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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 1,099 records · Page 61
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1982

NASA-ESA Spacelab systems and programs; Proceedings of the Seminar, Washington, DC, April 23, 24, 1981

Topics discussed include the development status of the Space Shuttle and Spacelab, with attention to Spacelab subsystem performance capabilities and Shuttle-Spacelab flight operations; Spacelab data management and software for science applications, ESA and Space Shuttle pointing systems, and the Space Shuttle's Office of Space and Terrestrial Applications (OSTA)-1 payload. Also covered are the lessons learned from the first Spacelab mission, the pallet-only mode verification flight of the second Spacelab mission, the objectives of the Spacelab mission D1, its role in the German space program, and its implementation, the impact of Spacelab on space-based life sciences research, the high resolution, large area modular reflector array X-ray telescope to be used by Spacelab, and Space Shuttle contamination effects on UV coronagraphic observations.

Moore, J. W.↗
NASA NTRS1988

Sources of scattering in vegetarian and other surfaces and objects

The sources of scattering in vegetation and other surfaces and objects were studied. A special radar, SOURCESCAT, that could resolve a cylindrical volume 18 cm in diameter and 11 cm long was built. This system provided the first really fine-resolution measurements of radar backscatter from vegetation. The measurements showed that many of the assumptions used previously in modeling vegetation backscatter were false. Vegetation studied included various field crops, prairie grass, and various trees. Major differences were found in the roles of leaves, branches, stems, and trunks for different species. An artificial tree was studied in the laboratory using the systems. The most significant findings were that the average radar volume scattering coefficient is independent of azimuth, and that slanting of the polarization vector can give useful information not available with ordinary vertical and horizontal polarization. A model for scattering from a single leaf was developed. This model, for the first time, took into account the presence of veins in leaves. The pattern of scatter from a leaf was shown quite different from that for which the veins are ignored. A list of publications and presentations resulting from this project are attached.

Moore, R. K.↗
NASA NTRS1991

Magnetic Suspension and Balance Systems: A Comprehensive, Annotated Bibliography

This bibliography contains 301 entries. Results are reported of recent studies aimed at increasing the research capabilities of magnetic suspension and balance systems; e.g., increasing force and torque capability, increasing angle of attack capability, and increasing overall system reliability. The problem is addressed of scaling from the relatively small size of existing systems to much larger sizes. The purpose of the bibliography is to provide an up-to-date list of publications that might be helpful to persons interested in magnetic suspension and balance systems for use in wind tunnels. The arrangement is generally chronological by date of presentation. However, papers presented at conferences or meetings are placed under dates of presentation. The numbers assigned to many of the citations have been changed from those used in the previous bibliography. This has been done in order to allow outdated citations to be removed and some recently discovered older works to be included in their proper chronological order. Author, source, and subject indexes are included in order to increase the usefulness of this compilation.

Tuttle, Marie H.↗
NASA NTRS2004

The Keck Interferometer Nuller: System Architecture and Laboratory Performance

The first high-dynamic-range interferometric mode planned to come on line at the Keck Observatory is mid-infrared nulling. This observational mode, which is based on the cancellation of the on-axis starlight arriving at the win Keck telescopes, will be used to examine nearby stellar systems for the presence of circumstellar exozodiacal emission. This paper describes the system level layout of the Keck Interferometer Nuller (KIN), as well as the final performance levels demonstrated in the laboratory integration and test phase at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory prior to shipment of the nuller hardware to the Keck Observatory in mid-June 2004. On-sky testing and observation with the mid-infrared nuller are slated to begin in August 2004.

interferometry↗
DOE OSTI2025

A2SD: Accelerating Scientific Innovation Through Autonomous Discovery Systems

The 2025 Advancing Autonomous Scientific Discovery (A2SD) workshop convened researchers from academia, national laboratories, and industry to explore the transformative role of autonomy in scientific discovery. The workshop highlighted a convergence of artificial intelligence, robotics, and computational workflows into autonomous systems capable of accelerating the scientific process. Presentations and discussions spanned autonomous experimentation, intelligent workflow orchestration, digital twins, and agent-based systems for managing complex research ecosystems. Key challenges discussed included interoperability across heterogeneous infrastructures, near real-time data management under FAIR principles, reproducibility, and the integration of human oversight. The workshop also emphasized the need for modular software interfaces, federated learning models, and education initiatives to support a next-generation scientific workforce.

Taufer, Michela [University of Tennessee, Knoxvill↗
NASA NTRS1992

Arcing on dc power systems

Unexpected and undesirable arcing on dc power systems can produce hazardous situations aboard space flights. The potential for fire and shock might exist in a situation where there is a broken conductor, a loose power connection, or a break in the insulation of the power cable. Such arcing has been found to be reproducible in a laboratory environment. Arcing tests show that the phenomena can last for several seconds and yet be undetectable by present protection schemes used in classical power relaying and remote power controller applications. This paper characterizes the arcing phenomena and suggests future research that is needed.

Moores, Greg↗
DOE OSTI2024

BioSiting Tool (BioSiting) v2

The BioSiting Tool provides a geospatial interface for analyzing bioeconomy resources and infrastructure across the continental U.S. The tool integrates empirical and modeled data from a broad range of sources. Bioeconomy resources mapped in the tool include agricultural residues, forest residues, municipal solid waste streams, food waste, manure, fats, oils and greases and potential yields of energy crops. Infrastructure mapped in the tool includes biorefineries, material recovery facilities, anaerobic digesters, wastewater treatment plants, combustion plants, district energy systems, crude oil pipelines, petroleum pipelines, natural gas pipelines, railways and freight terminals. Additional data layers include environmental justice indicators at the census tract level and carbon dioxide geologic storage potential. Users can select a location on the map, define a buffer radius in kilometers and generate an inventory of all bioecomony resources within the buffer zone. Data from the tool can be downloaded from individual buffer zones, or at the state or national level.

Huntington, Tyler↗
NASA NTRS1972

Study of the application of advanced technologies to long-range transport aircraft. Volume 2: Research and development requirements

Investigations were conducted to evaluate the relative benefits attainable through the exploitation of advanced technologies and to identify future research and development efforts required to permit the application of selected technologies to transport aircraft entering commercial operation in 1985. Results show that technology advances, particularly in the areas of composite materials, supercritical aerodynamics, and active control systems, will permit the development of long-range, high-payload commercial transports operating at high-subsonic speeds with direct operating costs lower than those of current aircraft. These advanced transports also achieve lower noise levels and lower engine pollutant emissions than current transports. Research and development efforts, including analytical investigations, laboratory test programs, and flight test programs, are required in essentially all technology areas to achieve the potential technology benefits.

Lange, R. H.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Grid Sphere Electrodes used for Current Collection at the Positive Pole of Electrodynamic Tethers

The generation of either electrical power or propulsive thrust with an electrodynamic tether system necessarily depends on driving a return current through the system's ambient space plasma environment. An electrical connection is, therefore, required between the plasma and each end of the tether. The voltage required to drive current through the system is derived either from the orbital motion of the conducting tether through the magnetic field of the Earth, or from a high-voltage power supply that taps into an external energy source (e.g., the sun). In either case, one end of the tether will receive a positive bias. This positive bias, between the tether and the ambient plasma, allows electrons to be collected effectively with a simple, passive electrode. Passive electrode contactors offer several important advantages, including simplification of the upper end-body design and operations, minimization of system mass, and an increase of system reliability and robustness. A preliminary analysis of an inflatable Grid-Sphere end-body concept is presented that is interesting because of the potential for collecting arbitrarily large currents independent of tether length, while the device has the physical characteristics of a high area-to-mass ratio, a low drag coefficient, and simplicity. In particular, we will discuss the physics of current collection by a biased Grid-Sphere and the present state-of-the-art of materials, attainable area-to-mass ratios, and deployment techniques.

Stone, N. H.↗
DOE OSTI2024

Computed Tomography Scanning and Petrophysical Measurements of Oriskany Core across Eastern Ohio

The computed tomography (CT) facilities and the Multi-Sensor Core Logger (MSCL) at the National Energy Technology Laboratory (NETL) in Morgantown, West Virginia were used to characterize core material from three Ohio wells. These wells are listed below along with their American Petroleum Institute (API) and Ohio Geological Survey (OGS) identification numbers: - New York Central System 1 well (API 34085200170000, OGS Core 855) - Herren Well (API 34099201650000, OGS Core 2914) - Garvin-King Well (API 34121215610000, OGS Core 2939) The primary impetus of this work was to capture a detailed digital representation of the available core from all three wells. The collaboration between the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) NETL and the Ohio Department of Natural Resources, Division of Geological Survey enables other research entities to access information about this potential carbon storage location and its surrounding formations.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2006

Liquid Annular Seal CFD Analysis for Rotordynamic Force Prediction

A commercially available code is utilized to analyze a plain and grooved liquid annular seal. These type seals are commonly used in modern turbopumps and have a pronounced effect on the rotordynamic behavior of these systems. Accurate prediction of both leakage and dynamic reaction forces is vital to ensure good performance and sound mechanical operation. The code SCISEAL developed by CFDRC is a generic 3-D, finite volume based CFD code solving the 3-D Reynolds averaged Navier Stokes equations. The code allows body-fitted, multi-blocked structured grids, turbulence modeling, rotating coordinate frames, as well as integration of dynamic pressure and shear forces on the rotating journal. The code may be used with the commercially available pre-and post-processing codes from CFDRC as well.

Moore, Jeff↗
NASA NTRS2017

UAV Inspection of Electrical Transmission Infrastructure with Path Conformance Autonomy and Lidar-Based Geofences NASA Report on UTM Reference Mission Flights at Southern Company Flights November 2016

Flights at low altitudes in close proximity to electrical transmission infrastructure present serious navigational challenges: GPS and radio communication quality is variable and yet tight position control is needed to measure defects while avoiding collisions with ground structures. To advance unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) navigation technology while accomplishing a task with economic and societal benefit, a high voltage electrical infrastructure inspection reference mission was designed. An integrated air-ground platform was developed for this mission and tested in two days of experimental flights to determine whether navigational augmentation was needed to successfully conduct a controlled inspection experiment. The airborne component of the platform was a multirotor UAV built from commercial off-the-shelf hardware and software, and the ground component was a commercial laptop running open source software. A compact ultraviolet sensor mounted on the UAV can locate 'hot spots' (potential failure points in the electric grid), so long as the UAV flight path adequately samples the airspace near the power grid structures. To improve navigation, the platform was supplemented with two navigation technologies: lidar-to-polyhedron preflight processing for obstacle demarcation and inspection distance planning, and trajectory management software to enforce inspection standoff distance. Both navigation technologies were essential to obtaining useful results from the hot spot sensor in this obstacle-rich, low-altitude airspace. Because the electrical grid extends into crowded airspaces, the UAV position was tracked with NASA unmanned aerial system traffic management (UTM) technology. The following results were obtained: (1) Inspection of high-voltage electrical transmission infrastructure to locate 'hot spots' of ultraviolet emission requires navigation methods that are not broadly available and are not needed at higher altitude flights above ground structures. (2) The sensing capability of a novel airborne UV detector was verified with a standard ground-based instrument. Flights with this sensor showed that UAV measurement operations and recording methods are viable. With improved sensor range, UAVs equipped with compact UV sensors could serve as the detection elements in a self-diagnosing power grid. (3) Simplification of rich lidar maps to polyhedral obstacle maps reduces data volume by orders of magnitude, so that computation with the resultant maps in real time is possible. This enables real-time obstacle avoidance autonomy. Stable navigation may be feasible in the GPS-deprived environment near transmission lines by a UAV that senses ground structures and compares them to these simplified maps. (4) A new, formally verified path conformance software system that runs onboard a UAV was demonstrated in flight for the first time. It successfully maneuvered the aircraft after a sudden lateral perturbation that models a gust of wind, and processed lidar-derived polyhedral obstacle maps in real time. (5) Tracking of the UAV in the national airspace using the NASA UTM technology was a key safety component of this reference mission, since the flights were conducted beneath the landing approach to a heavily used runway. Comparison to autopilot tracking showed that UTM tracking accurately records the UAV position throughout the flight path.

Moore, Andrew J.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Implications of rootless geothermal models: Missing processes, parameter compensation, and imposter convection

Numerical models of geothermal systems commonly capture only the top of a reservoir. Deeper areas of the reservoir are simplified to a boundary at the base of the model domain. Commonly, the basal boundary is given either a heat source or a source of mass and enthalpy. Here we developed and present simple numerical experiments which demonstrate that these approaches do not produce the correct model behavior in comparison to a model that captures the entire convecting domain with a heat flux only. We describe a variety of incorrect types of model behavior that arise directly from the choice of boundary condition, independent of the specific parameterization of the model. Heat sources are sensitive to the thickness of the domain and parameters take unphysical values to compensate for the reduced height. The combined mass/heat boundary can produce temperatures that show similarities to circulating geothermal systems, but with incorrect fluid flow and a strong boundary layer focused at the base of the simulated clay cap. These errors likely cause parameters to adjust their values to compensate for the incorrect physics. We highlight these issues and show an example from a developed reservoir model. Initial calibrations to natural state temperature were unsuitable for history matching. The 3D model required parameter adjustments to achieve a more realistic production model. Appropriate mitigation measures should be considered to reduce parameter compensation and improve decision-support models.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
NASA NTRS1989

Application of the Langley plot for calibration of sun sensors for the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE)

The calibration of the Halogen Occultation Experiment (HALOE) sun sensor is described. This system consists of two energy-balancing silicon detectors which provide coarse azimuth and elevation control signals and a silicon photodiode array which provides top and bottom solar edge data for fine elevation control. All three detectors were calibrated on a mountaintop near Tucson, Ariz., using the Langley plot technique. The conventional Langley plot technique was modified to allow calibration of the two coarse detectors, which operate wideband. A brief description of the test setup is given. The HALOE instrument is a gas correlation radiometer that is now being developed for the Upper Atmospheric Research Satellite.

Moore, Alvah S., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS1995

Large-Scale Structure of Magnetospheric Plasma

Recent investigations of magnetospheric plasma structure are summarized under the broad categories of empirical models, transport across boundaries, formation, and dynamics of the plasma sheet. This report reviews work in these areas during the period 1991 to 1993. Fully three-dimensional empirical models and simulations have become important contributors to our understanding of the magnetospheric system. Some new structural concepts have appeared in the literature: the 'entry boundary' and 'geo-pause', the plasma sheet 'region 1 vortices', the 'low-energy layer', the 'adia-baticity boundary' or 'wall region', and a region in the tail to which we refer as the 'injection port'. Traditional structural concepts have also been the subject of recent study, notably the plasmapause, the magnetopause, and the plasma sheet. Significant progress has been made in understanding the nature of plasma sheet formation and dynamics, but the acceleration of electrons to high energy remains somewhat mysterious.

Moore, T. E.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Making NASA Earth Observing System Satellite Data Accessible to the K-12 and Citizen Scientist Communities

The Atmospheric Sciences Data Center (ASDC) at NASA s Langley Research Center houses over 700 data sets related to Earth s radiation budget, clouds, aerosols and tropospheric chemistry. These data sets are produced to increase academic understanding of the natural and anthropogenic perturbations that influence global climate change. The Mentoring and inquirY using NASA Data on Atmospheric and earth science for Teachers and Amateurs (MY NASA DATA) project has been established to systematically support educational activities at all levels of formal and informal education by reducing these large data holdings to microsets that will be easily explored and understood by the K-12 and the amateur scientist communities

Moore, Susan W.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Trapped Electrons and Ions as Particle Detectors

Electrons and ions trapped with electromagnetic fields have long served as important high-precision metrological instruments, and more recently have also been proposed as a platform for quantum information processing. Here we point out that these systems can also be used as highly sensitive detectors of passing charged particles, due to the combination of their extreme charge-to-mass ratio and low-noise quantum readout and control. In particular, these systems can be used to detect energy depositions many orders of magnitude below typical ionization scales. As illustrations, we suggest some applications in particle physics. We outline a nondestructive time-of-flight measurement capable of sub-eV energy resolution for slowly moving, collimated particles. We also show that current devices can be used to provide competitive sensitivity to models where ambient dark matter particles carry small electric millicharges $\ll$e. Furthermore, our calculations may also be useful in the characterization of noise in quantum computers coming from backgrounds of charged particles.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
NASA NTRS1994

A General Mission Independent Simulator (GMIS) and Simulator Control Program (SCP)

GMIS is a general-purpose simulator for testing ground system software. GMIS can be adapted to any mission to simulate changes in the data state maintained by the mission's computers. GMIS was developed in Code 522 NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. The acronym GMIS stands for GOTT Mission Independent Simulator, where GOTT is the Ground Operations Technology Testbed. Within GOTT, GMIS is used to provide simulated data to an installation of TPOCC - the Transportable Payload Operations Control Center. TPOCC was developed by Code 510 as a reusable control center. GOTT uses GMIS and TPOCC to test new technology and new operator procedures.

Baker, Paul L.↗