Magazine

Recent experiments were performed in which return loss and insertion loss of waveguide test assemblies in the frequency range from 325 to 508 GHz were measured by use of a swept-frequency two-port vector network analyzer (VNA) test set. The experiments were part of a continuing effort to...

Error-detecting counters have been proposed as parts of fault-tolerant finite state machines that could be implemented in field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and application-specific integrated circuits that perform sequential logic functions. The use of error-detecting counters would...

OXIMAP is a numerical (FEA-based) solution tool capable of calculating the carbon fiber and fiber coating oxidation patterns within any arbitrarily shaped carbon silicon carbide composite structure as a function of time, temperature, and the environmental oxygen partial pressure. The...

This software provides internal, automated search mechanics of GIDEP (Government- Industry Data Exchange Program) Alert data imported from the GIDEP government Web site. The batching tool allows the import of a single parts list in tab-delimited text format into the local JPL GIDEP database. Delimiters from every part number are...

"Generic Spacecraft" is the name of an evolving library of software that provides for simulation of a generic spacecraft that can orbit the Earth and land on the Moon (and, eventually, on Mars). This library is incorporated into the Langley Standard Realtime Simulation in C++ (LaSRS++) software...

A computer program implements parallel processing for nearly real-time creation of panoramic mosaics of images of terrain acquired by video cameras on an exploratory robotic vehicle (e.g., a Mars rover). Because the original images are typically acquired at various camera positions and...

A computer program enables assessment of the quality of tie points in the image-correlation processes of the software described in the immediately preceding article. Tie points are computed in mappings between corresponding pixels in the left and right images of a stereoscopic pair. The mappings...

Flexcam software was designed to allow continuous monitoring of the mechanical deformation of the telescope structure at Palomar Observatory. Flexcam allows the user to watch the motion of a star with a low-cost astronomical camera, to measure the motion of the star on the image plane, and to feed...

It has been proposed that thin face sheets of wide-aperture deformable mirrors in adaptive-optics systems be made from a composite material consisting of cyanate ester filled with graphite. This composite material appears to offer an attractive alternative to low-thermal-expansion glasses that...