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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 109 records · Page 6

Update on Apollo Data Restoration by the NSSDC and the PDS Lunar Data Node

The Lunar Data Node (LDN) , under the auspices of the Geosciences Node of the Planetary Data System (PDS) and the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC), is continuing its efforts to recover and restore Apollo science data. The data being restored are in large part archived with NSSDC on older media, but unarchived data are also being recovered from other sources. They are typically on 7- or 9-track magnetic tapes, often in obsolete formats, or held on microfilm, microfiche, or paper documents. The goal of the LDN is to restore these data from their current form, which is difficult for most researchers to access, into common digital formats with all necessary supporting data (metadata) and archive the data sets with PDS. Restoration involves reading the data from the original media, deciphering the data formats to produce readable digital data and converting the data into usable tabular formats. Each set of values in the table must then be understood in terms of the quantity measured and the units used. Information on instrument properties, operational history, and calibrations is gathered and added to the data set, along with pertinent references, contacts, and other ancillary documentation. The data set then undergoes a peer review and the final validated product is archived with PDS. Although much of this effort has concentrated on data archived at NSSDC in the 1970's, we have also recovered data and information that were never sent to NSSDC. These data, retrieved from various outside sources, include raw and reduced Gamma-Ray Spectrometer data from Apollos 15 and 16, information on the Apollo 17 Lunar Ejecta And Meteorites experiment, Dust Detector data from Apollos 11, 12, 14, and I5, raw telemetry tapes from the Apollo ALSEPs, and Weekly Status Reports for all the Apollo missions. These data are currently being read or organized, and supporting data is being gathered. We are still looking for the calibrated heat flow data from Apollos 15 and 17 for the period 1975-1977, any assistance or information on these data would be welcome. NSSDC has recently been tasked to release its hard-copy archive, comprising photography, microfilm, and microfiche. The details are still being discussed, but we are concentrating on recovering the valuable lunar data from these materials while they are still readily accessible. We have identified the most critical of these data and written a LASER proposal to fund their restoration. Included in this effort are data from the Apollo 15 and 16 Mass Spectrometers and the Apollo 17 Par-UV Spectrometer and ancillary information on the Apollo 17 Surface Electrical Properties Experiment.

Williams, David R.↗

JPL Space Telecommunications Radio System Operating Environment

A flight-qualified implementation of a Software Defined Radio (SDR) Operating Environment for the JPL-SDR built for the CoNNeCT Project has been developed. It is compliant with the NASA Space Telecommunications Radio System (STRS) Architecture Standard, and provides the software infrastructure for STRS compliant waveform applications. This software provides a standards-compliant abstracted view of the JPL-SDR hardware platform. It uses industry standard POSIX interfaces for most functions, as well as exposing the STRS API (Application Programming In terface) required by the standard. This software includes a standardized interface for IP components instantiated within a Xilinx FPGA (Field Programmable Gate Array). The software provides a standardized abstracted interface to platform resources such as data converters, file system, etc., which can be used by STRS standards conformant waveform applications. It provides a generic SDR operating environment with a much smaller resource footprint than similar products such as SCA (Software Communications Architecture) compliant implementations, or the DoD Joint Tactical Radio Systems (JTRS).

Lux, James P.↗

Radiation hardened successive-approximation ADC with error detection circuits - 238

For several decades, radiation-hardened-by-design (RHBD) techniques have been developed to meet the design requirements of irradiating environment in nuclear power plants. Improvements on the circuit side for radiation sensors in performance, chip size, and radiation hardening ability have been adopted in current plant systems; however, next generation reactors and/or preparation for severe events in existing reactors require advanced circuit structures that can provide relatively long viability in harsh conditions. In order to maintain performances of electronics in high radiating environments, we propose to develop a small-area, low resource-overhead data-converter architecture that is immune to radiation impact events, an architecture that includes three kinds of novel radiation-hardened (rad-hard) designs for each analog and digital circuit in an ADC structure: a) error detectable tri-state buffer for flip flop against DSET, b) error detection storage in flip flop against SEU, and c) analog algorithm for the analog parts of an SAR ADC. The novel ADC architecture including the three RHBD techniques was implemented in a standard 180 nm CMOS technology with a 1.8 V supply voltage. Simulation results show that the techniques can successfully recognize errors induced by radiation impact events. The static power consumption was 123 {mu}W with the sampling rate 36 MS/s and resolution of 8 bits. The performances could be highly advanced under fine-tune designs. (authors)

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Risk-informed Graded Approach for Reliability and Performance Assessment of Sensor and Instrumentation Systems within Advanced Condition Monitoring Technologies

Advanced condition monitoring (ACM) technologies, such as digital twins, are innovative strategies designed to provide real-time health insights, including the remaining useful life of components. The primary goal of ACM is to predict and alert operators to potential functional failures before they occur. ACM systems achieve this by integrating predictive models with various sensor instrumentation, analog-to-digital converters, data warehouses, and data pre-processors. These sensor and instrumentation systems (SIS) are essential for forming a comprehensive understanding of component conditions and ensuring the predictive success of ACM programs. Introducing new technologies like ACM involves varying degrees of risk that can impact plant reliability. Therefore, risk mitigation should be commensurate with the performance and reliability of the developed technology, following a risk-informed graded approach (RIGA). Establishing a RIGA process requires a clear understanding of the hazards and reliability of all subsystems, including their interdependencies and potential impacts on the overall system. Given the critical role of SIS in ACM, this work reviews hazard identification and reliability quantification methods for SIS. It also considers these methods' implications when developing a RIGA process for ACM.

22 - GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Analysis on Evaluations of Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s Wave Energy Converter’s Field Data Using WEC-Sim and Gazebo: A Simulation Tool Comparison

Although many studies have validated wave energy converter (WEC) numerical models against scaled prototype experimental data, there remains a notable lack of validation using data from full-scale deployed WECs. This paper compares two numerical models of Monterey Bay Aquarium Research Institute’s Wave Energy Converter (MBARI-WEC), a two-body point absorber with an electro-hydraulic power take-off system (PTO). The models are implemented in WEC-Sim/Simscape and Gazebo Simulator. A statistical analysis of the models was performed, and field results were obtained to compare the models’ accuracy in predicting the RMS piston velocity, RMS motor speed, and mean electric power compared to field data for 56 observations across varying sea states. The Gazebo model demonstrated a closer agreement across all three parameters for a majority of the observations. When compared to the field data, the Gazebo and WEC-Sim models exhibited average mean electric power overestimations of 13% and 22%, respectively.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗

Science data systems

Video film converter for data processing, linear feedback shift registers, and woven plated wire memory storage units for science missions

MEMORY STORAGE UNIT↗

Fast Asynchronous Data Communication Via Fiber Optics

Transmitter and receiver devised for asynchronous digital communication via optical fiber at rates above 100 Mb/s. Transmitter converts parallel data to serial for high-speed transmission; receiver recovers clock signal and converts data back to parallel. No phase-lock loops used. New receiver design avoids over-sampling altogether. Local sampling oscillator operating nominally at clock frequency generates N clock signals of equally spaced phase, used to clock incoming data into N separate shift registers.

Bergman, Larry A.↗

The ARM Data System and Archive

Every observationally based research program needs a way to collect data from instruments, convert the data from its raw format into a more usable format, apply quality control, process it into higher-order data products, store the data, and make the data available to its scientific community. This data flow is illustrated pictorially in Fig. 11-1. These are the basic requirements of any scientific data system, and ARM’s data system would have to address these requirements and more. This research provides one view of the development of the ARM data system, which includes the ARM Data Archive, and some of the notable decisions that were made along the way.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

Radiometric resolution for monitoring vegetation: How many bits are needed?

The significance of the various number of radiometric quantizing levels required for satellite monitoring of vegetation resources was evaluated by using in situ collected spectral reflectance data, an atmospheric radiative transfer simulation model, and a satellite sensor simulation model. Reflectance data were converted to radiance data; passed through a model atmosphere to an altitude of 706 km; and subsequently quantized at 16, 32, 64, 128, 256, and 512 digital count levels for Thematic Mapper bands TM3(0.63 - 0.69 microns) and TM4(0.76 - 0.90 microns). The simulated digital count data were regressed against the in situ biological data to quantify the relationship between quantizing levels.

Tucker, C. J.↗

Documentation for the machine-readable character coded version of the SKYMAP catalogue

The SKYMAP catalogue is a compilation of astronomical data prepared primarily for purposes of attitude guidance for satellites. In addition to the SKYMAP Master Catalogue data base, a software package of data base management and utility programs is available. The tape version of the SKYMAP Catalogue, as received by the Astronomical Data Center (ADC), contains logical records consisting of a combination of binary and EBCDIC data. Certain character coded data in each record are redundant in that the same data are present in binary form. In order to facilitate wider use of all SKYMAP data by the astronomical community, a formatted (character) version was prepared by eliminating all redundant character data and converting all binary data to character form. The character version of the catalogue is described. The document is intended to fully describe the formatted tape so that users can process the data problems and guess work; it should be distributed with any character version of the catalogue.

Warren, W. H., Jr.↗

Radiometric resolution for monitoring vegetation - how many bits are needed

The number of radiometric quantizing levels required for satellite monitoring of vegetation resources was evaluated by using in situ collected spectral reflectance data, an atmospheric radiative transfer simulation model, and a satellite sensor simulation model. Reflectance data were converted to radiance data, passed through a model atmosphere to an altitude of 706 km, and subsequently quantized at 16, 32, 64, 128, 256 and 512 digital count levels for Thematic Mapper bands TM3 (0.63-0.69 microns) and TM4 (0.76-0.90 microns). The simulated digital count data were regressed against in situ biological data to quantify the relationship between quantizing levels. Results of the analysis demonstrated that solar zenith angle has an effect on the quantization equivalent change in reflectance, that 256 quantizing levels gave a 1-3% improvement per channel over 64 quantizing levels, and that 256 quantizing levels gave a 1% improvement per channel over 128 quantizing levels. No improvements were found for 256 versus 512 quantizing levels.

Tucker, C. J.↗

UWB Tracking System Design for Lunar/Mars Exploration

This paper describes a design effort for a prototype ultra-wideband (UWB) tracking system that is currently under development at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC). The system is being studied for use in tracking of lunar/Mars rovers during early exploration missions when satellite navigation systems are not available. The UWB technology is exploited to implement the tracking system due to its properties such as high data rate, fine time resolution, low power spectral density, and multipath immunity. A two-cluster prototype design using commercially available UWB products is proposed to implement the Angle Of Arrival (AOA) tracking methodology in this research effort. An AOA technique using the Time Difference Of Arrival (TDOA) information is utilized for location estimation in the prototype system, not only to exploit the precise time resolution possible with UWB signals, but also to eliminate the need for synchronization between the transmitter and the receiver. After the UWB radio at each cluster is used to obtain the TDOA estimates from the UWB signal sent from the target, the TDOA data is converted to AOA data to find the angle of arrival, assuming this is a far field application. Since the distance between two clusters is known, the target position is computed by a simple triangulation. Simulations show that the average tracking error at a range of 610 meters is 2.7595 meters, less than 0.5% of the tracking range. Outdoor tests to track the SCOUT vehicle (The Science Crew Operations and Utility Testbed) near the Meteor Crater, Flagstaff, Arizona were performed on September 12-13, 2005. The tracking performance was obtained with less than 1% tracking error at ranges up to 2000 feet. No RF interference with on-board GPS, video, voice and telemetry systems was detected. Outdoor tests demonstrated the UWB tracking capability.

Ni, Jianjun↗