Healthy people and pre-diabetic individuals may have a reduced sensitivity (or resistance) to insulin. A company seeks natural ingredients that can be added to foods that will enhance the body’s sensitivity to insulin, and help maintain post-absorptive blood glucose control at a...

A digital architecture has been implemented for a trace gas sensor platform, as a companion to standard analog control electronics, which accommodates optical absorption whose fractional absorbance equivalent would result in excess error if assumed to be linear. In cases where the absorption...

This innovation is a lightweight, small sensor for inert gases that consumes a relatively small amount of power and provides measurements that are as accurate as conventional approaches. The sensing approach is based on generating an electrical discharge and measuring the specific gas breakdown...

This work relates to the generic problem of remote active imaging; that is, a source illuminates a target of interest and a receiver collects the scattered light off the target to obtain an image. Conventional imaging systems consist of an imaging lens and a high-resolution detector array [e.g., a CCD...

Dispersed Fringe Sensing (DFS) is a technique for measuring and phasing segmented telescope mirrors using a dispersed broadband light image. DFS is capable of breaking the monochromatic light ambiguity, measuring ab solute piston errors between segments of large segmented primary mirrors to tens of...

Fault detection, diagnosis, and prognosis are essential tasks in the operation of autonomous spacecraft, instruments, and in situ platforms. One of NASA’s key mission requirements is robust state estimation. Sensing, using a wide range of sensors and sensor fusion approaches, plays a central role in robust...

A sensitive resistor-based NO microsensor, with a wide detection range and a low detection limit, has been developed. Semiconductor microfabrication techniques were used to create a sensor that has a simple, robust structure with a sensing area of 1.10 × 0.99 mm. A Pt interdigitated...

The formation of scour patterns at bridge piers is driven by the forces at the boundary of the water flow. In most experimental scour studies, indirect processes have been applied to estimate the shear stress using measured velocity profiles. The estimations are based on theoretical models and...

Qualification and verification of advanced electronic packaging and interconnect technologies, and various other types of hardware elements for the Mars Exploration Rover’s Spirit and Opportunity (MER)/Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) flight projects, has been performed to...

Wireless sensors connected in a local network offer revolutionary exploration capabilities, but the current solutions do not work in extreme environments of low temperatures (200K) and low to moderate radiation levels (<50 krad). These sensors (temperature,...

Bump bonding hybridization techniques use arrays of indium bumps to electrically and mechanically join two chips together. Surface-tension issues limit bump sizes to roughly as wide as they are high. Pitches are limited to 50 microns with bumps only 8–14 microns high on each wafer. A new process...

In situ missions typically have pointable, mast-mounted cameras, which are capable of taking panoramic mosaics comprised of many individual frames. These frames are mosaicked together. While the mosaic software applies radiometric correction to the images, in many cases brightness/contrast seams still exist...

Changes in the shape of the Earth’s surface can be routinely measured with precisions better than centimeters. Processes below the surface often drive these changes and as a result, investigators require models with inversion methods to characterize the sources. Simplex inverts any combination of GPS...

VML (Virtual Machine Language) is an advanced computing environment that allows spacecraft to operate using mechanisms ranging from simple, timeoriented sequencing to advanced, multicomponent reactive systems.

A multi-scale three-dimensional variational data assimilation system (MS-3DVAR) has been formulated and the associated software system has been developed for improving high-resolution coastal ocean prediction. This system helps improve coastal ocean...

Pandora Operation and Analysis Software controls the Pandora Sun- and sky-pointing optical head and built-in filter wheels (neutral density, UV bandpass, polarization filters, and opaque). The software also controls the attached spectrometer exposure time and thermoelectric cooler to maintain the spectrometer...

A new microsensor fabrication approach has been demonstrated based upon the use of nanostructures as templates. The fundamental idea is that existing nanostructures, such as carbon nanotubes or biological structures, have a material structure that can be used advantageously in order to...

A fabrication process has been developed for cryogenic in-line filtering for the bias and readout of ultrasensitive cryogenic bolometers for millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. The design is a microstripline filter that cuts out, or strongly attenuates, frequencies (10–50...

Shape memory materials undergo physical conformation changes when exposed to an external stimulus, such as a change in temperature. Such materials have a permanent shape, but can be reshaped above a critical temperature and fixed into a temporary shape when cooled under stress to below the critical...

A non-toxic, non-flammable, low-freezing heat transfer fluid is being developed for drop-in replacement within current and future heat transfer loops currently using water or alcohol-based coolants. Numerous water-soluble compounds were down-selected and screened for toxicological,...

The modular flooring system (MFS) was developed to provide a portable, modular, durable carpeting solution for NASA’s Robotics Alliance Project’s (RAP) outreach efforts. It was also designed to improve and replace a modular flooring system that was too heavy for safe use and transportation. The MFS was developed for use...

A thin layer (≈10 microns) of a novel “transparent” fluorescent material is applied to existing solar cells or modules to effectively block and convert UV light, or other lower solar response waveband of solar radiation, to visible or IR light that can be more...

A gas-charging plug can be easily analyzed for random vibration. The design features two steeped O-rings in a radial configuration at two different diameters, with a 0.050-in. (≈1.3-mm) diameter through-hole between the two O-rings. In the charging state, the top O-ring is engaged and sealing. The bottom O-ring outer...

A need exists for miniaturized, rugged, low-cost high-vacuum systems. Recent advances in sensor technology have led to the development of very small mass spectrometer detectors as well as other analytical instruments such as scanning electron microscopes. However, the vacuum systems to support these sensors...

An oxygen-methane thruster was conceived with integrated igniter/injector capable of nominal operation on either gaseous or liquid propellants. The thruster was designed to develop 100 lbf (≈445 N) thrust at vacuum conditions and use oxygen and methane as propellants. This continued development included refining the design...