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Articles: Government
NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA, has won NASA’s 2010 Government Invention of the Year Award and the Commercial Invention of the Year Award. The Government...
Articles: Aerospace
Aircraft of the future may not look significantly different from today’s aircraft, but a peek “under the hood” will reveal technologies that are vastly different. Commercial aviation giants such...
Application Briefs: Software
CodeSonar, Coverity Prevent, and Uno softwareGrammaTechIthaca, NY607-273-7340www.grammatech.com
The results of a ten-month study by 30 NASA engineers of possible electronic causes of...
Application Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Microelectromechanical system (MEMS)-based deformable mirrorBoston Micromachines Corp. (BMC)Cambridge, MA617-868-4178www.bostonmicromachines.com
Boston Micromachines was awarded a Phase 1 NASA Small...
Articles: Sensors/Data Acquisition
CCD TH7888A imaging sensorse2vChelmsford, Essex, UK+44 (0) 1245 493 493www.e2v.com
Earlier this year, NASA’s MESSENGER became the first spacecraft to orbit the planet Mercury. The e2v Charge Coupled...
NASA Tech Needs
NASA seeks innovative technologies to facilitate meeting back Planetary Protection objectives for a potential Mars Sample Return (MSR) mission, and to facilitate forward Planetary Protection implementation for a...
Articles: Aerospace
This feature profiles NASA’s ten field centers located across the country. Each month, we’ll highlight a NASA center’s unique facilities, capabilities, and areas of research, as well as specific missions and...
Products: Electronics & Computers
National Instruments, Austin, TX, has released the NI PXIe-5186 digitizer, co-developed with Tektronix, Beaverton, OR. The unit achieves up to 5 GHz bandwidth and 12.5 GS/s sample rates. The NI PXIe-5185 delivers 3 GHz...
Techs for License
Facing for Acoustic Batts that Contain Melt-Film Fibrillation
Melt-Film Fibrillation (MFF) technology produces a facing for acoustic batts for vehicle sound insulation that offers equivalent or superior sound-deadening performance at reduced weight and cost. Equivalent weights of MFF fibers produce substantially enhanced sound insulation over...
Techs for License
Adaptive Membranes for Comfortable Protective Wear
This dual-membrane technology provides apparel with a high degree of comfort, passing air and water vapor easily. The garment (or survival enclosure) can instantly be made impervious with the flip of a switch on the belt-mounted power pack. The garment can be toggled between high comfort and high...
Tech Needs
Sensitive, Robust Sensors for Ethane and Methane Detection
A company seeks a sensor that is sensitive and quantitative for ethane from 5 ppm to 5,000 ppm, and for methane from 5 ppm to 7,000 ppm. The sensor(s) should work in or near oil. While the location of the sensor heads should primarily be positioned in the headspace above the oil, ability to...
Tech Needs
Solution to Filter Light to High Specification
A firm seeks to identify spectral filter technologies to operate within a demanding optical environment. The technology solution will enable the suppression of out-of-band wavelengths above 100 nm, while exhibiting minimal loss to wavelengths of the order of 10 nm. The solution can be manufactured...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Stereo imaging requires two different perspectives of the same object and, traditionally, a pair of side-by-side cameras would be used but are not feasible for something as tiny as a less than 4-mm-diameter...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Wind and Temperature Spectrometry of the Upper Atmosphere in Low-Earth Orbit
Wind and Temperature Spectrometry (WATS) is a new approach to measure the full wind vector, temperature, and relative densities of major neutral species in the Earth’s thermosphere. The method uses an energy-angle spectrometer moving through the tenuous upper atmosphere...
Briefs: Information Technology
Health Monitor for Multitasking, Safety-Critical, Real-Time Software
Health Manager can detect “Bad Health” prior to a failure occurring by periodically monitoring the application software by looking for code corruption errors, and sanity-checking each critical data value prior to use. A processor’s memory can fail and corrupt the software,...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Parallel Wavefront Analysis for a 4D Interferometer
This software provides a programming interface for automating data collection with a PhaseCam interferometer from 4D Technology, and distributing the image-processing algorithm across a cluster of general-purpose computers.
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Early Oscillation Detection Technique for Hybrid DC/DC Converters
Oscillation or instability is a situation that must be avoided for reliable hybrid DC/DC converters. A real-time electronics measurement technique was developed to detect catastrophic oscillations at early stages for hybrid DC/DC converters. It is capable of identifying low-level...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Compact THz receivers with broad bandwidth and low noise have been developed for the frequency range from 100 GHz to 1 THz. These receivers meet the requirements for high-resolution...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Coaxial Cables for Martian Extreme
Work was conducted to validate the use of the rover external flexible coaxial cabling for space under the extreme environments to be encountered during the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. The antennas must survive all ground operations plus the nominal 670-Martian-day mission that includes summer and winter...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Carbon Nanofiber-Based, High-Frequency, High-Q, Miniaturized Mechanical Resonators
High Q resonators are a critical component of stable, low-noise communication systems, radar, and precise timing applications such as atomic clocks. In electronic resonators based on Si integrated circuits, resistive losses increase as a result of the continued...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Using Spare Logic Resources To Create Dynamic Test Points
A technique has been devised to enable creation of a dynamic set of test points in an embedded digital electronic system. As a result, electronics contained in an application specific circuit [e.g., gate array, field programmable gate array (FPGA)] can be internally “probed,” even when...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Ultracapacitor-Based Uninterrupted Power Supply System
The ultracapacitor-based uninterrupted power supply (UPS) system enhances system reliability; reduces life-of-system, maintenance, and downtime costs; and greatly reduces environmental impact when compared to conventional UPS energy storage systems. This design provides power when required and...
Briefs: Software
Autonomous Coordination of Science Observations Using Multiple Spacecraft
This software provides capabilities for autonomous cross-cueing and coordinated observations between multiple orbital and landed assets. Previous work has been done in re-tasking a single Earth orbiter or a Mars rover in response to that craft detecting a science event. This...
Briefs: Software
EOS MLS Level 1B Data Processing Software, Version 3
This software is an improvement on Version 2, which was described in “EOS MLS Level 1B Data Processing, Version 2.2,” NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 33, No. 5 (May 2009), p. 34. It accepts the EOS MLS Level 0 science/engineering data, and the EOS Aura spacecraft ephemeris/attitude data, and produces...
Briefs: Software
Cassini Tour Atlas Automated Generation
During the Cassini spacecraft’s cruise phase and nominal mission, the Cassini Science Planning Team developed and maintained an online database of geometric and timing information called the Cassini Tour Atlas. The Tour Atlas consisted of several hundreds of megabytes of EVENTS mission planning software...
Briefs: Software
Software Development Standard Processes (SDSP)
A JPL-created set of standard processes is to be used throughout the lifecycle of software development. These SDSPs cover a range of activities, from management and engineering activities, to assurance and support activities. These processes must be applied to software tasks per a pre- scribed set of...
Briefs: Software
Autonomous Phase Retrieval Calibration
The Palomar Adaptive Optics System actively corrects for changing aberrations in light due to atmospheric turbulence. However, the underlying internal static error is unknown and uncorrected by this process. The dedicated wavefront sensor device necessarily lies along a different path than the science camera,...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Graphite Composite Panel Polishing Fixture
The use of high-strength, lightweight composites for the fixture is the novel feature of this innovation. The main advantage is the light weight and high stiffness-to-mass ratio relative to aluminum.
Top Stories
Blog: Manufacturing & Prototyping
2025 Holiday Gift Guide for Engineers: Tech, Tools, and Gadgets
Blog: Power
Using Street Lamps as EV Chargers
INSIDER: Semiconductors & ICs
Scientists Create Superconducting Semiconductor Material
Blog: Materials
This Paint Can Cool Buildings Without Energy Input
Blog: Software
Quiz: Power
Webcasts
Upcoming Webinars: AR/AI
The Real Impact of AR and AI in the Industrial Equipment Industry
Upcoming Webinars: Motion Control
Next-Generation Linear and Rotary Stages: When Ultra Precision...
Podcasts: Manufacturing & Prototyping
SAE Automotive Engineering Podcast: Additive Manufacturing
Podcasts: Defense
A New Approach to Manufacturing Machine Connectivity for the Air Force
On-Demand Webinars: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Streamlining Manufacturing with Integrated Digital Planning and Simulation

