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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 1,243 records · Page 69
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2014

Raising Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) Technology Readiness Above 3

NTP development is currently supported by the NASA program office "Advanced Exploration Systems". The concept is a main propulsion option being considered for human missions to Mars in the 2030's. Major NTP development took place in the 1960's and 1970's under the Rover/NERVA program. The technology had matured to TRL 6 and was preparing to go to TRL 7 with a prototype flight engine before the program was cancelled. Over the last 40 years, a variety of continuations started, but only lasted a few years each. The Rover/NERVA infrastructure is almost all gone. The only remains are a few pieces of hardware, final reports and a few who worked the Rover/NERVA. Two types of nuclear fuel are being investigated to meet the current engine design specific impulse of 900 seconds compared to approximately 850 seconds demonstrated during Rover/NERVA. One is a continuation of composite fuel with new coatings to better control mid-band corrosion. The other type is a CERMET fuel made of Tungsten and UO2. Both fuels are being made from Rover/NERVA lessons learned, but with slightly different recipes to increase fuel endurance at higher operating temperatures. The technology readiness level (TRL) of these current modified reactor fuels is approximately TRL 3. To keep the development cost low and help mature the TRL level past 4 quickly, a few special non-nuclear test facilities have been made to test surrogate fuel, with depleted uranium, as coupons and full length elements. Both facilities utilize inductive heating and are licensed to handle depleted uranium. TRL 5 requires exposing the fuel to a nuclear environment and TRL 6 requires a prototype ground or flight engine system test. Currently, three different NTP ground test facility options are being investigated: exhaust scrubber, bore hole, and total exhaust containment. In parallel, a prototype flight demonstration test is also being studied. The first human mission to Mars in the 2030's is currently 2033. For an advanced propulsion concept to be seriously considered for use, the engine development plans need to show it is feasible and affordable to reach TRL 8 by 2027 and can be qualified for human mission use.

Gerrish, Harold P., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Cabin Pressure Monitors Notify Pilots to Save Lives

In 2013, San Diego-based Aviation Technology Inc. obtained an exclusive license for the technology behind the cabin pressure monitor invented at Kennedy Space Center and built its own version of the product. The Alt Alert is designed to save lives by alerting aircraft pilots and crews when cabin pressure becomes dangerously low.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2015

Bioreactor Yields Extracts for Skin Cream

Johnson Space Flight Center researchers created a unique rotating-wall bioreactor that simulates microgravity conditions, spurring innovations in drug development and medical research. Renuèll Int'l Inc., based in Aventure, Florida, licensed the technology and used it to produce a healing skin care product, RE`JUVEL. In a Food and Drug Administration test, RE`JUVEL substantially increased skin moisture and elasticity while reducing dark blotches and wrinkles.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2015

Low-Cost Sensors Deliver Nanometer-Accurate Measurements

As part of a unique partnership program, Kennedy Space Center collaborated with a nearby business school to allow MBA students to examine and analyze the market potential for a selection of NASA-patented technologies. Following the semester, a group of students decided to form Winter Park, Florida-based Juntura Group Inc. to license and sell a technology they had worked with: a sensor capable of detecting position changes as small as 10 nanometers-approximately the thickness of a cell wall.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2015

Evolution of Archival Storage (from Tape to Memory)

Over the last three decades, there has been a significant evolution in storage technologies supporting archival of remote sensing data. This section provides a brief survey of how these technologies have evolved. Three main technologies are considered - tape, hard disk and solid state disk. Their historical evolution is traced, summarizing how reductions in cost have helped being able to store larger volumes of data on faster media. The cost per GB of media is only one of the considerations in determining the best approach to archival storage. Active archives generally require faster response to user requests for data than permanent archives. The archive costs have to consider facilities and other capital costs, operations costs, software licenses, utilities costs, etc. For meeting requirements in any organization, typically a mix of technologies is needed.

Magnetic Storage; Technology Evolution↗
NASA NTRS2015

NASA Near Earth Network (NEN), Deep Space Network (DSN) and Space Network (SN) Support of CubeSat Communications

There has been a historical trend to increase capability and drive down the Size, Weight and Power (SWAP) of satellites and that trend continues today. Small satellites, including systems conforming to the CubeSat specification, because of their low launch and development costs, are enabling new concepts and capabilities for science investigations across multiple fields of interest to NASA. NASA scientists and engineers across many of NASAs Mission Directorates and Centers are developing exciting CubeSat concepts and welcome potential partnerships for CubeSat endeavors. From a communications and tracking point of view, small satellites including CubeSats are a challenge to coordinate because of existing small spacecraft constraints, such as limited SWAP and attitude control, low power, and the potential for high numbers of operational spacecraft. The NASA Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Programs Near Earth Network (NEN), Deep Space Network (DSN) and the Space Network (SN) are customer driven organizations that provide comprehensive communications services for space assets including data transport between a missions orbiting satellite and its Mission Operations Center (MOC). The NASA NEN consists of multiple ground antennas. The SN consists of a constellation of geosynchronous (Earth orbiting) relay satellites, named the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). The DSN currently makes available 13 antennas at its three tracking stations located around the world for interplanetary communication. The presentation will analyze how well these space communication networks are positioned to support the emerging small satellite and CubeSat market. Recognizing the potential support, the presentation will review the basic capabilities of the NEN, DSN and SN in the context of small satellites and will present information about NEN, DSN and SN-compatible flight radios and antenna development activities at the Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) and across industry. The presentation will review concepts on how the SN multiple access capability could help locate CubeSats and provide a low-latency early warning system. The presentation will also present how the DSN is evolving to maximize use of its assets for interplanetary CubeSats. The critical spectrum-related topics of available and appropriate frequency bands, licensing, and coordination will be reviewed. Other key considerations, such as standardization of radio frequency interfaces and flight and ground communications hardware systems, will be addressed as such standardization may reduce the amount of time and cost required to obtain frequency authorization and perform compatibility and end-to-end testing. Examples of standardization that exist today are the NASA NEN, DSN and SN systems which have published users guides and defined frequency bands for high data rate communication, as well as conformance to CCSDS standards. The workshop session will also seek input from the workshop participants to better understand the needs of small satellite systems and to identify key development activities and operational approaches necessary to enhance communication and navigation support using NASA's NEN, DSN and SN.

Telecommunication↗
NASA NTRS2015

The Open Data Repositorys Data Publisher

Data management and data publication are becoming increasingly important components of researcher's workflows. The complexity of managing data, publishing data online, and archiving data has not decreased significantly even as computing access and power has greatly increased. The Open Data Repository's Data Publisher software strives to make data archiving, management, and publication a standard part of a researcher's workflow using simple, web-based tools and commodity server hardware. The publication engine allows for uploading, searching, and display of data with graphing capabilities and downloadable files. Access is controlled through a robust permissions system that can control publication at the field level and can be granted to the general public or protected so that only registered users at various permission levels receive access. Data Publisher also allows researchers to subscribe to meta-data standards through a plugin system, embargo data publication at their discretion, and collaborate with other researchers through various levels of data sharing. As the software matures, semantic data standards will be implemented to facilitate machine reading of data and each database will provide a REST application programming interface for programmatic access. Additionally, a citation system will allow snapshots of any data set to be archived and cited for publication while the data itself can remain living and continuously evolve beyond the snapshot date. The software runs on a traditional LAMP (Linux, Apache, MySQL, PHP) server and is available on GitHub (http://github.com/opendatarepository) under a GPLv2 open source license. The goal of the Open Data Repository is to lower the cost and training barrier to entry so that any researcher can easily publish their data and ensure it is archived for posterity.

Astrobiology data↗
NASA NTRS2016

Improving Human/Autonomous System Teaming Through Linguistic Analysis

An area of increasing interest for the next generation of aircraft is autonomy and the integration of increasingly autonomous systems into the national airspace. Such integration requires humans to work closely with autonomous systems, forming human and autonomous agent teams. The intention behind such teaming is that a team composed of both humans and autonomous agents will operate better than homogenous teams. Procedures exist for licensing pilots to operate in the national airspace system and current work is being done to define methods for validating the function of autonomous systems, however there is no method in place for assessing the interaction of these two disparate systems. Moreover, currently these systems are operated primarily by subject matter experts, limiting their use and the benefits of such teams. Providing additional information about the ongoing mission to the operator can lead to increased usability and allow for operation by non-experts. Linguistic analysis of the context of verbal communication provides insight into the intended meaning of commonly heard phrases such as "What's it doing now?" Analyzing the semantic sphere surrounding these common phrases enables the prediction of the operator's intent and allows the interface to supply the operator's desired information.

Meszaros, Erica L.↗
NASA NTRS2016

Modeling ARRM Xenon Tank Pressurization Using 1D Thermodynamic and Heat Transfer Equations

As a first step in understanding what ground support equipment (GSE) is required to provide external cooling during the loading of 5,000 kg of xenon into 4 aluminum lined composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs), a modeling analysis was performed using Microsoft Excel. The goals of the analysis were to predict xenon temperature and pressure throughout loading at the launch facility, estimate the time required to load one tank, and to get an early estimate of what provisions for cooling xenon might be needed while the tanks are being filled. The model uses the governing thermodynamic and heat transfer equations to achieve these goals. Results indicate that a single tank can be loaded in about 15 hours with reasonable external coolant requirements. The model developed in this study was successfully validated against flight and test data. The first data set is from the Dawn mission which also utilizes solar electric propulsion with xenon propellant, and the second is test data from the rapid loading of a hydrogen cylindrical COPV. The main benefit of this type of model is that the governing physical equations using bulk fluid solid temperatures can provide a quick and accurate estimate of the state of the propellant throughout loading which is much cheaper in terms of computational time and licensing costs than a Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis while capturing the majority of the thermodynamics and heat transfer.

Xenon storage↗
NASA NTRS2017

Modeling Xenon Tank Pressurization using One-Dimensional Thermodynamic and Heat Transfer Equations

As a first step in understanding what ground support equipment (GSE) is required to provide external cooling during the loading of 5,000 kg of xenon into 4 aluminum lined composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs), a modeling analysis was performed using Microsoft Excel. The goals of the analysis were to predict xenon temperature and pressure throughout loading at the launch facility, estimate the time required to load one tank, and to get an early estimate of what provisions for cooling xenon might be needed while the tanks are being filled. The model uses the governing thermodynamic and heat transfer equations to achieve these goals. Results indicate that a single tank can be loaded in about 15 hours with reasonable external coolant requirements. The model developed in this study was successfully validated against flight and test data. The first data set is from the Dawn mission which also utilizes solar electric propulsion with xenon propellant, and the second is test data from the rapid loading of a hydrogen cylindrical COPV. The main benefit of this type of model is that the governing physical equations using bulk fluid solid temperatures can provide a quick and accurate estimate of the state of the propellant throughout loading which is much cheaper in terms of computational time and licensing costs than a Computation Fluid Dynamics (CFD) analysis while capturing the majority of the thermodynamics and heat transfer.

Thermodynamic tank modeling↗
NASA NTRS2017

Conference Video for Booth at SAE World Congress Experience Conference

Contents: Publicly released videos on technology transfer items available for licensing from NASA. Includes; Powder Handling Device for Analytical Instruments (Ames); 2. Fiber Optic Shape Sensing (FOSS) (Armstrong); 3. Robo-Glove (Johnson); 4. Modular Robotic Vehicle (Johnson); 5. Battery Management System (Johnson); 6. Active Response Gravity Offload System (ARGOS) (Johnson); 7. Contaminant Resistant Coatings for Extreme Environments (Langley); 8. Molecular Adsorber Coating (MAC) (Goddard); 9. Ultrasonic Stir Welding (Marshall). Also includes scenes from the International Space Station.

Harkey, Ann Marie↗
NASA NTRS2016

TechPort Featured at Glenn Research Center's Technology Day

The NASA Technology Portfolio (TechPort) System was featured at NASA Glenn Research Center's Technology Day on May 24, 2016. This event, which coincided with GRC's 75th Anniversary celebration, drew nearly 250 registered guests including aerospace and technology representatives, local business leaders, state and local government officials, and members of academia. GRC's Director of the Office of Technology Incubation and Innovation and Center Chief Technologist, John Sankovic, presented the opening remarks. Several technical and business-focused panel sessions were convened. NASA's Associate Administrator for the Space Technology Mission Directorate, Steve Jurczyk, GRC's Director of Space Flight Systems, Bryan Smith, and NASA astronaut and U.S. Navy Captain, Sunita Williams, were engaged as a panel for a discussion about "NASA's Journey to Mars: Science Fiction Meets Reality." Another panel moderated by the Executive Director of the Cleveland Water Alliance, Bryan Stubbs, involved a discussion with four GRC technologists on the subject of global water scarcity and water treatment concerns. The GRC panelists shared information on the development of snow-sensing, hyperspectral imaging, and non-equilibrium plasma technologies. Technology Day attendees received overviews of GRC's technologies and partnership objectives, and were introduced to areas for potential collaboration. They were also informed about opportunities to license technologies and how to do business with NASA.

TechPort↗
NASA NTRS2017

A New Architecture for Visualization: Open Mission Control Technologies

Open Mission Control Technologies (MCT) is a new architecture for visualisation of mission data. Driven by requirements for new mission capabilities, including distributed mission operations, access to data anywhere, customization by users, synthesis of multiple data sources, and flexibility for multi-mission adaptation, Open MCT provides users with an integrated customizable environment. Developed at NASAs Ames Research Center (ARC), in collaboration with NASAs Advanced Multimission Operations System (AMMOS) and NASAs Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), Open MCT is getting its first mission use on the Jason 3 Mission, and is also available in the testbed for the Mars 2020 Rover and for development use for NASAs Resource Prospector Lunar Rover. The open source nature of the project provides for use outside of space missions, including open source contributions from a community of users. The defining features of Open MCT for mission users are data integration, end user composition and multiple views. Data integration provides access to mission data across domains in one place, making data such as activities, timelines, telemetry, imagery, event timers and procedures available in one place, without application switching. End user composition provides users with layouts, which act as a canvas to assemble visualisations. Multiple views provide the capability to view the same data in different ways, with live switching of data views in place. Open MCT is browser based, and works on the desktop as well as tablets and phones, providing access to data anywhere. An early use case for mobile data access took place on the Resource Prospector (RP) Mission Distributed Operations Test, in which rover engineers in the field were able to view telemetry on their phones. We envision this capability providing decision support to on console operators from off duty personnel. The plug-in architecture also allows for adaptation for different mission capabilities. Different data types and capabilities may be added or removed using plugins. An API provides a means to write new capabilities and to create data adaptors. Data plugins exist for mission data sources for NASA missions. Adaptors have been written by international and commercial users. Open MCT is open source. Open source enables collaborative development across organizations and also makes the product available outside of the space community, providing a potential source of usage and ideas to drive product design and development. The combination of open source with an Apache 2 license, and distribution on GitHub, has enabled an active community of users and contributors. The spectrum of users for Open MCT is, to our knowledge, unprecedented for mission software. In addition to our NASA users, we have, through open source, had users and inquires on projects ranging from Internet of Things, to radio hobbyists, to farming projects. We have an active community of contributors, enabling a flow of ideas inside and outside of the space community.

Trimble, Jay↗
NASA NTRS2017

Demonstrating High-Accuracy Orbital Access Using Open-Source Tools

Orbit propagation is fundamental to almost every space-based analysis. Currently, many system analysts use commercial software to predict the future positions of orbiting satellites. This is one of many capabilities that can replicated, with great accuracy, without using expensive, proprietary software. NASAs SCaN (Space Communication and Navigation) Center for Engineering, Networks, Integration, and Communications (SCENIC) project plans to provide its analysis capabilities using a combination of internal and open-source software, allowing for a much greater measure of customization and flexibility, while reducing recurring software license costs. MATLAB and the open-source Orbit Determination Toolbox created by Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) were utilized to develop tools with the capability to propagate orbits, perform line-of-sight (LOS) availability analyses, and visualize the results. The developed programs are modular and can be applied for mission planning and viability analysis in a variety of Solar System applications. The tools can perform 2 and N-body orbit propagation, find inter-satellite and satellite to ground station LOS access (accounting for intermediate oblate spheroid body blocking, geometric restrictions of the antenna field-of-view (FOV), and relativistic corrections), and create animations of planetary movement, satellite orbits, and LOS accesses. The code is the basis for SCENICs broad analysis capabilities including dynamic link analysis, dilution-of-precision navigation analysis, and orbital availability calculations.

propagation↗
NASA NTRS2017

Invariant Imbedded T-Matrix Method for Axial Symmetric Hydrometeors with Extreme Aspect Ratios

The single-scattering properties (SSPs) of hydrometeors are the fundamental quantities for physics-based precipitation retrievals. Thus, efficient computation of their electromagnetic scattering is of great value. Whereas the semi-analytical T-Matrix methods are likely the most efficient for nonspherical hydrometeors with axial symmetry, they are not suitable for arbitrarily shaped hydrometeors absent of any significant symmetry, for which volume integral methods such as those based on Discrete Dipole Approximation (DDA) are required. Currently the two leading T-matrix methods are the Extended Boundary Condition Method (EBCM) and the Invariant Imbedding T-matrix Method incorporating Lorentz-Mie Separation of Variables (IITM+SOV). EBCM is known to outperform IITM+SOV for hydrometeors with modest aspect ratios. However, in cases when aspect ratios become extreme, such as needle-like particles with large height to diameter values, EBCM fails to converge. Such hydrometeors with extreme aspect ratios are known to be present in solid precipitation and their SSPs are required to model the radiative responses accurately. In these cases, IITM+SOV is shown to converge. An efficient, parallelized C++ implementation for both EBCM and IITM+SOV has been developed to conduct a performance comparison between EBCM, IITM+SOV, and DDSCAT (a popular implementation of DDA). We present the comparison results and discuss details. Our intent is to release the combined ECBM IITM+SOV software to the community under an open source license.

Pelissier, Craig↗
NASA NTRS2017

NASA Technology Transfer System

NTTS is the IT infrastructure for the Agency's Technology Transfer (T2) program containing 60,000+ technology portfolio supporting all ten NASA field centers and HQ. It is the enterprise IT system for facilitating the Agency's technology transfer process, which includes reporting of new technologies (e.g., technology invention disclosures NF1679), protecting intellectual properties (e.g., patents), and commercializing technologies through various technology licenses, software releases, spinoffs, and success stories using custom built workflow, reporting, data consolidation, integration, and search engines.

enterprise information technology↗
NASA NTRS2018

Increasing Flight Software Reuse with OpenSatKit

In January 2015 the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) released the Core Flight System (cFS) as open source under the NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) license. The cFS is based on flight software (FSW) developed for 12 spacecraft spanning nearly two decades of effort and it can provide about a third of the FSW functionality for a low-earth orbiting scientific spacecraft. The cFS is a FSW framework that is portable, configurable, and extendable using a product line deployment model. However, the components are maintained separately so the user must configure, integrate, and deploy them as a cohesive functional system. This can be very challenging especially for organizations such as universities building cubesats that have minimal experience developing FSW. Supporting universities was one of the primary motivators for releasing the cFS under NOSA. This paper describes the OpenSatKit that was developed to address the cFS deployment challenges and to serve as a cFS training platform for new users. It provides a fully functional out-of-the box software system that includes NASA's cFS, Ball Aerospaceâ€"TM"s command and control system COSMOS, and a NASA dynamic simulator called 42. The kit is freely available since all of the components have been released as open source. The kit runs on a Linux platform, includes 8 cFS applications, several kit-specific applications, and built in demos illustrating how to use key application features. It also includes the software necessary to port the cFS to a Raspberry Pi and instructions for configuring COSMOS to communicate with the target. All of the demos and test scripts can be rerun unchanged with the cFS running on the Raspberry Pi. The cFS uses a 3-tiered layered architecture including a platform abstraction layer, a Core Flight Executive (cFE) middle layer, and an application layer. Similar to smart phones, the cFS application layer is the key architectural feature for userâ€"TM"s to extend the FSW functionality to meet their mission-specific requirements. The platform abstraction layer and the cFE layers go a step further than smart phones by providing a platform-agnostic Application Programmer Interface (API) that allows applications to run unchanged on different platforms. OpenSatKit can serve two significant architectural roles that will further help the adoption of the cFS and help create a community of users that can share assets. First, the kit is being enhanced to automate the integration of applications with the goal of creating a virtual cFS 'App Store'. Second, a platform certification test suite can be developed that would allow users to verify the port of the cFS to a new platform. This paper will describe the current state of these efforts and future plans.

McComas, David↗
NASA NTRS2018

Increasing Flight Software Reuse with OpenSatKit

In January 2015 the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) released the Core Flight System (cFS) as open source under the NASA Open Source Agreement (NOSA) license. The cFS is based on flight software (FSW) developed for 12 spacecraft spanning nearly two decades of effort and it can provide about a third of the FSW functionality for a low-earth orbiting scientific spacecraft. The cFS is a FSW framework that is portable, configurable, and extendable using a product line deployment model. However, the components are maintained separately so the user must configure, integrate, and deploy them as a cohesive functional system. This can be very challenging especially for organizations such as universities building cubesats that have minimal experience developing FSW. Supporting universities was one of the primary motivators for releasing the cFS under NOSA. This paper describes the OpenSatKit that was developed to address the cFS deployment challenges and to serve as a cFS training platform for new users. It provides a fully functional out-of-the box software system that includes NASA's cFS, Ball Aerospace's command and control system COSMOS, and a NASA dynamic simulator called 42. The kit is freely available since all of the components have been released as open source. The kit runs on a Linux platform, includes 8 cFS applications, several kit-specific applications, and built in demos illustrating how to use key application features. It also includes the software necessary to port the cFS to a Raspberry Pi and instructions for configuring COSMOS to communicate with the target. All of the demos and test scripts can be rerun unchanged with the cFS running on the Raspberry Pi. The cFS uses a 3-tiered layered architecture including a platform abstraction layer, a Core Flight Executive (cFE) middle layer, and an application layer. Similar to smart phones, the cFS application layer is the key architectural feature for users to extend the FSW functionality to meet their mission-specific requirements. The platform abstraction layer and the cFE layers go a step further than smart phones by providing a platform-agnostic Application Programmer Interface (API) that allows applications to run unchanged on different platforms. OpenSatKit can serve two significant architectural roles that will further help the adoption of the cFS and help create a community of users that can share assets. First, the kit is being enhanced to automate the integration of applications with the goal of creating a virtual cFS "App Store".. Second, a platform certification test suite can be developed that would allow users to verify the port of the cFS to a new platform. This paper will describe the current state of these efforts and future plans.

Computer Programming and Software↗