Articles

Standards Help Protect Technology and Life in Orbit or on Earth

A recent conversation with engineers at NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston revealed that there’s often “a world of difference” between the standards for circuit...

CCD and CMOS Sensors

What's best for your application? How does one select the best HD video camera and imaging sensor for professional video in applications such as life sciences, surgical imaging, microscopy, industrial imaging, and...

Products of Tomorrow

The technologies NASA develops don’t just blast off into space. They also improve our lives here on Earth. Life-saving search-and-rescue tools, implantable medical devices, advances in commercial aircraft safety,...

Spacecraft Seat Standards Lead to Comfort in Your Car

In the beginning, safety outweighed comfort in spacecraft designs for human space travel. Capsules like Gemini and Apollo were small, and most of the flight activities were performed while...

High-Temperature Actuators for Aircraft Propulsion Systems

Future “more electric aircraft” (MEA) will require electric actuation systems for control surfaces and engine controls. Electric motors, drive electronics, and mechanisms are...

Industry Roundtable: 3D Printing

It’s being called a revolutionary change in the way we design and make products – a disruptive technology that will have far-reaching effects for both engineers and consumers. It’s 3D printing, and it is...

Blurring the Boundaries: IP and Machine Vision Cameras Converge

In modern production facilities, users are more frequently combining two different strands of camera technology. Classic machine vision cameras manage inspection tasks and yield...

Defining the Smart Camera

Smart cameras have been used in industrial applications for roughly two and a half decades, but advances in processor technologies have made the devices much more accessible and popular within the past 7 years,...

Power for Extreme Environments

Specifying the ideal power management solution for remote wireless devices found in extreme environments and hard-to-access locations requires more ruggedized solutions. Fortunately, two viable options are now...

Advances in Manufacturing Fiber Optic Gyroscopes

Since it was first proposed in 1975, the fiber optic gyroscope (FOG) has steadily improved in performance and manufacturability. Now a mainstream, high-volume manufactured product with...

Liquid Cooling Technology for LEDs

Best quality LED A-lamp light bulbs provide a superior, energy-efficient alternative to incandescent bulbs, which have essentially been banned as of January 1, 2014. LED bulbs offer the same amount of light as...

Finding the Optimal Lighting Solution for Line-Scan Applications

In machine vision systems, acquiring images of moving targets is a challenge and consequently the best image requires three fundamentals to be well defined: an excellent camera; ...

Products of Tomorrow

The technologies NASA develops don’t just blast off into space. They also improve our lives here on Earth. Life-saving search-and-rescue tools, implantable medical devices, advances in commercial aircraft safety,...

Designing a Multi-Segmented Robot for Hull Climbing

The Multi-segmented Magnetic Ro bot (MSMR) project addresses a capability gap in the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance needs of the U.S. Navy visit, board, search, and seizure...

Steering Toward the Future

The global automotive industry faces incredible pressures today. The skyrocketing costs of traditional fuels — along with worldwide supply uncertainties — are forcing automakers to not only increase the efficiency...

SAE 2014 World Congress Preview

The SAE 2014 World Congress, which takes place April 8-10 at Cobo Hall in Detroit, assembles the best talent in the automotive industry — experts, management teams, engineers, and executives — to collaborate...

Harnessing the Power of NASA Technology

Have you ever felt nauseous reading a book in the back seat of a car? Did you ever wake up from a deep sleep feeling disoriented? Momentary incidents like these happen when the sensory systems that track...

System-on-Module for Pre-Packaged Convenience

Increasing design complexity, coupled with compressed time to market, has been an engineering reality for some time. A system-on-module (SOM) addresses both of these real engineering issues. An...

Measuring Motion with Imaging Software

High-speed photography is as much of an engineering tool as an oscilloscope, spectrum analyzer, or logic analyzer. The photographic technique enables us to visualize and analyze motion, especially motion...

Demystifying Spectroscopy

Spectroscopy techniques date back to Isaac Newton’s first studies of light and today provide researchers with a better understanding of what happens at the atomic and molecular level when matter interacts with light....

Collaborative Platforms Aid Emergency Decision-Making

NASA runs and partners in many missions dedicated to monitoring the Earth, and the tools used in these missions continuously return data on everything from shifts in temperature, to cloud...

LED Illumination in Simulation and Training

Since its inception, projection has been the dominant technology for displaying large, high-resolution images. Over the years, projectors have evolved to keep pace with advances in computer graphics...

Moving Magnet Voice Coil Actuators Offer Controllable Movement for High-Duty-Cycle Applications

There are two types of voice coil actuators: moving coil and moving magnet. The materials of construction are similar, since they both use rare...

Industry Roundtable: Design and PLM Software

As traditional Computer-Aided Design (CAD) software expands with more simulation capabilities and wider enterprise data management, software vendors are meeting customers’ demands with solutions...

Manufacturing LED Modules and Components

Technical Challenges Several technical challenges exist when manufacturing solid state lighting (SSL) modules and components. The greatest challenge is in keeping up with the changes in LED technology....

State-of-the-Art LED Cooling Technology

The story behind LED development—only the 4th lighting technology developed in human history— is remarkable. The potential ahead of LED lighting to deliver real and measurable advantages— to save...

Photonic Laser Thrusters for Spacecraft Maneuvering

Traditionally, spacecraft maneuvering is performed by onboard particle- based thrusters, such as ion thrusters, with a limited amount of fuel that restricts lifetime and V capability. In...

Testing Today’s Most Complex Consumer Device: The Ubiquitous Smartphone

We’ve come a long way since Alexander Graham Bell’s famous words, “Mr. Watson, come here” were spoken and the telephone was born. The simplicity of use of...

Camera Systems Rapidly Scan Large Structures

Aging aircraft are an increasing concern. Commercial and government vehicles are being flown past their originally intended service life in order to save money. The answer, however, isn’t merely to...