Use of Nanofibers to Strengthen Hydrogels of Silica, Other Oxides, and Aerogels

John H. Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio

Research has shown that including up to 5 percent w/w carbon nanofibers in a silica backbone of polymer crosslinked aerogels improves its strength, tripling compressive modulus and increasing tensile stress-at-break fivefold with no increase in density or decrease in porosity. In addition, the initial silica hydrogels, which are produced as a first step in manufacturing the aerogels, can be quite fragile and difficult to handle before cross-linking. ...

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NASA Drops Chopper to Test New Technology

How do you make a helicopter safer to fly? You crash one. NASA aeronautics researchers at Langley Research Center in Hampton, VA, recently dropped a small helicopter from a height of 35 feet to see whether an expandable honeycomb cushion called a deployable energy absorber could lessen the destructive force of a crash. On impact, the helicopter’s skid landing gear bent outward, but the cushion attached to its belly kept the rotorcraft’s bottom from touching the ground. Researchers must analyze the test results before they can say for ...

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Lunar Dust-Tolerant Electrical Connector

John H. Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, Ohio

An electrical connector was developed that is tolerant of the presence of lunar dust. Novel features of the connector include the use of a permeable membrane to act both as a dust barrier and as a wiper to limit the amount of dust that makes its way into the internal chamber of the connector. The development focused on the Constellation lunar extra-vehicular activity (EVA) spacesuit’s portable life support system (PLSS) battery recharge connector; ...

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Movies and Manufacturing

Linda Bell

Day two at SolidWorks World, the worldwide event for SolidWorks users, drew a record crowd. And this time it wasn’t because of the sunny Southern California weather. It was because the special guest speaker happened to be ...

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High-Speed Ring Bus

NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California

The high-speed ring bus at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) allows for future growth trends in spacecraft seen with future scientific missions. This innovation constitutes an enhancement of the 1393 bus as documented in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1393-1999 standard for a spaceborne fiber-optic data bus. ...

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