SEARCH · Engineering Papers
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.
Through computer animation several geological features of Venus are presented in this video. The Sif Mons, a 1.2 mile high volcano and the Gula Mons, a 1.8 mile high volcano are shown. Also, radar images of a rift valley, several impact craters, and a corona can be seen. The video ends with a northeast view of Eistla Regio.
Day 7 of the STS-71 mission is featured in this video, a continuation from days 1-6, this video includes live footage onboard the STS-71 Space Station Atlantis and the Mir Space Station. Astronaut, Dr. Norman Thagard, after living in space for 3 months onboard the Mir Space Station, joins the crew of Atlantis for his trip back to earth. Live interviews are conducted with the crew of Atlantis.
Day 8 of the STS-71 mission is featured in this video, a continuation from days 1-7, this video includes live footage onboard the STS-71 Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Mir Space Station. Live interviews are conducted with the crew of Atlantis. Views are shown of the Mir Space Station from various angles.
Day 9 of the STS-71 mission is featured in this video, a continuation from days 1-8, this video includes live footage onboard the STS-71 Space Shuttle Atlantis and the Mir Space Station. Views are shown of the Mir Space Station from various angles and its earth orbit after disconnection from Atlantis.
Historical footage (1958 - 1983) concerning NASA's Space Program, is reviewed in this two-part video. Host, Lynn Bondurant describes the birth of NASA and its accomplishments through the years. Part one contains: the launch of Russian satellite Sputnik on October 4,1957; the first dog (Soviet) in space; NACA Space Research, Explorer-6; and still photographs of various Space projects. Tiros 1 experimental weather satellite, Microgravity simulators, Echo 1 passive communications satellite, and the first U.S. manned spaceflight Mercury are included in part two. The seven Mercury astronauts are: Captain Donald Slayton, Lt. Commander Alan Shepard, Lt. Commander Walter Schirra, Captain Virgil Grissom, Lt. Col. John Glenn Jr., Captain Leroy Cooper Jr, and Lt. Malcolm Scott Carpenter. Also included are an ongoing interview (throughout the video) with NASA's first Administrator Keith Glennan, the first flight in 1961 with Enos, a chimpanzee, President Kennedy's speech in Washington about the Space Program, Project Gemini - the 2-manned space flights, and the recovery of Virgil Grissom from splash down.
Short-duration upper atmospheric optical flashes were recorded on the night of 8 July, 1993 (9 July UT) from the NASA DC-8 Airborne Laboratory flying over the American Midwest. All-sky video images from an intensified silicon intensified target (ISIT) camera revealed 19 upper atmospheric flashes occurring over a period of approximately 100 min. The flashes were similar in appearance to previously reported ground and shuttle-based video observations. Detailed analysis of 12 of the events yielded these parameters: (1) duration less than or equal to 17 ms; (2) brightness 10-50 kR, roughly that of bright aurorae; (3) terminal heights 30-100 km, with a mean of approximately 60 km; (4) horizontal extent 10-50 km; (5) emission volumes greater than 1000 cu km. The relative frequency of the optical flashes was (6) 1:200-1:400 compared to negative cloud-to-ground discharges and 1:20-1:40 compared to positive cloud-to-ground discharges.
Chromatic image analysis system (CIAS) developed for use in noncontact measurements of temperatures on aerothermodynamic models in hypersonic wind tunnels. Based on concept of temperature coupled to shift in color spectrum for optical measurement. Video camera images fluorescence emitted by phosphor-coated model at two wavelengths. Temperature map of model then computed from relative brightnesses in video images of model at those wavelengths. Eliminates need for intrusive, time-consuming, contact temperature measurements by gauges, making it possible to map temperatures on complex surfaces in timely manner and at reduced cost.
Actors computer program implements automated process that synthesizes realistic animations of person speaking. Produces "newscaster" type video sequences. Uses images of person and, therefore, not limited to cartoons and cartoonlike movies. Potential applications also include use of process for automatically producing on-the-fly animations for human/computer interfaces and for reducing bandwidth needed to transmit video telephone signals.
The Law of Sines and the Law of Cosines are introduced and demonstrated in this 'Project Mathematics' series video using both film footage and computer animation. This video deals primarily with the mathematical field of Trigonometry and explains how these laws were developed and their applications. One significant use is geographical and geological surveying. This includes both the triangulation method and the spirit leveling method. With these methods, it is shown how the height of the tallest mountain in the world, Mt. Everest, was determined.
The Device for Orientation and Motion Environments Preflight Adaptation Trainer (DOME PAT) provides astronauts a virtual microgravity sensory environment designed to help alleviate tye symptoms of space motion sickness (SMS). The system consists of four microcomputers networked to provide real time control, and an image generator (IG) driving a wide angle video display inside a dome structure. The spherical display demands distortion correction. The system is currently being modified with a new graphical user interface (GUI) and a new Silicon Graphics IG. This paper will concentrate on the new GUI and the networking scheme. The new GUI eliminates proprietary graphics hardware and software, and instead makes use of standard and low cost PC video (CGA) and off the shelf software (Microsoft's Quick C). Mouse selection for user input is supported. The new Silicon Graphics IG requires an Ethernet interface. The microcomputer known as the Real Time Controller (RTC), which has overall control of the system and is written in Ada, was modified to use the free public domain NCSA Telnet software for Ethernet communications with the Silicon Graphics IG. The RTC also maintains the original ARCNET communications through Novell Netware IPX with the rest of the system. The Telnet TCP/IP protocol was first used for real-time communication, but because of buffering problems the Telnet datagram (UDP) protocol needed to be implemented. Since the Telnet modules are written in C, the Adap pragma 'Interface' was used to interface with the network calls.
On this second day of the STS-73 sixteen day mission, the crew Cmdr. Kenneth Bowersox, Pilot Kent Rominger, Payload Specialists Albert Sacco and Fred Leslie, and Mission Specialists Kathryn Thornton, Catherine 'Cady' Coleman, and Michael Lopez-Alegria are shown performing several of the spaceborne experiments on the United States Microgravity Lab-2 (USML-2). These experiments included the Astroculture (tm)(ASC) experiment, the Protein Crystal Growth (PCG) experiment using liquid/liquid diffusion methods, and the Drop Physics Module (DPM) experiment. A High-Packed Digital Television (HI-PAC) system is used to downlink video images of the various experiments from the Shuttle to Mission Control. Video from Mission Control is uplinked to the shuttle using a Ground-Air Television (GATV) system.
At a post flight press conference, the flight crew of the STS-46 mission (Cmdr. Loren Shriver, Pilot Andrew Allen, Mission Specialists Claude Nicollier (European Space Agency (ESA)), Marsha Ivins (Flight Engineer), Jeff Hoffman (Payload Commander), Franklin Chang-Dias, and Payload Specialist Franco Malerba (Italian Space Agency (ISA))) discussed their roles in and presented video footage, slides and still photographs of the different aspects of their mission. The primary objectives of the mission were the deployment of ESA's European Retrievable Carrier (EURECA) satellite and the joint NASA/ISA deployment and testing of the Tethered Satellite System (TSS). Secondary objectives included the IMAX Camera, the Limited Duration Space Environment Candidate Materials Exposure (LDVE), and the Pituitary Growth Hormone Cell Function (PHCF) experiments. Video footage of the EURECA and TSS deployment procedures are shown. Earth views were extensive and included Javanese volcanoes, Amazon basin forest ground fires, southern Mexico, southern Bolivian volcanoes, south-west Sudan and the Sahara Desert, and Melville Island, Australia. Questions from reporters and journalists from Johnson Space Center and Kennedy Space Center were discussed.
The Photogrammetric Appendage Structural Dynamics Experiment (PASDE) uses six video cameras in the Space Shuttle cargo bay to measure vibration of the Russian Mir space station Kvant-ll solar array. It occurs on Shuttle/Mir docking mission STS-74 scheduled for launch in November 1995. The objective of PASDE is to demonstrate photogrammetric technology for measuring 'untargeted' spacecraft appendage structural dynamics. This paper discusses a pre-flight simulation test conducted in July 1995, focusing on the image processing aspects. The flight camera system recorded vibrations of a full-scale structural test article having grids of white lines on black background, similar in appearance to the Mir solar array. Using image correlation analysis, line intersections on the structure are tracked in the video recordings to resolutions of less than 0.1 pixel. Calibration and merging of multiple camera views generated 3-dimensional displacements from which structural modal parameters are then obtained.
This report describes a personal computer based system for automatic and semiautomatic tracking of objects on film or video tape, developed to meet the needs of the Microgravity Combustion and Fluids Science Research Programs at the NASA Lewis Research Center. The system consists of individual hardware components working under computer control to achieve a high degree of automation. The most important hardware components include 16-mm and 35-mm film transports, a high resolution digital camera mounted on a x-y-z micro-positioning stage, an S-VHS tapedeck, an Hi8 tapedeck, video laserdisk, and a framegrabber. All of the image input devices are remotely controlled by a computer. Software was developed to integrate the overall operation of the system including device frame incrementation, grabbing of image frames, image processing of the object's neighborhood, locating the position of the object being tracked, and storing the coordinates in a file. This process is performed repeatedly until the last frame is reached. Several different tracking methods are supported. To illustrate the process, two representative applications of the system are described. These applications represent typical uses of the system and include tracking the propagation of a flame front and tracking the movement of a liquid-gas interface with extremely poor visibility.
Incidence of wave breaking for pure wind driven waves has been studied on Lake Washington at wind speeds up to 8 m/s. Video recordings were employed to identify and categorize the breaking events in terms of micro-scale, spilling and plunging breakers. These events were correlated with the magnitude of the wave spectrum measured with a resistance wire wave gauge and band pass filtered between 6 and 10 Hz. An equivalent percentage of breaking crests were found for spilling and plunging events. Wave forcing as measured by wind stress (or friction velocity, u(sub *), squared) and by inverse wave age, u(sub *)/Cp where Cp is the phase velocity of the waves at the peak of the frequency spectrum, were found to be good prerictors of percentage of breaking crests. When combined in a two parameter regression, those two variables gave small standard deviation and had a high correlation coefficient (66 percent). The combination of u(sub *)(exp 2) and u(sub *)/Cp can be understood in physical terms. Furthermore, for the larger values of u(sub *)(exp 2) the dependence of wave braking and wave age was stronger than at the low end of the values u(sub *)(exp 2) and u(sub *)/Cp. Thus, both the level of wave development as determined by inverse wave age, which we may term relative wind effectiveness for wave forcing and the wind forcing on the water surface determine the incidence of wave breaking. Substituting U(sub 10)(sup 3.75) (which is the dependence of whitecap cover found by Monahan and coworkers) an equivalent correlation was found to the prediction by u(sub *)(exp 2). Slightly better standard deviation value and higher correlation coefficient were found by using a Reynolds number as predictor. A two-parameter regression involving u(sub *)(exp 2) and a Reynold's number proposed by Toba and his colleagues which relates u(sub *)(exp 2) and peak wave frequency, improves the correlation even more but is less easy to interpret in physical terms. The equivalent percentage of breaking crests obtained in our previous study was reported at 8.6 percent for a short record obtained at U(sub 10N) of about 6 m/s. Typical values in the current study for similar conditions are 6 percent, which is consistent with the previous study in view of the scatter. In that study we did not have a video recording system, so the observed breaking may include more of the micro-scaic breaking events, and the value, 8.6 percent, is well within the range of highly probable sampling variability.
The primary objective was to develop a computer information system for effectively presenting NASA's technologies to American industries, for appropriate commercialization. To this end a comprehensive information management model, applicable to a wide variety of situations, and immune to computer software/hardware technological gyrations, was developed. The model consists of four main elements: a DATA_STORE, a data PRODUCER/UPDATER_CLIENT and a data PRESENTATION_CLIENT, anchored to a central object-oriented SERVER engine. This server engine facilitates exchanges among the other model elements and safeguards the integrity of the DATA_STORE element. It is designed to support new technologies, as they become available, such as Object Linking and Embedding (OLE), on-demand audio-video data streaming with compression (such as is required for video conferencing), Worldwide Web (WWW) and other information services and browsing, fax-back data requests, presentation of information on CD-ROM, and regular in-house database management, regardless of the data model in place. The four components of this information model interact through a system of intelligent message agents which are customized to specific information exchange needs. This model is at the leading edge of modern information management models. It is independent of technological changes and can be implemented in a variety of ways to meet the specific needs of any communications situation. This summer a partial implementation of the model has been achieved. The structure of the DATA_STORE has been fully specified and successfully tested using Microsoft's FoxPro 2.6 database management system. Data PRODUCER/UPDATER and PRESENTATION architectures have been developed and also successfully implemented in FoxPro; and work has started on a full implementation of the SERVER engine. The model has also been successfully applied to a CD-ROM presentation of NASA's technologies in support of Langley Research Center's TAG efforts.
When a thin film of polymer is coated on to a quartz crystal microbalance (QCM), the QCM can be used to detect the rate of increase in weight of the polymer film as the volatile penetrant diffuses into the polymer. From this rate information the diffusion coefficient of the penetrant into the polymer can be computed. Calculations requiring this diffusion coefficient lead to values which approximate the monomeric friction coefficient of the polymer. This project has been concerned with the trial of crystal oscillating circuits suitable for driving polymer coated crystals in an atmosphere of penetrant. For these studies done at room temperature, natural rubber was used as an easily applied polymer that is readily penetrated by toluene vapors, qualities anticipated with polyimides when they are tested at T(g) in the presence of toluene. Three quartz crystal oscillator circuits were tested. The simplest circuit used +/- 5 volt dc and had a transistor to transistor logic (TTL) inverter chip that provides a 180 deg phase shift via a feed back loop. This oscillator circuit was stable but would not drive the crystal when the crystal was coated with polymer and subjected to toluene vapors. Removal of a variable resistor from this circuit increased stability but did not otherwise increase performance. Another driver circuit tested contained a two stage differential input, differential output, wide band video amplifier and also contain a feed back loop. The circuit voltage could not be varied and operated at +/- 5 volts dc; this circuit was also stable but failed to oscillate the polymer coated crystal in an atmosphere saturated with toluene vapors. The third oscillator circuit was of similar construction and relied on the same video amplifier but allowed operation with variable voltage. This circuit would drive the crystal when the crystal was submerged in liquid toluene and when the crystal was coated with polymer and immersed in toluene vapors. The frequency readings obtained when using this oscillating circuit are highly variable. This circuit requires further modification to stabilize frequency readings before its use in studies to determine the diffusion coefficient of penetrant molecules into a polymer film coated on a QCM.
Image intensifiers, video cameras, and image-data-processing computers used to study combustion. Possible to view and analyze methane, hydrogen, and other flames dim or invisible to human eye and difficult to image by use of conventional photographic and video cameras.