Engineering Papers⌕ Search

SEARCH · Engineering Papers

Results for “Direct detection”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 1,279 records · Page 71
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1992

Far infrared spectra of amorphous and crystalline water ice and changes in these phases as the result of proton irradiation

Far infrared spectra from 20 microns (500 cm(sup -1)) to 100 microns (100 cm(sup -1)) of water ice were measured. Amorphous ice deposited at 13 K has one absorption band at 45 microns (220 cm(sup -1)). Amorphous ice evolves into a crystalline form with absorptions at 44 microns (229 cm(sup -1)) and 62 microns (162 cm(sup -1)) as the temperature is increased to 155 K. Spectra documenting this phase change are presented as well as spectra of crystalline ice at temperatures between 13 K and 155 K. Far infrared spectra of amorphous and crystalline water ice before and after proton irradiation are also presented. Changes in these two forms are discussed in relation to ices in comets, grains, and planetary satellites in various radiation environments. Observations of non-terrestrial clathrate hydrates are still lacking despite the fact that clathrates first were suggested to exist in cometary and interstellar ices over forty years ago. Spectroscopy, the most direct method of astronomical detection, has been hampered by the similarity of clathrate hydrate spectra to those of unenclathrated guest molecules and solid H2O. A methanol (CH3OH) clathrate hydrate, using a recently published procedure, was prepared and its far-IR spectrum investigated. The spectrum is quite differenct from that of either unenclathrated CH3OH or solid H2O and so should be of value in astronomical searches for this clathrate.

Hudson, Reggie L.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Far-infrared investigations of a methanol clathrate hydrate - Implications for astronomical observations

Observations of nonterrestrial clathrate hydrates are still lacking despite the fact that clathrates first were suggested to exist in cometary and interstellar ices over 40 years ago. Spectroscopy, the most direct method of astronomical detection, has been hampered by the similarity of clathrate hydrate spectra to those of unenclathrated guest molecules and solid H2O. We have prepared a methanol (CH3OH) clathrate hydrate, using a recently published procedure, and have investigated its far-infrared spectrum. The spectrum is quite different from that of either unenclathrated CH3OH or solid H2O and so should be of value in astronomical searches for this clathrate.

Hudson, Reggie L.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Elliptical-core two-mode optical-fiber sensor implementation methods

We present experimental methods for the practical implementation of few-mode elliptical-core sensors. Techniques for desensitizing the lead-in and lead-out fibers are discussed and results of a vibration sensor embedded in a graphite-epoxy composite are presented. A scheme using a single-mode elliptical-core fiber as the lead-in fiber and an offset circular-core single-mode fiber as the lead-out fiber is successfully implemented. Detection techniques for few-mode fiber sensors are reviewed and a novel fringe-counting method to unambiguously detect the amplitude and direction of dynamic strain is reported for the first time.

Murphy, Kent A.↗
NASA NTRS2001

Common-Path Heterodyne Laser-Induced Thermal Acoustics for Seedless Laser Velocimetry

We demonstrate the use of a novel technique for the detection of heterodyne laser-induced thermal acoustics signals, which allows the construction of a highly stable seedless laser velocimeter. A common-path configuration is combined with quadrature detection to provide flow direction, greatly improve robustness to misalignment and vibration, and give reliable velocity measurement at low flow velocities. Comparison with Pitot tube measurements in the freestream of a wind tunnel shows root-mean-square errors of 0.67 m/s over the velocity range 0.55 m/s.

Hart, Roger C.↗
NASA NTRS1999

Methane concentration and isotopic composition measurements with a mid-infrared quantum-cascade laser

A quantum-cascade laser operating at a wavelength of 8.1 micrometers was used for high-sensitivity absorption spectroscopy of methane (CH4). The laser frequency was continuously scanned with current over more than 3 cm-1, and absorption spectra of the CH4 nu 4 P branch were recorded. The measured laser linewidth was 50 MHz. A CH4 concentration of 15.6 parts in 10(6) ( ppm) in 50 Torr of air was measured in a 43-cm path length with +/- 0.5-ppm accuracy when the signal was averaged over 400 scans. The minimum detectable absorption in such direct absorption measurements is estimated to be 1.1 x 10(-4). The content of 13CH4 and CH3D species in a CH4 sample was determined.

Non-NASA Center↗
NASA NTRS1986

M.I.T./Canadian vestibular experiments on the Spacelab-1 mission: 6. Vestibular reactions to lateral acceleration following ten days of weightlessness

Tests of otolith function were performed pre-flight and post-flight on the science crew of the first Spacelab Mission with a rail-mounted linear acceleration sled. Four tests were performed using horizontal lateral (y-axis) acceleration: perception of linear motion, a closed loop nulling task, dynamic ocular torsion, and lateral eye deviations. The motion perception test measured the time to detect the onset and direction of near threshold accelerations. Post-flight measures of threshold and velocity constant obtained during the days immediately following the mission showed no consistent pattern of change among the four crewmen compared to their pre-flight baseline other than an increased variability of response. In the closed loop nulling task, crewmen controlled the motion of the sled and attempted to null a computer-generated random disturbance motion. When performed in the light, no difference in ability was noted between pre-flight and post-flight. In the dark, however, two of the four crewmen exhibited somewhat enhanced performance post-flight. Dynamic ocular torsion was measured in response to sinusoidal lateral acceleration which produces a gravitionertial stimulus equivalent to lateral head tilt without rotational movement of the head. Results available for two crewmen suggest a decreased amplitude of sinusoidal ocular torsion when measured on the day of landing (R+0) and an increasing amplitude when measured during the week following the mission.

short duration↗
NASA NTRS2008

Optimization of Neutral Atom Imagers

The interactions between plasma structures and neutral atom populations in interplanetary space can be effectively studied with energetic neutral atom imagers. For neutral atoms with energies less than 1 keV, the most efficient detection method that preserves direction and energy information is conversion to negative ions on surfaces. We have examined a variety of surface materials and conversion geometries in order to identify the factors that determine conversion efficiency. For chemically and physically stable surfaces smoothness is of primary importance while properties such as work function have no obvious correlation to conversion efficiency. For the noble metals, tungsten, silicon, and graphite with comparable smoothness, conversion efficiency varies by a factor of two to three. We have also examined the way in which surface conversion efficiency varies with the angle of incidence of the neutral atom and have found that the highest efficiencies are obtained at angles of incidence greater then 80deg. The conversion efficiency of silicon, tungsten and graphite were examined most closely and the energy dependent variation of conversion efficiency measured over a range of incident angles. We have also developed methods for micromachining silicon in order to reduce the volume to surface area over that of a single flat surface and have been able to reduce volume to surface area ratios by up to a factor of 60. With smooth micro-machined surfaces of the optimum geometry, conversion efficiencies can be increased by an order of magnitude over instruments like LENA on the IMAGE spacecraft without increase the instruments mass or volume.

Shappirio, M.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Discovery of a 7 mHz X-Ray Quasi-Periodic Oscillation from the Most Massive Stellar-Mass Black Hole IC 10 X-1

We report the discovery with XMM-Newton of an approx.. = 7 mHz X-ray (0.3-10.0 keV) quasi-periodic oscillation (QPO) from the eclipsing, high-inclination black hole binary IC 10 X-1. The QPO is significant at >4.33 sigma confidence level and has a fractional amplitude (% rms) and a quality factor, Q is identical with nu/delta nu, of approx. = 11 and 4, respectively. The overall X-ray (0.3-10.0 keV) power spectrum in the frequency range 0.0001-0.1 Hz can be described by a power-law with an index of approx. = −2, and a QPO at 7 mHz. At frequencies approx. > 0.02 Hz there is no evidence for significant variability. The fractional amplitude (rms) of the QPO is roughly energy-independent in the energy range of 0.3-1.5 keV. Above 1.5 keV the low signal-to-noise ratio of the data does not allow us to detect the QPO. By directly comparing these properties with the wide range of QPOs currently known from accreting black hole and neutron stars, we suggest that the 7 mHz QPO of IC 10 X-1 may be linked to one of the following three categories of QPOs: (1) the "heartbeat" mHz QPOs of the black hole sources GRS 1915+105 and IGR J17091−3624, or (2) the 0.6-2.4 Hz "dipper QPOs" of high-inclination neutron star systems, or (3) the mHz QPOs of Cygnus X-3.

Oscillation↗
NASA NTRS2018

System and Method of Optical Axis Alignment Monitor and Feedback Control for a Spectrometer

The present invention relates to an apparatus and method of a real-time, monitoring and control feedback system for a 2-D spectrometer application, to correct for active optical axis pointing misalignments or jitter (i.e., tip, tilt), that result in degraded scientific image integrity, unwanted spatial crosstalk and image blurring artifacts which severely limit the applications for high resolution spectrometer image data. The present invention provides a unique system architecture which ensures the most direct optical axis motion detection and control capability that will enable sub-pixel image motion monitoring and boresight control stability, thus, maximizing the science image quality.

Marx, Catherine↗
NASA NTRS2003

Demonstration of extreme wavefront sensing performance on the TPF high contrast imaging testbed

The Terrestrial Platet Finder high contrast imaging testbed facilitates the investigation into the diversity of engineering challenges presented by the goal of direct exo-planet detection, for instance, HCIT offers a high-density deformable mirror to control the optical wavefront errors, a configurable coronagraph to control the diffracted light, and translatable cameras for measuring the focal and pupil planes before and after the coronagraph. In this paper, we summarize the measurements that are obtained about the occulter focal plane.

Trauger, John T.↗
DOE OSTI2022

Balancing Trade-Offs Imposed by Growth Media and Mass Spectrometry for Bacterial Exometabolomics

The bacterial exometabolome consists of a vast array of specialized metabolites, many of which are only produced in response to specific environmental stimuli. For this reason, it is desirable to control the extracellular environment with a defined growth medium composed of pure ingredients. However, complex (undefined) media are expected to support the robust growth of a greater variety of microorganisms than defined media. Here, we investigate the trade-offs inherent to a range of complex and defined solid media for the growth of soil microorganisms, production of specialized metabolites, and detection of these compounds using direct infusion mass spectrometry. We find that complex media support growth of more soil microorganisms, as well as allowing for the detection of more previously discovered natural products as a fraction of total m/z features detected in each sample. However, the use of complex media often caused mass spectrometer injection failures and poor-quality mass spectra, which in some cases resulted in over a quarter of samples being removed from analysis. Defined media, while more limiting in growth, generated higher quality spectra and yielded more m/z features after background subtraction. These results inform future exometabolomic experiments requiring a medium that supports the robust growth of many soil microorganisms.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS1991

Progress in extra-solar planet detection

Progress in extra-solar planet detection is reviewed. The following subject areas are covered: (1) the definition of a planet; (2) the weakness of planet signals; (3) direct techniques - imaging and spectral detection; and (4) indirect techniques - reflex motion and occultations.

Brown, Robert A.↗
NASA NTRS2004

The Herbig Ae Star HD 163296 in X-Rays

Chandra X-ray imaging spectroscopy of the nearby Herbig Ae star HD 163296 at 100 AU angular resolution is reported. A point-like, soft (kT approximately 0.5 approximately kev), emission-line source is detected at the location of the star with an X-ray luminosity of 4.0e29 erg/s. In addition, faint emission along the direction of a previously-detected Ly-alpha-emitting jet and Herbig-Haro outflow may be present. The relatively low luminosity, lack of a hard spectral component, and absence of strong X-ray variability in HD 163296 can be explained as originating from optically-thin shock-heated gas accreting onto the stellar surface along magnetic field lines. This would require a (dipole) magnetic field strength at the surface of HD 163296 of at least approximately 100 approximately G and perhaps as high as several kG.

Swartz, Douglas A.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Deep Analysis Net with Causal Embedding for Coal-fired Power Plant Fault Detection and Diagnosis (DANCE4CFDD)

Fault detection and diagnosis is critical to power plant operation to ensure attaining high reliability while reducing operation cost. As more renewable power is introduced to the power grid, traditional fossil power plants take on the extra burden of excessive load cycling to compensate the generation variability from renewable power. Such load cycling will pose more reliability challenges to power plant operation. There are a number of challenges faced by today’s asset health management system in coal- fired (or gas) power plants: 1) high-dimensional nonlinear interaction among multiple time series measurements; 2) high measurement variance induced by operational conditions/modes; 3) variation among asset types and plant configurations; and 4) a small number of faulty events to learn from. To cope with these challenges, today’s fielded asset health management systems rely heavily on manual efforts from domain experts and hand-crafted features or rules based on domain knowledge. Despite its role in plant reliability, such a practice is costly and hinders its scalability and sustainability, particularly when a plant undergoes modifications. The objective of this project is to develop a novel end-to-end AI learning system that is trainable (i.e., the AI representation of a complex system behavior can be directly learned from properly labeled data) for accurate fault detection and root cause analysis. The ability to create a fault detection model directly from time series could alleviate the efforts associated with today’s asset management solution development. In the course of this project, we have achieved the following: Created an AI model development environment incorporating state-of-the-art neural network architectures for rapid model development and evaluation; Developed novel learning strategies for training of fault detection model; Developed special-purpose neural network architecture embedded with variable association graph aiming for better interpretability; Developed a learning strategy to leverage a small number of faulty events for enhanced fault detection capability; Conducted detailed experimental study based on public benchmark datasets and demonstrated the effectiveness of the proposed solution; and Validated the developed system with data from both a coal-fired plant boiler dynamic simulation model and real-world coal-fired power plant covering multiple asset and fault types. Overall, the project attained a technology readiness level of TRL 5 from TRL 2 at the beginning of the project.

20 FOSSIL-FUELED POWER PLANTS↗
NASA NTRS1987

Spectral differential imaging detection of planets about nearby stars

Direct ground-based optical imaging of planets in orbit about nearby stars may be accomplished by spectral differential imaging using multiple passband acoustooptic filters with a CCD. This technique provides two essential results. First, it provides a means to modulate the stellar flux reflected from a planet while leaving the flux from the star and other sources in the same field of view unmodulated. Second, spectral differential imaging enables the CCD detector to achieve a sufficiently high dynamic range to locate planets near a star in spite of an integrated brightness differential of 5 x 10 to the 8th. Spectral differential imaging at nearby diffraction limited imaging conditions with telescope apodization can reduce the time to conduct a sensitive planetary search to a few hours in some cases. The feasibility of this idea is discussed here and shown to provide, in principle, the discrimination and sensitivity to detect a Jovian-class planet about stars at distances of about 10 parsecs. The detection of brown dwarfs is shown to be feasible as well.

Smith, W. Hayden↗
NASA NTRS2017

Development of the Space Debris Sensor (SDS)

Debris Resistive/Acoustic Grid Orbital Navy-NASA Sensor (DRAGONS) is an impact sensor designed to detect and characterize collisions with small orbital debris: from 50 microns to greater than 1millimeter debris size detection; Characterizes debris size, speed, direction, and density. The Space Debris Sensor (SDS) is a flight demonstration of DRAGONS on the International Space Station: Approximately 1 square meter of detection area facing the ISS velocity vector; Minimum two year mission on Columbus External Payloads Facility (EPF); Minimal obstruction from ISS hardware; Development is nearing final checkout and integration with the ISS; Current launch schedule is SpaceX13, about September 2017, or SpaceX14, about Jan 2018.

Hamilton, Joe↗
NASA NTRS1984

Voyager EUV and FUV Observations

The Voyager 1 and 2 ultraviolet spectrometers are sensitive over the wavelength range 500 to 1700 A. In the extreme ultraviolet (EUV), at wavelengths shortward of the Lyman limit (912 A), Voyager observations detected emission from three out of a sample of 11 nearly hot DA white dwarfs. These observations imply very low HI column densities in the directions of the three stars detected. In the far ultraviolet (FUV), at wavelengths between 912 and 1200 A, Voyager observations of O and B stars can be used to study interstellar reddening at the shortest wavelengths and to provide useful estimates of interstellar H2 column densities.

Holberg, J. B.↗
NASA NTRS1971

Low intensity H-beta emission from the interstellar medium

A search for diffuse galactic H beta emission not associated with any known H II regions was conducted using a 2-inch-diamenter pressure-scanned Fabry-Perot spectrometer at the Coude focus of a 36-inch telescope. Observations were made near the directions of four pulsars. Emissions with intensities from 40,000 to 400,000 photons/sq cm sec ster (corresponding to emission measures of approximately 10 - 100) were detected in three of the directions. The data indicate an average ionization rate (assuming steady state) of approximately 10 to the minus 14th power/H-atom sec for the interstellar hydrogen in these directions and temperatures between 1000 and 10,000 K for the emitting regions. Plans were made to continue the investigation of these very faint hydrogen emission sources using a 6-inch-diameter Fabry-Perot spectrometer.

Reynolds, R. J.↗