Tech Briefs

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A comprehensive library of technical briefs from engineering experts at NASA and major government, university, and commercial laboratories covering all aspects of innovations in electronics, software, photonics, imaging, motion control, automation, sensors, test, materials, manufacturing, mechanical, and mechatronics.

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Briefs: Materials
Standardization of a Volumetric Displacement Measurement for Two-Body Abrasion Scratch Test Data Analysis

A limitation has been identified in the existing test standards used for making controlled, two-body abrasion scratch measurements based solely on the width of the resultant score on the surface of the material. A new, more robust method is...

Briefs: Physical Sciences

Future astrophysics and planetary experiments are expected to require large focal plane arrays with thousands of detectors. Feedhorns have excellent performance, but their mass, size,...

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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Validating Phasing and Geometry of Large Focal Plane Arrays

The Kepler Mission is designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-sized and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone. The Kepler photometer is an array of 42 CCDs (charge-coupled devices) in the focal plane of a 95-cm Schmidt camera onboard...

Briefs: Photonics/Optics

The single-photon counting imaging sensor is typically an array of silicon Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes that are monolithically integrated with CMOS (complementary metal oxide...

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Briefs: Lighting

A new mobile lighting system features a fuel cell running on pure hydrogen, resulting in zero-emission electrical power. The fuel cell produces electricity for an advanced, power-saving...

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Briefs: Lighting

Economics is a key factor for application of organic light-emitting diodes (OLEDs) in general lighting relative to OLED flat panel displays that can handle...

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Briefs: Lighting
High-Performance LED Comprised of Organic and Quantum Dot-Based Layers

New research paves the way to manufacturing efficient, stable, and low-cost quantum dot-based light-emitting diodes (LEDs), which is important for the widespread commercial use of these LEDs in large-area, full-color flat-panel displays or as solid-state lighting sources to...

Briefs: Physical Sciences
Optical Sensors for Monitoring Gamma and Neutron Radiation

For safety and efficiency, nuclear reactors must be carefully monitored to provide feedback that enables the fission rate to be held at a constant target level via adjustments in the position of neutron- absorbing rods and moderating coolant flow rates. For automated reactor control, the...

Briefs: Physical Sciences
Qualifications of Bonding Process of Temperature Sensors to Deep- Space Missions

A process has been examined for bonding a platinum resistance thermometer (PRT) onto potential aerospace materials such as flat aluminum surfaces and a flexible copper tube to simulate coaxial cables for flight applications. Primarily, PRTs were inserted into a...

Briefs: Physical Sciences
Compliant Tactile Sensors

Tactile sensors are currently being designed to sense interactions with human hands or pen-like interfaces. They are generally embedded in screens, keyboards, mousepads, and pushbuttons. However, they are not well fitted to sense interactions with all kinds of objects.

Briefs: Physical Sciences
Laser Truss Sensor for Segmented Telescope Phasing

A paper describes the laser truss sensor (LTS) for detecting piston motion between two adjacent telescope segment edges. LTS is formed by two point-topoint laser metrology gauges in a crossed geometry.

Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Scanning and Defocusing Properties of Microstrip Reflectarray Antennas

A symmetric reflectarray, consisting of variable-size square patch elements with a commonly used mathematical model for the horn in the form of a cosine function, has been designed using the transmit mode technique for different f/D ratios with –10 dB edge taper....

Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Cable Tester Box

Cables are very important electrical devices that carry power and signals across multiple instruments. Any fault in a cable can easily result in a catastrophic outcome. Therefore, verifying that all cables are built to spec is a very important part of Electrical Integration Procedures. Currently, there are two methods used in...

Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Sub-Shot Noise Power Source for Microelectronics

Low-current, high-impedance microelectronic devices can be affected by electric current shot noise more than they are affected by Nyquist noise, even at room temperature. An approach to implementing a sub-shot noise current source for powering such devices is based on direct conversion of...

Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Measuring Input Thresholds on an Existing Board

A critical PECL (positive emitter-coupled logic) interface to Xilinx interface needed to be changed on an existing flight board. The new Xilinx input interface used a CMOS (complementary metal-oxide semiconductor) type of input, and the driver could meet its thresholds typically, but not in...

Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Programmable Oscillator

A programmable oscillator is a frequency synthesizer with an output phase that tracks an arbitrary function. An offset, phase-locked loop circuit is used in combination with an error control feedback loop to precisely control the output phase of the oscillator.

Briefs: Physical Sciences
Rapid-Response Semiconductor Sensor With Resistance Detection Determines Partial Pressure of Oxygen

In the past, solid electrolytes have mainly been used as oxygen sensors for automobiles. This type of sensor measures the difference between the oxygen partial pressures of a reference electrode and a measurement electrode, and always requires a...

Briefs: Software
Asynchronous Message Service Reference Implementation

This software provides a library of middleware functions with a simple application programming interface, enabling implementation of distributed applications in conformance with the CCSDS AMS (Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems Asynchronous Message Service) specification.

Briefs: Physical Sciences

Laser line illumination systems may be used for numerous applications including imaging systems in which the laser line is directed toward a light modulator to reflect or...

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Briefs: Software
Zero-Copy Objects System

Zero-copy objects (ZCOs) are abstract data access representations designed to minimize I/O (input/output) in the encapsulation of application source data within one or more layers of communication protocol structure. They are constructed within the heap space of a “Simple Data Recorder” (SDR) data store to which all...

Briefs: Medical
Cytometer on a Chip

A cytometer now under development exploits spatial sorting of sampled cells on a microarray chip followed by use of grating-coupled surface-plasmon-resonance imaging (GCSPRI) to detect the sorted cells. This cytometer on a chip is a prototype of contemplated future miniature cytometers that would be suitable for rapidly...

Briefs: Software
Contact Graph Routing

Contact Graph Routing (CGR) is a dynamic routing system that computes routes through a time-varying topology of scheduled communication contacts in a network based on the DTN (Delay-Tolerant Networking) architecture. It is designed to enable dynamic selection of data transmission routes in a space network based on DTN. This...

Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Fault-Tolerant, Radiation-Hard DSP

Commercial digital signal processors (DSPs) for use in high-speed satellite computers are challenged by the damaging effects of space radiation, mainly single event upsets (SEUs) and single event functional interrupts (SEFIs). Inno vations have been developed for mitigating the effects of SEUs and SEFIs,...

Briefs: Software
Parallel Eclipse Project Checkout

Parallel Eclipse Project Checkout (PEPC) is a program written to leverage parallelism and to automate the checkout process of plug-ins created in Eclipse RCP (Rich Client Platform). Eclipse plug-ins can be aggregated in a “feature project.” This innovation digests a feature description (xml file) and...

Briefs: Software
Delay and Disruption Tolerant Networking MACHETE Mode

To verify satisfaction of communication requirements imposed by unique missions, as early as 2000, the Communications Networking Group at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) saw the need for an environment to support interplanetary communication protocol design, validation, and...

Briefs: Physical Sciences
Programmable Aperture With MEMS Microshutter Arrays

A microshutter array (MSA) has been developed for use as an aperture array for multi-object selections in James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) technology. Light shields, molybdenum nitride (MoN) coating on shutters, and aluminum/ aluminum oxide coatings on interior walls are put on each shutter...

Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Pallet Manufacturing Process and Machinery Using Recycled Plastic Materials

As the recycling of plastic continues in the United States, there is a great need for the increased utilization of recycled products. Some of the plastic being recycled is extruded into a product known as plastic lumber, which is similar in shape and texture to its wood...

Briefs: Physical Sciences
Co-Flow Hollow Cathode Technology

Hall thrusters utilize identical hollow cathode technology as ion thrusters, yet must operate at much higher mass flow rates in order to efficiently couple to the bulk plasma discharge. Higher flow rates are necessary in order to provide enough neutral collisions to transport electrons across magnetic fields so...

Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Technique for Configuring an Actively Cooled Thermal Shield in a Flight System

Broad area cooling shields are a massefficient alternative to conductively cooled thermal radiation shielding. The shield would actively intercept a large portion of incident thermal radiation and transport the heat away using cryogenic helium gas. The design concept...

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