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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 NTRS2025

ACROSS: Enabling Time Domain and Multi-Messenger Astrophysics

The U.S. Astro2020 Decadal Survey recommended an investment in Time Domain and Multi-Messenger Astrophysics (TDAMM) as the top-priority sustaining activity in space for the coming decade. One aspect of NASA’s response to this rec-ommendation is a pilot project, the Astrophysics Cross-Observatory Science Support (ACROSS) Initiative, designed to provide support to both missions and observers as they pursue TDAMM science. In this talk, we present our observations of needs in the community and initial plans for ACROSS activities, including services to facilitate and improve cross-mission follow-up planning and execution; a multi-messenger web portal with links to existing mission resources, community tools, and information tar-geted for TDAMM General Observers; development of "Smart Target of Opportunity submission page" proof-of-concepts; and ongoing development of a potential TDAMM general observing competitive grant solicitation. While the initial focus has been to en-hance coordination between NASA missions, we are eager to work with ground-based and international partners as well. We invite discussion with both missions and ob-servers to better understand their needs and concerns as ACROSS progresses. Here we present our efforts on the web-portal and API, along with our development to support NASA’s BurstCube mission.

T B Humensky↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Investigation of Lunar-Inspired Geopolymer Concrete Formulations Mixed and Cured in Microgravity on the International Space Station (ISS)

The research outlined in this presentation investigates the use of various lunar regolith simulants in geopolymer lunar concrete mixes mixed and cured on the International Space Station (ISS). The motivation for this work is to study the effects of gravity on the microstructure of alkali-activated materials cured with heat, and to develop materials for the construction of long-term infrastructure on the lunar surface with in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). ISRU for construction materials reduces the cost and mass of payloads related to lunar construction. The advantage of geopolymer concrete as opposed to traditional portland cement concrete is that water acts as a medium for the polymerization reaction and leaves the system throughout the process, reducing its demand. Twelve samples of lunar regolith simulant and a solution composed of sodium hydroxide and sodium silicate were sent to the ISS. The three simulants were OPRH2N, OPRL2N, and JSC-1AF, using only particles less than 53 µm in diameter to increase reactivity of the simulant. Simulant to solution ratios were determined by workability while mixing. The simulant and solution were sealed Burst Pouches® along with 2 other sealed bags to prevent material from leaking. Crew member F-14 conducted testing on the ISS by introducing the solution to the simulant in the Burst Pouch®, mixing the sample with a spatula, and then clamping the specimen in the fresh state to prevent flow inside the Burst Pouch®. These specimens were then put in a thermos heated to 80C via sealed drinking water bags to cure for 24 hours with a temperature logger. The cured specimens remained in microgravity for at least 28 days and were returned from the ISS in February 2025. The specimens were then brought to the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) to analyze. Material characterization consisted of conducting Micro-CT tests of entire samples in their sealed apparatus to a resolution of 25µm. 2D image slices were saved in each orthogonal direction of each specimen at a 0.03 mm step size from the 3D model to conduct analytical porosity calculations. Representative samples from each specimen were sampled to perform helium gas pycnometery and were then mounted in resin for SEM imaging, EDS, and nanoindentation. Porosity was analyzed analytically using micromechanics modelling with the assistance of the NASA Multiscale Analysis Tool (NASMAT), as well as the NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) servers (V. Saseendran & N. Yamamoto, 2024). Density was measured using helium gas pycnometery and was then compared to the theoretical density for experimental porosity calculation. Due to the samples’ non-uniform shape being cured in a pouch, traditional compression and tensile strength testing could not be performed. Nanoindentation was conducted at Clarkson University to determine the microhardness and reduced modulus of elasticity. Results from flight samples can be compared to ground samples currently in DLR’s possession to determine the effect on microstructure from being mixed and cured in microgravity. This study gives further insight and understanding of geopolymer lunar concrete and its viability as a lunar construction material with ISRU.

Adam Johnson↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA POWER: Providing Analysis-Ready, Cloud-Optimized Data for AI /ML Training and Applications in Earth Science

As global demand for sustainable development grows, the integration of Earth Observation (EO) data into decision making frameworks has become a primary objective for the scientific community. The NASA Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resources (POWER) project serves as a bridge between NASA EO data and the specialized needs of the renewable energy, sustainable infrastructure and agroclimatology communities. In this poster presentation we will present an overview of POWER data products and services along with its use in diverse research to decision-making workflows. By providing over 40 years of high-resolution historical, hourly and daily solar and meteorological data, POWER transforms satellite observations and global model reanalysis into actionable, Analysis-Ready Dataset (ARD). Currently, the project delivers over 250 industry-friendly parameters to the users from different NASA datasets like CERES SYN1Deg, MERRA-2, and IMERG alongside downscaled CMIP6 climate model data, fulfilling over 16 million requests from 50,000 unique users monthly. To ensure data quality and traceability, these parameters are rigorously validated against the ground-based observations from the Baseline Surface Radiation Network (BSRN) and the Global Surface Summary of the Day (GSOD) – these results will be discussed in the presentation. A newly introduced web-based PaRameter Uncertainty ViEwer (PRUVE) tool will be presented that provides an online validation platform to the users that benchmarks satellite-based and assimilation data products against these surface measurements. To reduce technical barriers to data adoption, POWER data is accessible through RESTful APIs, ESRI ArcGIS Image Services, a web-based Data Access Viewer tool, allowing users to visualize, validate and apply the dataset. For efficient data delivery POWER data is cloud-optimized into Zarr datastore accessible through NASA managed Amazon S3 ensures high-performance allowing users to integrate EO directly into operational pipelines. These customized services will be presented. Use cases from application will be presented from the energy sector - such as for design of generation systems, performance monitoring of solar power plants, in infrastructure sector- optimizing building energy efficiency and thermal comfort, in agriculture – such as driving crop simulation and yield forecasting models to enable climate resilient farming. Furthermore, the shift toward machine learning (ML) in EO research that has positioned POWER as a key provider for training datasets which will be discussed. Use-cases will be presented to showcase how NASA data is enabling the development of predictive tools for climate variability and resource management. The poster will present POWER’s future plans including technology development to enhance data traceability and reproducibility and improving I/O performance to support the rapid integration of new EO products, ensuring that POWER remains a robust scalable backend for the evolving landscape of AI-driven Earth Science. Additionally, POWER is developing an AI Agent and an MCP-Server to enable industry AI-Agentic workflows.

Neha Khadka↗
DOE OSTI2020

Sustainability, Feasibility, and Economics of a Fuel Cell-Powered Data Center

Data centers, used for cloud computing or data storage, consume huge amounts of power and are increasing rapidly in number, and consequently, this increase in power consumption has raised concerns with green and sustainable energy supplies to minimize carbon emissions. Significant renewable power can be a carbon-free energy source to reduce the carbon footprint of a data center; however, direct integration of wind and solar power with data center causes concern of the power quality for uninterrupted power supply to computer servers. The reliable power supply can be accomplished by using power produced from fuel cells fueled by hydrogen. If fed with hydrogen derived from renewable sources, fuel cells will realize carbon-free data centers. This presentation shows various renewable-integration scenarios to meet reliable and sustainable power requirements for a data center.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2020

Evaluating software defined networking solutions to reduce the digital attack surface of nuclear security systems

Most nuclear security systems used today were not designed for today’s threat environment. Systems that were intended to be stand alone are now interconnected. Devices that have a single purpose are built on multi-purpose platforms and communication protocols that, while effective, have no ability to authenticate authorized versus unauthorized commands. These attributes provide an attacker significant ability to affect the system, pivot throughout the interconnected networks, and remain undetected if he/she is able to compromise a single node. Software defined networking (SDN) has been used for years by information technology (IT) cloud service providers to quickly provision or remove servers or other systems to meet changing demand. The same concept has recently been applied to operational technology (OT) systems to enable very fast failover on critical systems that have stringent and deterministic (<5ms) transmit/receive times. By carefully engineering the communication flows through a network using preplanned routes and specific pathways it is possible to achieve deterministic and extremely reliable message delivery even when components fail. This engineering approach to network design has added security benefits including securing the networking control plane, eliminating network scanning and mapping, inhibiting ARP spoofing and host masquerading, eliminating unauthorized network pivoting and enabling greater situational awareness on the network. SDN in OT environments is new but early testing in electrical power and other critical infrastructure has shown it to be a very powerful tool for building reliable networks and reducing the digital attack surface of the network. The authors tested a software defined network switch on a simple physical protection system with components commonly found in nuclear security systems and found improved mitigations to denial of service attacks, lateral movement and network reconnaissance. The paper details the tests and their results.

Cyber security, Nuclear security, software defined↗
DOE OSTI2019

WLCG Web Proxy Auto Discovery for Dynamically Created Web Proxies

The WLCG Web Proxy Auto Discovery (WPAD) service provides a convenient mechanism for jobs running anywhere on the WLCG to dynamically discover web proxy cache servers that are nearby. The web proxy caches are general purpose for a number of different http applications, but different applications have different usage characteristics and not all proxy caches are engineered to work with the heaviest loads. For this reason, the initial sources of information for WLCG WPAD were the static configurations that ATLAS and CMS maintain for the Conditions data that they read through the Frontier Distributed Database system, which is the most demanding popular WLCG application for web proxy caches. That works well for use at traditional statically defined WLCG sites, but now that usage of commercial clouds is increasing, there is also a need for web proxy caches to dynamically register themselves as they are created. A package called Shoal had already been created to manage dynamically created web proxy caches. This paper describes the integration of the Shoal package into the WLCG WPAD system, such that both statically and dynamically created web proxy caches can be located from a single source. It also describes other improvements to the WLCG WPAD system since the last CHEP publication.

Dykstra, Dave↗
DOE OSTI2020

Adaptive sensing for a gas leak detection

A method, a system and an apparatus for adaptively sensing a gas leak. The method includes: obtaining wind data from a wind sensor, identifying at least one wireless mote in a plurality of wireless motes that is most likely to detect a gas plume from the wind data, activating the identified at least one wireless mote to trigger measuring gas concentration of the gas plume, and identifying the location of the gas leak if the gas concentration is above a predetermined threshold. Also included is a system for adaptively sensing a gas leak having a wind sensor, a plurality of wireless motes and a server in communication therewith. An apparatus for adaptively sensing a gas leak in an industrial site is also provided.

03 NATURAL GAS↗
DOE OSTI2020

High Performance Computing Systems Tools, Visualization, and Management

High Performance Computing (HPC) systems are complex setups of servers, storage devices, network switches, and cables that are specifically designed to accommodate hundreds of users running highly computationally intensive applications at a time. These applications require numerous softwares, licenses, and various levels of storage as well. All of these resources must be monitored and managed by HPC administrators, which presents a daunting task. In this project, I created numerous software tools as part of an HPC Visualization and Management system, which is now used by HPC administrators on a daily basis.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2020

Big Data Processing for Power Grid Event Detection

In this paper we present the application of big data processing for the development of machine learning (ML) models to detect relevant events in power grid operations. This is based on almost 20TB of phasor measurement unit data corresponding to up to two years of operation of three grid interconnections which provide power to most of the United States. A significant aspect of the work consists in having all data processing performed on a single standard GPU server, from pre-processing to ML model training and testing. We describe the data and computational infrastructure, challenges faced and methods used in data processing, main findings and results. The ML approach employed for best utilization of the big data is also discussed, including sample results.

Paes Leao, Bruno↗
DOE OSTI2020

Power system model parameter conditioning tool

A power system model parameter conditioning tool including a server control processor in communication with phasor measurement unit monitored data records of multiple disturbance events, a model calibration unit providing event screening, power system model simulation, and simultaneous tuning of model parameters. The model calibration performing a simulation using default model parameters, the processor comparing the simulation results to the monitored data. If the prediction is within threshold, then terminating conditioning; else performing parameter identifiability analysis to determine differing effects of various model parameters on power system model accuracy, selecting a parameter set causing a degradation in power system model prediction, and updating the default model parameters corresponding to members of the parameter set with values selected to reduce the degradation. A method and a non-transitory computer readable medium are also disclosed.

Baone, Chaitanya Ashok↗
DOE OSTI2021

Malware analysis and recovery

A system and method detects malware by processing notifications from an intrusion detection system and baseline snapshots from an image capture utility. The image capture utility constructs an image of the suspected malware intrusion and links the suspected malware intrusion to the baseline snapshots. The system and method propagates the image of the suspected malware intrusion across multiple networks before it distinguishes malicious code, device state, and files from benign code, device state, and files. Some systems and methods include a malware recovery system that executes machine learning instructions and heuristics to revert a client and/or a remote server to one or more baseline snapshots.

Smith, Jared M.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Leaky Buddies: Cross-Component Covert Channels on Integrated CPU-GPU Systems

Graphics Processing Units (GPUs) are ubiquitous components used across the range of today’s computing plat- forms, from phones and tablets, through personal computers, to high-end server class platforms. With the increasing importance of graphics and video workloads, recent processors are shipped with GPU devices that are integrated on the same chip. Integrated GPUs share some resources with the CPU and as a result, there is a potential for microarchitectural attacks from the GPU to the CPU or vice versa. We consider the potential for covert channel attacks that arise either from shared microarchitectural components (such as caches) or through shared contention domains (e.g., shared buses). We illustrate these two types of channels by developing two reliable covert channel attacks. The first covert channel uses the shared LLC cache in Intel’s integrated GPU architectures. The second is a contention based channel targeting the ring bus connecting the CPU and GPU to the LLC. This is the first demonstrated microarchitectural attack crossing the component boundary (GPU to CPU or vice versa). Cross-component channels introduce a number of new challenges that we had to overcome since they occur across heterogeneous components that use different computation models and are interconnected using asymmetric memory hierarchies. We also exploit GPU parallelism to increase the bandwidth of the communication, even without relying on a common clock. The LLC based channel achieves a bandwidth of 120 kbps with a low error rate of 2%, while the contention based channel delivers up to 400 kbps with a 0.8% error rate. We also demonstrate a proof- of-concept prime-and-probe side channel attack that probes the full LLC from the GPU.

Cyber secruity, high performance comptuing, Hetero↗
DOE OSTI2021

Design and Performance of a Smartphone-based Cosmic Ray Observatory

This dissertation examines the feasibility of appropriating the global network of smartphones as an observatory for ultra-high-energy cosmic rays. An application and cloud-based data-acquisition system are first proposed for such an observatory, in which heterogenous devices self-calibrate and server feedback optimizes individual device triggers. Methods of monitoring and manually controlling this network are also examined. Detection efficiencies for cosmic muons, MeV-scale gamma rays, and 120 GeV protons are then measured for this trigger, with which a Monte Carlo pixel model is fine-tuned. Extending this model to cosmic ray showers, the effective area of the observatory for super-GZK primaries is shown to equal that of the Pierre Auger Observatory with a global participation rate under 0.1%, far below initial estimates presented in Ref. [83]. A vastly improved sensitivity to photons and more precise modeling of electrons are primarily responsible for this discrepancy, though more refined models of the combinatorial background may yet lead to more stringent requirements.

Swaney, Jeff↗
DOE OSTI2021

Blockchain-Enabled Cyber-Secure Microgrid Control Using Consensus Algorithm: Preprint

This paper proposes a distributed control method based on a consensus algorithm for distributed energy resources (DERs) using blockchain as a secure communication medium for cyber resilience. Each DER communicates with a local blockchain server that is maintained by the distributed ledger technology to allow for securely sharing local measurements among neighboring assets to achieve the global control objectives, i.e., voltage and frequency regulation as well as accurate power sharing among the DERs, including collective grid-forming capability. To prove that the distributed control can retain system stability under a blockchain-induced variable communication delay, Lyapunov function-based stability analysis is carried out. This paper demonstrates the concept on an 11-bus test case developed in MATLAB Simulink, which has been modified from the IEEE 9-bus test case, to study dynamic operations of the five inverter-based DERs working with a blockchain-induced variable delay. The results validate the superior performance of the proposed control method, compared to heavily compromised operations of the other test cases without the security measure, affected by heavy communication delays and communication interruptions.

blockchain↗
DOE OSTI2021

Hierarchal framework for integrating distributed energy resources into distribution systems

Methods and apparatus are disclosed for providing a hierarchical framework for integrating distributed energy resources into power distribution systems. In one example of the disclosed technology, a method implemented with an aggregation server includes receiving a respective utility function associated with each of at least two of a plurality of distributed energy resources representing an amount of energy produced or consumed by the respective associated distributed energy resource as a function of energy price, producing an aggregated utility function associated with the plurality of distributed energy resources based on the received utility functions, transmitting the produced aggregated utility function to a coordinator, receiving a clearing value from the coordinator, and transmitting the received clearing value to each of the plurality of distributed energy resources.

Lian, Jianming↗
DOE OSTI2022

A Modern Ethernet Data Acquisition Architecture for Fermilab Beam Instrumentation

The Fermilab Accelerator Division, Instrumentation Department is adopting an open-source framework to replace our embedded VME-based data acquisition systems. Utilizing an iterative methodology, we first moved to embedded Linux, removing the need for VxWorks. Next, we adopted Ethernet on each data acquisition module eliminating the need for the VME backplane in addition to communicating with a rack mount server. Development of DDCP (Distributed Data Communications Protocol), allowed for an abstraction between the firmware and software layers. Each data acquisition module was adapted to read out using 1 GbE and aggregated at a switch which up linked to a 10 GbE network. Current development includes scaling the system to aggregate more modules, to increase bandwidth to support multiple systems and to adopt MicroTCA as a crate technology. The architecture was utilized on various beamlines around the Fermilab complex including PIP2IT, FAST/IOTA and the Muon Delivery Ring. In summary, we were able to develop a data acquisition framework which incrementally replaces VxWorks & VME hardware as well as increases our total bandwidth to 10 Gbit/s using off the shelf Ethernet technology.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗
DOE OSTI2022

Accelerating shared file checkpoint with local burst buffers

A data management system and method for accelerating shared file checkpointing. Written application data is aggregated in an application data file created in a local burst buffer memory at a compute node, and an associated data mapping built index to maintain information related to the offsets into a shared file at which segments of the application data is to be stored in a parallel file system, and where in the buffer those segments are located. The node asynchronously transfers a data file containing the application data and the associated data mapping index to a file server for shared file storage. The data management system and method further accelerates shared file checkpointing in which a shared file, together with a map file that specifies how the shared file is to be distributed, is asynchronously transferred to local burst buffer memories at the nodes to accelerate reading of the shared file.

Gooding, Thomas↗
DOE OSTI2023

Reducing Commercial Building Process Loads and Refrigeration Unit Energy Consumption

This resource provides guidance on larger PPLs, many of which are hardwired. Examples include elevators, enterprise servers, freezers, and water fountains with chillers, which are often collectively referred to as "process loads." This resource also outlines how to assess process loads in a building, describes the procedure for identifying which loads to target for reduction, and provides an overview of reduction strategies. In this resource, process loads are broken into five categories - food handling, refrigeration, internal mobility, data center and information technology, and water handling.

commercial buildings↗