Current spacecraft-compatible cleaning protocols involve a vapor degreaser, liquid sonication, and alcohol wiping. These methods are not very effective in removing live and dead microbes from spacecraft piece parts of slightly complicated geometry,...

The Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope (GAVRT) is an outreach project, a partnership involving NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL ), the Lewis Center for Educational Research (LCER), and the Apple Valley Unified School District near the NASA Goldstone deep space communication complex....

Airborne observations using lightweight camera systems are desirable for a variety of applications. This system was contemplated as a method to provide a simple remote sensing aerial platform. Kites have been successfully employed for aerial observations, but have historically required...

Electron beam freeform fabrication (EBF3) is a member of an emerging class of direct manufacturing processes known as solid freeform fabrication (SFF); another member of the class is the laser deposition process. Successful application of the EBF3 process requires precise control...

IMAGESEER is a new Web portal that brings easy access to NASA image data for non-NASA researchers, educators, and students. The IMAGESEER Web site and database are specifically designed to be utilized by the university community, to enable teaching image processing (IP) techniques on NASA data, as...

Using a stereo camera pair, imagery is acquired and processed through the “JPLV” stereo processing pipeline. From this stereo data, large 3D blobs are found. These blobs are then described and classified by their shape to determine which are vehicles and which are not. Prior vehicle...

As NASA’s Director of Space Technology Programs, Michael Gazarik contributes to the development of technology that can be applied to NASA’s exploration systems, space operations, and science missions. Gazarik integrates and tracks all investments...

Hybrid Diagnosis Engine (HyDE) is a general framework for stochastic and hybrid model-bused diagnosis that offers flexibility to the diagnosis application designer. The HyDE architecture supports the use of multiple modeling paradigms at the component and system level. Several...

As communication and networking technologies advance, networks will become highly complex and heterogeneous, interconnecting different network domains. There is a need to provide user authentication and data protection in order to...

The Sensory Ego-Sphere (SES) is a short-term memory for a robot in the form of an egocentric, tessellated, spherical, sensory-motor map of the robot’s locale. Visual attention enables fast alignment of overlapping images without warping or position optimization, since an attentional...

Researchers at the UCLA Henry Samueli School of Engineering and Applied Science have for the first time demonstrated a method for converting carbon dioxide into liquid fuel isobutanol using electricity. The electrochemical formate production and the biological carbon dioxide fixation...

A tiny prototype robot that functions like a living creature could be safely used to pinpoint diseases within the human body. Called ‘Cyberplasm’, it will combine advanced microelectronics with latest research in biomimicry (technology inspired by nature). The aim is for Cyberplasm to have an...

Researchers from Sandia National Laboratories in New Mexico have invented a dart-like, self-guided bullet for small-caliber, smooth-bore firearms that could hit laser-designated targets at distances of more than a mile (about 2,000 meters). Sandia is seeking a private company partner to complete testing...

Long hailed as windows to the soul, the eyes also might provide insight for researchers at the U.S. Army Research Institute of Environmental Medicine (USARIEM), who are evaluating and working to improve methods for detecting traumatic brain injuries (TBIs) in soldiers while they are still...

Engineers have fired the Navy’s first industry-built electromagnetic railgun (EM Railgun) prototype launcher at a test facility, beginning an evaluation that is an important intermediate step toward a future tactical weapon for ships. The Office of Naval Research (ONR) is evaluating the first...

A new approach to motion capture technology is offering fresh insights into tennis injuries – and orthopedic injuries in general. Researchers from Ohio State University studied three types of tennis serves, and identified one in particular, called a “kick” serve, which creates the...

Researchers at the Polytechnic Institute of New York University (NYU-Poly) and Michigan-based REL, Inc. are creating a next-generation aluminum composite brake rotor potentially weighing 60 percent less than today’s cast iron rotors with triple the life expectancy. The...

MIT engineers created the “buckliball,” a hollow, spherical object made of soft rubber containing no moving parts, but fashioned with 24 carefully spaced dimples. When the air is sucked out of a buckliball with a syringe, the thin ligaments forming columns between lateral dimples...

Pioneering engineers at the University of Strathclyde in Glasgow are developing an innovative technique, based on lasers, that could radically change asteroid deflection technology.The research has unearthed the possibility of using a swarm of relatively small satellites flying in formation and...

 A recent event called the "Day of Unplugging" kicked off last week, challenging people to go without their cell phones and technology for 24 hours. The "digital detox" idea encourages everyone to step away from their computers and smartphones. Some people are opposed to the idea and see no need to unplug from...

A team of researchers from Columbia Engineering and the University of Pennsylvania has figured out a way to measure nanopores — tiny holes in a thin membrane that can detect single biological molecules such as DNA and proteins — with less error than can be achieved with...

Bitumen and heavy oil are difficult to extract from reservoirs because they are thick and do not flow easily. There are several methods of extraction, one of which uses carbon dioxide-rich gas injections which helps liquify the bitumen for easier extraction, while presenting opportunities for...

Spread by mosquitoes, malaria is caused by a tiny parasite that infects human red blood cells. University of British Columbia researcher Hongshen Ma and his team designed a lab-on-a-chip device to better understand the changes in red blood cells caused by Plasmodium falciparum, the most...

A new imaging system could use opaque walls, doors, or floors as 'mirrors' to gather information about a given scene. The camera produced recognizable 3-D images of a wooden figurine and of foam cutouts outside of the device’s line of sight.The principle behind the system is essentially that of the...

Engineers from the NRL Spacecraft Engineering Department (SED) successfully demonstrated the robotic fluids transfer from a stationary platform to an Unmanned Surface Vehicle (USV) in wave heights greater than three feet. The Rapid Autonomous Fuel Transfer (RAFT) project exhibits the ability to...