology has been incorporated into an electrical power control unit (EPCU) for the Fluids and Combustion Facility (FCF). The objective is to maximize science throughput by providing a flexible power system that is easily reconfigured by the science payload. Electrical power is at a premium on the International Space Station (ISS). The EPCU utilizes advanced power management techniques to maximize the power available to the FCF experiments. The EPCU architecture enables dynamic allocation of power from two ISS power channels for experiments. Because of the unique flexible remote power controller (FRPC) design, power channels can be paralleled while maintaining balanced load sharing between the channels. With an integrated and redundant architecture, the EPCU can tolerate multiple faults and still maintain FCF operation. It is important to take full advantage of the EPCU functionality. The EPCU acts as a buffer between the experimenter and the ISS power system with all its complex requirements. However, FCF science payload developers will still need to follow guidelines when designing the FCF payload power system. This is necessary to ensure power system stability, fault coordination, electromagnetic compatibility, and maximum use of available power for gathering scientific data.

Fox, David A.↗

NASA NTRS1995

Remote Visualization and Remote Collaboration On Computational Fluid Dynamics

A new technology has been developed for remote visualization that provides remote, 3D, high resolution, dynamic, interactive viewing of scientific data (such as fluid dynamics simulations or measurements). Based on this technology, some World Wide Web sites on the Internet are providing fluid dynamics data for educational or testing purposes. This technology is also being used for remote collaboration in joint university, industry, and NASA projects in computational fluid dynamics and wind tunnel testing. 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).

Watson, Val↗

NASA NTRS2002

On Overview of the Performance and Scientific Results from the Chandra X-Ray Observatory

The Chandra X-Ray Observatory (CXO) was launched on 1999 July 23 by the Columbia Space Shuttle. The first X-rays focused by the telescope were seen on 1999 August 12 after the satellite systems were activated. Beginning with the first observation, it was clear that the telescope was not damaged by the launch environment and was operating as planned. After the early surprise due to the discovery that the telescope concentrated CCD-damaging low-energy protons far more efficiently than had been expected, the observatory is performing optimally and is returning excellent scientific data. Together with other space observatories, especially XMM-Newton, it is obvious that we have entered a new era of discovery in high-energy astrophysics.

Weisskopf, M. C.↗