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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Multiplexed Force and Deflection Sensing Shell Membranes for Robotic Manipulators
Force sensing is an essential requirement for dexterous robot manipulation, e.g., for extravehicular robots making vehicle repairs. Although strain gauges have been widely used, a new sensing approach is desirable for applications that require greater robustness,...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Mars Technology Rover with Arm-Mounted Percussive Coring Tool, Microimager, and Sample-Handling Encapsulation Containerization Subsystem
A report describes the PLuto (programmable logic) Mars Technology Rover, a mid-sized FIDO (field integrated design and operations) class rover with six fully drivable and steerable cleated wheels, a rocker-bogey...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Fault-Tolerant, Real-Time, Multi-Core Computer System
A document discusses a fault-tolerant, self-aware, low-power, multi-core computer for space missions with thousands of simple cores, achieving speed through concurrency. The proposed machine decides how to achieve concurrency in real time, rather than depending on programmers. The driving...
Briefs: Software
The controlled transfer of heat from a component to its surroundings is critical for the operation of many industrial processes. For example, cooling of electronics components is needed to maintain safe operation and...
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Briefs: Software
Surface plasmons are coherent electron oscillations that exist at the interface between any two materials where the real part of the dielectric function changes sign across the interface. Surface Plasmon Resonance...
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Briefs: Software
Highvoltage.dk is a Danish consulting engineering firm with expertise in lightning protection and high-voltage engineering. The company, founded in 2005, tackles...
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Briefs: Software
Computing Radiative Transfer in a 3D Medium
A package of software computes the time-dependent propagation of a narrow laser beam in an arbitrary threedimensional (3D) medium with absorption and scattering, using the transientdiscrete- ordinates method and a direct integration method. Unlike prior software that utilizes a Monte Carlo method, this...
Briefs: Imaging
Water bodies are challenging terrain hazards for terrestrial unmanned ground vehicles (UGVs) for several reasons. Traversing through deep water bodies could cause costly damage to the electronics of...
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Briefs: Software
SATPLOT for Analysis of SECCHI Heliospheric Imager Data
Determining trajectories of solar transients such as coronal mass ejections is not always easy. White light images from SECCHI’s (Sun Earth Connection Coronal and Heliospheric Investigation) heliospheric imagers are difficult to interpret because they represent a lineof- sight projection of...
Briefs: Software
Low-Cost Telemetry System for Small/Micro Satellites
A Software Defined Radio (SDR) concept uses a minimum amount of analog/radio frequency components to up/downconvert the RF signal to/from a digital format. Once in the digital domain, all other processing (filtering, modulation, demodulation, etc.) is done in software. The project will leverage...
Briefs: Software
Plug-in Plan Tool v3.0.3.1
The role of PLUTO (Plug-in Port UTilization Officer) and the growth of the International Space Station (ISS) have exceeded the capabilities of the current tool PiP (Plug-in Plan). Its users (crew and flight controllers) have expressed an interest in a new, easy-touse tool with a higher level of interactivity and...
Briefs: Software
Architectural Implementation of NASA Space Telecommunications Radio System Specification
This software demonstrates a working implementation of the NASA STRS (Space Telecommunications Radio System) architecture specification. This is a developing specification of software architecture and required interfaces to provide commonality among future NASA...
Briefs: Software
Graphical operator interface methods have been developed for modular, reconfigurable articulated surface systems in general, and a specific instantiation...
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Briefs: Software
When taking aerial images, it is important to know locations of specific points of interest in an Earth-centered coordinate system (latitude, longitude, height) (see...
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Briefs: Software
The need to maintain optimal energy efficiency is critical during the drilling operations performed on future and current planetary rover missions (see figure)....
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Briefs: Software
Journal and Wave Bearing Impedance Calculation Software
The wave bearing software suite is a MALTA application that computes bearing properties for user-specified wave bearing conditions, as well as plain journal bearings. Wave bearings are fluid film journal bearings with multi-lobed wave patterns around the circumference of the bearing surface....
Briefs: Software
Scalable Integrated Multi-Mission Support System (SIMSS) Simulator Release 2.0 for GMSEC
Scalable Integrated Multi-Mission Support System (SIMSS) Simulator Release 2.0 software is designed to perform a variety of test activities related to spacecraft simulations and ground segment checks. This innovation uses the existing SIMSS framework, which...
Briefs: Software
Linked-List-Based Multibody Dynamics (MBDyn) Engine
This new release of MBDyn is a software engine that calculates the dynamics states of kinematic, rigid, or flexible multibody systems. An MBDyn multibody system may consist of multiple groups of articulated chains, trees, or closed-loop topologies. Transient top ologies are handled through...
Briefs: Software
Frequency Correction for MIRO Chirp Transformation Spectroscopy Spectrum
This software processes the flyby spectra of the Chirp Transform Spectrometer (CTS) of the Microwave Instrument for Rosetta Orbiter (MIRO). The tool corrects the effect of Doppler shift and local-oscillator (LO) frequency shift during the flyby mode of MIRO operations. The...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Jet and Tropopause Products for Analysis and Characterization (JETPAC)
This suite of IDL programs provides identification and comprehensive characterization of the dynamical features of the jet streams in the upper troposphere, the lower stratospheric polar night jet, and the tropopause. The output of this software not only provides comprehensive...
Briefs: Software
Multi-Mission Power Analysis Tool (MMPAT) Version 3
The Multi-Mission Power Analysis Tool (MMPAT) simulates a spacecraft power subsystem including the power source (solar array and/or radioisotope thermoelectric generator), bus-voltage control, secondary battery (lithium-ion or nickel-hydrogen), thermostatic heaters, and power-consuming equipment....
Briefs: Software
Jupiter Environment Tool
The Jupiter Environment Tool (JET) is a custom UI plug-in for STK that provides an interface to Jupiter environment models for visualization and analysis. Users can visualize the different magnetic field models of Jupiter through various rendering methods, which are fully integrated within STK’s 3D Window. This allows...
Briefs: Software
This software implements digital control of a WGM resonator temperature based on the dual-mode approach. It comprises one acquisition and three modules. Interaction proportional-integral loops is designed in original way...
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Briefs: Software
Large Terrain Continuous Level of Detail 3D Visualization Tool
This software solved the problem of displaying terrains that are usually too large to be displayed on standard workstations in real time. The software can visualize terrain data sets composed of billions of vertices, and can display these data sets at greater than 30 frames per second.
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Earth-Science Data Co-Locating Tool
This software is used to locate Earthscience satellite data and climate-model analysis outputs in space and time. This enables the direct comparison of any set of data with different spatial and temporal resolutions. It is written in three separate modules that are clearly separated for their functionality and...
Briefs: Software
Ultra-efficient real-time structural monitoring algorithms have been developed to provide extensive information about the physical response of structures under load. These...
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Briefs: Information Technology
CometQuest: A Rosetta Adventure
CometQuest is an educational Apple iPhone game outlining the Rosetta mission to comet Churyumov-Gerasimenko. Its goal is to provide an enjoyable means to learn about the Rosetta mission through action gameplay where the player takes the role of Rosetta’s mission operator and tries to capture and record as much...
Briefs: Information Technology
Mission Analysis, Operations, and Navigation Toolkit Environment (Monte) Version 040
Monte is a software set designed for use in mission design and spacecraft navigation operations. The system can process measurement data, design optimal trajectories and maneuvers, and do orbit determination, all in one application. For the first time, a single...
Briefs: Software
Tiled WMS/KML Server V2
This software is a higher-performance implementation of tiled WMS, with integral support for KML and time-varying data. This software is compliant with the Open Geospatial WMS standard, and supports KML natively as a WMS return type, including support for the time attribute. Regionated KML wrappers are generated that match...

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