NASA Tech Briefs - January 2009 - Vol. 33 No. 1

Features

• Application Briefs

  Connectors Provide Signal Reliability for Mars Science Laboratory

  Wireless Video Surveillance System Secures Aircraft

• Who's Who

  Dr. Woodrow Whitlow Jr., Director, John H. Glenn Research Center, Cleveland, OH

• Articles

  CAD Tools: Breaking Barriers

Tech Briefs

• Bio-Medical

  Sensitive, Rapid Detection of Bacterial Spores

  Adenosine Monophosphate-Based Detection of Bacterial Spores

• Physical Sciences

  Small CO₂ Sensors Operate at Lower Temperature

  Effects of Temperature on Polymer/Carbon Chemical Sensors

  Tele-Supervised Adaptive Ocean Sensor Fleet

  CGH Figure Testing of Aspherical Mirrors in Cold Vacuums

  Silicon Microleaks for Inlets of Mass Spectrometers

  Series-Coupled Pairs of Silica Microresonators

• Manufacturing & Prototyping

  Improved Joining of Metal Components to Composite Structures

  Machined Titanium Heat-Pipe Wick Structure

• Materials

  Gadolinia-Doped Ceria Cathodes for Electrolysis of CO2

• Information Sciences

  High-Performance Algorithm for Solving the Diagnosis Problem

  Efficient Method for Optimizing Placement of Sensors

  Truncation Depth Rule-of-Thumb for Convolutional Codes

• Mechanics & Machinery

  Alternative OTEC Scheme for a Submarine Robot

  Utilizing Ocean Thermal Energy in a Submarine Robot

  Fuel-Cell Power Systems Incorporating Mg-Based H₂ Generators

• Semiconductors & ICs

  Submillimeter-Wave Amplifier Module With Integrated Waveguide Transitions

  Economical Implementation of a Filter Engine in an FPGA

• Electronics & Computers

  The Radio Frequency Health Node Wireless Sensor System

  Synthesis of Submillimeter Radiation for Spectroscopy

  Generating Ka-Band Signals Using an X-Band Vector Modulator

  100-GHz Phase Switch/Mixer Containing a Slot-Line Transition

  SiC Optically Modulated Field-Effect Transistor

Products

• ML7 BGS sensors

  Photonics West Exhibitor Preview

• Briefs

  Metrology System for a Large, Somewhat Flexible Telescope

  Formation Flying of Components of a Large Space Telescope

  Laser Metrology Heterodyne Phase-Locked Loop

  Precise Stabilization of the Optical Frequency of WGMRs

  Spatial Modulation Improves Performance in CTIS

• Applications

  Measuring LED and Solid State Lighting Performance

• Articles

  Micromachining with Lasers

• Products

  Software Radio PMC Module

  PC/104 Single Board Computer

  Graphical Programming Software

  VPX/CompactPCI Hybrid Backplane

  Toggle Switch

  Reconfigurable FPGA AMC Module

  CompactPCI Power Supplies

  512Mb TSOPII SDRAM

  Voltage Controlled Oscillator

  Conductive Epoxy With Applicator

  1RU Servers

  RF Communications Toolkit Software

• Applications

  Designing Backplanes for Rugged COTS Applications

• Articles

  Deciphering the New SUMIT™ Specification

  Applying Cognitive Memory to Pattern Recognition

  Direct Spray Liquid Cooling Systems