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Briefs: Aerospace
NASA has developed a game-changing deployable aeroshell concept for entry, descent, and landing (EDL) of large science and exploration-class payloads. The...
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Briefs: Green Design & Manufacturing
Three-Band Cloud and Precipitation Radar
After many years of use of Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) and CloudSat data, focus groups within the cloud and precipitation science community produced requirements for the next generation of missions. The first draft of Aerosol-Cloud-Ecosystem mission requirements was formalized in 2009,...
Articles: Materials
Historically, high-strength materials have been heavy and dense. The need for high-strength but lightweight materials has become more widespread when designing everything from vehicles and...
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Briefs: Aerospace
High Speed Idle Engine Control Mode
Innovators at NASA's Glenn Research Center have developed an engine control mode that improves an engine's responsiveness to throttle commands during emergency landing conditions. The high speed idle (HSI) control mode increases the speed of the engine's fan and core shafts, allowing faster response and increased...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
The Orion Crew-Service Module (CM/SM) umbilical retention and release mechanism supports, protects, and disconnects all of the cross-module commodities...
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Briefs: Aerospace
This technology is a new type of design for the wing flap, aileron, or flaperon located directly behind the engine nozzle on jet aircraft. Using a concave-down curved shape for...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Researchers at the University of Wisconsin-Madison created computer chips that can be configured to perform complex calculations and store massive amounts of information within the same...
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Briefs: Energy
Solid-State Lithium Sulfur Battery
Sulfur is a promising cathode for lithium batteries due to its high theoretical specific capacity (1673 mAh/g), low cost, and environmental friendliness. With a high specific energy density of 2500 Wh/kg, which is a five times greater energy density than a conventional Li-ion battery, Li-S batteries hold great...
Articles: Automotive
More than 11,000 engineering industry professionals from 55 countries will experience the new WCX — the evolution of SAE World Congress (here) — to be held April 4-6 in Detroit, MI. Attendees will gain new...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Printed Circuit Board Design Software Helps Create New Energy Solutions
Founded in 2006, Eagle Harbor Technologies (EHT) delivers high-quality pulsed power solutions to organizations such as the Department of Energy (DoE), NASA, and the United States Navy. From its headquarters in Seattle, WA, EHT offers a full suite of pulsed power products to...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Princeton University researchers have built a device in which a single electron can pass its quantum information to a particle of light. The particle of light, or photon, then acts as a...
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Briefs: Aerospace
Method and System for Air Traffic Rerouting for Airspace Constraint Resolution
NASA's National Airspace System Constraint Evaluation and Notification Tool (NASCENT) is a dynamic constraint avoidance system that automatically analyzes routes of aircraft flying, or to be flown, in or near constraint regions, and attempts to find more time- and...
Briefs: Software
Timeline Builder Assistant
Current human spaceflight requirements limit the number of hours a crewmember can be outside of the habitation unit to 8 hours in a 48-hour period, and 24 hours in a seven-day period. This time must be appropriately balanced to complete science, exploration, and maintenance tasks. Off-days can be used for site transit...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
The laws of physics have set a 5-nanometer threshold on the size of transistor gates among conventional semiconductors, about one-quarter the size of high-end, 20-nanometer-gate...
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Briefs: Energy
Standardized Heating Method to Trigger and Prevent Thermal Runaway Propagation in Lithium-Ion Batteries
Lithium-ion (Li-ion) cells are increasingly used in high-voltage and high-capacity modules. The Li-ion chemistry has the highest energy density of all rechargeable battery chemistries, but associated with that energy is the issue of catastrophic...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Great strides are taken to miniaturize spaceflight instrumentation, particularly analytical systems such as liquid chromatographs, gas chromatographs, and mass spectrometers....
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Articles: Manufacturing & Prototyping
This column presents technologies that have applications in commercial areas, possibly creating the products of tomorrow. To learn more about each technology, see the contact information provided for that innovation.
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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Fluid-pumped radiators are used to reject heat from structures to space. A fluid travels inside the structure to collect heat, and then travels...
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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
JPL's Microfluidic Electrospray Propulsion (MEP) thruster design is based on a microfabricated electrospray system with a capillary-force-driven feed system that uses...
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Briefs: Aerospace
NASA's Langley Research Center has created a novel process that significantly improves the effectiveness of high-lift devices on aircraft wings by utilizing a hybrid concept of...
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Products: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Shape Sensor OFS, (Norcross, GA) has developed a shape sensor fiber. The technology platform produces twisted multicore optical fiber with continuous FBGs (Fiber Bragg Gratings). The sensor meets 3D shape sensing specifications,...
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INSIDER: Materials
'Tougher-than-Metal' Hydrogels Support New Biomaterials
Scientists from Japan's Hokkaido University have created tough hydrogels combined with woven fiber fabric. The "fiber-reinforced soft composite" fabrics are highly flexible, stronger than metals, and can support a number of potential applications, including artificial ligaments and tendons...
Question of the Week: Transportation
Can augmented reality reduce "road rage?"
This week’s Question: A new "CarNote" app from the Eindhoven University of Technology in the Netherlands aims to use augmented reality to improve the driving experience and reduce "road rage." CarNote's driver-facing periscope lens and transparent display projects information from a smartphone, allowing...
INSIDER: Aerospace
Engineers at NASA’s Ames Research Center in Moffett Field, CA have been testing its Exo-Brake technology as a simple design that promises to help bring small payloads...
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INSIDER: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Five-axis machine tools are computer-numerically controlled (CNC) machines that can move, cut, or mill a part on five different axes at the same time. Because of inherent...
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INSIDER: Robotics, Automation & Control
Researchers in Lausanne, Switzerland have determined that a bipod gait is the fastest and most efficient way for six-legged robots to move on flat ground, provided they don’t have the adhesive...
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INSIDER: Motion Control
Engineers and scientists at the University of Texas at Austin and the AMOLF institute in the Netherlands have invented mechanical metamaterials that transfer motion in one direction...
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INSIDER: Energy
Researchers Advance Printable Solar Cell Possibilities
By finding a new way to manufacture low-cost perovskite solar cells, a team at the University of Toronto believes that making solar cells could someday be as easy and inexpensive as printing a newspaper. The researchers' alternative solar technology supports the development of low-cost,...
Question of the Week: Aerospace
This week's Question: Amazon recently filed a patent for parachute-aided delivery of packages. The proposed idea imagines drones releasing parcels from the sky, deploying parachutes to slow...
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