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DOE OSTI2020

CY2019 Annual Closure Monitoring Report for Corrective Action Unit 98, Frenchman Flat, Underground Test Area, Nevada National Security Site, Nevada (January 2019–December 2019), Revision 1

Three types of monitoring are performed for CAU 98: water quality, water level, and institutional control. These are monitored to determine whether the URs remain protective of human health and the environment, and to ensure that the regulatory boundary objectives are being met. Monitoring data will be used in the future, once multiple years of data are available, to evaluate consistency with the groundwater flow and contaminant transport models because the contaminant boundaries calculated with the models are the primary basis of the UR boundaries. Six wells were sampled for water-quality monitoring in 2019. Contaminants of concern were detected only in the two source/plume wells already known to contain contamination as a result of a radionuclide migration experiment. Tritium concentrations in both of these wells, RNM-2S and UE-5n, remain above the Safe Drinking Water Act maximum contaminant level of 20,000 picocuries per liter but declined in 2019 as compared to measurements in 2018. All other contaminants of concern are below the minimum detection level plus analytical error. The water-level monitoring network includes 16 wells. Depth to water measured in 2019 is generally consistent with recent measurements for all wells. Many wells continue to exhibit a long-term downward trend in water level, though changes from 2018 to 2019 are minimal. The sharp 2016 decline in water level in Well ER-5-3-2 remains unexplained, with the lower level persisting through 2019. Rising water-level trends continue to be observed in Well ER-5-3 deep piezometer and former water supply Well WW-5A. Water supply Well WW-5B experienced a rise in water level as a result of an absence of pumping in the first part of the year (due to a mechanical problem), whereas water levels declined in WW-4 and WW-4A in response to greater pumping in 2019. Institutional control monitoring confirmed the URs are recorded in U.S. Department of Energy and U.S. Air Force land management systems, and that no activities within Frenchman Flat basin are occurring that could potentially affect the contaminant boundaries. Survey of groundwater resources in basins surrounding Frenchman Flat similarly identify no current or pending development that would indicate the need to increase monitoring activities or would otherwise cause concern for the closure decision. The URs continue to prevent exposure of the public, workers, and the environment to contaminants of concern by preventing use of potentially contaminated groundwater.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

NASA NTRS2016

Development and Characterization of a Small Spacecraft Electro-Optic Scanner for Free-Space Laser Communications

Emergent data-intensive missions coupled with dramatic reductions in spacecraft size plus an increasing number of space-based missions necessitates new high performance, compact and low cost communications technology. Free space optical communications offer advantages including orders of magnitude increase for data rate performance, increased security, immunity to jamming and lack of frequency allocation requirements when compared with conventional radio frequency (RF) means. The spatial coherence and low divergence associated with the optical frequencies of laser communications lends themselves to superior performance, but this increased directionality also creates one of the primary technical challenges in establishing a laser communications link by repeatedly and reliably pointing the beam onto the receive aperture. Several solutions have emerged from wide angle (slow) mechanical articulation systems, fine (fast) steering mirrors and rotating prisms, inertial compensation gyros and vibration isolation cancellation systems, but each requires moving components and imparts a measured amount of burden on the host platform. The complexity, cost and size of current mechanically scanned solutions limits their platform applicability, and restricts the feasibility of deploying optical communications payloads on very compact spacecraft employing critical systems. A high speed, wide angle, non-mechanical solution is therefore desirable. The purpose of this work is to share the development, testing, and demonstration of a breadboard prototype electro-optic (EO) scanned laser-communication link (see Figure 1). This demonstration is a step toward realizing ultra-low Size, Weight and Power (SWaP) SmallSat/MicroSat EO non-mechanical laser beam steering modules for high bandwidth ( greater than Gbps) free-space data links operating in the 1550 nm wavelength bands. The elimination of all moving parts will dramatically reduce SWaP and cost, increase component lifetime and reliability, and simplify the system design of laser communication modules. This paper describes the target mission architectures and requirements (few cubic centimeters of volume, 10's of grams of weight with milliwatts of power) and design of the beam steering module. Laboratory metrology is used to determine the component performance including horizontal and vertical resolution (20urad) as a function of control voltage (see Figure 2), transition time (0.1-1ms), pointing repeatability and optic insertion loss. A test bed system demonstration, including a full laser communications link, is conducted. The capabilities of this new EO beam steerer provide an opportunity to dramatically improve space communications through increased utilization of laser technology on smaller platforms than were previously attainable.

Laser Optical Communications↗

NASA NTRS2018

Curating NASA's Past, Present, and Future Extraterrestrial Sample Collections

As codified in NASA Policy Directive 7100.10F, the Astromaterials Acquisition and Curation Office at NASA Johnson Space Center (hereafter JSC Curation) is charged with curation of all extraterrestrial material under NASA control, including future NASA missions. JSC Curation curates all or part of nine astromaterial collections in seven clean room suites: (1) Apollo Samples (1969; ISO 6-7), (2) Luna Samples (from USSR; 1972; ISO 7), (3) Antarctic Meteorites (1976; ISO 7), (4) Cosmic Dust (1981; ISO 5), (5) Microparticle Impact Collection (formerly called Space Exposed Hardware; 1985; ISO 5), (6) Genesis Solar Wind Atoms (2004; ISO 4); (7) Stardust Comet Particles (2006; ISO 5), (8) Stardust Interstellar Particles (2006; ISO 5), (9) Hayabusa Asteroid Particles (from JAXA; 2010; ISO 5). In addition to the labs that house the samples, we have installed and maintained a wide variety of facilities and infrastructure required to support the clean-rooms: more than 10 different HEPA-filtered air-handling systems, ultrapure dry gaseous nitrogen systems, an ultrapure water system (UPW) and cleaning facilities to provide clean tools and equipment for the labs. We also have sample preparation facilities for making thin sections, microtome sections, and even focused ion-beam (FIB) sections to meet the research requirements of scientists. To ensure that we are keeping the samples as pristine as possible, we routinely monitor the cleanliness of our clean rooms and infrastructure systems. This monitoring includes: daily monitoring of the quality of our UPW, weekly airborne particle counts in the labs, monthly monitoring of the stable isotope composition of the gaseous N2 system, and annual measurements of inorganic or organic contamination in processing cabinets. We track within our databases the current and ever-changing characteristics of more than 250,000 individual samples across our various collections (including the 19,141 samples on loan to 433 Principal Investigators in 24 countries). The next sample return missions that NASA will participate in are Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx (Origins Spectral Interpretation Resource Identification Security - Regolith Explorer). The designs for a new state-of-the-art suite of clean rooms to house these samples at JSC have been finalized. This includes separate ISO class 5 clean rooms to house each collection, a common ISO class 7 area for general use, an ISO class 7 microtome laboratory, and a separate thin section lab. Additionally, a new cleaning facility is being designed and procedures developed that will allow for enhanced cleaning of cabinets and tools in an inorganically, organically, and biologically clean manner. We are also designing a large multi-purpose Advanced Curation laboratory that will allow us to develop the techniques necessary to fully support the Hayabusa2 and OSIRIS-REx missions, as well as future possible sample return missions (e.g., Lunar Polar Volatiles, Mars, Comet Surface). A micro-CT (micro Computed Tomography) laboratory dedicated to the study of astromaterials has come online within JSC Curation, and we plan to add additional facilities that will enable non-destructive (or minimally-destructive) analyses of astromaterials in the near future (e.g., micro-XRF (micro X-Ray Fluorescence), confocal imaging Raman Spectroscopy). These facilities will be available to: (1) develop sample handling and storage techniques for future sample return missions, (2) be utilized by PET (Positron Emission Tomography) for future sample return missions, (3) for retroactive PET-style analyses of our existing collections, and (4) for periodic assessments of the existing sample collections.

Zeigler, Ryan A.↗

DOE OSTI2026

Feature Engineering and Ensemble Methods for Imbalanced ICS Intrusion Detection: Pipeline Audit and Constrained Evaluation

Industries are becoming increasingly connected and are more vulnerable to cyberattacks due to the widened attack surface. Industrial Control Systems (ICS) are among the most critical sectors that malicious actors can target, as such attacks can cause significant operational disruption and physical damage. It is imperative to detect such attacks as early as possible. This paper evaluates constraint-conditioned optimistic performance estimates for traditional ML models in ICS intrusion detection (i.e., estimates obtained under contiguous, non-shuffled temporal evaluation without test-set alteration, but with pre-split feature engineering that may introduce temporal leakage, due to dataset constraints). Our findings are threefold. First, we quantify how iterative feature engineering affects tree-based ensemble performance and examine how pipeline decisions (split strategy, sampling scope, and cleaning policy) can inflate or reduce reported IDS results under constraint-bound evaluation. Second, we compare intrinsic class-imbalance handling across ensemble models. Third, under our current pipeline constraints (including pre-split feature engineering), CatBoost achieves the best performance on Water Storage Tank (accuracy: 0.9831, class-1 F1: 0.9682), while Light- GBM achieves the best performance on Gas Pipeline (accuracy: 0.9618, class-1 F1: 0.9086).

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗

NASA NTRS2005

Failure Assessment

Three questions to which software developers want accurate, precise answers are "How can the software system fail?", "mat bad things will happen if the software fails?t', and "How many failures will the software experience?". Numerous techniques have been devised to answer these questions; three of the best known are: 1) Software Fault Tree Analysis (SFTA) 2) Software Failure Modes, Effects, and Criticality Analysis (SFMECA 3) Software Fault/Failure Modeling. SFTA and SFMECA have been successfully used to analyze the flight software for a number of robotic planetary exploration missions, including Galileo, Cassini, and Deep Space 1. Given the increasing interest in reusing software components from mission to mission, one of us has developed techniques for reusing the corresponding portions of the SFTA and SFMECA, reducing the effort required to conduct these analyses. SFTA has also been shown to be effective in analyzing the security aspects of software systems; intrusion mechanisms and effects can easily be modeled using these techniques. The Bi- Directional Safety Analysis (BDSA) method combines a forward search (similar to SFMECA) from potential failure modes to their effects, with a backward search (similar to SFTA) from feasible hazards to the contributing causes of each hazard. BDSA offers an efficient way to identify latent failures. Recent work has extended BDSA to product-line applications such as flight-instrumentation displays and developed tool support for the reuse of the failure-analysis artifacts within a product line. BDSA has also been streamlined to support those projects having tight cost and/or schedule constraints for their failure analysis efforts. We discuss lessons learned from practice, describe available tools, and identi@ some future directions for the topic. A substantial amount of research has been devoted to estimating the number of failures that a software system will experience during test and operations, as well as the number of faults that have been inserted into that system during its development. One of us has found that the amount of structural change to a system during its development is strongly related to the number of faults inserted into it. Using techniques requiring no additional effort on the part of the development organization, the required measurements of structural evolution can be easily obtained from a development effort's configuration management system and readily transformed into an estimate of fault content. So far, structure-fault relationships have been identified for source code; current work seeks to examine artifacts available earlier in the lifecycle to determine if similar relationships between structure and fault content can be found. In particular, relationships between requirements change requests and the number of faults inserted into the implemented system would provide a significant improvement in our ability to control software quality during the early development phases.

fault tree↗

NASA NTRS2014

Large Plant Growth Chambers: Flying Soon on a Space Station near You!

The International Space Station (ISS) now has platforms for conducting research on horticultural plant species, and those capabilities continue to grow. The Veggie vegetable production system will be deployed to the ISS in Spring of 2014 to act as an applied research platform with goals of studying food production in space, providing the crew with a source of fresh food, allowing behavioral health and plant microbiology experimentation, and being a source of recreation and enjoyment for the crew. Veggie was conceived, designed, and constructed by Orbital Technologies Corporation (ORBITEC, Madison, WI). Veggie is the largest plant growth chamber that NASA has flown to date, and is capable of growing a wide array of horticultural crops. It was designed for low energy usage, low launch mass and stowage volume, and minimal crew time requirements. The Veggie flight hardware consists of a light cap containing red (630 nanometers), blue, (455 nanometers) and green (530 nanometers) light emitting diodes. Interfacing with the light cap is an extendable bellows baseplate secured to the light cap via magnetic closures and stabilized with extensible flexible arms. The baseplate contains vents allowing air from the ISS cabin to be pulled through the plant growth area by a fan in the light cap. The baseplate holds a Veggie root mat reservoir that will supply water to plant pillows attached via elastic cords. Plant pillows are packages of growth media and seeds that will be sent to ISS dry and installed and hydrated on orbit. Pillows can be constructed in various sizes for different plant types. Watering will be via passive wicking from the root mat to the pillows. Science procedures will include photography or videography, plant thinning, pollination, harvesting, microbial sampling, water sampling, etcetera. Veggie is one of the ISS flight options currently available for research investigations on plants. The Plant Habitat (PH) is being designed and constructed through a NASA-ORBITEC collaboration, and is scheduled to fly on ISS around 2016. This large plant chamber will control light quality, level, and timing, temperature, CO2, relative humidity, and irrigation, while scrubbing ethylene. Additional monitoring capabilities include leaf temperature sensing and root zone moisture and oxygen sensing. The PH light cap will have red (630 nanometers), blue (450 nanometers), green (525 nanometers), far red (730 nanometers) and broad spectrum white light emitting diodes. There will be several internal cameras to monitor and record plant growth and operations.

Space Biology↗

DOE OSTI2025

Diversion Path Analysis: A Proposed Methodology to Develop an MC&A Approach for Liquid-Fueled Molten Salt Reactors

Nuclear material control and accounting (MC&A) is a critical element of both the US Nuclear Regulatory Commission (NRC) and US Department of Energy (DOE)’s domestic safeguards and security requirements. NRC licensees are required, under Title 10 of the Code of Federal Regulations (10 CFR) Part 74 to establish and maintain an MC&A program that captures and records the quantities and locations of special nuclear material (SNM) at the facility. Along with physical protection, MC&A is a key element of domestic nuclear material safeguards that enables the NRC to ensure that SNM is controlled and accounted for. SNM, per 10 CFR Part 74, refers to plutonium, 233 U, and uranium enriched in the isotope 233 U or 235 U, but does not include source material. Periodic physical inventories, coupled with material balance evaluations, are effective and demonstrated tools to account for and detect theft or diversion of SNM in facilities containing SNM in bulk material form (i.e., not in discrete, countable items). Historically in the United States, these types of facilities have included fuel fabrication, conversion, and enrichment facilities. In comparison, reactors have relied on item counting of assemblies and control of SNM while in containment (e.g., a sealed reactor pressure vessel) because, to date, reactor fuel has been in item form. In liquid-fueled molten salt reactors (MSRs), unlike traditional light water reactors (LWRs) or bulk facilities, bulk SNM quantities can change significantly during operation as a result of depletion and transmutation. This introduces challenges to the use of traditional periodic physical inventories and material balance evaluations to detect theft or diversion of SNM in reactors that use SNM in bulk material form. Liquid-fueled (i.e., salt-fueled) MSR facilities are MSRs that use SNM within a salt eutectic as the fuel. The SNM is in a bulk material form any time it is outside of fresh or spent fuel storage containers. Some examples of when SNM will be in bulk form in the facility are during addition of fuel to the reactor system, while fuel is circulating in operation, and while fuel is in a drain tank. Periodic physical inventories and material balance evaluations can likely be effectively applied to many portions of an MSR facility, including all areas where depletion and transmutation are not significantly changing the quantities of SNM within the control area. Within an MSR facility, this would include fresh fuel receipt and loading, waste streams that may contain SNM, irradiated fuel storage outside of the reactor core, and any irradiated fuel processing that may happen after SNM has been removed from the reactor. All of these process steps could rely on measurements of SNM quantities compared with documented inventories. Any discrepancies from predicted (i.e., book) inventories and measured inventories could be quantified as inventory differences, consistent with traditional MC&A guidance from the NRC (e.g., in NUREG-1065 Revision 2, NUREG-2159 Revision 1, and RG 5.29 Revision 2). Within the reactor system, additions and removals to the book inventory include depletion of the SNM (e.g., fission of 235 U), which complicates the use of physical inventories. SNM control, however, can also likely be effectively applied to detect theft of SNM throughout a liquid-fueled MSR facility. To complement these approaches, prior technical reports have identified that a diversion path analysis may be a useful, risk-informed, and performance-based tool to determine suitable elements of an MC&A approach for the reactor system within a liquid-fueled MSR facility.

22 GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA's Moon to Mars Autonomous Habitat Status

NASA is developing a strategy for sending humans to the Mars vicinity, known broadly as the Moon to Mars (M2M) Campaign. A critical part of this campaign is the development of in-space and surface habitation systems capable of substantially extending human presence beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO). Mars missions feature an in-space transit habitat capable of supporting crews of four on ~850-1200-day missions, including transit to and from Mars and time in Mars orbit. Surface and transit habitats are complex elements which must keep crewmembers healthy and productive in deep-space environments with limited resources, long rescue times in contingency situations, and communication delays; all within constrained mass, volume, and power budgets. These habitats provide crew both living and workspace as well as most of the resources needed to support crew life. For deep space habitats, automation needs to be employed due to latency and for significant amounts of time when the habitats are uncrewed. Automation of systems is possible in space applications, but there are limitations. Outside of the Earth’s (or any) magnetosphere, radiation environments are harsh to both the physical hardware and the software components. Radiation (charged particles and ionizing electromagnetic waves) degrades and damages the hardware and causes single event upsets (SEUs) in software. If the hardware is damaged, data can be lost, or control actions not made. For software, SEUs cause algorithms to result in different solutions, or incorrect commands to be sent out. This means that algorithms and hardware used for deep space systems are different than what is used on Earth. Radiation-tolerant hardware is generations behind the current state-of-the-art hardware. Recent NASA missions, such as James Webb Space Telescope, continue to rely on older technologies such as the RAD750 processor, and the most advanced processors are still single core and less than 1.5 GHz. There have been attempts to use higher performance processors, but these often take multiple mitigation steps to handle the radiation environments, which limits the processing power and/or throughput. Current techniques for radiation mitigation have been redundancies, voting, physical separation of hardware, encasing materials, under-clocking hardware, and more. Some radiation mitigation techniques do provide benefits such as having a redundant system to improve the probability that a system will be available when needed. Autonomous software systems will have fewer interactions with humans on deep space missions and therefore need to be able to handle more off-nominal conditions. Microgravity also complicates the autonomous aspects of the mission because autonomous systems are usually built from known deterministic states, but microgravity causes physical objects to shift and move changing the location an autonomous system placed the object. Not only does the software need to be reliable and deterministic, losing resources due to a software error is not only costly but detrimental to reputation. The combination of having lower performance hardware and having to be able to verify and deterministically run software and an ever-changing environment makes deep space autonomous systems more complicated. Multiple gaps have been identified including verification of autonomous software algorithms (including artificial intelligence and machine learning), higher performance processors (graphics and general purpose), high speed networks (onboard and transmissions), memory, power distribution, data security, and variations from these. These gaps need to be closed for more advanced systems to be deployed and reduce the size, weight, and power impacts on the habitats.

Scott B. Tashakkor↗

DOE OSTI2026

Low-Rate Cycling Regeneration Sustains NMC811–Graphite Battery Performance through Extreme Ultrafast Charging

Urban air mobility (UAM) systems, such as electric vertical takeoff and landing (eVTOL) aircraft, require batteries capable of extreme ultrafast charging to support high-frequency operations. Here, in this work, we evaluate the electrochemical stability of NMC811–graphite full cells using a complex mixed-modal protocol designed to simulate the aggressive turnaround demands of UAM missions. We demonstrate that incorporating a periodic low-rate (0.3C) “regeneration” cycle enables cells to maintain 96% capacity retention over 900 cycles, despite repeated exposure to ultrafast pulses. To validate the efficacy of this regeneration mechanism, we performed simplified control experiments comparing continuous 10C charging against a 10C–0.3C interleaved protocol. Advanced characterization reveals that while mechanical particle fracture is pervasive at these rates, the regeneration cycles decelerate the electrochemical degradation by resolving spatially heterogeneous Ni oxidation states and relaxing lithium-ion concentration gradients. These findings provide a vital mechanistic framework for battery operation, proving that restorative charging can effectively delay and mitigate failure in demanding UAM applications.

batteries↗

DOE OSTI2025

A distributed voltage inference framework for cyber-physical attacks detection and localization in active distribution grids

The transition to active distribution grids with real-time monitoring and control depends on the proliferation of advanced communication networks and devices. This paradigm shift towards a cyber-physical architecture also introduces new vulnerabilities for adversaries to exploit and launch sophisticated cyber-physical attacks targeting grid observability. Current research highlights the challenges in distinguishing attacks on voltage phasor or nodal injection measurements and isolating multi-source attack locations in a multiphase distribution grid. The attack detection and localization methods in literature face accuracy issues, applications across diverse attack scenarios, or scalability limits. Here, to bridge these gaps, this paper proposes a distributed Voltage Inference framework for real-time detection and localization of cyber-physical attacks, addressing scalability, adaptability, and accuracy challenges in state-of-the-art methods. The proposed methodology leverages the distributed nature of the Voltage Inference framework through a two-step process of prediction and correction, together with a tractable graph partitioning approach, providing a reliable solution to identify compromised measurement sources and facilitate isolation. Extensive testing on IEEE 13 and 123-node distribution feeders underscores the algorithm’s efficacy, enhancing the security and resilience of active distribution grids against evolving cyber threats. Additionally, Hardware-in-the-Loop (HIL) implementation validates the proposed strategy’s practical applicability in real-world scenarios.

active distribution grids↗

NASA NTRS2023

Plants in Space and Space Crop Production

As astronauts venture farther from Earth, and for longer periods, the space food system will increase in importance. Crop production can supplement a packaged diet to provide additional nutrients and dietary variety for astronauts, and in future missions, bioregenerative approaches may be used to generate a larger percentage of the diet. Plants may also provide behavioural health benefits and assist with other life support functions. Several unique challenges exist for growth of plants in microgravity and on other planetary surfaces like the moon and Mars. Testing with the Veggie and Advanced Plant Habitat (APH) chambers on the International Space Station is allowing us to understand the impacts of gravity and spaceflight on crop growth, nutritional content, acceptability, and the importance of plants to astronauts living and working away from Earth. We are also gaining a better understanding of food safety concerns and the behaviour of space plant microbiomes and plant pathogens. As we transition from research towards operational space crop production to enable human exploration, there are several gaps and challenges of growing crops in space that must be addressed. Research and technology development in key areas such as water and nutrient delivery, plant health monitoring, and crop selection are needed to overcome these challenges. Additionally, there are opportunities for breeding or engineering of custom space crops related to plant growth and development, plant physiology, produce nutrition, organoleptic acceptability, and post-harvest characteristics. Solutions to help ensure food security off-Earth may also translate to better approaches to terrestrial sustainable crop production.

Advanced Plant Habitat↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Plants in Space and Space Crop Production

Advanced Plant Habitat↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

How Autonomous Intelligent Systems Can Facilitate Earth-independent Medical Care: Going Beyond Telepresence

During the last decade, teleoperated robotic systems have extended humans’ sensorimotor competence to digitally fly beyond the physical barrier of distance and scale and thus transmit sensorimotor skills of the human through direct communication. Telepresence capabilities have enabled tele-physical remote access at small scales thanks to telerobotic mediums. Although the concept was initially motivated by space applications, such technologies quickly have expanded into the medical domain and resulted in teleoperated medical robots, including telerobotic surgical systems (such as the da Vinci surgical system). Effective telepresence fundamentally depends on an agile, reliable, and secure communication medium that can transmit real-time information between the operator and a remote device. However, direct telepresence may not be achievable for long-duration exploration spaceflight missions. Thus, autonomous systems and local intelligence represent potential solutions to the aforementioned issues. One example solution employs demonstration systems which enable learning from the pre-captured inputs of a skilled human operator. These will be computationally modeled and later probabilistically replicated toward the completion of remote physical tasks when direct telepresence is not viable - such as under communication blackout conditions. In other words, trained autonomous systems (e.g., robots) can perform remote operations that mimic the physical performance of experts during remote operations/training. Beyond learning the physics of the task, autonomous agents can also be used to conduct algorithmic decision-making that mimics the higher-level cognition of the expert. Thus, using an autonomous system, pre-trained cognitive and manipulation-based skills can be leveraged (acquired during pre-mission events) to produce digital twins of an intelligent operator. Such systems can be used for the real-time conduction of intricate tasks in complex and unstructured environments. Such systems will operationalize “cognitive digital twins” and can expand the reach of human cognition and manipulation through the power of data-driven learning from demonstration algorithms. This system category will be discussed as a fully autonomous operation in this talk. In addition to the above, we will also propose and discuss the possibility of partial-automation using remote intelligence and remote sensing. In contrast to full automation, partial automation can close the loop through a local operator equipped with augmented sensory awareness through wearable systems. Such technologies will allow the local operator to conduct delicate tasks while being guided using sensory augmentation and being monitored to gauge her/his level of cognitive focus and performance. The difference with the previous category is that a remote human will conduct the task. Further, rather than making a digital twin of human cognition, we will augment the control inputs of the local human to match those of the skilled expert operator who is not accessible in real-time. Going beyond classic telepresence and thus approaching intelligent telepresence, our vision is that autonomous agents will eventually enable the safe, consistent and efficient delivery of complex, remote and smart medical care during space exploration across operators in an Earth-independent fashion. We will discuss our collective vision from NASA and MERIIT@NYU lab in this talk.

Telepresence↗

DOE OSTI2020

Cybersecurity for Distance Relay Protection

This project is a DOE follow-up effort on the CREDC workshop held on September 13, 2018 in Cambridge, MA to discuss cybersecurity of distance relays, which considered the benefits, vulnerabilities and risk mitigations for the use of communication systems in power system protection. The objectives of this project are to define the taxonomy of relay protection and associated communications; define use cases describing approaches to reduce the cyber-attack surface on those protective relays; and evaluate the loss of operational functional capability from changes to communication coverage. Mitigating controls will also be evaluated to understand if there are other approaches to reduce attack surfaces while maintaining communications or partial communications. Distance relays are used to protect transmission lines of approximately 10 to 300 miles in length, by detecting short circuits (i.e., faults) on the lines and then tripping circuit breakers in the substation. Such protection systems are a subset of the power system and they incorporate sensing, logic and communication functions. Protection system exposure to cyberattack could be drastically limited by disconnecting relays from all vulnerable communication systems, but this may adversely impact overall power system performance in the absence of cyberattack. This project began with a use case analysis of protection systems with communications, as summarized in this report. It continued with modeling, testing and evaluation in a miniature power system (MPS), located in the Western Area Power Administration (WAPA) Electric Power Training Center (EPTC). The project also incorporated feedback from two industry meetings held in February and September 2019. The suggested next steps account for and complement the work already underway with DOE/CESER funding: 1. Study the performance of LCD and PC vs. PUTT, which is less reliant on communication system performance and GPS timing references. The PUTT scheme could prove to be more resilient to cyberattack or communications-related disruption. It could also be more tolerant of message re-routing with SDN/SDR communication systems. On the other hand, it will be more vulnerable to false tripping during dynamic events or to loss of the voltage signal. The optimum choice of scheme may depend on the specific power system and risk assessment. This study could provide a new template for evaluation based on business functions. 2. Research and develop new methods to detect and monitor distributed physical attacks, possibly using drones, video sensors, thermal sensors, machine learning and other advanced techniques. This will help mitigate the impact of cyberattack on the protection system, and will also help mitigate the impact of wild fires. 3. Implement a scalable PKI for use in electric utility protection systems. This will encourage widespread adoption of secure authentication methods that are already available, but not widely used at present. This will help secure engineering access to the relays. 4. Investigate the use of SDN in combination with SDR to achieve better cybersecurity and electromagnetic security of the network, incorporating path variability. This would help secure both engineering access and peer-to-peer GOOSE messaging. 5. Perform additional testing, with operator evaluation of “red button” scenarios, PUTT vs. LCD, relay mis-operations, and other cyberattacks in the EPTC. This is an important advantage of testing in the EPTC rather than by computer simulation or even hardware-in-the-loop simulation; the EPTC is already dedicated to managing the situational awareness, operator response times and other human impacts. One of the project objectives was to settle on a common nomenclature for this problem space. We have concluded that the OSI layer model, supplemented by ANSI device numbers and other IEEE standards, is already well-accepted by the industry. The IEEE PSRC knowledge base provides a great deal of public information

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

NASA NTRS2004

Cooperative Lander-Surface/Aerial Microflyer Missions for Mars Exploration

Concepts are being investigated for exploratory missions to Mars based on Bioinspired Engineering of Exploration Systems (BEES), which is a guiding principle of this effort to develop biomorphic explorers. The novelty lies in the use of a robust telecom architecture for mission data return, utilizing multiple local relays (including the lander itself as a local relay and the explorers in the dual role of a local relay) to enable ranges ~10 to 1,000 km and downlink of color imagery. As illustrated in Figure 1, multiple microflyers that can be both surface or aerially launched are envisioned in shepherding, metamorphic, and imaging roles. These microflyers imbibe key bio-inspired principles in their flight control, navigation, and visual search operations. Honey-bee inspired algorithms utilizing visual cues to perform autonomous navigation operations such as terrain following will be utilized. The instrument suite will consist of a panoramic imager and polarization imager specifically optimized to detect ice and water. For microflyers, particularly at small sizes, bio-inspired solutions appear to offer better alternate solutions than conventional engineered approaches. This investigation addresses a wide range of interrelated issues, including desired scientific data, sizes, rates, and communication ranges that can be accomplished in alternative mission scenarios. The mission illustrated in Figure 1 offers the most robust telecom architecture and the longest range for exploration with two landers being available as main local relays in addition to an ephemeral aerial probe local relay. The shepherding or metamorphic plane are in their dual role as local relays and image data collection/storage nodes. Appropriate placement of the landing site for the scout lander with respect to the main mission lander can allow coverage of extremely large ranges and enable exhaustive survey of the area of interest. In particular, this mission could help with the path planning and risk mitigation in the traverse of the long-distance surface explorer/rover. The basic requirements of design and operation of BEES to implement the scenarios are discussed. Terrestrial applications of such concepts include distributed aerial/surface measurements of meteorological events, i.e., storm watch, seismic monitoring, reconnaissance, biological chemical sensing, search and rescue, surveillance, autonomous security/ protection agents, and/or delivery and lateral distribution of agents (sensors, surface/subsurface crawlers, clean-up agents). Figure 2 illustrates an Earth demonstration that is in development, and its implementation will illustrate the value of these biomorphic mission concepts.

Thakoor, Sarita↗

NASA NTRS2001

TT and C - First TDRSS, Then Commercial GEO and Big LEO and Now through LEO

The advent of low earth orbit (LEO) commercial communications satellites provides an opportunity to dramatically reduce Telemetry Tracking and Control (TT&C) costs of launch vehicles and Unpiloted Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) by reducing or eliminating ground infrastructure. Personnel from the Goddard Space Flight Center Wallops Flight Facility (GSFC/WFF) in Virginia have successfully used commercial GEO & Big LEO communications satellites for Long Duration Balloon flight TT&C. In addition, TDRSS capability for these balloons has been developed by WFF for the Ultra Long Duration Balloons with the first test flight launch in January 2001 for one global circumnavigation at 120,000 feet altitude launched from Alice Springs. Australia. Numerous other low cost applications can new utilize the commercial LEO satellites for TT&C. The Flight Modern became a GSFC/WFF Advanced Range Technology Initiative (ARTI) in an effort to streamline TT&C capability to the user community at low cost. Phase I ground tests of The Flight Modem verified downlink communications quality of service and measured transmission latencies. These tests were completed last year, Phase II consisting of aircraft flight tests provide much of the data presented in this paper. Phase III of the Flight Modern baseline test program is a demonstration of the ruggedized version of the WFF Flight Modem flown on one sounding rocket launched from Sweden. Flights of opportunity have been and are being actively pursued with other centers, ranges and users at universities. The WFF goal is to reduce TT&C costs by providing a low cost COTS Flight Modem with a User Handbook containing system capability and limitation descriptions. Additionally, since data transmission is by packetized Internet Protocol (IP), data can be received and commands initialed from practically any location with no infrastructure. The WFF, like most ranges, has been using GPS receivers on sounding rockets and long duration balloons for several years, The WFF Flight Modem contains a GPS receiver to provide vehicle position for tracking and vehicle recovery. The system architecture which integrates antennas, GPS receiver, commercial satellite packet data modem. and a single board computer with custom software is described and a number of technical challenges are discussed along with the plan for their resolution. These include antenna development, high Doppler rates, reliability, environmental ruggedness, hand over between satellites and data security. An aggressive test plan is included which in addition to environmental Testing measures bit error rate latency and antenna patterns. Additional flight tests are planned far the near future on aircraft, long duration balloons and sounding rockets and these results as well as the current status of the project arc reported. Use of the WFF Flight Modem on small satellites is also being pursued. The LEO satellite constellation altitude above 1400 km is not an obstacle because most spacecraft do not require continuous Communications. The challenge is scheduling where store and forward techniques for command are required and downlink when the communications link allows connection (above 60 percent of the time depending on the satellite altitude). Sophisticated scheduling techniques utilizing 2-line orbital element sets available on the NASA/NORAD Internet site could be implemented for rare special cases. The current 9600 baud rate of the LEO communications link may be increased With special techniques that are planned for development in the WFF Flight Modem project.

Morgan, Dwayne↗

NASA NTRS2006

NASA Tech Briefs, September 2006

Topics covered include: Improving Thermomechanical Properties of SiC/SiC Composites; Aerogel/Particle Composites for Thermoelectric Devices; Patches for Repairing Ceramics and Ceramic- Matrix Composites; Lower-Conductivity Ceramic Materials for Thermal-Barrier Coatings; An Alternative for Emergency Preemption of Traffic Lights; Vehicle Transponder for Preemption of Traffic Lights; Automated Announcements of Approaching Emergency Vehicles; Intersection Monitor for Traffic-Light-Preemption System; Full-Duplex Digital Communication on a Single Laser Beam; Stabilizing Microwave Frequency of a Photonic Oscillator; Microwave Oscillators Based on Nonlinear WGM Resonators; Pointing Reference Scheme for Free-Space Optical Communications Systems; High-Level Performance Modeling of SAR Systems; Spectral Analysis Tool 6.2 for Windows; Multi-Platform Avionics Simulator; Silicon-Based Optical Modulator with Ferroelectric Layer; Multiplexing Transducers Based on Tunnel-Diode Oscillators; Scheduling with Automated Resolution of Conflicts; Symbolic Constraint Maintenance Grid; Discerning Trends in Performance Across Multiple Events; Magnetic Field Solver; Computing for Aiming a Spaceborne Bistatic- Radar Transmitter; 4-Vinyl-1,3-Dioxolane-2-One as an Additive for Li-Ion Cells; Probabilistic Prediction of Lifetimes of Ceramic Parts; STRANAL-PMC Version 2.0; Micromechanics and Piezo Enhancements of HyperSizer; Single-Phase Rare-Earth Oxide/Aluminum Oxide Glasses; Tilt/Tip/Piston Manipulator with Base-Mounted Actuators; Measurement of Model Noise in a Hard-Wall Wind Tunnel; Loci-STREAM Version 0.9; The Synergistic Engineering Environment; Reconfigurable Software for Controlling Formation Flying; More About the Tetrahedral Unstructured Software System; Computing Flows Using Chimera and Unstructured Grids; Avoiding Obstructions in Aiming a High-Gain Antenna; Analyzing Aeroelastic Stability of a Tilt-Rotor Aircraft; Tracking Positions and Attitudes of Mars Rovers; Stochastic Evolutionary Algorithms for Planning Robot Paths; Compressible Flow Toolbox; Rapid Aeroelastic Analysis of Blade Flutter in Turbomachines; General Flow-Solver Code for Turbomachinery Applications; Code for Multiblock CFD and Heat-Transfer Computations; Rotating-Pump Design Code; Covering a Crucible with Metal Containing Channels; Repairing Fractured Bones by Use of Bioabsorbable Composites; Kalman Filter for Calibrating a Telescope Focal Plane; Electronic Absolute Cartesian Autocollimator; Fiber-Optic Gratings for Lidar Measurements of Water Vapor; Simulating Responses of Gravitational-Wave Instrumentation; SOFTC: A Software Correlator for VLBI; Progress in Computational Simulation of Earthquakes; Database of Properties of Meteors; Computing Spacecraft Solar-Cell Damage by Charged Particles; Thermal Model of a Current-Carrying Wire in a Vacuum; Program for Analyzing Flows in a Complex Network; Program Predicts Performance of Optical Parametric Oscillators; Processing TES Level-1B Data; Automated Camera Calibration; Tracking the Martian CO2 Polar Ice Caps in Infrared Images; Processing TES Level-2 Data; SmaggIce Version 1.8; Solving the Swath Segment Selection Problem; The Spatial Standard Observer; Less-Complex Method of Classifying MPSK; Improvement in Recursive Hierarchical Segmentation of Data; Using Heaps in Recursive Hierarchical Segmentation of Data; Tool for Statistical Analysis and Display of Landing Sites; Automated Assignment of Proposals to Reviewers; Array-Pattern-Match Compiler for Opportunistic Data Analysis; Pre-Processor for Compression of Multispectral Image Data; Compressing Image Data While Limiting the Effects of Data Losses; Flight Operations Analysis Tool; Improvement in Visual Target Tracking for a Mobile Robot; Software for Simulating Air Traffic; Automated Vectorization of Decision-Based Algorithms; Grayscale Optical Correlator Workbench; "One-Stop Shopping" for Ocean Remote-Sensing and Model Data; State Analysis Database Tool; Generating CAHV and CAHVOmages with Shadows in ROAMS; Improving UDP/IP Transmission Without Increasing Congestion; FORTRAN Versions of Reformulated HFGMC Codes; Program for Editing Spacecraft Command Sequences; Flight-Tested Prototype of BEAM Software; Mission Scenario Development Workbench; Marsviewer; Tool for Analysis and Reduction of Scientific Data; ASPEN Version 3.0; Secure Display of Space-Exploration Images; Digital Front End for Wide-Band VLBI Science Receiver; Multifunctional Tanks for Spacecraft; Lightweight, Segmented, Mostly Silicon Telescope Mirror; Assistant for Analyzing Tropical-Rain-Mapping Radar Data; and Anion-Intercalating Cathodes for High-Energy- Density Cells.

Source record↗

DOE OSTI2023

Characterization of Orography-Influenced Riming and Secondary Ice Production and Their Effects on Precipitation Rates Using Radar Polarimetry and Doppler Spectra (CORSIPP-SAIL)

The Characterization of Orography-Influenced Riming and Secondary Ice Production and Their Effects on Precipitation Rates Using Radar Polarimetry and Doppler Spectra (CORSIPP) project was conducted to help improve the understanding of precipitation formation in orographically influenced terrain. Special focus is put on the two processes of riming and secondary ice production and their external drivers. Two instruments, a polarimetric W-band simultaneous transmission simultaneous reception (STSR) Doppler cloud radar manufactured by Radiometer Physics GmbH (RPG, instrument type RPG-FMCW-94-DP), from now on named LIMRAD94, and the video in situ snowfall sensor (VISSS), were deployed at the U. S. Department of Energy Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) user facility’s Surface Atmosphere Integrated Field Laboratory (SAIL) site in Gothic, Colorado between November 2022 and June 2023 during the second SAIL winter. Note that the exact dates of data availability differ between the instruments. Both instruments arrived at Gothic on November 2, 2022, 09:20 local time. VISSS, described by Maahn et al., is equipped with two camera systems with telecentric lenses. The two cameras are at a 90° angle to each other. This configuration allows for size-independent measurements by capturing images of hydrometeors from two sides at a high frame rate of 250 Hz. With a minimum detection size of 200 μm, VISSS provides valuable insights into particle size, number, shape, complexity, and fall velocity. The VISSS was deployed on the grassland next to the ARM facility with the amazing help of the ARM employees on site. The setup started on November 2, 2022, and was finished on November 5, 2022, without major problems. VISSS measurements were started on November 6, 2022. LIMRAD94 was installed on a scaffolding platform near Orehouse (Gothic) on November 9, 2022, with the great help of RMBL staff. LIMRAD94 was mounted on a cold temperature scanner prototype. After a short test of the setup on November 9, 2022, the digital control of the scanner elevation stopped working for (at that time) unknown reasons. All attempts to resolve the problem failed. This malfunction made it impossible to operate LIMRAD94 in scanning mode. The scanner was then manually moved to zenith pointing mode and between November 10 and November 15, 2022, vertical observations for polarimetric calibration were performed. On November 15, 2022, after the polarimetric calibration was applied, the scanner was manually moved to 40° elevation with azimuthal view towards the Ka-band ARM Zenith Radar (KAZR) and measurements were continued at constant elevation. Investigation of the scanner malfunction on February 6, 2023, by Benn Schmatz revealed a disengagement between the cogwheel of the elevation motor and the cogwheel moving the scanner in elevation. This mechanical issue was temporarily solved by re-engaging the cogwheels. This made the scanner operational again for about four weeks, until mechanical force disengaged the cogwheels again on March 15, 2023. This repeated scanner failure remained undetected for about three weeks until April 8, 2023; during this time the scanner was stuck at 72° elevation. However, the radar software continued to produce data files falsely indicating that the scanner was still operational. After the scanner failure was noticed, scanning was stopped again, and we returned to constant elevation measurements. On May 15, 2023, the cogwheels of the elevation motor were secured with additional screws sent by the manufacturer. At some point in May, the cogwheels of the azimuth motor were also disengaged by mechanical force, which still allowed for range height indicator (RHI) but no plan position indicator (PPI) scans in the last weeks of the campaign. The azimuth motor was repaired in Germany after the end of the campaign. Throughout the campaign, RMBL and ARM staff kept the radar and the VISSS free of snow.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗