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At least 1,477 records · Page 82

Numerical Study of Water Ice and Molecular Contamination Build Up during JWST Deployment

This paper summarizes a recent numerical analysis of water vapor and volatile condensible material deposition on the James Webb Space Telescope from the initial orbit insertion up to 180 days post launch. The analysis utilized 17 distinct geometry files capturing observatory configuration changes during the deployment. Surface temperature was set from a time-dependent thermal analysis solution. A vapor pressure model was used to calculate the net water ice adsorption. Molecular contamination included a contribution from UV photopolymerization. The analysis predicted levels of ice and molecular accumulation were found to be within the allowable limits specified by the observatory contamination control plan.

James Webb Space Telescope↗

Lunar EXOCAM - Remotely Deployable In-Situ Sensor Suite to Inform Lunar PSI

Lunar ExoCam is a remotely deployed lunar sensor suite payload that can land within an operable ranged distance of approx. 5 – 20 m to lander. The sensor suite will enable a fully immersive 360° environmental characterization of regolith dispersion captured during the final descent of the landing craft. Ejecting and reaching the lunar surface prior to the descending vehicle, the ExoCam sensor suite is then poised to gather in-situ measurements throughout the full cycle of plume-surface interaction (PSI), utilizing various onboard instrumentation to capture and relay synchronous data over time. Following completion of the landing cycle and brief surface activity, these data are relayed via Wi-Fi back to the lander for subsequent transmission to Earth

Jason Achilles Mezilis↗

Using Virtual Reality to Envision Deployment of Spacesuit-Compatible Augmented Reality Displays for Lunar Surface Operations

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) will soon land crew on the lunar surface to establish a sustainable presence and develop operational concepts for future long-duration missions. New technologies will be necessary to extend planning and execution capabilities for lunar surface activities. The Joint Augmented Reality Visual Informatics System (Joint AR) at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) is one such technology. Joint AR is a suit-mounted augmented reality (AR) display and compute system which facilitates unprecedented information exchange and data visualization capabilities between mission support operators and suited crew. This paper describes challenges associated with developing an AR technology for an envisioned work domain by applying a sociotechnical lens to the iterative testing and development of novel AR technology through virtual reality (VR). A foundational VR testbed was established, providing a high-fidelity approximation of the lunar surface and enabling testing of envisioned AR system features in parallel with real world product development. Using this environment, a series of human-in-the-loop experiments were conducted using VR to deploy a notional AR system supporting use cases envisioned for lunar exploration extravehicular activity (xEVA). Our findings indicate VR is a powerful and immersive tool for testing capabilities which extend beyond the limitations of current AR technology. Our VR testbed enables early testing of proposed system features, advancing identification of high-value features and driving present-day development of Joint AR. Future work directions are discussed, including lessons learned and a roadmap for an iterative research and development approach applying VR (among other testbeds) to accelerate Joint AR system maturation.

Augmented reality↗

Open-source Wireless Sensor Network (Wi-Se Net) for Flexible Deployment

Wireless sensors, especially if battery powered, have a number of advantages over wired sensors for flexible or temporary diagnostic deployment in a field or lab setting. Recent advances in wireless technology and microprocessor boards have produced a variety of inexpensive off-the shelf chips which can communicate wirelessly with simple protocols. This paper describes the design and implementation of a highly customizable wireless sensor network (called Wi-Se Net) using inexpensive open-source hardware components as wireless nodes. These wireless sensor nodes can transmit data at a rate <250 Hz, can be battery powered, and have a small footprint (2x5 cm). In addition, a preliminary over-the-air programming system was developed to allow for simple wireless configuration when active. The network performance was demonstrated by taking distributed and electrically isolated temperature measurements on a high-voltage lab apparatus. Although this test case is in a laboratory setting, this network architecture could be easily repurposed for various other forms of monitoring.

Wireless Sensor Network↗

Open-source Wireless Sensor Network (Wi-Se Net) for Flexible Deployment

Wireless sensors, especially if battery powered, have a number of advantages over wired sensors for flexible or temporary diagnostic deployment in a field or lab setting. Recent advances in wireless technology and microprocessor boards have produced a variety of inexpensive off-the shelf chips which can communicate wirelessly with simple protocols. This paper describes the design and implementation of a highly customizable wireless sensor network (called WiSe Net) using inexpensive open-source hardware components as wireless nodes. These wireless sensor nodes can transmit data at a rate <250 Hz, can be battery powered, and have a small footprint (2x5 cm). In addition, a preliminary over-the-air programming system was developed to allow for simple wireless configuration when active. The network performance was demonstrated by taking distributed and electrically isolated temperature measurements on a high-voltage lab apparatus. Although this test case is in a laboratory setting, this network architecture could be easily repurposed for various other forms of monitoring.

Wireless Sensor Network↗

Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS): the 2022 Deployment

The Investigation of Microphysics and Precipitation for Atlantic Coast Threatening Snowstorms (IMPACTS) is a NASA-supported field campaign to study snowstorms particularly over the northeastern United States. Snowfall within these winter storms is often organized in banded structures that can vary on multiple scales. The goals of IMPACTS are to characterize the spatial and temporal scale of snowbands, understand the processes controlling the structure and evolution of the bands and apply this knowledge to improving remote sensing and numerical modeling. IMPACTS takes place over three winter seasons, 2020, 2022 and 2023. IMPACTS flies two aircraft: the ER-2 equipped with satellite-simulating remote sensing instruments; and the P-3 equipped with in situ microphysics probes and environmental instrumentation. Stationary and mobile radar facilities and mobile sounding teams round out the observational assets. The preliminary results from the 2022 deployment are highlighted here.

Lynn A McMurdie↗

Guidelines on Deploying Small Satellites from Gateway

The issue of small payloads released from Gateway may become a concern for the space users' community. Man-made objects can stay in the same or crossing orbit for a long time, creating significant hazard for Gateway, other users and sites on the surface of the Moon. It is important to coordinate efforts between organizations and agencies to ensure that Gateway operates safely. The purpose of this paper is to outline the Gateway Program approach for evaluating the deployment of candidate research payloads from Gateway Modules and/or Visiting Vehicles (VV) docked to the Gateway or vehicles/modules on the route to/from the Gateway.

Evgeny Victor Menkin↗

Evaluating the Trustworthiness of Deep Neural Networks in Deployment – A Comparative Study (Replicability Study)

As deep neural networks (DNNs) are increasingly used in safety critical applications, there is a growing concern for their trustworthiness. Even highly trained, high-performant networks are not 100% accurate. However, it is very difficult to predict their behaviour during deployment without ground truth. In this paper, we provide a comparative and replicability study on recent approaches that have been proposed to evaluate the trustworthiness of DNNs. We find that it is very difficult to run and reproduce the results for these approaches on their replication packages, and it is even more difficult to run the tools on artifacts other than their own. Further, it is difficult to compare the effectiveness of the tools, due to lack of clearly defined evaluation metrics. Our results indicate that more effort is needed in our research community to obtain sound techniques for evaluating the trustworthiness of neural networks in safety-critical domains. To this end, we contribute an evaluation framework that incorporates the considered approaches and enables evaluation on common benchmarks, using common metrics. Using this framework, we run a comparative study of the three approaches.

Trustworthy AI↗

Simulating the Lunar Thermal Environment for the Surface-Deployed LEMS Artemis III TVAC Test

The Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS) is an autonomous, survive-the lunar-night seismic suite to be deployed on the Lunar surface by the Artemis III crew and designed to operate continuously for two years. It will see the extremes of the Lunar south pole thermal environment where surface temperatures range from -200°C to +20°C and where nighttime duration is at least 354 hours. Given power and mass constraints, the thermal system is limited to 2.5 Watts of heat during the lunar night. Presented is the system thermal vacuum test plan and configuration to validate the thermal control system performance in a flight-like environment. The test will measure the nighttime heat leaks for the bus and 18 seismometers to ensure lunar night survival and operability.

Thermal↗

Harness Thermal Heat Loss Measurement for a Lunar Surface-Deployed LEMS Artemis III Payload

The Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS) is an autonomous, survive-the-lunar-night seismic suite to be deployed on the Lunar surface by the Artemis III crew and designed to operate continuously for two years. It will see the extremes of the Lunar south pole thermal environment where surface temperatures range from -200°C to +20°C and where nighttime duration is at least 354 hours. Given power and mass constraints, the thermal system is limited to 2.5 Watts of heat during the lunar night. The electrical harnessing named the Signal and Power Passthrough (SAPP) was designed to minimize heat loss while meeting power and signal integrity requirements. To mitigate risk due to uncertainty associated with the harnessing materials, routing, and tie-downs, a flight-like thermal conductance test was performed to measure the heat loss. The test methodology, results, and model correlation are presented.

TVAC↗

Simulating the Lunar Thermal Environment for the Surface-Deployed LEMS Artemis III TVAC Test

The Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS) is an autonomous, survive-the lunar-night seismic suite to be deployed on the Lunar surface by the Artemis III crew and designed to operate continuously for two years. It will see the extremes of the Lunar south pole thermal environment where surface temperatures range from -200°C to +20°C and where nighttime duration is at least 354 hours. Given power and mass constraints, the thermal system is limited to 2.5 Watts of heat during the lunar night. Presented is the system thermal vacuum test plan and configuration to validate the thermal control system performance in a flight-like environment. The test will measure the nighttime heat leaks for the bus and 18 seismometers to ensure lunar night survival and operability.

Thermal↗

Harness Thermal Heat Loss Measurement for A Lunar Surface-Deployed LEMS Artemis III Payload

The Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS) is an autonomous, survive-the-lunar-night seismic suite to be deployed on the Lunar surface by the Artemis III crew and designed to operate continuously for two years. It will see the extremes of the Lunar south pole thermal environment where surface temperatures range from -200°C to +20°C and where nighttime duration is at least 354 hours. Given power and mass constraints, the thermal system is limited to 2.5 Watts of heat during the lunar night. The electrical harnessing named the Signal and Power Passthrough (SAPP) was designed to minimize heat loss while meeting power and signal integrity requirements. To mitigate risk due to uncertainty associated with the harnessing materials, routing, and tie-downs, a flight-like thermal conductance test was performed to measure the heat loss. The test methodology, results, and model correlation are presented.

Thermal↗

Harness Thermal Heat Loss Measurement for A Lunar Surface-Deployed LEMS Artemis III Payload

The Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS) is an autonomous, survive-the-lunar-night seismic suite to be deployed on the Lunar surface by the Artemis III crew and designed to operate continuously for two years. It will see the extremes of the Lunar south pole thermal environment where surface temperatures range from -200°C to +20°C and where nighttime duration is at least 354 hours. Given power and mass constraints, the thermal system is limited to 2.5 Watts of heat during the lunar night. The electrical harnessing named the Signal and Power Passthrough (SAPP) was designed to minimize heat loss while meeting power and signal integrity requirements. To mitigate risk due to uncertainty associated with the harnessing materials, routing, and tie-downs, a flight-like thermal conductance test was performed to measure the heat loss. The test methodology, results, and model correlation are presented.

TVAC↗

Simulating the Lunar Thermal Environment for the Surface-Deployed LEMS Artemis III TVAC Test

The Lunar Environment Monitoring Station (LEMS) is an autonomous, survive-the lunar-night seismic suite to be deployed on the Lunar surface by the Artemis III crew and designed to operate continuously for two years. It will see the extremes of the Lunar south pole thermal environment where surface temperatures range from -200°C to +20°C and where nighttime duration is at least 354 hours. Given power and mass constraints, the thermal system is limited to 2.5 Watts of heat during the lunar night. Presented is the system thermal vacuum test plan and configuration to validate the thermal control system performance in a flight-like environment. The test will measure the nighttime heat leaks for the bus and 18 seismometers to ensure lunar night survival and operability.

TVAC↗

Domain-Specific Languages For Developing and Deploying Signature Discovery Workflows

Domain-agnostic Signature Discovery entails scientific investigation across multiple domains through the re-use of existing algorithms into workflows. The existing algorithms may be written in any programming language for various hardware architectures (e.g., desktops, commodity clusters, and specialized parallel hardware platforms). This raises an engineering issue in generating Web services for heterogeneous algorithms so that they can be composed into a scientific workflow environment (e.g., Taverna). In this paper, we present our software tool that defines two simple Domain-Specific Languages (DSLs) to automate these processes: SDL and WDL. Our Service Description Language (SDL) describes key elements of a signature discovery algorithm and generates the service code. The Workflow Description Language (WDL) describes the pipeline of services and generates deployable artifacts for the Taverna workflow management system. We demonstrate our tool with a landscape classification example that is represented by BLAST workflows composed of services that wrap original scripts.

Jacob, Ferosh↗

India Solar Resource Data: Enhanced Data for Accelerated Deployment (Fact Sheet)

Identifying potential locations for solar photovoltaic (PV) and concentrating solar power (CSP) projects requires an understanding of the underlying solar resource. Under a bilateral partnership between the United States and India - the U.S.-India Energy Dialogue - the National Renewable Energy Laboratory has updated Indian solar data and maps using data provided by the Ministry of New and Renewable Energy (MNRE) and the National Institute for Solar Energy (NISE). This fact sheet overviews the updated maps and data, which help identify high-quality solar energy projects. This can help accelerate the deployment of solar energy in India.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗