Features

Software Aids Design of Ares V Composite Shroud Structure

NASA’s Ares V space launch vehicle makes significant use of composites, and during flight, the shroud of the Ares V will separate into four petals to release the Lunar Lander. In the...

Battery Will Provide Backup Power for Space Shuttles

International Battery is building a battery prototype for NASA that will provide backup power in support of the space shuttle program. NASA is interested in the company’s largeformat,...

Smart and Intelligent Sensors

Rocket engine testing is the primary mission for Stennis Space Center. Test stand facilities include the B-1/B-2 complex built for the Apollo Program, which is now used to test the RS-68 engine. A number of smaller...

Infrared Zoom Moves Toward the Mainstream

For many years, infrared vision was limited to government and laboratory applications, but the picture is rapidly changing. With the cost of thermal cameras decreasing, military, aerospace, and...

ASDX Series of silicon pressure sensors

Honeywell Sensing and Control, Minneapolis, MN, has introduced the ASDX Series of silicon pressure sensors with pressure ranges of 15, 30, and 100 psi.

Reflective Switch Employed in Wind Turbines for RPM Sensing

The OPB732 Series long distance infrared reflective switch from TT electronics OPTEK Technology (Carrollton, TX) has been employed in a 6kW wind turbine for RPM sensing. Placed at the...

Starr Ginn, Deputy Branch Chief, Engineering Directorate, Aerostructures Branch, Dryden Flight Research Center

Starr Ginn decided she wanted to work for NASA after interning in their Summer High School Apprenticeship Research Program (SHARP)...

Jeff Ding, Aerospace Welding Engineer at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center

Jeff Ding introduced friction stir welding (FSW) to NASA in 1995. He currently holds 6 U.S. patents for FSW, including one for an automatic retractable pin tool that...

Industry Update: Analysis & Simulation Software

Changing Roles in a Challenging Environment In our annual poll of executives at leading analysis and simulation software companies, we posed questions dealing with virtual prototyping, the...

Intelligent Integrated System Health Management

Stennis Space Center is NASA’s primary center for rocket engine testing. The facilities include large test stands built for the Apollo Program that are being used to test Space Shuttle Main...

Core 2 Duo® Rugged System

General Micro Systems (Rancho Cucamonga, CA) has introduced the “Raider” S705 Core 2 Duo®-based system. Raider is based on the GMS P70x module, a Core 2 Duo processor providing up to 2.16 GHz of power and 4 MB of...

Moving Machine Vision to 64-Bits

A nearly geometric growth in the data requirements for many machine vision applications is pushing 32-bit processing to its limits. The challenge is not in processing power, however, but in addressing memory...

Color Touchscreen PLC

Unitronics (Quincy, MA) has added the V570-57-T20B to the company’s Vision570™ series of 5.7” Color Touchscreen PLCs. The model is lower in cost and has a white LED instead of fluorescent display backlight. The...

Designing 3D Capabilities Into Handheld Displays

For 3D viewing to be convenient on small, portable devices, it must be autostereoscopic, thus eliminating the requirement for 3D “glasses.” The display devices must also provide 2D and 3D...

Environmentally Sealed LCD Monitor

Stealth.com Inc. (Ontario, Canada) has released the Stealth TT-840, a rugged, environmentally sealed LCD monitor for harsh environments. The TT-840 is an 8.4 inch sunlight-readable LCD encapsulated in a rugged...

Freescale Processor-Based SOM

The TX37 Freescale i.MX37 processor-based System on Module (SOM) from Strategic Test (Woburn, MA) measures just 67.6mm x 26mm x 4.2 mm. It contains a 532 MHz i.MX37 processor coupled with 128 MB mobile DDRSDRAM,...

LCD Touch Panel Computer

Advantech (Cincinnati, OH) introduces the TPC-1780H, a 17" SXGA TFT LCD fanless touch panel PC with an Intel® Core™ 2 Duo CPU. The TPC-1780H provides one extension slot, such as RS-422/485, PCI-104, and...

FPGA Design Solution

Xilinx (San Jose, CA) introduces the ISE® Design Suite 11.1, an FPGA design solution with fully interoperable domain-specific design flows and tool configurations for logic, digital signal processing (DSP), embedded...

Power Supply Reference Design

Fairchild Semiconductor (San Jose, CA) has introduced the RD212, a 200W DC/DC power supply reference design that offers high efficiency (up to 94 percent), and low noise characteristics due to its zero voltage...

Product of the Month: Lenses for Hostile Environments

Marshall’s Industrial and Security Division (El Segundo, CA) has developed a new series of pinhole lenses designed to protect employees when monitoring high temperature and/or hostile...

Using Event Systems and DMA to Cut Power Consumption

The trick to exploiting the ultra lowpower characteristics of microcontrollers with 100 nA sleep mode power consumption is to keep them in sleep mode as much as possible. The problem is that...

Shadowgraph Camera

The Specialised Imaging Shadowgraph (SIS) camera from Specialised Imaging (Tring, UK) enables high resolution digital imaging of ultra-fast events in ambient and low-light environments. Integrating this camera with an...

Using Dynamic Parameters to Measure Digitizer Performance

Much confusion exists about characterizing the performance of a highspeed digitizer device. Nominal vertical resolution is routinely presented as an indicator of a digitizer’s...

High-Power Titanium Sapphire Coatings

Laser Components (Hudson, NH) offers solid state laser coatings with high damage thresholds, including coatings for Q-switched lasers at 1064 nm, 532 nm, 355 nm, or 266 nm. Coatings for short pulse lasers...

Designing Versatile COTS Data Acquisition Systems

Designing a versatile data acquisition (DAQ) system begins by comparing features of the signal of interest to the capabilities of current state-of-the-art A/D converters. Specifically, signal...

Highly Aspheric Mirrors and Lenses

Optical Surfaces Ltd (Surrey, UK) can generate highly aspheric parabolic mirrors with off-axis angles approaching 30 degrees and focal lengths as short as 100mm. They can also fabricate high-performance...

Machine Vision Camera System

Toshiba Teli America (Irvine, CA) has introduced the CS8581QF, a remote-head FireWire camera system for high-speed industrial imaging. The CS8581QF offers 133 fps at full 640 × 480 resolution (8bit monochrome), and...

Sub-Miniature Resonant Optical Scanner

The SC-3 Sub-Miniature Resonant Optical Scanner from Electro-Optical Products (Fresh Meadows, NY) is an electromagnetically driven moving mirror device that deflects a light beam with a continuous...

USB-Equipped Cameras

The CMOS camera models ProgRes® CT1, CT3 and CT5 from Jenoptik (Jena, Germany) are now equipped with USB interface. With an extended resolution up to 5 Megapixel and a live frame rate up to 20 fps the new USB Camera of the...