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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2012

U.S. Government Open Internet Access to Sub-meter Satellite Data

The National Geospatial-Intelligence Agency (NGA) has contracted United States commercial remote sensing companies GeoEye and Digital Globe to provide very high resolution commercial quality satellite imagery to federal/state government agencies and those projects/people who support government interests. Under NextView contract terms, those engaged in official government programs/projects can gain online access to NGA's vast global archive. Additionally, data from vendor's archives of IKONOS-2 (IK-2), OrbView-3 (OB-3), GeoEye-1 (GE-1), QuickBird-1 (QB-1), WorldView-1 (WV-1), and WorldView-2 (WV-2), sensors can also be requested under these agreements. We report here the current extent of this archive, how to gain access, and the applications of these data by Earth science investigators to improve discoverability and community use of these data. Satellite commercial quality imagery (CQI) at very high resolution (< 1 m) (here after referred to as CQI) over the past decade has become an important data source to U.S. federal, state, and local governments for many different purposes. The rapid growth of free global CQI data has been slow to disseminate to NASA Earth Science community and programs such as the Land-Cover Land-Use Change (LCLUC) program which sees potential benefit from unprecedented access. This article evolved from a workshop held on February 23rd, 2012 between representatives from NGA, NASA, and NASA LCLUC Scientists discussion on how to extend this resource to a broader license approved community. Many investigators are unaware of NGA's archive availability or find it difficult to access CQI data from NGA. Results of studies, both quality and breadth, could be improved with CQI data by combining them with other moderate to coarse resolution passive optical Earth observation remote sensing satellites, or with RADAR or LiDAR instruments to better understand Earth system dynamics at the scale of human activities. We provide the evolution of this effort, a guide for qualified user access, and describe current to potential use of these data in earth science.

Neigh, Christopher S. R>↗
NASA NTRS2010

Utilizing Earth Observations for Societal Issues

Over the last four decades a tremendous progress has been made in the Earth science space-based remote sensing observations, technologies and algorithms. Such advancements have improved the predictability by providing lead-time and accuracy of forecast in weather, climate, natural hazards, and natural resources. It has further reduced or bounded the overall uncertainties by partially improving our understanding of planet Earth as an integrated system that is governed by non-linear and chaotic behavior. Many countries such as the US, European Community, Japan, China, Russia, India has and others have invested billions of dollars in developing and launching space-based assets in the low earth (LEO) and geostationary (GEO) orbits. However, the wealth of this scientific knowledge that has potential of extracting monumental socio-economic benefits from such large investments have been slow in reaching the public and decision makers. For instance, there are a number of areas such as water resources and availability, energy forecasting, aviation safety, agricultural competitiveness, disaster management, air quality and public health, which can directly take advantage. Nevertheless, we all live in a global economy that depends on access to the best available Earth Science information for all inhabitants of this planet. This presentation discusses a process to transition Earth science data and products for societal needs including NASA's experience in achieving such objectives. It is important to mention that there are many challenges and issues that pertain to a number of areas such as: (1) difficulties in making a speedy transition of data and information from observations and models to relevant Decision Support Systems (DSS) or tools, (2) data and models inter-operability issues, (3) limitations of spatial, spectral and temporal resolution, (4) communication limitations as dictated by the availability of image processing and data compression techniques. Additionally, the most critical element amongst all is the organizational and management boundaries that must be resolved at local, state, national and international levels to implement and realize free flow of such vital information.

Habib, Shahid↗
NASA NTRS1977

Applications of remote sensing to water resources

Analyses were made of selected long-term (1985 and beyond) objectives, with the intent of determining if significant data-related problems would be encountered and to develop alternative solutions to any potential problems. One long-term objective selected for analysis was Water Availability Forecasting. A brief overview was scheduled in FY-77 of the objective -- primarily a fact-finding study to allow Data Management personnel to gain adequate background information to perform subsequent data system analyses. This report, includes discussions on some of the larger problems currently encountered in water measurement, the potential users of water availability forecasts, projected demands of users, current sensing accuracies, required parameter monitoring, status of forecasting modeling, and some measurement accuracies likely to be achievable by 1980 and 1990.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1973

Applicability of ERTS for surveying Antarctic iceberg resources

The author has identified the following significant results. This investigation explores the applicability of ERTS to (1) determine the Antarctic sea ice and environmental behavior that may influence the harvesting of icebergs, and (2) monitor iceberg locations, characteristics, and evolution. From image sampling, it is found that the potential applicability of ERTS to the research, planning, and harvesting operations can contribute importantly to the promise derived from broader scope studies for the use of Antarctic iceberg to relieve fresh Thermal sensor bands will provide coverage in daylight and darkness. Several years of comprehensive monitoring will be necessary to characterize sea ice and environmental behavior and iceberg evolution. Live ERTS services will assist harvesting control and claming operations and offer a means for harmonizing entitlements to iceberg resources. The valuable ERTS services will be more cost effective than other means and will be easily justified and borne by the iceberg harvesting operation.

Hult, J. L.↗
NASA NTRS1972

Satellites for U.S. education - Needs, opportunities and systems.

This paper presents results of a continuing interdisciplinary study of the potential applications of Fixed- and Broadcast-Satellites for educational information transfer in the United States for the period 1975-1985. The status of U.S. education is examined and needs, trends and issues are discussed. The existing educational telecommunications infrastructure is examined and opportunities for satellite services are defined. Potential uses include networking of educational institutions and service centers for delivery of public and instructional television, computer-aided instruction, computing and information resources to regions and groups not now adequately served. Systems alternatives and some of the organizational and economic issues inherent in the deployment of an educational satellite system are discussed.-

Morgan, R. P.↗
NASA NTRS1973

First Year Projects and Activities of the Environmental Remote Sensing Applications Laboratory (ERSAL)

Activities, pilot projects, and research that will effectively close the gap between state-of-the-art remote sensing technology and the potential users and beneficiaries of this technological and scientific progress are discussed in light of the first year of activity. A broad spectrum of resource and man-environment problems are described in terms of the central thrust of the first-year program to support land use planning decisions with information derived from the interpretation of NASA highlight and satellite imagery.

Poulton, C. E.↗
NASA NTRS1973

Remote sensors - Prospects and limitations

Review of the history, present status, and future prospects and limitations of remote sensing systems for satellite-based earth resources surveys. The objectives and special areas of interest of ongoing sensor development experiments are summarized, and the measurement and performance goals of current potential sensor research is discussed.

Lehmann, J.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Comet nucleus and asteroid sample return missions

Three Advanced Design Projects have been completed this academic year at Penn State. At the beginning of the fall semester the students were organized into eight groups and given their choice of either a comet nucleus or an asteroid sample return mission. Once a mission had been chosen, the students developed conceptual designs. These were evaluated at the end of the fall semester and combined into three separate mission plans, including a comet nucleus same return (CNSR), a single asteroid sample return (SASR), and a multiple asteroid sample return (MASR). To facilitate the work required for each mission, the class was reorganized in the spring semester by combining groups to form three mission teams. An integration team consisting of two members from each group was formed for each mission so that communication and information exchange would be easier among the groups. The types of projects designed by the students evolved from numerous discussions with Penn State faculty and mission planners at the Johnson Space Center Human/Robotic Spacecraft Office. Robotic sample return missions are widely considered valuable precursors to manned missions in that they can provide details about a site's environment and scientific value. For example, a sample return from an asteroid might reveal valuable resources that, once mined, could be utilized for propulsion. These missions are also more adaptable when considering the risk to humans visiting unknown and potentially dangerous locations, such as a comet nucleus.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1996

[A NASA / University Joint Venture in Space Science]

MILAGRO is a water-Cherenkov detector for observing cosmic gamma rays over a broad energy range of 100 GeV to 100 TeV. MILAGRO will be the first detector that has sensitivity overlapping both air-Cherenkov and air-shower detectors. With this detector scientists in the collaboration will study previously observed celestial sources at their known emission energies, extend these observations into a new energy regime, and search for new sources at unexplored energies. The diffuse gamma-radiation component in our galaxy, which originates from interactions of cosmic rays with interstellar gas and photons, provides important information about the density, distribution, and spectrum of the cosmic rays that pervade the interstellar medium. Events in the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (GRO) are being observed up to about 30 GeV, differing by slightly more than order of magnitude from the low energy threshold of MILAGRO. By looking in coincidence at sources, correlated observations will greatly extend the astrophysics potential of MILAGRO and NASA's GRO. A survey of cosmic-ray observatories is being prepared for scientists and others to provide a resource and reference which describes high energy cosmic-ray research activities around the world. This summary presents information about each research group, such as names of principal investigators, number of persons in the collaboration, energy range, sensitivity, angular resolution, and surface area of detector. Similarly, a survey of gamma-ray telescopes is being prepared to provide a resource and reference which describes gamma-ray telescopes for investigating galactic diffuse gamma-ray flux currently observed in the GeV energy range, but is expected to extend into the TeV range. Two undergraduate students are compiling information about gamma-ray telescopes and high energy cosmic-ray observatories for these surveys. Funding for this project was provided by the Arkansas Space Grant Consortium. Also enclosed Appendix A, B, C, D and E.

Wold, Donald C.↗
NASA NTRS2006

Implementing Scientific Simulation Codes Highly Tailored for Vector Architectures Using Custom Configurable Computing Machines

The motivation for this work comes from an observation that amidst the push for Massively Parallel (MP) solutions to high-end computing problems such as numerical physical simulations, large amounts of legacy code exist that are highly optimized for vector supercomputers. Because re-hosting legacy code often requires a complete re-write of the original code, which can be a very long and expensive effort, this work examines the potential to exploit reconfigurable computing machines in place of a vector supercomputer to implement an essentially unmodified legacy source code. Custom and reconfigurable computing resources could be used to emulate an original application's target platform to the extent required to achieve high performance. To arrive at an architecture that delivers the desired performance subject to limited resources involves solving a multi-variable optimization problem with constraints. Prior research in the area of reconfigurable computing has demonstrated that designing an optimum hardware implementation of a given application under hardware resource constraints is an NP-complete problem. The premise of the approach is that the general issue of applying reconfigurable computing resources to the implementation of an application, maximizing the performance of the computation subject to physical resource constraints, can be made a tractable problem by assuming a computational paradigm, such as vector processing. This research contributes a formulation of the problem and a methodology to design a reconfigurable vector processing implementation of a given application that satisfies a performance metric. A generic, parametric, architectural framework for vector processing implemented in reconfigurable logic is developed as a target for a scheduling/mapping algorithm that maps an input computation to a given instance of the architecture. This algorithm is integrated with an optimization framework to arrive at a specification of the architecture parameters that attempts to minimize execution time, while staying within resource constraints. The flexibility of using a custom reconfigurable implementation is exploited in a unique manner to leverage the lessons learned in vector supercomputer development. The vector processing framework is tailored to the application, with variable parameters that are fixed in traditional vector processing. Benchmark data that demonstrates the functionality and utility of the approach is presented. The benchmark data includes an identified bottleneck in a real case study example vector code, the NASA Langley Terminal Area Simulation System (TASS) application.

Rutishauser, David↗
NASA NTRS2010

Getting to First Flight: Equipping Space Engineers to Break the Start-Stop-Restart Cycle

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration s (NASA s) history is built on a foundation of can-do strength, while pointing to the Saturn/Apollo Moon missions in the 1960s and 1970s as its apex a sentiment that often overshadows the potential that lies ahead. The chronicle of America s civil space agenda is scattered with programs that got off to good starts with adequate resources and vocal political support but that never made it past a certain milestone review, General Accountability Office report, or Congressional budget appropriation. Over the decades since the fielding of the Space Shuttle in the early 1980s, a start-stop-restart cycle has intervened due to many forces. Despite this impediment, the workforce has delivered engineering feats such as the International Space Station and numerous Shuttle and science missions, which reflect a trend in the early days of the Exploration Age that called for massive infrastructure and matching capital allocations. In the new millennium, the aerospace industry must respond to transforming economic climates, the public will, national agendas, and international possibilities relative to scientific exploration beyond Earth s orbit. Two pressing issues - workforce transition and mission success - are intertwined. As this paper will address, U.S. aerospace must confront related workforce development and industrial base issues head on to take space exploration to the next level. This paper also will formulate specific strategies to equip space engineers to move beyond the seemingly constant start-stop-restart mentality to plan and execute flight projects that actually fly.

Singer, Christopher E.↗
NASA NTRS2012

Emergent Capabilities Converging into M and S 2.0

The continued operational environment complexity faced by the Department of Defense, despite a restricted resource environment, is a mandate for greater adaptability and availability in joint training. To address these constraints, this paper proposes a model for the potential integration of adaptability training, virtual world capabilities and immersive training into the wider Joint Live Virtual and Constructive (JLVC) Federation, supported by human, social, cultural and behavior modeling, and measurement and assessment. By fusing those capabilities and modeling and simulation enhancements into the JLVC federation, it will create a force who is more apt to arrive at and implement correct decisions, and more able to appropriately seize initiative in the field. The model would allow for the testing and training of capabilities and TTPs that cannot be reasonably explored to their logical conclusions in a 'live' environment, as well as enhance training fidelity for all echelons and tasks.

Reitz, Emilie↗
NASA NTRS2012

EVA Development and Verification Testing at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory

As an early step in preparing for future EVAs, astronauts perform neutral buoyancy testing to develop and verify EVA hardware and operations. To date, neutral buoyancy demonstrations at NASA JSC’s Sonny Carter Training Facility have primarily evaluated assembly and maintenance tasks associated with several elements of the ISS. With the retirement of the Space Shuttle, completion of ISS assembly, and introduction of commercial participants for human transportation into space, evaluations at the NBL will take on a new focus. In this session, Juniper Jairala briefly discussed the design of the NBL and, in more detail, described the requirements and process for performing a neutral buoyancy test, including typical hardware and support equipment requirements, personnel and administrative resource requirements, examples of ISS systems and operations that are evaluated, and typical operational objectives that are evaluated. Robert Durkin discussed the new and potential types of uses for the NBL, including those by non-NASA external customers.

Juniper Jairala↗
NASA NTRS2012

EVA Development and Verification Testing at NASA's Neutral Buoyancy Laboratory

As an early step in preparing for future EVAs, astronauts perform neutral buoyancy testing to develop and verify EVA hardware and operations. To date, neutral buoyancy demonstrations at NASA JSC's Sonny Carter Training Facility have primarily evaluated assembly and maintenance tasks associated with several elements of the ISS. With the retirement of the Space Shuttle, completion of ISS assembly, and introduction of commercial participants for human transportation into space, evaluations at the NBL will take on a new focus. In this session, Juniper Jairala briefly discussed the design of the NBL and, in more detail, described the requirements and process for performing a neutral buoyancy test, including typical hardware and support equipment requirements, personnel and administrative resource requirements, examples of ISS systems and operations that are evaluated, and typical operational objectives that are evaluated. Robert Durkin discussed the new and potential types of uses for the NBL, including those by non-NASA external customers.

Juniper Jairala↗
NASA NTRS2014

Deep Mapping of Small Solar System Bodies with Galactic Cosmic Ray Secondary Particle Showers

Galactic cosmic rays rain steadily from all directions onto asteroids and comets. The interaction of these high-energy ions produces a cascade of secondary particles, including muons, which can penetrate the solid interiors of small solar system bodies. Muons, which are produced in abundance in Earth's atmosphere, have been used to image large structures on Earth, including the Great Pyramids and the interior of volcanoes. In this study, we demonstrate that the transmitted flux of muons is sensitive to the interior density structure of asteroids and comets, less than a few hundred meters in diameter. Muonography has the potential to fill a critical gap in our knowledge of the deep interiors of small bodies, providing information needed for planetary defense, in situ resource utilization, and planetary science. We use Monte Carlo codes (MCNPX and FLUKA), which accurately model galactic cosmic ray showers, to explore systematic variations in the production of muons in solid surfaces. Results of these calculations confirm the scaling of muon production in Earth's atmosphere to solid regolith materials, as predicted by a simple, semi-empirical model. Muons are primarily produced in the top meter of the regoliths of asteroids and comets. Their rate of production is over three orders of magnitude lower than in Earth's atmosphere and depends strongly on regolith density. In practice, the use of muonography to characterize the interiors of small solar system bodies must overcome their low rate of production and their dependence on regolith density, which can vary over the surface of asteroids and comets. We show that interior contrast can be resolved using a muon telescope (hodoscope) with about 1 sq m aperture with integration times ranging from hours to weeks. Design concepts for a practical hodoscope that could be deployed in situ or on an orbiting spacecraft, are described. Regolith density within the top meter of an asteroid can be determined from radar observations. A concept for a pilot mission that combines remote radar measurements with in situ muonography of a near-Earth asteroid is presented. Perceived challenges and next steps for the development of the concept are described.

Prettyman, T. H.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Advanced Life Support Technologies and Scenarios

As NASA looks beyond the International Space Station toward long-duration, deep space missions away from Earth, the current practice of supplying consumables and spares will not be practical nor affordable. New approaches are sought for life support and habitation systems that will reduce dependency on Earth and increase mission sustainability. To reduce launch mass, further closure of Environmental Control and Life Support Systems (ECLSS) beyond the current capability of the ISS will be required. Areas of particular interest include achieving higher degrees of recycling within Atmosphere Revitalization, Water Recovery and Waste Management Systems. NASA is currently investigating advanced carbon dioxide reduction processes that surpass the level of oxygen recovery available from the Sabatier Carbon Dioxide Reduction Assembly (CRA) on the ISS. Improving the efficiency of the recovery of water from spacecraft solid and liquid wastes is possible through use of emerging technologies such as the heat melt compactor and brine dewatering systems. Another significant consumable is that of food. Food production systems based on higher plants may not only contribute significantly to the diet, but also contribute to atmosphere revitalization, water purification and waste utilization. Bioreactors may be potentially utilized for wastewater and solid waste management. The level at which bioregenerative technologies are utilized will depend on their comparative requirements for spacecraft resources including mass, power, volume, heat rejection, crew time and reliability. Planetary protection requirements will need to be considered for missions to other solar system bodies.

Barta, Daniel J.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Exploiting Dark Information Resources to Create New Value Added Services to Study Earth Science Phenomena

This paper presents two research applications exploiting unused metadata resources in novel ways to aid data discovery and exploration capabilities. The results based on the experiments are encouraging and each application has the potential to serve as a useful standalone component or service in a data system. There were also some interesting lessons learned while designing the two applications and these are presented next.

Earth Science Informatics↗
NASA NTRS2019

The Role of Advanced Materials and Manufacturing in Future NASA Exploration Missions

Future NASA missions to the Moon and Mars will require significant advances in materials and manufacturing technologies. These missions will likely be constrained in mass and volume. Lightweight, high strength materials will be required to reduce the mass of launch vehicles and spacecraft in order to maximize the amount of supplies and equipment that can be transported to the surface of the planet. Additive manufacturing and advanced in-space assembly methods will be needed to fabricate spare parts and build habitats for the astronauts. Methods to convert resources on the planet and recycle waste into materials, parts, and fuel will also be required. This presentation will discuss some of these needs, potential solutions currently being explored, and research opportunities for students, faculty, and researchers from industry and government to help address these needs.

chemistry↗