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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Ultracapacitor-Based Uninterrupted Power Supply System
The ultracapacitor-based uninterrupted power supply (UPS) system enhances system reliability; reduces life-of-system, maintenance, and downtime costs; and greatly reduces environmental impact when compared to conventional UPS energy storage systems. This design provides power when required and...
Briefs: Software
Autonomous Coordination of Science Observations Using Multiple Spacecraft
This software provides capabilities for autonomous cross-cueing and coordinated observations between multiple orbital and landed assets. Previous work has been done in re-tasking a single Earth orbiter or a Mars rover in response to that craft detecting a science event. This...
Briefs: Software
EOS MLS Level 1B Data Processing Software, Version 3
This software is an improvement on Version 2, which was described in “EOS MLS Level 1B Data Processing, Version 2.2,” NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 33, No. 5 (May 2009), p. 34. It accepts the EOS MLS Level 0 science/engineering data, and the EOS Aura spacecraft ephemeris/attitude data, and produces...
Briefs: Software
Cassini Tour Atlas Automated Generation
During the Cassini spacecraft’s cruise phase and nominal mission, the Cassini Science Planning Team developed and maintained an online database of geometric and timing information called the Cassini Tour Atlas. The Tour Atlas consisted of several hundreds of megabytes of EVENTS mission planning software...
Briefs: Software
Software Development Standard Processes (SDSP)
A JPL-created set of standard processes is to be used throughout the lifecycle of software development. These SDSPs cover a range of activities, from management and engineering activities, to assurance and support activities. These processes must be applied to software tasks per a pre- scribed set of...
Briefs: Software
Autonomous Phase Retrieval Calibration
The Palomar Adaptive Optics System actively corrects for changing aberrations in light due to atmospheric turbulence. However, the underlying internal static error is unknown and uncorrected by this process. The dedicated wavefront sensor device necessarily lies along a different path than the science camera,...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Graphite Composite Panel Polishing Fixture
The use of high-strength, lightweight composites for the fixture is the novel feature of this innovation. The main advantage is the light weight and high stiffness-to-mass ratio relative to aluminum.
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Modifying Matrix Materials to Increase Wetting and Adhesion
In an alternative approach to increasing the degrees of wetting and adhesion between the fiber and matrix components of organic-fiber/polymer matrix composite materials, the matrix resins are modified. Heretofore, it has been common practice to modify the fibers rather than the matrices:...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Ridge Waveguide Structures in Magnesium-Doped Lithium Niobate
This work proposes to establish the feasibility of fabricating isolated ridge waveguides in 5% MgO:LN. Ridge waveguides in MgO:LN will significantly improve power handling and conversion efficiency, increase photonic component integration, and be well suited to space-based applications....
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Material Gradients in Oxygen System Components Improve Safety
Oxygen system components fabricated by Laser Engineered Net Shaping™ (LENS™) could result in improved safety and performance. LENS™ is a near-net shape manufacturing process fusing powdered materials injected into a laser beam. Parts can be fabricated with a variety of elemental...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Method for Cleanly and Precisely Breaking Off a Rock Core Using a Radial Compressive Force
The Mars Sample Return mission has the goal to drill, break off, and retain rock core samples. After some results gained from rock core mechanics testing, the realization that scoring teeth would cleanly break off the core after only a few millimeters of...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Scoring Dawg Core Breakoff and Retention Mechanism
This novel core break-off and retention mechanism consists of a scoring dawg controlled by a set of two tubes (a drill tube and an inner tube). The drill tube and the inner tube have longitudinal concentric holes. The solution can be implemented in an eccentric tube configuration as well where the...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Sampling cores requires the controlled breakoff of the core at a known location with respect to the drill end. An additional problem is designing a mechanism that can be implemented...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Sampling cores requires the controlled breakoff of the core at a known location with respect to the drill end. An additional problem is designing a mechanism that can be implemented at a small...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Vibration Isolation and Stabilization System for Spacecraft Exercise Treadmill Devices
A novel, passive system has been developed for isolating an exercise treadmill device from a spacecraft in a zero-G environment. The Treadmill 2 Vibration Isolation and Stabilization System (T2-VIS) mechanically isolates the exercise treadmill from the...
Articles: Motion Control
Hydraulic steering systems have long dominated the industrial utility vehicle market because of their familiarity both to vehicle designers and...
Application Briefs: Motion Control
How do you test the behavior of different soil structures in an earthquake? Obviously, large earthquakes don’t happen often, and they certainly don’t happen on cue. The solution,...
Briefs: Medical
Microgravity-Enhanced Stem Cell Selection
Stem cells, both embryonic and adult, promise to revolutionize the practice of medicine in the future. In order to realize this potential, a number of hurdles must be overcome. Most importantly, the signaling mechanisms necessary to control the differentiation of stem cells into tissues of interest remain...
Briefs: Medical
Diagnosis and Treatment of Neurological Disorders by Millimeter-Wave Stimulation
Increasingly, millimeter waves are being employed for telecomm, radar, and imaging applications. To date in the U.S, however, very few investigations on the impact of this radiation on biological systems at the cellular level have been undertaken. In the beginning, to...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Multi-point, multi-axis measurement of position can be valuable in a variety of applications that require high-speed data acquisition and a high degree of...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Passive Vaporizing Heat Sink
A passive vaporizing heat sink has been developed as a relatively lightweight, compact alternative to related prior heat sinks based, variously, on evaporation of sprayed liquids or on sublimation of solids. This heat sink is designed for short-term dissipation of a large amount of heat and was originally intended for...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Remote Sensing and Quantization of Analog Sensors
This method enables sensing and quantization of analog strain gauges. By manufacturing a piezoelectric sensor stack in parallel (physical) with a piezoelectric actuator stack, the capacitance of the sensor stack varies in exact proportion to the exertion applied by the actuator stack. This, in turn,...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Helium-Cooled Black Shroud for Subscale Cryogenic Testing
This shroud provides a deep-space simulating environment for testing scaled-down models of passively cooling systems for spaceflight optics and instruments. It is used inside a liquid-nitrogen-cooled vacuum chamber, and it is cooled by liquid helium to 5 K. It has an inside geometry of...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Phase Retrieval for Radio Telescope and Antenna Control
Phase-retrieval is a general term used in optics to describe the estimation of optical imperfections or “aberrations.” The purpose of this innovation is to develop the application of phase retrieval to radio telescope and antenna control in the millimeter wave band.
Briefs: Information Technology
Receive Mode Analysis and Design of Microstrip Reflectarrays
Traditionally microstrip or printed reflectarrays are designed using the “transmit mode” technique. In this method, the size of each printed element is chosen so as to provide the required value of the reflection phase such that a collimated beam results along a given direction. The...
Briefs: Information Technology
Chance-Constrained Guidance With Non-Convex Constraints
Missions to small bodies, such as comets or asteroids, require autonomous guidance for descent to these small bodies. Such guidance is made challenging by uncertainty in the position and velocity of the spacecraft, as well as the uncertainty in the gravitational field around the small body. In...
Briefs: Energy
A design of a highly efficient and lightweight space magnetic cooler has been developed at Goddard Space Flight Center that can continuously provide remote/distributed cooling at temperatures in the range of 2 K with a heat sink at about 15 K. The innovative design uses a cryogenic circulator that enables the cooler to operate at a high cycle frequency to achieve a large cooling capacity.
Briefs: Lighting
Polymer nanofibers are nanoscale materials whose properties can be adjusted to provide desirable light management performance for high efficiency solid-state lighting...
Articles: Transportation
Air conditioning is a ‘must-have’ for most new cars. But the fluorocarbon refrigerant HFC-134a – the global standard – is one of the ozone-depleting greenhouse gases causing global warming....
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