A limitation has been identified in the existing test standards used for making controlled, two-body abrasion scratch measurements based solely on the width of the resultant score on the surface of the material. A new, more robust method is...

A new mobile lighting system features a fuel cell running on pure hydrogen, resulting in zero-emission electrical power. The fuel cell produces electricity for an advanced, power-saving light-emitting plasma (LEP) lighting system and additional auxiliary power up to 2.5 kW, which allows extra...

This material represents a breakthrough in the production, manufacturing, and application of thermal protection system (TPS) materials and radiation shielding, as this represents the first effort to develop a non-metallic, nonceramic, biomaterial-based, sustainable TPS with the...

The Kepler Mission is designed to survey our region of the Milky Way galaxy to discover hundreds of Earth-sized and smaller planets in or near the habitable zone. The Kepler photometer is an array of 42 CCDs (charge-coupled devices) in the focal plane of a 95-cm Schmidt camera onboard the...

A 180-GHz interferometric imager uses compact receiver modules, combined high- and low-gain antennas, and ASIC (application specific integrated circuit) correlator technology, enabling continuous, all-weather observations of water vapor with 25-km resolution and 0.3-K noise in 15 minutes of observation for numerical...

Concepts of an autonomous and automated space-compliant diagnostic system were developed for conditioned- based maintenance (CBM) of rocket motors for space exploration vehicles. The diagnostic system will provide real-time information on the integrity of critical structures...

A report describes a non-standard direct digital synthesizer (DDS) implementation that can be used as part of a coherent transponder so as to allow any rational turnaround ratio to be exactly achieved and maintained while the received frequency varies. (A coherent...

In order to simulate physically plausible surfaces that represent geologically evolved surfaces, demonstrating demanding surface-relative guidance navigation and control (GN&C) actions, such surfaces must be made to mimic the geological processes themselves....

Means have been developed for enabling fiber optic cables of the Laser Induced Breakdown Spectrometer instrument to survive ground operations plus the nominal 670 Martian conditions that include Martian summer and winter seasons. The purpose of this development was to...

A simple new way of obtaining absolute wavefront measurements with a laboratory Fizeau interferometer was recently devised. In that case, the observed wavefront map is the difference of two cavity surfaces, those of the mirror under test and of an unknown reference surface on...

A solid-state light source combines an array of light-emitting diodes (LEDs) with advanced electronic control and stabilization over both the spectrum and overall level of the light output. The use of LEDs provides efficient operation over a wide range of wavelengths and power levels, while electronic...