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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 1,513 records · Page 84
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1972

A symmetrical laser Doppler velocity meter and its application to turbulence characterization

A symmetrical method of optical heterodyning of the Doppler shifted scattered laser radiation developed for velocity measurements with a minimal instrumental spectral broadening and a high signal-to-noise ratio. The method employs two laser beams incident on the moving scatterer and does not use any reference beam for heterodyning. The Doppler signal frequency is independent of the scattering angle and the signal possesses no receiving aperture broadening. Optical alignment is simple. Typical values of the instrumental spectral broadening were approximately 0.8 percent of the center frequency of the Doppler signal, and the signal-to-noise ratio was approximately 25 dB, obtained from an air flow system using submicron dioctylphthalate scattering aerosol. Experimental and theoretical studies were made on the characteristics of the Doppler signal and the effect of system parameters in turbulent flow measurement. The optimization process involved in the beam optics and in the use of a spatial filter is described. For localized flow measurement in any direction of the three-dimensional orthogonal coordinates, the system, using uncorrected optical components, had a sensing volume which can be described by a sensitive length of 600 microns and a diameter of 100 microns.

Mazumder, M. K.↗
NASA NTRS1993

Small Business Innovations

Under an Army Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant, Symbiotics, Inc. developed a software system that permits users to upgrade products from standalone applications so they can communicate in a distributed computing environment. Under a subsequent NASA SBIR grant, Symbiotics added additional tools to the SOCIAL product to enable NASA to coordinate conventional systems for planning Shuttle launch support operations. Using SOCIAL, data may be shared among applications in a computer network even when the applications are written in different programming languages. The product was introduced to the commercial market in 1993 and is used to monitor and control equipment for operation support and to integrate financial networks. The SBIR program was established to increase small business participation in federal R&D activities and to transfer government research to industry. InQuisiX is a reuse library providing high performance classification, cataloging, searching, browsing, retrieval and synthesis capabilities. These form the foundation for software reuse, producing higher quality software at lower cost and in less time. Software Productivity Solutions, Inc. developed the technology under Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) projects funded by NASA and the Army and is marketing InQuisiX in conjunction with Science Applications International Corporation (SAIC). The SBIR program was established to increase small business participation in federal R&D activities and to transfer government research to industry.

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NASA NTRS1979

Global disaster satellite communications system for disaster assessment and relief coordination

The global communication requirements for disaster assistance and examines operationally feasible satellite system concepts and the associated system parameters are analyzed. Some potential problems associated with the current method of providing disaster assistance and a scenario for disaster assistance relying on satellite communications are described. Historical statistics are used with the scenario to assess service requirements. Both present and planned commercially available systems are considered. The associated global disaster communication yearly service costs are estimated.

Leroy, B. E.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Water-Rock Interactions in Outer Solar System Bodies: Evidence from the Coordinated Analysis of Interplanetary Dust

NASA has an ongoing program of collecting interplanetary dust particles (IDPs) in the stratosphere using high altitude research aircraft. The collected IDPs are derived from asteroids and comets and here we report studies of a subset of hydrated IDPs rich in carbonaceous matter that are proposed to have a cometary origin. Our studies are aimed at understanding the evolution of oxygen reservoirs in the Solar System and their interaction with cometary minerals and organic matter. The small size (<20 μm) and fragility of these IDPs present a number of analytical challenges. We have pioneered techniques for performing chemical, mineralogical, isotopic, and spectroscopic measurements on the same sample in a carefully coordinated sequence. Coordinated analyses of nanogram-size samples is made possible by several delicate sample preparation techniques. To avoid organic contamination, we embed IDPs in elemental sulfur and use ultramicrotomy to partly section the particles (the first few micrometers). Multiple thin sections (50-70 nm thick) are placed on different substrates depending on the analysis technique. We use a JEOL 2500SE scanning, transmission electron microscope (STEM) to determine the mineralogy, microstructure, and elemental compositions of constituent minerals in the thin sections through a combination of high resolution imaging, electron diffraction, quantitative energy-dispersive x-ray mapping, and electron energy-loss spectroscopy. Following the STEM analyses, we use a NanoSIMS 50L for high spatial resolution isotopic measurements of H, C, N, and O to search for presolar grains and to understand the origin of the indigenous organic matter. The isotopic analyses are performed on the same sections analyzed in the STEM in order to correlate isotopic properties with the elemental and mineralogical data. We reserve other thin sections for non-destructive analyses utilizing synchrotron-based techniques including Fourier-transform infrared (FTIR) micro-spectroscopy and X-ray absorption near-edge structure (XANES) analyses, especially for functional group analysis of organic matter in the particles. The remainder of the IDP is extracted from the sulfur bead that was used for microtomy and is pressed into Au foil for quantitative analysis (including light elements) using a JEOL 8530F field emission electron probe microanalyzer (EPMA). After the EPMA measurements, high precision oxygen isotopic analyses are obtained using Cameca IMS1270/1290 instruments at UCLA. The hydrated IDPs in this study are dominated by saponitic clays, with minor magnetite, carbonate and abundant organic matter. The remarkable oxygen isotopic compositions, high carbon contents, and the abundance of isotopically anomalous organic matter, together suggest that the high carbon, hydrated IDPs are derived from primitive sources not yet represented in meteorite collections such as outer main belt P- and D-type asteroids or comets.

Keller, Lindsay P.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Integrated controls-structures optimization of a large space structure

General-purpose control and structural codes are applied to a large detailed structural model including objective and constraint functions derived from actual design specifications. The approach is to divide the problem into a controls optimization step, a structural optimization step, and a system level coordination step. The objective is to minimize mass and power consumption with constraints on vibration characteristics, strength, and damping. This decomposition and optimization approach significantly enhances the design of a structure based on the COFS-I Mast Flight System, which is selected as a demonstration problem.

Pasula, S. L.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Coordinated operation of electricity and natural gas systems from day-ahead to real-time markets

Power systems worldwide are becoming more reliant on energy from natural gas, wind, and solar, posing possible reliability and coordination challenges from the tighter coupling of these infrastructure systems. This paper proposes a framework for the market-based coordination of electricity and natural gas system operations. The proposed framework includes a power system model that accounts for flexibility in the commitment of power plants with short start-up and shut-down times, coupled with a dynamic gas model that simulates when gas cannot be delivered to generators. The capabilities of the framework are illustrated using real-world electric power and gas systems, including scenarios around wind and solar penetrations and the analysis of time-variant, “shaped flow” gas nominations. Our results indicate that coordination between power and gas systems improves total gas delivery and reduces out-of-merit order dispatch in the electricity system, and that shaped flows may reduce unserved gas in systems with high penetrations of wind and solar. Coordination can have mixed effects on carbon-dioxide emissions, with emissions increasing with coordination for current systems during high load weeks but decreasing for systems with high renewable penetrations, particularly during periods of high variability.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗
NASA NTRS1983

Longitudinal asymmetry of the Io plasma torus

Remote observations of the Io plasma torus have revealed a persistent longitudinal asymmetry in the brightness of optical S(+) emission lines but not of ultraviolet S(2+) emission lines. The S(+) asymmetry (with respect to the corotating System III coordinates) has been attributed to an asymmetric plasma source; the question then arises, why do the higher ionization states of sulfur not reflect a similar asymmetry? The explanation proposed here is based on the fact that torus ions do not quite corotate at the System III rate because of mass loading. If the resulting System III drift period of the ions is intermediate between the ionization lifetimes of S(+) and S(2+), then the asymmetry of the source will be obscured by longitudinal drift for the relatively long-lived multiply-ionized sulfur ions, but not for short-lived S(+).

Hill, T. W.↗
DOE OSTI2022

An Efficient Distributed Reinforcement Learning for Enhanced Multi-Microgrid Management

Economic dispatch in multi-microgrid (MMG) systems requires coordinating distributed energy resources (DERs) of different microgrids, which leads to a significant increase in the number of states for energy management. In these cases, traditional reinforcement learning (RL) approaches become computationally expensive or output a solution that causes extra-operating costs for the system. This paper proposes an RL approach that employs local learning agents to interact with microgrid environments in a distributed manner and aggregates the outcomes to train the global agent to learn the policy for the MMG system. This distributed exploration and aggregation process provides an effective solution and guides the global agent to learn the dispatch policy efficiently. Case studies are performed on a system with three microgrids with different types of DERs. Results obtained using the proposed RL and comparisons with conventional methods substantiate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in terms of operation costs, computation time, and peak-to-average ratio.

Das, Avijit↗
DOE OSTI2020

Let’s get our hands dirty: a comprehensive evaluation of DAQDB, key-value store for petascale hot storage

Data acquisition systems are a key component for successful data taking in any experiment. The DAQ is a complex distributed computing system and coordinates all operations, from the data selection stage of interesting events to storage elements. For the High Luminosity upgrade of the Large Hadron Collider, the experiments at CERN need to meet challenging requirements to record data with a much higher occupancy in the detectors. The DAQ system will receive and deliver data with a significantly increased trigger rate, one million events per second, and capacity, terabytes of data per second. An effective way to meet these requirements is to decouple real-time data acquisition from event selection. Data fragments can be temporarily stored in a large distributed key-value store. Fragments belonging to the same event can be then queried on demand, by the data selection processes. Implementing such a model relies on a proper combination of emerging technologies, such as persistent memory, NVMe SSDs, scalable networking, and data structures, as well as high performance, scalable software. In this paper, we present DAQDB (Data Acquisition Database) — an open source implementation of this design that was presented earlier, with an extensive evaluation of this approach, from the single node to the distributed performance. Furthermore, we complement our study with a description of the challenges faced and the lessons learned while integrating DAQDB with the existing software framework of the ATLAS experiment.

Abed Abud, Adam↗
NASA NTRS2012

An Overview of the NOAA Drought Task Force

The charge of the NOAA Drought Task Force is to coordinate and facilitate the various MAPP-funded research efforts with the overall goal of achieving significant advances in understanding and in the ability to monitor and predict drought over North America. In order to achieve this, the task force has developed a Drought Test-bed that individual research groups can use to test/evaluate methods and ideas. Central to this is a focus on three high profile North American droughts (1998-2004 western US drought, 2006-2007 SE US drought, 2011- current Tex-Mex drought) to facilitate collaboration among projects, including the development of metrics to assess the quality of monitoring and prediction products, and the development of an experimental drought monitoring and prediction system that incorporates and assesses recent advances. This talk will review the progress and plans of the task force, including efforts to help advance official national drought products, and the development of early warning systems by the National Integrated Drought Information System (NIDIS). Coordination with other relevant national and international efforts such as the emerging NMME capabilities and the international effort to develop a Global Drought Information System (GDIS) will be discussed.

Schubert, S.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Monitoring Outpatient Care

Each year, health care costs for managing chronically ill patients increase as the life expectancy of Americans continues to grow. To handle this situation, many hospitals, doctors practices, and home care providers are turning to disease management, a system of coordinated health care interventions and communications, to improve outpatient care. By participating in daily monitoring programs, patients with congestive heart failure, chronic obstructive pulmonary disease, diabetes, and other chronic conditions requiring significant self-care are facing fewer emergency situations and hospitalizations. Cybernet Medical, a division of Ann Arbor, Michigan-based Cybernet Systems Corporation, is using the latest communications technology to augment the ways health care professionals monitor and assess patients with chronic diseases, while at the same time simplifying the patients interaction with technology. Cybernet s newest commercial product for this purpose evolved from research funded by NASA, the National Institute of Mental Health, and the Advanced Research Projects Agency. The research focused on the physiological assessment of astronauts and soldiers, human performance evaluation, and human-computer interaction. Cybernet Medical's MedStar Disease Management Data Collection System is an affordable, widely deployable solution for improving in-home-patient chronic disease management. The system's battery-powered and portable interface device collects physiological data from off-the-shelf instruments.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1991

The walking robot project

A walking robot was designed, analyzed, and tested as an intelligent, mobile, and a terrain adaptive system. The robot's design was an application of existing technologies. The design of the six legs modified and combines well understood mechanisms and was optimized for performance, flexibility, and simplicity. The body design incorporated two tripods for walking stability and ease of turning. The electrical hardware design used modularity and distributed processing to drive the motors. The software design used feedback to coordinate the system and simple keystrokes to give commands. The walking machine can be easily adapted to hostile environments such as high radiation zones and alien terrain. The primary goal of the leg design was to create a leg capable of supporting a robot's body and electrical hardware while walking or performing desired tasks, namely those required for planetary exploration. The leg designers intent was to study the maximum amount of flexibility and maneuverability achievable by the simplest and lightest leg design. The main constraints for the leg design were leg kinematics, ease of assembly, degrees of freedom, number of motors, overall size, and weight.

Williams, P.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Implementing NASA's Capability-Driven Approach: Insight into NASA's Processes for Maturing Exploration Systems

NASA is engaged in transforming human spaceflight. The Agency is shifting from an exploration-based program with human activities focused on low Earth orbit (LEO) and targeted robotic missions in deep space to a more sustainable and integrated pioneering approach. Through pioneering, NASA seeks to address national goals to develop the capacity for people to work, learn, operate, live, and thrive safely beyond the Earth for extended periods of time. However, pioneering space involves more than the daunting technical challenges of transportation, maintaining health, and enabling crew productivity for long durations in remote, hostile, and alien environments. This shift also requires a change in operating processes for NASA. The Agency can no longer afford to engineer systems for specific missions and destinations and instead must focus on common capabilities that enable a range of destinations and missions. NASA has codified a capability driven approach, which provides flexible guidance for the development and maturation of common capabilities necessary for human pioneers beyond LEO. This approach has been included in NASA policy and is captured in the Agency's strategic goals. It is currently being implemented across NASA's centers and programs. Throughout 2014, NASA engaged in an Agency-wide process to define and refine exploration-related capabilities and associated gaps, focusing only on those that are critical for human exploration beyond LEO. NASA identified 12 common capabilities ranging from Environmental Control and Life Support Systems to Robotics, and established Agency-wide teams or working groups comprised of subject matter experts that are responsible for the maturation of these exploration capabilities. These teams, called the System Maturation Teams (SMTs) help formulate, guide and resolve performance gaps associated with the identified exploration capabilities. The SMTs are defining performance parameters and goals for each of the 12 capabilities, developing maturation plans and roadmaps for the identified performance gaps, specifying the interfaces between the various capabilities, and ensuring that the capabilities mature and integrate to enable future pioneering missions. By managing system development through the SMTs instead of traditional NASA programs and projects, the Agency is shifting from mission-driven development to a more flexible, capability-driven development. The process NASA uses to establish, integrate, prioritize, and manage the SMTs and associated capabilities is iterative. NASA relies on the Human Exploration and Operation Mission Directorate's SMT Integration Team within Advanced Exploration Systems to coordinate and facilitate the SMT process. The SMT Integration team conducts regular reviews and coordination meetings among the SMTs and has developed a number of tools to help the Agency implement capability driven processes. The SMT Integration team is uniquely positioned to help the Agency coordinate the SMTs and other processes that are making the capability-driven approach a reality. This paper will introduce the SMTs and the 12 key capabilities they represent. The role of the SMTs will be discussed with respect to Agency-wide processes to shift from mission-focused exploration to a capability-driven pioneering approach. Specific examples will be given to highlight systems development and testing within the SMTs. These examples will also show how NASA is using current investments in the International Space Station and future investments to develop and demonstrate capabilities. The paper will conclude by describing next steps and a process for soliciting feedback from the space exploration community to refine NASA's process for developing common exploration capabilities.

Williams-Byrd, Julie↗
NASA NTRS2008

International Space Station Medical Operations

NASA is currently the leader, in conjunction with our Russian counterpart co-leads, of the Multilateral Medical Policy Board (MMPB), the Multilateral Medical Operations Panel (MMOP), which coordinates medical system support for International Space Station (ISS) crews, and the Multilateral Space Medicine Board (MSMB), which medically certifies all crewmembers for space flight on-board the ISS. These three organizations have representatives from NASA, RSA-IMBP (Russian Space Agency- Institute for Biomedical Problems), GCTC (Gagarin Cosmonaut Training Center), ESA (European Space Agency), JAXA (Japanese Space Agency), and CSA (Canadian Space Agency). The policy and strategic coordination of ISS medical operations occurs at this level, and includes interactions with MMOP working groups in Radiation Health, Countermeasures, Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA), Informatics, Environmental Health, Behavioral Health and Performance, Nutrition, Clinical Medicine, Standards, Post-flight Activities and Rehabilitation, and Training. Each ISS Expedition has a lead Crew Surgeon from NASA and a Russian Crew Surgeon from GCTC assigned to the mission. Day-to-day issues are worked real-time by the flight surgeons and biomedical engineers (also called the Integrated Medical Group) on consoles at the MCC (Mission Control Center) in Houston and the TsUP (Center for Flight Control) in Moscow/Korolev. In the future, this may also include mission control centers in Europe and Japan, when their modules are added onto the ISS. Private medical conferences (PMCs) are conducted regularly and upon crew request with the ISS crew via private audio and video communication links from the biomedical MPSR (multipurpose support room) at MCC Houston. When issues arise in the day-to-day medical support of ISS crews, they are discussed and resolved at the SMOT (space medical operations team) meetings, which occur weekly among the International Partners. Any medical or life science issue that is not resolved at the SMOT can be taken to the Mission Management Team meeting, which occurs biweekly from MCC-Houston. This meeting includes the other International Partners and all flight support and console position representatives via teleconference. ISS Crew Surgeons have handled many medical conditions on orbit; including skin rashes, dental abscesses, lacerations, and STT segment EKG changes. Fortunately to date, there have not been any forced medical evacuations from the ISS. This speaks well for the implementation of the primary, secondary and even tertiary prevention strategies invoked by the Integrated Medical Group, as there were several medical evacuations during the previous Russian space stations.

Jones, Jeffrey A.↗
DOE OSTI2025

Osprey Framework v0.2.2

The Alpha Berkeley Framework is a software architecture for building agentic AI systems that coordinate multi-step workflows in scientific and industrial environments. It is based on a plan-first orchestration model, where natural language requests are translated into execution plans with explicit dependencies and optional human approval. The framework includes capability classification, which selects relevant tools on a per-task basis to keep orchestration efficient as the number of available tools grows. It incorporates task extraction methods that compress conversational context and integrate external resources such as databases, APIs, and knowledge bases into structured, machine-readable tasks. Execution is supported by modular services with checkpointing, artifact management, and error handling, allowing workflows to be paused, inspected, and resumed. The system is designed for deployment in production environments, supporting both local and containerized execution as well as integration with HPC clusters. Interfaces include command-line tools, browser-based workflows, and containerized services. The framework has been demonstrated in tutorial examples and deployed at the Advanced Light Source, where it coordinates accelerator control and analysis workflows.

Hellert, Thorsten [Lawrence Berkeley National Labo↗
DOE OSTI2026

Sap Velocity Data for Urban Trees in Chicago, Illinois (2024-2025)

This dataset contains uncorrected sap velocity measurements using the heat ratio method (HRM) collected using ICT International SFM1x sensors at five urban sites in Chicago, Illinois, as part of the DOE CROCUS project. The data includes continuous monitoring of sap velocity from various tree species, including Maples (Acer spp.): Sugar Maple (Acer saccharum), Silver Maple (Acer saccharinum), and Red Maple (Acer rubrum); Oaks (Quercus spp.): Swamp White Oak (Quercus bicolor); American Elm (Ulmus americana); Honey Locust (Gleditsia triacanthos); Cottonwood (Populus deltoides); and Tree of Heaven (Ailanthus altissima) across Chicago State University (CSU), Northeastern Illinois University (NEIU), Northwestern University (NU), University of Illinois Chicago (UIC), and West Woodlawn "Blacks in Green" (BIG). These include both street trees and those in urban park locations. Measurements were collected at 15-20 minute intervals, depending on the sensor, and transmitted via Long Range Wide Area Network (LoRaWAN) protocols. The wireless data was collected by Sage Network (https://sagecontinuum.org/) nodes. The dataset includes sensor ID, Global Positioning System (GPS) coordinates, tree species (common and scientific names), tree identification number, diameter at breast height (DBH in cm), uncorrected sap velocity measurements (cm/hr) from both inner and outer probes, and Sage Node identifiers so the data can be mapped to related variables such as air quality and wind speed that were collected on the Sage nodes. All timestamps are in local Chicago time (CDT/CST). Quality control flags are provided using a 3-bit binary system indicating physical range violations (< -10 or > 60 cm/hr), step spikes (absolute difference > 36 cm/hr), and stuck sensor conditions (> 10 consecutive identical values). These are raw data, not corrected for wood anatomy or species-specific characteristics. Data is provided in comma separated (CSV) format. This dataset is part of a larger collection of CROCUS environmental monitoring data, including linked datasets from Air Quality Transmitter (AQT) sensors, Weather Transmitter (WXT) sensors, and Multi-Function Research LoRaWAN (MFR) Nodes. DOIs for the supporting data are provided as part of this data package.

Chicago↗
NASA NTRS1986

Earth's compressional foreshock boundary revisited Observations by the ISEE 1 magnetometer

A 'solar foreshock coordinate' (SFC) system is introduced in which the positions of foreshock components can be collated with a minimum of assumptions about the physical processes involved. Location behind the interplanetary magnetic field (IMF) tangent surface to the bow shock and rotational symmetry around the solar wind flow (X) axis are the only presuppositions. The SFC system has been applied to over 300 observations of the boundary of the ULF compressional waves recorded by ISEE 1's magnetometer in 1978 and 1979. The boundary locations form a coherent pattern in the SFC frame. A selection of those cases for which the cone angle of the IMF was between 40 and 50 deg, corresponding to the average stream angle, yields a least square line whose mapping back to the solar ecliptic coordinates frame has slope of about 85 deg, very close to that of the tangent ULF boundary deduced earlier from more primitive methods with entirely different data sets. The line, being parallel to neither the IMF, the typical reflected beam, nor the shock, cannot be compatible with any model of wave production by beam-solar wind interaction that depends on uniform beam distribution or fixed growth rate. Rather, its tangency suggests the influence of a separate, escaping ion population.

Greenstadt, E. W.↗
NASA NTRS2000

Object Locating System

A portable system is provided that is operational for determining, with three dimensional resolution, the position of a buried object or approximately positioned object that may move in space or air or gas. The system has a plurality of receivers for detecting the signal front a target antenna and measuring the phase thereof with respect to a reference signal. The relative permittivity and conductivity of the medium in which the object is located is used along with the measured phase signal to determine a distance between the object and each of the plurality of receivers. Knowing these distances. an iteration technique is provided for solving equations simultaneously to provide position coordinates. The system may also be used for tracking movement of an object within close range of the system by sampling and recording subsequent position of the object. A dipole target antenna. when positioned adjacent to a buried object, may be energized using a separate transmitter which couples energy to the target antenna through the medium. The target antenna then preferably resonates at a different frequency, such as a second harmonic of the transmitter frequency.

Arndt, G. Dickey↗