The U.S. Army has begun the final phase for manufacturing a microchip-sized prototype that will support efforts to provide highly accurate location and battlefield situational awareness for the dismounted soldier, even in the temporary absence of GPS capability.

University of Illinois researchers have a new low-cost method to carve delicate features onto semiconductor wafers using light – and watch as it happens. The team’s new technique can monitor a semiconductor’s surface as it is etched, in real time, with nanometer resolution. It uses...

The Orlando Sentinel reported last week that NASA's next major mission could be the construction of a "gateway spacecraft" outpost that would send astronauts 277,000 miles from Earth, farther than ever before. The outpost would hover in orbit on the far side of the moon, support a small astronaut crew, and...

Replacing the mechanical check-valve in a Stirling engine with a micromachined, non-moving-part flow diode eliminates moving parts and reduces the risk of microparticle clogging.

The microgravity conditions of space travel result in unique physiological demands on the human body. In particular, the absence of the continual mechanical stresses on the skeletal system that are present on Earth cause the bones to decalcify. Trabecular structure decreases in thickness...

There is a growing concern that desiccation and extreme radiation-resistant, non-spore-forming microorganisms associated with spacecraft surfaces can withstand space environmental conditions and subsequent proliferation on another solar body. Such forward contamination would jeopardize future life...

This innovation is a coupled fluorescence-activated cell sorting (FACS) and fluorescent staining technology for purifying (removing cells from sampling matrices), separating (based on size, density, morphology, and live versus dead), and concentrating cells (spores,...

A method combines solid phase acidification with two non-toxic biocides to prevent ammonia volatilization and microbial proliferation. The safe, nonoxidizing biocide combination consists of a quaternary amine and a food preservative. This combination has exhibited excellent stabilization of both acidified and...

The Juno mission to Jupiter requires an antenna with a torus-shaped antenna pattern with approximately 6 dBic gain and circular polarization over the Deep Space Network (DSN) 7-GHz transmit frequency and the 8-GHz receive frequency. Given the large distances that accumulate en-route to...

An active laser was developed ranging in real-time with two terminals, emulating interplanetary distances, and with submillimeter accuracy. In order to overcome the limitations to ranging accuracy from jitters and delay drifts within the transponders, architecture was...

This software performs two functions: (1) taking stereo image pairs as input, it computes stereo disparity maps from them by cross-correlation to achieve 3D (three-dimensional) perception; (2) taking a sequence of stereo image pairs as input, it tracks features in the image sequence to...

This software generates cylindrically projected tiles of swath-based or gridded satellite data for the purpose of dynamically generating high-resolution global images covering various time periods, scaling ranges, and colors called “tiles.” It reconstructs a global image given a set of tiles covering a...

GOES-R: Satellite Insight seeks to bring awareness of the GOES-R (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite — R Series) satellite currently in development to an audience of all ages on the emerging medium of mobile games. The iPhone app (Satellite Insight) was created for the GOES-R Program. The app describes in...

The Office of the CIO at JPL has developed an iPhone application for the Aquarius/SAC-D mission. The application includes specific information about the science and purpose of the Aquarius satellite and also features daily mission news updates pulled from sources at Goddard Space Flight Center as well as Twitter. The...

Shewhart control charts have been established as an expedient method for analyzing dynamic, trending data in order to identify anomalous subsystem performance as soon as such performance would exceed a statistically established baseline. Additionally, this leading...

Data analysis is a process of inspecting, cleaning, transforming, and modeling data to highlight useful information and suggest conclusions. Accurate timestamps and a timeline of vehicle events are needed to analyze flight data. When data is gathered onboard a rocket, precise time stamping is even more...

The simulation of high-pressure turbulent flows, where the pressure, p, is larger than the critical value, pc, for the species under consideration, is relevant to a wide array of propulsion systems, e.g. gas turbine, diesel, and liquid rocket engines....

Planar arrays of waveguide-fed slots have been employed in many radar and remote sensing applications. Such arrays are designed in the standing wave configuration because of high efficiency. Traveling wave arrays can produce greater bandwidth at the expense of efficiency due to power...

A report describes a pulse tube refrigerator that uses a mixture of 3He and superfluid 4He to cool to temperatures below 300 mK, while rejecting heat at temperatures up to 1.7 K. The refrigerator is driven by a novel thermodynamically reversible pump that is capable of...

A document discusses the creation of a viewport suitable for use on the surface of Venus. These viewports are rated for 500 °C and 100 atm pressure with appropriate safety factors and reliability required for incorporation into a Venus Lander. Sapphire windows should easily withstand the chemical, pressure, and...

A document discusses a simulation chamber that represents a shift from the thermal-vacuum chamber stereotype. This innovation, currently in development, combines the capabilities of space simulation chambers, the user-friendliness of modern-day electronics, and the modularity of plug-and-play computing. The Mobile Chamber is a...

A document highlights a means to complement remote spectroscopy while also providing in situ surface samples without a landed system. Historically, most compositional analysis of small body surfaces has been done remotely by analyzing reflection or nuclear spectra. However, neither provides...

A document discusses power converters suitable for space use that meet the DSCC MIL-PRF-38534 Appendix G radiation hardness level P classification. A method for qualifying commercially produced electronic parts for DC-DC converters per the Defense Supply Center Columbus (DSCC) radiation hardened assurance...