Magazine

Non-aerodynamic mechanical devices are under consideration as means to augment the stability of miniature autonomous and remotely controlled aircraft. Such aircraft can be used for diverse purposes, including military reconnaissance, radio communications, and safety-related monitoring of wide...

A method has been formulated to enable prediction of the amount of work that remains to be performed in developing flight software for a spacecraft. The basic concept embodied in the method is that of using an idealized curve (specifically, the Weibull function) to interpolate from (1) the...

A recently developed data-compression method is an adaptive technique for coding quantized wavelet-transformed data, nominally as part of a complete image-data compressor. Unlike some other approaches, this method admits a simple implementation and does not rely on the use of large code tables.

Solid disks of microporous activated carbon, produced by a method that enables optimization of pore structure, have been investigated as means of storing gas (especially hydrogen for use as a fuel) at relatively low pressure through adsorption on pore surfaces. For hydrogen and other gases of practical...

A paper introduces the concept of a stellar gyroscope, currently at an early stage of development, for determining the attitude or spin axis, and spin rate of a spacecraft. Like star trackers, which are commercially available, a stellar gyroscope would capture and process images of stars to...

Unlike prior fungus growing apparatuses, this chamber makes it possible to examine a fungus culture without disrupting it. Partly resembling a small picture frame, the chamber includes a metal plate having a rectangular through the thickness opening with recesses for a top and a bottom cover glass, an inlet...

An algorithm analyzes rain-gauge data to identify statistical outliers that could be deemed to be erroneous readings. Heretofore, analyses of this type have been performed in burdensome manual procedures that have involved subjective judgements. Sometimes, the analyses have included...

NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) generates planetary and lunar ephemeris data and FORTRAN routines that allow users to obtain state data for the Sun, the moon, and the planets. The JPL Solar System Ephemeris Toolbox, developed at Kennedy Space Center, is a set of functions that provides the same functionality in...

Flexible metal-fabric radiators have been considered as alternative means of dissipating excess heat from spacecraft and space suits. The radiators also may be useful in such special terrestrial applications as rejecting heat from space-suit-like protective suits worn in hot work environments. In addition to...

Major upgrades have been made in two of the programs reported in "Five Computer Codes for Analysis of Turbomachinery" (LEW-16851), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 23, No. 11 (November 1999), page 28. The affected programs are:

An end-of-life prediction system developed for electric machines and their loads could be used in integrated vehicle health monitoring at NASA and in other government agencies. This system will provide on-line, real-time condition assessment and end-of-life...

A computer program has been written to facilitate appraisals according to the methodology of Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI). [CMMI is a government/ industry standard, maintained by the Software Engineering Institute at Carnegie Mellon University, for objectively assessing the engineering capability...

Launch Vehicle External Sound Pressure is a computer program that predicts the ignition-overpressure and the acoustic pressure on the surfaces and in the vicinity of a rocket and launch pad during launch. The program generates a graphical user interface (GUI) that gathers input data from the user....

A 1,024 × 1,024-pixel array of quantumwell infrared photodetectors (QWIPs) has been built on a 1.8 × 1.8-cm GaAs chip. In tests, the array was found to perform well in detecting images at wavelengths from 8 to 9 μm in operation at temperatures between 60 and 70 K. The largest-format QWIP...

Wing-Viewer is a computer program for acquisition and reduction of image data acquired by any of five different scientific grade commercial electronic cameras used at Langley Research center to observe wind-tunnel models coated with pressure or temperature-sensitive paints (PSP/TSP).

The Grid Visualization Tool (GVT) is a computer program for displaying the path of a mobile robotic explorer (rover) on a terrain map. The GVT reads a map-data file in either portable graymap (PGM) or portable pixmap (PPM) format, representing a gray-scale or color map image, respectively.