Scientists at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt Maryland are in the early stages of designing a sample-collecting comet harpoon. NASA Goddard’s Donald Wegel, lead engineer on the project, will work with researchers to send a spacecraft to rendezvous...

Progress has been made into adapting and enhancing a commercially available infrared spectrometer for the development of a handheld device for in-field measurements of the chemical composition of various samples of materials. The intent is to duplicate...

A miniaturized instrument for performing chemical and isotopic analysis of rocks has been developed. The rock sample is ablated by a laser and the neutral species produced are analyzed using the JPL-invented miniature mass spectrometer. The...

A system allows crime scene and accident scene investigators the ability to acquire visual scene data using cameras for processing at a later time. This system uses a COTS digital camera, a photogrammetry calibration cube, and 3D photogrammetry processing software.

DLiSPS is a collection of software modules that processes lidar data and displays/archives the output products. It has the same features as the real-time version written in C++, except the hardware control capability, with many other functionalities for off-line lidar signal processing. DLiSPS is...

Powerful new parallel data mining algorithms can produce diagnostic and prognostic numerical models and analyses from observational data. These techniques yield higher-resolution measures than ever before of environmental parameters by fusing synoptic imagery and time-series measurements. These techniques...

A method has been developed for continuous cell voltage balancing for rechargeable batteries (e.g. lithium ion batteries). A resistor divider chain is provided that generates a set of voltages representing the ideal cell voltage (the voltage of each cell should be as if the cells were perfectly balanced). An...

Planetary surface exploration missions present considerable operational challenges in the form of substantial communication delays, limited communication windows, and limited communication bandwidth. A 3D visualization software was developed and delivered to the 2008 Phoenix Mars Lander...

Advanced Technology Life-cycle Analysis System (ATLAS) is a system-of-systems technology-portfolio-analysis software tool. ATLAS affords capabilities to (1) compare estimates of the mass and cost of an engineering system based on competing technological concepts; (2) estimate life-cycle costs of...

VESsel GENeration (VESGEN) Analysis is an automated software that maps and quantifies effects of vascular regulators on vascular morphology by analyzing important vessel parameters. Quantification parameters include vessel diameter, length, branch points, density, and fractal...

The LMDB (Landmark Database) Builder software identifies persistent image features (“landmarks”) in a scene viewed multiple times and precisely estimates the landmarks’ 3D world positions. The software receives as input multiple 2D images of...

A software tool is used to demonstrate the feasibility of Touch and Go (TAG) sampling for Asteroid Sample Return missions. TAG is a concept whereby a spacecraft is in contact with the surface of a small body, such as a comet or asteroid, for a few...

Carbon nanotubes grown from a surface typically have poor bonding strength at the interface. A process has been developed for adding a metal coat to the surface of carbon nanotubes (CNTs) through a “wicking” process, which could lead to an enhanced bonding strength...

A technique has been developed for patterning thin metallic films that are, in turn, used to fabricate microelectronics circuitry and thin-film sensors. The technique uses germanium thin films as lift-off masks. This requires development of a technique to strip or undercut the germanium...

A method has been developed for fabricating high-reflectivity, multi-layer optical films for the terahertz wavelength region. A silicon mirror with 99.997-percent reflectivity at 70 μm wavelength requires an air gap of 17.50 μm, and a silicon thickness of 5.12 μm. This approach obtains pre-thinned...

Sealing materials that can be applied and left in place in vacuum over a wide range of temperatures (especially temperatures of a few thousand degrees Celsius) have been conceived and investigated for potential utility in repairing thermal-protection tiles on the space shuttles in orbit...