Results for “DATA COMPILATION” — Page 52

NASA NTRS1999

MPI, HPF or OpenMP: A Study with the NAS Benchmarks

Porting applications to new high performance parallel and distributed platforms is a challenging task. Writing parallel code by hand is time consuming and costly, but the task can be simplified by high level languages and would even better be automated by parallelizing tools and compilers. The definition of HPF (High Performance Fortran, based on data parallel model) and OpenMP (based on shared memory parallel model) standards has offered great opportunity in this respect. Both provide simple and clear interfaces to language like FORTRAN and simplify many tedious tasks encountered in writing message passing programs. In our study we implemented the parallel versions of the NAS Benchmarks with HPF and OpenMP directives. Comparison of their performance with the MPI implementation and pros and cons of different approaches will be discussed along with experience of using computer-aided tools to help parallelize these benchmarks. Based on the study,potentials of applying some of the techniques to realistic aerospace applications will be presented

Jin, Hao-Qiang↗

NASA NTRS2004

Proposed Plan for Adopting Updated Range Reference Atmospheres

The Terrestrial and Planetary Environments Team at Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) proposes to facilitate validation, documentation, and adoption of updated Range Reference Atmospheres (RRAs). This viewgraph presentation describes the plan, focusing on seven tasks: 1) Document data sources; 2) Document analytical models; 3) Document data processing procedures; 4) Compare updates to 1983 versions; 5) Compile written documentation; 6) Obtain approval for final volumes; 7) Publish new RRA datasets/documents.

Keller, Vernon↗

NASA NTRS2010

The Connection Between Small Gamma-Ray Flares and SEPs with COMPTEL/CGRO

While it is clear that particle acceleration is occurring during flares, what is less clear is the connection between the neutral radiation observed concommitant with the flare and the in-situ observations of SEPs. For the largest SEP events, where current instruments possess the sensitivity to observe nuclear-related gamma-ray emission, the origin of SEPs is generally divided between an escaping accelerated flare population and a population of coronal particles (or some admixture) accelerated through CME-driven shocks. Small flares, as defined by their X-ray emission, have been found to correlate with the presence of small "impulsive" (enriched in electrons and heavy nuclei) SEP events, suggesting that small SEP events are originally flare particles. The difficulty with this interpretation is that small flares lack detectable nuclear-related gamma-ray emission. Whether this emission is there or not is unclear because current instruments capable of high-energy gamma-ray observations operate above the sensitivity threshold for observing gammaray emission from small flares (< C-class). The COMPton TELescope (COMPTEL) aboard the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) provided unprecedented, and as yet unsurpassed, sensitivity to y rays in the 0.7 to 30 MeV energy range and neutrons in the 20 to 150 MeV energy range. This, combined with its nine years of operation, has produced a unique data set of observations for almost a complete solar cycle. The COMPTEL archival data offers the best possibility to investigate a connection between SEP observations in space and small-flare gamma-ray emission. We present preliminary results of a small-flare search within the COMPTEL archival data and discuss the correlation between already well-established compilations of SEP events and small impulsive or 3He-rich SEP events. Establishing a connection and determining the characterization of this connection, would signify an important development in our understanding of how and where flare particles are accelerated and how these very same particles escape into the interplanetary medium. Equally important would be demonstrating the inconsistencies or poor correlation between gamma-ray emission and small impulsive SEP events.

deNolfo, Georgia↗

NASA NTRS2016

Evidence Report: Risk of Acute Radiation Syndromes Due to Solar Particle Events

Crew health and performance may be impacted by a major solar particle event (SPE), multiple SPEs, or the cumulative effect of galactic cosmic rays (GCR) and SPEs. Beyond low-Earth orbit, the protection of the Earth's magnetosphere is no longer available, such that increased shielding and protective mechanisms are necessary in order to prevent acute radiation sickness and impacts to mission success or crew survival. While operational monitoring and shielding are expected to minimize radiation exposures, there are EVA scenarios outside of low-Earth orbit where the risk of prodromal effects, including nausea, vomiting, anorexia, and fatigue, as well as skin injury and depletion of the blood-forming organs (BFO), may occur. There is a reasonable concern that a compromised immune system due to high skin doses from a SPE or due to synergistic space flight factors (e.g., microgravity) may lead to increased risk to the BFO. The primary data available at present are derived from analyses of medical patients and persons accidentally exposed to acute, high doses of low-linear energy transfer (LET) (or terrestrial) radiation. Data more specific to the space flight environment must be compiled to quantify the magnitude of increase of this risk and to develop appropriate protection strategies. In particular, information addressing the distinct differences between solar proton exposures and terrestrial exposure scenarios, including radiation quality, dose-rate effects, and non-uniform dose distributions, is required for accurate risk estimation.

Carnell, Lisa↗

NASA NTRS2019

Psychophysiological Monitoring of Aerospace Crew State

As next-generation space exploration missions necessitate increasingly autonomous systems, there is a critical need to better detect and anticipate crewmember interactions with these systems. The success of present and future autonomous technology in exploration spaceflight is ultimately dependent upon safe and efficient interaction with the human operator. Optimal interaction is particularly important for surface missions during highly coordinated extravehicular activity (EVA), which consists of high physical and cognitive demands with limited ground support. Crew functional state may be affected by a number of variables including workload, stress, and motivation. Real-time assessments of crew state that do not require a crewmember’s time and attention to complete will be especially important to assess operational performance and behavioral health during flight. In response to the need for objective, passive assessment of crew state, the aim of this work is to develop an accurate and precise prediction model of human functional state for surface EVA using multi-modal psychophysiological sensing. The psychophysiological monitoring approach relies on extracting a set of features from physiological signals and using these features to classify an operator’s cognitive state. This work aims to compile a non-invasive sensor suite to collect physiological data in real-time. Training data during cognitive and more complex functional tasks will be used to develop a classifier to discriminate high and low cognitive workload crew states. The classifier will then be tested in an operationally relevant EVA simulation to predict cognitive workload over time. Once a crew state is determined, further research into specific countermeasures, such as decision support systems, would be necessary to optimize the automation and improve crew state and operational performance.

Wusk, Grace C.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Relating Land Cover Change to Runoff Distribution Using NASA Earth Observations in Riley County, Kansas

In recent years, Riley County, Kansas experienced high levels of flooding potentially due to changes in land use and impervious surface. To analyze the increase in floods and runoff patterns over time, this study contrasted two methods of curve number (CN) calculation, which estimated runoff from rainfall events, from 2006-2020. The conventional calculation method used a look-up table and tracked land use/land cover change. This method resulted in static tables from various inputs such as soil type, surface imperviousness, slope, and crop phenology to estimate runoff versus infiltration. These tables allowed for phenology specific curve numbers and accounted for various farming techniques but required many inputs and lacked flexibility to include seasonal variations in vegetation. In contrast, the dynamic method is a more modern and simple calculation employing normalized difference vegetation index (NDVI) data from Landsat 5, Landsat 7, and Landsat 8 satellites compiled over the rainy season each year to calculate curve numbers based off seasonal vegetation. This dynamic method allowed for more precise analysis of runoff variability because NDVI is a more accurate, real-time measurement for land cover and it could be calculated with greater temporal detail. The results will allow decision makers to make more informed decisions on resiliency strategies to address future flooding.

Trista Brophy↗

NASA NTRS2013

A 4-D Climatology (1979-2009) of the Monthly Tropospheric Aerosol Optical Depth Distribution over the Mediterranean Region from a Comparative Evaluation and Blending of Remote Sensing and Model Products

Since the 1980s several spaceborne sensors have been used to retrieve the aerosol optical depth (AOD) over the Mediterranean region. In parallel, AOD climatologies coming from different numerical model simulations are now also available, permitting to distinguish the contribution of several aerosol types to the total AOD. In this work, we perform a comparative analysis of this unique multiyear database in terms of total AOD and of its apportionment by the five main aerosol types (soil dust, seasalt, sulfate, black and organic carbon). We use 9 different satellite-derived monthly AOD products: NOAA/AVHRR, SeaWiFS (2 products), TERRA/MISR, TERRA/MODIS, AQUA/MODIS, ENVISAT/MERIS, PARASOL/POLDER and MSG/SEVIRI, as well as 3 more historical datasets: NIMBUS7/CZCS, TOMS (onboard NIMBUS7 and Earth- Probe) and METEOSAT/MVIRI. Monthly model datasets include the aerosol climatology from Tegen et al. (1997), the climate-chemistry models LMDz-OR-INCA and RegCM-4, the multi-model mean coming from the ACCMIP exercise, and the reanalyses GEMS and MACC. Ground-based Level- 2 AERONET AOD observations from 47 stations around the basin are used here to evaluate the model and satellite data. The sensor MODIS (on AQUA and TERRA) has the best average AOD scores over this region, showing a relevant spatio-temporal variability and highlighting high dust loads over Northern Africa and the sea (spring and summer), and sulfate aerosols over continental Europe (summer). The comparison also shows limitations of certain datasets (especially MERIS and SeaWiFS standard products). Models reproduce the main patterns of the AOD variability over the basin. The MACC reanalysis is the closest to AERONET data, but appears to underestimate dust over Northern Africa, where RegCM-4 is found closer to MODIS thanks to its interactive scheme for dust emissions. The vertical dimension is also investigated using the CALIOP instrument. This study confirms differences of vertical distribution between dust aerosols showing a large vertical spread, and other continental and marine aerosols which are confined in the boundary layer. From this compilation, we propose a 4-D blended product from model and satellite data, consisting in monthly time series of 3-D aerosol distribution at a 50 km horizontal resolution over the Euro-Mediterranean marine and continental region for the 2003-2009 period. The product is based on the total AOD from AQUA/MODIS, apportioned into sulfates, black and organic carbon from the MACC reanalysis, and into dust and sea-salt aerosols from RegCM-4 simulations, which are distributed vertically based on CALIOP climatology.We extend the 2003-2009 reconstruction to the past up to 1979 using the 2003-2009 average and applying the decreasing trend in sulfate aerosols from LMDz-OR-INCA, whose AOD trends over Europe and the Mediterranean are median among the ACCMIP models. Finally optical properties of the different aerosol types in this region are proposed from Mie calculations so that this reconstruction can be included in regional climate models for aerosol radiative forcing and aerosol-climate studies.

troposphere↗

NASA NTRS1972

A communication link between the GIM data base and a general application program

Utilizing the extract verb of GIM causes the requested information to be extracted from the GIM base and written on to tape. When the GIM extract has completed, a FORTRAN program is then compiled and executed. This program reads the tape generated by GIM, formats and prints the extracted data on the line printer. When an end of file on the extracted tape is encountered the job is terminated.

Argo, W. V.↗

NASA NTRS1976

Planning for a data base system to support satellite conceptual design

The conceptual design of an automated satellite design data base system is presented. The satellite catalog in the system includes data for all earth orbital satellites funded to the hardware stage for launch between 1970 and 1980, and provides a concise compilation of satellite capabilities and design parameters. The cost of satellite subsystems and components will be added to the base. Data elements are listed and discussed. Sensor and science and applications opportunities catalogs will be included in the data system. Capabilities of the BASIS storage, retrieval, and analysis system are used in the system design.

Claydon, C. R.↗

NASA NTRS2022

A Census of Stars and Disks in Corona Australis

We have performed a census of the young stellar populations near the Corona Australis molecular cloud using photometric and kinematic data from several sources, particularly Gaia EDR3, and spectroscopy of hundreds of candidate members. We have compiled a catalog of 393 members of Corona Australis, (39 at >M6), 293 (36) of which are spectroscopically classified for the first time in this work. We find that Corona Australis can be described in terms of two stellar populations, a younger one (a few megayears) that is partially embedded in the cloud (the Coronet Cluster) and an older one (∼15 Myr) that surrounds and extends beyond the cloud (Upper Corona Australis). These populations exhibit similar space velocities, and we find no evidence for distinct kinematic populations in Corona Australis, in contrast to a recent study based on Gaia DR2. The distribution of spectral types in Corona Australis reaches a maximum at M5 (∼0.15 M⊙), indicating that the initial mass function has a similar characteristic mass as other nearby star-forming regions. Finally, we have compiled mid-infrared photometry from the Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer and the Spitzer Space Telescope for the members of Corona Australis, and we have used those data to identify and classify their circumstellar disks. Excesses are detected for 122 stars, one-third of which are reported for the first time in this work.

T L Esplin↗

NASA NTRS2016

High-Performance Reaction Wheel Optimization for Fine-Pointing Space Platforms: Minimizing Induced Vibration Effects on Jitter Performance plus Lessons Learned from Hubble Space Telescope for Current and Future Spacecraft Applications

The Hubble Space Telescope (HST) applies large-diameter optics (2.5-m primary mirror) for diffraction-limited resolution spanning an extended wavelength range (approx. 100-2500 nm). Its Pointing Control System (PCS) Reaction Wheel Assemblies (RWAs), in the Support Systems Module (SSM), acquired an unprecedented set of high-sensitivity Induced Vibration (IV) data for 5 flight-certified RWAs: dwelling at set rotation rates. Focused on 4 key ratios, force and moment harmonic values (in 3 local principal directions) are extracted in the RWA operating range (0-3000 RPM). The IV test data, obtained under ambient lab conditions, are investigated in detail, evaluated, compiled, and curve-fitted; variational trends, core causes, and unforeseen anomalies are addressed. In aggregate, these values constitute a statistically-valid basis to quantify ground test-to-test variations and facilitate extrapolations to on-orbit conditions. Accumulated knowledge of bearing-rotor vibrational sources, corresponding harmonic contributions, and salient elements of IV key variability factors are discussed. An evolved methodology is presented for absolute assessments and relative comparisons of macro-level IV signal magnitude due to micro-level construction-assembly geometric details/imperfections stemming from both electrical drive and primary bearing design parameters. Based upon studies of same-size/similar-design momentum wheels' IV changes, upper estimates due to transitions from ground tests to orbital conditions are derived. Recommended HST RWA choices are discussed relative to system optimization/tradeoffs of Line-Of-Sight (LOS) vector-pointing focal-plane error driven by higher IV transmissibilities through low-damped structural dynamics that stimulate optical elements. Unique analytical disturbance results for orbital HST accelerations are described applicable to microgravity efforts. Conclusions, lessons learned, historical context/insights, and perspectives on future applications are given; these previously unpublished data and findings represents a valuable resource for fine-pointing spacecraft or space-based platforms using RWAs, Control Moment Gyros (CMGs), Momentum Wheels, or other ball-bearing-based rotational units.

Hasha, Martin D.↗

NASA NTRS2013

Monitoring Regional Forest Disturbances across the US with near Real Time MODIS NDVI Products Resident to the ForWarn Forest Threat Early Warning System

Forest threats across the US have become increasingly evident in recent years. Sometimes these have resulted in regionally evident disturbance progressions (e.g., from drought, bark beetle outbreaks, and wildfires) that can occur across multiyear durations and have resulted in extensive forest overstory mortality. In addition to stand replacement disturbances, other forests are subject to ephemeral, sometimes yearly defoliation from various insects and varying types and intensities of ephemeral damage from storms. Sometimes, after prolonged severe disturbance, signs of recovery in terms of Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI) can occur. The growing prominence and threat of forest disturbances in part have led to the formation and implementation of the 2003 Healthy Forest Restoration Act which mandated that national forest threat early warning system be developed and deployed. In response, the US Forest Service collaborated with NASA, DOE Oakridge National Laboratory, and the USGS Eros Data Center to build and roll-out the near real time ForWarn early warning system for monitoring regionally evident forest disturbances. Given the diversity of disturbance types, severities, and durations, ForWarn employs multiple historical baselines that are used with current NDVI to derive a suite of six forest change products that are refreshed every 8 days. ForWarn employs daily quarter kilometer MODIS NDVI data from the Aqua and Terra satellites, including MOD13 data for deriving historical baseline NDVIs and eMODIS 7 NDVI for compiling current NDVI. In doing so, the Time Series Product Tool and the Phenological Parameters Estimation Tool are used to temporally de-noise, fuse, and aggregate current and historical MODIS NDVIs into 24 day composites refreshed every 8 days with 46 dates of products per year. The 24 day compositing interval enables disturbances to be detected, while minimizing the frequency of residual atmospheric contamination. Forest change products are computed versus the previous 1, previous 3, and all previous years in the MODIS record for a given 24 day interval. Other "weekly" forest change products include one computed using an adaptive length compositing method for quicker detection of disturbances, two others that adjust for seasonal fluctuations in normal vegetation phenology (e.g., early versus late springs). This overall approach enables forest disturbance dynamics from a variety of regionally evident biotic and abiotic forest disturbances to be viewed and assessed through the calendar year. The change products are also being utilized for forest change trend analysis and for developing regional forest overstory mortality products. ForWarn's forest change products are used to alert forest health specialists about new forest disturbances. Such alerts are also typically based on available Landsat, aerial, and ground data as well as communications with forest health specialists and previous experience. ForWarn products have been used to detect and track many types of regional disturbances to multiple forest types, including defoliation from caterpillars and severe storms, as well as mortality from both biotic and abiotic agents (e.g., bark beetles, drought, fire, anthropogenic clearing). ForWarn offers products that could be combined with other geospatial data on forest biomass to assess forest disturbance carbon impacts within the conterminous US.

Spruce, Joseph P.↗

NASA NTRS1971

Compilation of ultraviolet photoabsorption cross sections for atoms between 5 and 3500 A

Photoabsorption cross section data as function of wavelength for 24 atoms

Hudson, R. D.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The NASA Open Science Data Repository: Biomedical Fair Data, Analysis Tools, User Communities, Publications, and Discoveries for Deep Space Missions

Increased biomedical risks and challenges associated with deep space missions require new knowledge discovery, new health countermeasures, and development of novel ecosystems, life support, crop production, and biomedical support capabilities. To meet NASA’s Moon to Mars strategic program goals for Human and Biological Sciences, findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable (FAIR), and maximally open-access data is going to be required to enable humanity to thrive in deep space. Indeed, this cornerstone perspective on FAIR and maximally open access data was also recommended in the recent 2023-2032 Decadal Survey from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The NASA Open Science Data Repository (OSDR) is a maximally open access and FAIR database, and meets various scientific, technical, and operational spaceflight needs. It offers public users and submitters the ability to upload, download, search, share, analyze, and visualize data across ‘omics, physiological, phenotypic, behavioral, bioimaging, video, and environmental monitoring telemetry datasets. OSDR includes NASA GeneLab, NASA Ames Life Sciences Data Archive, and the NASA Biological Institutional Scientific Collection. OSDR has >455 studies with datasets from model organisms and non-NASA human astronauts. There are ~12 datasets from the Inspiration 4 (I4) mission, spanning metagenomics, comprehensive metabolic panels, clonal hematopoiesis, spatial transcriptomics, proteomics, and cytokine panels. In the interest of data privacy, two I4 datasets have raw FASTQ and FASTA files relating to the epitranscriptome, and a new request feature is live in OSDR (with a backend review process established) which was developed based on industry norms. OSDR also recently began a collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) to scientifically curate and make available >200 terabytes of human and model organism space-relevant data. The OSDR submission portal is designed to ingest and curate ~25 ‘omics assay data types, and ~50 physiological-phenotypic-imaging assay data types, spanning ultrasonography, micro-computed tomography, histology, morphometric photography, rebound tonometry, gait analysis, optical coherence tomography, novel object recognition, flow cytometry, and immunohistochemistry. A suite of analysis tools are available for OSDR users including: 1) an Environmental Data Application to compare radiation, CO2, relative humidity, temperature, and other telemetry across missions and subjects, 2) the RadLab database, a collaboration between NASA, ESA, the German and Italian Space Agencies, and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, which compiles radiation measurements relevant to human spaceflight and provides tools for accessing and manipulating the data, and 3) a Multi-study visualization tool which enables users to look across and combine GeneLab’s omics datasets across different experiments and missions. There are ~600 volunteer OSDR Analysis Working Group (AWG) members who: 1) provide feedback on scientific standards for reuse (subject and assay metadata; processing pipelines; dataset formats and uniformed structures for machine-readability), and 2) collaborate to mine-reuse OSDR data conducting scientific analysis. OSDR has enabled 60 publications as of September 2023, many directly from AWG collaborations most notably the Cell Press package in 2020. Lastly, there are at least 15 articles which mine OSDR data part of a package of ~50 articles across Nature Portfolio with research stemming from I4, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, NASA Space Biology, and the NASA Human Research Program.

space biology↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Open Science Data Repository: Biomedical FAIR Data, Analysis Tools, User Communities, and Discoveries for Deep Space Missions

Increased biomedical risks and challenges associated with deep space missions require new knowledge discovery, new health countermeasures, and development of novel ecosystems, life support, crop production, and biomedical support capabilities. To meet NASA’s Moon to Mars strategic program goals for Human and Biological Sciences, findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable (FAIR), and maximally open-access data is going to be required to enable humanity to thrive in deep space. Indeed, this cornerstone perspective on FAIR and maximally open access data was also recommended in the recent 2023-2032 Decadal Survey from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering, and Medicine. The NASA Open Science Data Repository (OSDR) is a maximally open access and FAIR database, and meets various scientific, technical, and operational spaceflight needs. It offers public users and submitters the ability to upload, download, search, share, analyze, and visualize data across ‘omics, physiological, phenotypic, behavioral, bioimaging, video, and environmental monitoring telemetry datasets. OSDR includes NASA GeneLab, NASA Ames Life Sciences Data Archive, and the NASA Biological Institutional Scientific Collection. OSDR has >455 studies with datasets from model organisms and non-NASA human astronauts. There are ~12 datasets from the Inspiration 4 (I4) mission, spanning metagenomics, comprehensive metabolic panels, clonal hematopoiesis, spatial transcriptomics, proteomics, and cytokine panels. In the interest of data privacy, two I4 datasets have raw FASTQ and FASTA files relating to the epitranscriptome, and a new request feature is live in OSDR (with a backend review process established) which was developed based on industry norms. OSDR also recently began a collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA) to scientifically curate and make available >200 terabytes of human and model organism space-relevant data. The OSDR submission portal is designed to ingest and curate ~25 ‘omics assay data types, and ~50 physiological-phenotypic-imaging assay data types, spanning ultrasonography, micro-computed tomography, histology, morphometric photography, rebound tonometry, gait analysis, optical coherence tomography, novel object recognition, flow cytometry, and immunohistochemistry. A suite of analysis tools are available for OSDR users including: 1) an Environmental Data Application to compare radiation, CO2, relative humidity, temperature, and other telemetry across missions and subjects, 2) the RadLab database, a collaboration between NASA, ESA, the German and Italian Space Agencies, and the Bulgarian Academy of Sciences, which compiles radiation measurements relevant to human spaceflight and provides tools for accessing and manipulating the data, and 3) a Multi-study visualization tool which enables users to look across and combine GeneLab’s omics datasets across different experiments and missions. There are ~600 volunteer OSDR Analysis Working Group (AWG) members who: 1) provide feedback on scientific standards for reuse (subject and assay metadata; processing pipelines; dataset formats and uniformed structures for machine-readability), and 2) collaborate to mine-reuse OSDR data conducting scientific analysis. OSDR has enabled 60 publications as of September 2023, many directly from AWG collaborations most notably the Cell Press package in 2020. Lastly, there are at least 15 articles which mine OSDR data part of a package of ~50 articles across Nature Portfolio with research stemming from I4, the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, NASA Space Biology, and the NASA Human Research Program.

open access↗

NASA NTRS1994

The software analysis project for the Office of Human Resources

There were two major sections of the project for the Office of Human Resources (OHR). The first section was to conduct a planning study to analyze software use with the goal of recommending software purchases and determining whether the need exists for a file server. The second section was analysis and distribution planning for retirement planning computer program entitled VISION provided by NASA Headquarters. The software planning study was developed to help OHR analyze the current administrative desktop computing environment and make decisions regarding software acquisition and implementation. There were three major areas addressed by the study: current environment new software requirements, and strategies regarding the implementation of a server in the Office. To gather data on current environment, employees were surveyed and an inventory of computers were produced. The surveys were compiled and analyzed by the ASEE fellow with interpretation help by OHR staff. New software requirements represented a compilation and analysis of the surveyed requests of OHR personnel. Finally, the information on the use of a server represents research done by the ASEE fellow and analysis of survey data to determine software requirements for a server. This included selection of a methodology to estimate the number of copies of each software program required given current use and estimated growth. The report presents the results of the computing survey, a description of the current computing environment, recommenations for changes in the computing environment, current software needs, management advantages of using a server, and management considerations in the implementation of a server. In addition, detailed specifications were presented for the hardware and software recommendations to offer a complete picture to OHR management. The retirement planning computer program available to NASA employees will aid in long-range retirement planning. The intended audience is the NASA civil service employee with several years until retirement. The employee enters current salary and savings information as well as goals concerning salary at retirement, assumptions on inflation, and the return on investments. The program produces a picture of the employee's retirement income from all sources based on the assumptions entered. A session showing features of the program was conducted for key personnel at the Center. After analysis, it was decided to offer the program through the Learning Center starting in August 1994.

Tureman, Robert L., Jr.↗

NASA NTRS1993

How diverse is the asteroid belt?

For approximately twenty years, many different asteroid taxonomies, which used many different observational data sets, have been developed to try to group asteroids into classes that contain members with similar spectral characteristics. However, to understand the structure of the asteroid belt, the resulting classes are only useful if they are grouping together asteroids with somewhat similar mineralogies and thermal histories. Until recently, these taxonomies have focused on spectral reflectance data from 0.3 to 1.1 microns and visual albedo. But in the last five years, observational data sets (e.g., 0.8 to 2.5 microns spectra, CCD spectra, 3 microns spectra, and radar albedos) for a small number of asteroids were compiled that can give a better mineralogical interpretation, but whose use in asteroid taxonomy was relatively limited. Analyses of these 'supplementary' data sets show that most asteroid classes contain members with different compositions and/or thermal histories. To understand the diversity of the asteroid belt, the number of objects with these observations must be expanded and used in the next generation of taxonomies.

Burbine, Thomas H.↗

NASA NTRS1992

Indexes of maps of the planets and satellites, 1992

More than 1,600 maps of the surfaces of planets and satellites of the solar system have been produced by the U.S. geological survey and by the defense mapping agency. This collection of maps is a unique research that has been derived from maps and data returned by a series of remarkably successful space missions. These indexes have been compiled to provide a comprehensive listing of all published maps. Many maps are out of print but copies reside in many libraries and regional planetary imaging facilities. These indexes are a valuable resource for studies of the planets and satellites, and are an important starting point for the acquisition of cartographic data.

Inge, J. L.↗