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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Wide-Band Radar for Measuring Thickness of Sea Ice
A wide-band penetrating radar system for measuring the thickness of sea ice is under development. The need for this or a similar system arises as follows: Spatial and temporal variations in the thickness of sea ice are important indicators of heat fluxes between the ocean and atmosphere and, hence,...
Articles: Aerospace
NASA’s predecessor agency, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics (NACA), began a legacy of aeronautical innovation that continues today. While much of the focus of NASA’s...
Articles: Aerospace
“Space exploration is all about inspiration, innovation, and discovery. It’s about imagining the future. It’s about taking new steps, and exploring beyond our limitations, and creating something bigger...
Briefs: Materials
Coating Reduces Ice Adhesion
The Shuttle Ice Liberation Coating (SILC) has been developed to reduce the adhesion of ice to surfaces on the space shuttle. SILC, when coated on a surface (foam, metal, epoxy primer, polymer surfaces), will reduce the adhesion of ice by as much as 90 percent as compared to the corresponding uncoated surface. This...
Articles: Aerospace
NASA Celebrates 50 Years
"The exploration of space will go ahead, whether we join it or not, and it is one of the greatest adventures of all time, and no nation which expects to be the leader of other nations can expect to stay behind in this race for space. "We set sail on this new sea because there is new knowledge to be gained and new rights to...
Briefs: Information Technology
Control Architecture for Robotic Agent Command and Sensing (CARACaS) is a recent product of a continuing effort to develop architectures for controlling either a single autonomous...
Briefs: Aerospace
Delay Banking for Managing Air Traffic
Delay banking has been invented to enhance air-traffic management in a way that would increase the degree of fairness in assigning arrival, departure, and en-route delays and trajectory deviations to aircraft impacted by congestion in the national airspace system. In delay banking, an aircraft operator...
Briefs: Aerospace
Flight-deck display software was designed and developed at NASA Langley Research Center to provide two-dimensional (2D) and three-dimensional (3D) terrain, obstacle, and flightpath perspectives on a...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Programmable Low-Voltage Circuit Breaker and Tester
An instrumentation system that would comprise a remotely controllable and programmable low- voltage circuit breaker plus several electric- circuit-testing subsystems has been conceived, originally for use aboard a spacecraft during all phases of operation from pre-launch testing through launch,...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A Topographical Lidar System for Terrain-Relative Navigation
An imaging lidar system is being developed for use in navigation, relative to the local terrain. This technology will potentially be used for future spacecraft landing on the Moon. Systems like this one could also be used on Earth for diverse purposes, including mapping terrain,...
Articles: Electronics & Computers
The complexity of military and aerospace systems is growing — more components, interfaces, power, bandwidth, processing, features, and data — and these systems are being...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
A variable-structure control system designed to enable a fuselage-heavy airplane to recover from spin has been demonstrated in a hand-launched, instrumented model glider airplane (see...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
The figure schematically depicts a lidar system for measuring optical properties of clouds and aerosols at three wavelengths. The system is designed to be operated aboard the NASA...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Lightweight, piezoelectrically actuated bending flight-control surfaces have shown promise as means of actively controlling airflows to improve the performances of transport airplanes. These...
Briefs: Materials
Composite truss structures are being developed that can be compacted for stowage and later deploy themselves to full size and shape. In the target applications, these "smart" structures...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
A fiber-optic sensor system has been developed that can remotely measure the concentration of molecular oxygen (O2), nitrogen (N2), hydro- carbon vapor,...
Application Briefs: Electronics & Computers
The colonel has a problem. He has eight unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) flying over the outskirts of Baghdad, looking for potential insurgent activity. Are those people he sees moving through...
Application Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
ToughDisk® 3500 SATA Rugged Hard Disk Formation, Inc. Moorestown, NJ 856-234-5020 www.formation.com
Formation’s ToughDisk® 3500 SATA Rugged Hard Disk has been selected by...
Briefs: Materials
Optimized Carbonate and Ester-Based Li-Ion Electrolytes
To maintain high conductivity in low temperatures, electrolyte co-solvents have been designed to have a high dielectric constant, low viscosity, adequate coordination behavior, and appropriate liquid ranges and salt solubilities. Electrolytes that contain ester-based co-solvents in large...
Articles: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Who's Who: Photonics/Optics
SOFIA (Stratospheric Observatory for Infrared Astronomy) is a joint venture between NASA and the German space agency, DLR, involving the use of a modified Boeing 747SP aircraft as an airborne...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
The Wing and Rotor Aeroelastic Test System (WRATS) data acquisition system (DAS) is a 64-channel data acquisition display and analysis system specifically designed for use with the WRATS 1/5-scale V-22...
Articles: Robotics, Automation & Control
The trend in aircraft design is toward more efficient brushless DC motors. A integrated motor drive module for brushless DC motors from International Rectifier (El Segundo, CA) reduces the effort of...
Books & Reports: Physical Sciences
Estimating Mixing Heights Using Microwave Temperature Profiler
A paper describes the Microwave Temperature Profiler (MTP) for making measurements of the planetary boundary layer thermal structure — data necessary for air quality forecasting as the Mixing Layer (ML) height determines the volume in which daytime pollution is primarily concentrated....
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A proposed microstrip Yagi antenna would operate at a frequency of 8.4 GHz (which is in the X band) and would feature a mechanically simpler, more elegant design, relative to a prior...
INSIDER: Electronics & Computers
Since their introduction in 1991, PC/104 standard based systems have been widely adopted in various applications. Unmanned aircraft control, onboard vehicle control and navigation systems,...
Briefs: Information Technology
Using Visual Odometry to Estimate Position and Attitude
A computer program in the guidance system of a mobile robot generates estimates of the position and attitude of the robot, using features of the terrain on which the robot is moving, by processing digitized images acquired by a stereoscopic pair of electronic cameras mounted rigidly on the...
Briefs: Information Technology
Balloon Design Software
PlanetaryBalloon Version 5.0 is a software package for the design of meridionally lobed planetary balloons. It operates in a Windows environment, and programming was done in Visual Basic 6. By including the effects of circular lobes with load tapes, skin mass, hoop and meridional stress, and elasticity in the structural...
Top Stories
Blog: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Ultrasound Wristband Precisely Tracks Hand Movements in Real Time
Podcasts: Electronics & Computers
Arm’s Agentic AI CPU: Engineering the Next Generation of AI Data Centers
Quiz: Manned Systems
National Astronaut Day 2026: Astronauts and Space Missions Quiz
Articles: Design
Redefining the Automotive Industry with Versatile Innovation
Application Briefs: Connectivity
Blog: Aerospace
Lincoln Laboratory Laser Communications Terminal Launches on Historic...
Webcasts
Podcasts: Design
How Smart Implants and AI Robotics Could Transform Neurological Surgery
Webinars: Internet of Things
Virtual. Physical. Connected: How Smart Testing Is Changing...
Webinars: Electronics & Computers
Superior Environmental Protection with Ultra-Thin Parylene and...
Summits: Energy
Battery Manufacturing & Simulation Summit 2026
Webinars: Power
Virtual Screening of Materials for Increased Battery Performance

