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Briefs: Lighting
Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY

This report summarizes results from a three-year Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD)...

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Products: Lighting

The K1 Kyropoulos Crystal Grower from Thermal Technology (Santa Rosa, CA) is suitable for LED substrate production. The 90 kg crystal grower features multiple, independently-controlled heating elements, weight sensors...

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Products: Lighting

Monocrystal (Stavropol, Russia) has introduced ultra-large 10-inch c-plane epi-ready sapphire substrates. The LED industry continues shifting to larger diameter substrates as it strives to achieve higher cost...

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Products: Lighting

Intematix (Fremont, CA) has introduced two LED phosphor families: green aluminate and red nitride materials that enable high-quality white illumination when applied to blue LEDs. The phosphor...

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Products

PTC, Needham, MA, has announced Creo™ design software, which is scheduled for availability mid-year. The software is a suite of scalable, interoperable, open product design applications that includes AnyRole Apps™,...

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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Fiber-Optic Magnetic-Field-Strength Measurement System for Lightning Detection

A fiber-optic sensor system is designed to measure magnetic fields associated with a lightning stroke. Field vector magnitudes are detected and processed for multiple locations. Since physical limitations prevent the sensor elements from being located in close...

Briefs: Physical Sciences
Computer Generated Hologram System for Wavefront Measurement System Calibration

Computer Generated Holograms (CGHs) have been used for some time to calibrate interferometers that require nulling optics. A typical scenario is the testing of aspheric surfaces with an interferometer placed near the paraxial center of curvature. Existing CGH...

Briefs: Physical Sciences
Multi-Segment Radius Measurement Using an Absolute Distance Meter Through a Null Assembly

This system was one of the test methods considered for measuring the radius of curvature of one or more of the 18 segmented mirrors that form the 6.5 m diameter primary mirror (PM) of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The assembled telescope will be...

Briefs: Physical Sciences
Non-Contact Thermal Properties Measurement With Low-Power Laser and IR Camera System

As shown by the Phoenix Mars Lander’s Thermal and Electrical Conductivity Probe (TECP), contact measurements of thermal conductivity and diffusivity (using a modified flux-plate or line-source heat-pulse method) are constrained by a number of factors. Robotic...

Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Telemetry-Based Ranging

A telemetry-based ranging scheme was developed in which the downlink ranging signal is eliminated, and the range is computed directly from the downlink telemetry signal. This is the first Deep Space Network (DSN) ranging technology that does not require the spacecraft to transmit a separate ranging signal. By contrast,...

Briefs: Physical Sciences
Photocatalytic Active Radiation Measurements and Use

Photocatalytic materials are being used to purify air, to kill microbes, and to keep surfaces clean. A wide variety of materials are being developed, many of which have different abilities to absorb various wavelengths of light. Material variability, combined with both spectral illumination...

Briefs: Software
JWST Wavefront Control Toolbox

A Matlab-based toolbox has been developed for the wavefront control and optimization of segmented optical surfaces to correct for possible misalignments of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) using influence functions. The toolbox employs both iterative and non-iterative methods to converge to an optimal solution by...

Briefs: Software
Java Image I/O for VICAR, PDS, and ISIS

This library, written in Java, supports input and output of images and metadata (labels) in the VICAR, PDS image, and ISIS-2 and ISIS-3 file formats. Three levels of access exist.

Briefs: Electronics & Computers
High-Performance Wireless Telemetrye

Prior technology for machinery data acquisition used slip rings, FM radio communication, or non-real-time digital communication. Slip rings are often noisy, require much space that may not be available, and require access to the shaft, which may not be possible. FM radio is not accurate or stable, and is...

Briefs: Software
X-Band Acquisition Aid Software

The X-band Acquisition Aid (AAP) software is a low-cost acquisition aid for the Deep Space Network (DSN) antennas, and is used while acquiring a spacecraft shortly after it has launched. When enabled, the acquisition aid provides corrections to the antenna-predicted trajectory of the spacecraft to compensate for...

Briefs: Electronics & Computers

A complementary metal oxide/semiconductor (CMOS) image detector now undergoing development is designed to exhibit less cross-talk and greater full-well capacity than do prior CMOS...

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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Range 7 Scanner Integration With PaR Robot Scanning System

An interface bracket and coordinate transformation matrices were designed to allow the Range 7 scanner to be mounted on the PaR Robot detector arm for scanning the heat shield or other object placed in the test cell. A process was designed for using Rapid Form XOR to stitch data from...

Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
High-Operating-Temperature Barrier Infrared Detector With Tailorable Cutoff Wavelength

A mid-wavelength infrared (MWIR) barrier photodetector is capable of operating at higher temperature than the prevailing MWIR detectors based on InSb. The standard high-operating-temperature barrier infrared detector

(HOT-BIRD) is made with an InAsSb...

Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Methods of Antimicrobial Coating of Diverse Materials

Methods of coating diverse substrate materials with antimicrobial agents have been developed. Originally intended to reduce health risks to astronauts posed by pathogenic microorganisms that can grow on surfaces in spacecraft, these methods could also be used on Earth — for example, to...

Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Antimicrobial-Coated Granules for Disinfecting Water

Methods of preparing antimicrobial-coated granules for disinfecting flowing potable water have been developed. Like the methods reported in the immediately preceding article, these methods involve chemical preparation of substrate surfaces (in this case, the surfaces of granules) to enable...

Briefs: Materials
A Model of Reduced Kinetics for Alkane Oxidation Using Constituents and Species for N-Heptane

The reduction of elementary or skeletal oxidation kinetics to a subgroup of tractable reactions for inclusion in turbulent combustion codes has been the subject of numerous studies. The skeletal mechanism is obtained from the elementary mechanism by...

Briefs: Materials
Thermally Conductive Tape Based on Carbon Nanotube Arrays

To increase contact conductance between two mating surfaces, a conductive “tape” has been developed by growing dense arrays of carbon nanotubes (CNTs, graphite layers folded into cylinders) on both sides of a thermally conductive metallic foil. When the two mating surfaces are brought...

Briefs: Materials
Two Catalysts for Selective Oxidation of Contaminant Gases

Two catalysts for the selective oxidation of trace amounts of contaminant gases in air have been developed for use aboard the International Space Station. These catalysts might also be useful for reducing concentrations of fumes in terrestrial industrial facilities — especially...

Briefs: Materials
Lightweight, Ultra-High-Temperature, CMC-Lined Carbon/Carbon Structures

lished engineering material used extensively in aerospace. The beneficial properties of C/C include high strength, low density, and toughness. Its shortcoming is its limited usability at temperatures higher than the oxidation temperature of carbon — approximately 400 °C....

Briefs: Materials
Nanoscale Metal Oxide Semiconductors for Gas Sensing

A report describes the fabrication and testing of nanoscale metal oxide semiconductors (MOSs) for gas and chemical sensing. This document examines the relationship between processing approaches and resulting sensor behavior. This is a core question related to a range of applications of...

Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems

A system has been developed to acquire and handle samples from a suspended remote platform. The system includes a penetrator, a penetrator deployment mechanism, and a sample...

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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Improved Rare-Earth Emitter Hollow Cathode

An improvement has been made to the design of the hollow cathode geometry that was created for the rare-earth electron emitter described in “Compact Rare Earth Emitter Hollow Cathode” (NPO-44923), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 34, No. 3 (March 2010), p. 52. The original interior assembly was made entirely...

Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
High-Temperature Smart Structures for Engine Noise Reduction and Performance Enhancement

One of key NASA goals is to develop and integrate noise reduction technology to enable unrestricted air transportation service to all communities. One of the technical priorities of this activity has been to account for and reduce noise via...

Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Cryogenic Scan Mechanism for Fourier Transform Spectrometer

A compact and lightweight mechanism has been developed to accurately move a Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS) scan mirror (a cube corner) in a near-linear fashion with near constant speed at cryogenic temperatures. This innovation includes a slide mechanism to restrict motion to one...

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