Vehicles and Performance

Entry, descent and landing

Stories

201
34364494
0
0
30
Briefs: Software
Incorporating a vision-based navigation method, NASA Ames has developed a novel Alternative Position, Navigation, and Timing (APNT) solution for AAM aircraft in environments where GPS is not available. Read on to learn more about it.
Feature Image
Briefs: Robotics, Automation & Control
Innovators at NASA Johnson Space Center have developed and successfully flight tested a high-performance computing platform, known as the Descent and Landing Computer (DLC), to suit the demands of safe, autonomous, extraterrestrial spacecraft landings for robotic and human exploration missions.
Feature Image
Briefs: Aerospace
Engineers at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center and Sidus Space developed a novel interlocking paver system enabling the robotic construction of high-stability vertical takeoff and landing pads.
Feature Image
Application Briefs: Aerospace
NASA’s successful Low-Earth Orbit Flight Test of an Inflatable Decelerator (LOFTID) demonstration suggests that inflatable aeroshells can keep payloads safe during atmospheric entry.
Feature Image
Briefs: Transportation
This simple, elegant invention can control flow separation resulting from the high flap deflections required by simple-hinged flap systems making such flaps a viable option for aircraft designers.
Feature Image
Briefs: Design
New design removes the need for mechanisms to perform active tilting of the wings or rotors, reducing system mass.
Feature Image
Briefs: Software
The simulations provide insight on the models needed to simulate a full-scale landing event.
Feature Image
Briefs: Aerospace
The low-density, graphene-based aerogel could make aircraft as quiet as a hairdryer.
Feature Image
Briefs: Aerospace
An algorithm runs onboard a vehicle, providing important real-time data to aid in steering the craft.
Feature Image
Briefs: Aerospace
The algorithms enable drones to quickly switch between hover and forward flight.
Feature Image
Articles: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Perseverance will have the ability to land in more challenging terrain than Curiosity, making more rugged sites eligible as safe landing candidates.
Feature Image
Application Briefs: Test & Measurement
Beta Technologies is putting their Electrical Vertical Takeoff and Landing aircraft (eVTOL) prototype through the wringer.
Feature Image
Application Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida is home to one of the largest buildings in the world — the massive Vehicle Assembly Building — and also hosts a number of one-of-a-kind facilities. The more...
Feature Image
Briefs: Aerospace
This technique lowers airstream noise generated at the side edges of deployed flaps, elevons, or slats.
Feature Image
Application Briefs: Imaging
Learn about the Draper Multi-Environment Navigator.
Feature Image
Briefs: Aerospace
NASA’s Langley Research Center developed an inexpensive, long-endurance, vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV). It is capable of flying for 24 hours, landing in a 50 × 50...
Feature Image
Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Neural Lander Uses AI to Land Drones Smoothly
Landing multi-rotor drones smoothly is difficult. Complex turbulence is created by the airflow from each rotor bouncing off the ground during a descent. This turbulence is not well understood nor is it easy to compensate for, particularly for autonomous drones. That is why takeoff and landing are often...
Briefs: Propulsion
Landing is stressful on a rocket’s legs because they must handle the force from the impact with the landing pad. One way to combat this is to build legs out of materials that absorb some of the...
Feature Image
Briefs: Energy
Heat shields are essentially used as the brakes to stop spacecraft from burning up and crashing on entry and reentry into a planet's atmosphere. Current spacecraft heat shield methods include huge...
Feature Image
Briefs: Aerospace
Real-Time, Fuel-Optimal, Powered Descent Guidance Using Interpolated Time-of-Flight and Propellant Mass
Soft landing using rockets requires a trajectory to be planned for the lander from rocket ignition — typically several kilometers in altitude and moving at up to 200 m/s — to the point near the surface with near-zero velocity. The exact...
Briefs: Aerospace
Vertical Take Off and Landing (VTOL) Aircraft with Vectored Thrust for Control and Continuously Variable Pitch Attitude in Hover
Most fixed-wing VTOL unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) take off vertically, then transition to horizontal flight. This is a new type of UAV that has unique capability. It can vary its hover position from “nose up”...
Briefs: Test & Measurement
Optical Method for Detecting Displacements and Strains at Ultra-High Temperatures During Thermo-Mechanical Testing
NASA's Langley Research Center has developed an optical method for detecting displacements and strains at ultra-high temperatures during thermo-mechanical testing. This innovation will provide displacement and strain measurements in...
Application Briefs: Materials
Collier Research Corp. Newport News, VA HyperSizer.com When the Stratolaunch aircraft rolled out of the Mojave, CA Air and Space Port hangar this spring in preparation for ground...
Feature Image
Briefs: Aerospace
Portable Runway Intersection Display and Monitoring System
Developed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center, the subject technology is a portable airport runway/taxiway intersection lighting system and signage designed to prevent incursions. This proposed runway incursion prevention solution aids in the management and prevention of airport runway...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Novel Vent Design Features Variable Flow Control and Rain Protection
NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center scientists have designed a vent that can be useful for purging closed compartments, while preventing backflow and foreign object entry. The technology uses a system of configurable devices to provide variable flow control and prevent water,...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Traditional heat shield design isolates the functions of the thermal protection system (TPS) from the underlying load-carrying structure. This is due to the use of brittle TPS material that...
Feature Image
Briefs: Aerospace
Some unmanned aircraft designs attempt to combine the vertical takeoff and landing (VTOL) and hover capabilities of a helicopter with the increased speed and range capabilities of fixed-wing airplanes. Stop-rotor...
Feature Image
Briefs: Aerospace
There are two commonly used options to transport large-volume and heavy cargo across the ocean: container ships and airline transport aircraft. Container ships take about 3 to 4 weeks to deliver...
Feature Image
Briefs: Aerospace
NASA's Langley Research Center has designed a Multifunctional Boost Protective Cover (MBPC) for a Launch Abort System (LAS). In the event of a crewed launch, the...
Feature Image

Videos