One of the most pervasive needs within the Deep Space Network (DSN) Metric Prediction Generator (MPG) view period event generation is that of finding solutions to given occurrence conditions. While the general form of an equation expresses equivalence between its...

The principle of tissue microfluidics and its resultant techniques has been applied to cell analysis. Building microfluidics to suit a particular tissue sample would allow the rapid, reliable, inexpensive, highly parallelized, selective extraction of chosen regions of tissue for...

An explosive bolt has been developed that has a one-sided dual initiation train all the way down to the pyro charge for high reliability, while still allowing the other side of the bolt to remain in place after actuation to act as a thermal seal in an extremely high-temperature environment. This...

A laser cavity was designed and implemented by using a wedged polarization rotator and a Porro prism in order to reduce the parts count, and to improve the laser reliability. In this invention, a z-cut quartz polarization rotator is used to compensate...

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...

A document discusses a mechanism that uses flex-pivots in a parallelogram arrangement to provide frictionless motion with an unlimited lifetime. A voice-coil actuator drives the parallelogram over the required 5-cm travel. An optical position sensor...

A grid-tied photovoltaic (PV) power system is connected directly to the utility distribution grid. Facility power can be obtained from the utility system as normal. The PV system is synchronized with the utility system to provide power for the facility, and excess power is provided to the utility.

The CCSDS (Consultative Committee for Space Data Systems) File Delivery Protocol for Interplanetary Overlay Network (CFDP-ION) is an implementation of CFDP that uses ION’s DTN (delay tolerant networking) implementation as its UT (unit-data transfer) layer. Because the DTN protocols effect automatic,...

When multiple parallel communication links are available, it is useful to consider link-utilization strategies that provide tradeoffs between reliability and throughput. Interesting cases arise when there are three or more available links. Under the model considered, the...

A sequencer for a radar altimeter provides accurate attitude information for a reliable soft landing of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL). This is a field-programmable-gate-array (FPGA)-only implementation. A table loaded externally into the FPGA controls timing, processing, and decision structures....

A stochastic optimization methodology (SDO) has been developed to design air-frame structural components made of metallic and composite materials. The design method accommodates uncertainties in load, strength, and material properties that are defined by distribution functions...

A plasma igniter has been developed for initiating combustion in liquid-propellant rocket engines. The device propels a hot, dense plasma jet, consisting of elemental fluorine and fluorine compounds, into the combustion chamber to ignite the cold propellant mixture. The igniter...

A self-nulling beam combiner is proposed that completely eliminates the phase inversion subsystem from the nulling interferometer, and instead uses the intrinsic phase shifts in the beam splitters. Simplifying the flight instrument in this way will be a valuable enhancement of mission...

This proof-of-concept device consists of a thin film of graphene deposited on an electrodized doped silicon wafer. The graphene film acts as a conductive path between a gold electrode deposited on top of a silicon dioxide layer and the reversible side of the silicon wafer, so as to form a...

The use of underfill materials is necessary with flip-chip interconnect technology to redistribute stresses due to mismatching coefficients of thermal expansion (CTEs) between dissimilar materials in the overall assembly. Underfills are formulated using organic polymers and possibly inorganic...

A quasi-optical front end allows any arbitrary polarization to be transmitted by controlling the timing, amplitude, and phase of the two input ports. The front end consists of two independent channels — horizontal and vertical. Each channel has two ports — transmit and receive. The transmit signal is...

A method eliminates (or recovers from) residual methane buildup in getter-pumped atomic frequency standard systems by applying ionizing assistance. Ultra-high stability trapped ion frequency standards for applications requiring very high reliability, and/or low...

In this work, radial transitions have been successfully mated with a HEMT-based MMIC (high-electron-mobility-transistor-based monolithic microwave integrated circuit) oscillator circuit. The chip has been assembled into a WR2.2 waveguide module for the basic implementation with...

NASA/NESSUS 6.2c is a general-purpose, probabilistic analysis program that computes probability of failure and probabilistic sensitivity measures of engineered systems. Because NASA/NESSUS uses highly computationally efficient and accurate analysis techniques, probabilistic solutions can be obtained even...