As communication and networking technologies advance, networks will become highly complex and heterogeneous, interconnecting different network domains. There is a need to provide user authentication and data protection in order to...

The Sensory Ego-Sphere (SES) is a short-term memory for a robot in the form of an egocentric, tessellated, spherical, sensory-motor map of the robot’s locale. Visual attention enables fast alignment of overlapping images without warping or position optimization, since an attentional...

Powerful new parallel data mining algorithms can produce diagnostic and prognostic numerical models and analyses from observational data. These techniques yield higher-resolution measures than ever before of environmental parameters by fusing synoptic imagery and time-series measurements. These techniques...

The most common means of remote scientific collaboration today includes the trio of e-mail for electronic communication, FTP for file sharing, and personalized Web sites for dissemination of papers and research results. With the growth of broadband Internet, there has been a desire to...

A high-rate data system was required to capture the data for an airborne lidar system. A data system was developed that achieved up to 22 million (64-bit) events per second sustained data rate (1408 million bits per second), as well as short bursts (

The purpose of the MDMLT is to improve the reliability and speed of loading multiplexers/ demultiplexers (MDMs) in the Software Development and Integration Laboratory (SDIL) by automating the configuration management (CM) of the loads in the MDMs, automating the loading procedure, and providing the...

An impact model was developed to predict how three specific foam types would damage the Space Shuttle Orbiter insulating tiles. The inputs needed for the model are the foam type, the foam mass, the foam impact velocity, the foam impact incident angle, the type being impacted, and whether the tile is new or aged (has flown...

Wavefront sensing is a process by which optical system errors are deduced from the aberrations in the image of an ideal source. The method has been used successfully in near-normal incidence, but not for grazing incidence systems. This innovation highlights the ability to examine...

The objective of this effort was to show that real-time aircraft control-surface hinge-moment information could be used to provide a robust and reliable prediction of vehicle performance and control authority degradation. For a given airfoil section with a control surface — be it a wing with an aileron,...

Task requirements for rocket propulsion test preparations of the test stand facilities drive the need to model the test facility propellant systems prior to constructing physical modifications. The Propellant System Modeling Environment (PSME) is an initiative...

Generic, object-oriented fault models, built according to causal-directed graph theory, have been integrated into an overall software architecture dedicated to monitoring and predicting the health of mission- critical systems. Processing over the generic fault...

A theory was developed to explain the properties of the chorus magnetic and electric field components in the case of an arbitrary propagation angle. The new theory shows that a whistler wave has circularly polarized magnetic fields for oblique propagation. This...

The performance of an optical system (for example, a telescope) is limited by the misalignments and manufacturing imperfections of the optical elements in the system. The impact of these misalignments and imperfections can be quantified by the phase variations imparted on light traveling through the system. Phase retrieval...

Traditionally, nodes in a sensor network simply collect data and then pass it on to a centralized node that archives, distributes, and possibly analyzes the data. However, analysis at the individual nodes could enable faster detection of anomalies or other...

A paper describes attitude-control algorithms using the combination of magnetic actuators with reaction wheel assemblies (RWAs) or other types of actuators such as thrusters. The combination of magnetic actuators with one or two RWAs aligned with different body axis expands...

A software framework called PCS Task Wrapper is responsible for standardizing the setup, process initiation, execution, and file management tasks surrounding the execution of science data algorithms, which are referred to by NASA as Product Generation...

A method was developed of obtaining propulsive base flow data in both hot and cold jet environments, at Mach numbers and altitude of relevance to NASA launcher designs. The base flow data was used to perform computational fluid dynamics (CFD) turbulence model assessments of base flow predictive capabilities in order to...

This work discusses research on the problems of synchronizing and distributing time information between spacecraft based on the Network Time Protocol (NTP), where NTP is a standard time synchronization protocol widely used in the terrestrial network. The Proximity-1 Space Link...

An algorithm improves the accuracy with which a lander can be delivered to the surface of Mars. The main idea behind this innovation is the use of a “lossless convexification,” which converts an otherwise non-convex constraint related to thruster throttling to a convex...

A formation estimation architecture for formation flying builds upon the local information exchange among multiple local estimators. Spacecraft formation flying involves the coordination of states among multiple spacecraft through relative sensing, inter-spacecraft communication, and control. Most...

CropEx is a Web-based agricultural Decision Support System (DSS) that monitors changes in crop health over time. It is designed to be used by a wide range of both public and private organizations, including individual producers and regional government offices with a vested interest in...

The data analysis tool of choice for many Sun-Earth Connection missions is the Interactive Data Language (IDL) by ITT VIS. The increasing amount of data produced by these missions and the increasing complexity of image processing algorithms requires access to higher computing...

A report describes a non-standard direct digital synthesizer (DDS) implementation that can be used as part of a coherent transponder so as to allow any rational turnaround ratio to be exactly achieved and maintained while the received frequency varies. (A coherent...

In order to simulate physically plausible surfaces that represent geologically evolved surfaces, demonstrating demanding surface-relative guidance navigation and control (GN&C) actions, such surfaces must be made to mimic the geological processes themselves....

The purpose of Hazard Relative Navigation (HRN) is to provide measurements to the Navigation Filter so that it can limit errors on the position estimate after hazards have been detected. The hazards are detected by processing a hazard digital elevation map (HDEM). The HRN process takes lidar...

This invention introduces a methodology and associated software tools for automatically learning spacecraft system models without any assumptions regarding system behavior. Data stream mining techniques were used to learn models for critical portions of the International Space Station (ISS)...