Nuclear reactors to support future robotic and manned missions impose new and innovative technological requirements for their control and protection instrumentation. Long-duration surface missions necessitate reliable autonomous operation, and manned missions impose added requirements for failsafe...

Direct to Earth return links are limited by the size and power of lander devices. A standard alternative is provided by a two-hops return link: a proximity link (from lander to orbiter relay) and a deep-space link (from orbiter relay to Earth). Although direct to Earth return links are limited...

An imager or sounder on satellites, such as the Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite (GOES), in geostationary orbit (GEO) has a scan mirror and motor in the scan cavity. The GEO orbit is 24 hours long. During part of the orbit, direct...

This technology enables detection and measurement of x-rays in an x-ray polarimeter using a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). The technology was developed for the Gravitational and Extreme Magnetism Small Explorer (GEMS) mission. It performs precision energy and timing...

With the introduction of new parallel architectures like the cell and multicore chips from IBM, Intel, AMD, and ARM, as well as the petascale processing available for high-end computing, a larger number of programmers will need to write parallel codes. Adding the...

The configuration of ION (Interplanetary Overlay Network) network nodes is a manual task that is complex, time-consuming, and error-prone. This program seeks to accelerate this job and produce reliable configurations.

A document discusses a liquid crystal variable retarder, an electro-optic element that changes the polarization of an optical beam in response to a low-voltage electronic signal. This device can be fabricated so that the element creates, among other states, a half-wave of...

A document describes a continuous magnetic refrigerator that is suited for cooling astrophysics detectors. This refrigerator has the potential to provide efficient, continuous cooling to temperatures below 50 mK for detectors, and has the benefits over existing...

Waves apply significant forces to small boats, in particular when such vessels are moving at a high speed in severe sea conditions. In addition, small high-speed boats run the risk of diving with the bow into the next wave crest during operations in the wavelengths and wave speeds...

This innovation is a system for gas sensing that includes an ultra-low-power MEMS (microelectromechanical system) gas sensor, combined with unique electronic circuitry and a proprietary algorithm for operating the sensor. The electronics were created from scratch, and represent a novel design capable of...

To satisfy the Major Constituents Analysis (MCA) requirements for the Vehicle Cabin Atmosphere Monitor (VCAM), this software analyzes the relative abundance ratios for N2, O2, Ar, and CO2 as a function of time and constructs their best-estimate mean. A histogram is first...

Research was conducted on the qualification of Honeywell platinum resistance thermometer (PRT) bonding for use in the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). This is the first time these sensors will be used for Mars-related projects. Different types of PRTs were employed for the...

Fault detection, diagnosis, and prognosis are essential tasks in the operation of autonomous spacecraft, instruments, and in situ platforms. One of NASA’s key mission requirements is robust state estimation. Sensing, using a wide range of sensors and sensor fusion approaches, plays a central role in robust...

The aperture ion source was conceived to eliminate distortion in measurements of angular distributions of neutral atoms and molecules that require electronimpact ion sources. The approach simplifies the coupling between ion source and spectrometer while providing virtually distortion-free angular distributions and improved...

Stray light reflected from the surface of imaging spectrometer components — in particular, the spectrometer slit — degrade the image quality. A technique has been developed for rapid, uniform, and cost-effective black silicon formation based on inductively coupled plasma (ICP) etching at...

The front-to-back interface between microstrip and CPW (coplanar waveguide) typically requires complex fabrication or has high radiation loss. The microwave crossover typically requires a complex fabrication step. The prior art in microstrip-CPW transition requires a physical...