Magazine

Structural dynamics are often an important consideration when evaluating system characteristics. A concern related to structural dynamics is the analysis of flutter for a flight vehicle. The instability associated with flutter can be quite sensitive to the structural dynamics; therefore, analysis of...

Compressed symbology is a product-identification method that was pioneered by NASA for tracking space-shuttle parts and is now being used to mark everything from groceries to automobile parts. Based on a system of two-dimensional marks applied to parts, compressed symbology was developed at NASA's...

A report proposes a design concept for synthesizing a reflecting telescope with a large-aperture (diameter ≈100 m) primary mirror from a sparse arrangement of four smaller (diameter ≈10 m) primary mirrors. The telescope would be placed in orbit for viewing Earth with high resolution....

Two reports summarize progress thus far in the continuing development of a spacecraft nuclear reactor, some or all of the fuel rods of which would not be loaded until the spacecraft was in orbit. (Keeping the fuel rods out of the reactor core before and during launch is intended to...

A report proposes the development of two different mechanisms that would prevent inadvertent startup of reactors in nuclear-fission-based propulsion and power systems in future spacecraft. The purpose of this development is to contribute to safety by ensuring that radioactivity is kept to...

A report discusses the potential application of artificial intelligence (AI) to planning, scheduling, and control of the optical configuration and other aspects of the operations of a large astronomical interferometer. Scientific demand and technical requirements necessitate...

A report proposes a method of cooperative modulation between (1) low-power radio transceivers associated with sensors geographically dispersed on a remote planet for relaying information between the sensors and an Earth station. The method, denoted node selection on orthogonal...

A report proposes a method to increase the accuracy of Doppler measurements made at the beginnings and endings of Earth/spacecraft radio occultations. Such measurements can reveal structural details of occulting objects in outer space. Heretofore, one-way measurements have been...

A brief report summarizes an investigation of less-toxic alternatives to toxic monopropellant fluids used in launch vehicles, upper stages, and spacecraft propulsion. The toxic fluids in question are (1) hydrazine and its derivatives, used, variously, as fuels or by themselves as...

A report describes an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for controlling a power-switching metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) in a spacecraft power-supply system. Denoted an SCA (for switch-control ASIC), this ASIC is designed to be radiation-hard and to...

The Meteorological Range Safety Support System/Eastern Range Dispersion Assessment System (MARSS/ERDAS) is a system of interconnected computer workstations designed to acquire, process, and disseminate nearly real-time meteorological data and outputs of mathematical models of the atmospheric...

The Reconstruction of Serial Sections (ROSS) computer program processes data from a series of tomograms to generate a three-dimensional (3D) representation of an object, and further processes data from the 3D representation to enable the viewing of any part of the object from any of an...

DARWIN is a computer program that provides access, via the Internet, to geographically dispersed NASA computer archives of both meta-data and raw test data from wind tunnels and raw simulation data from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) sites. DARWIN facilitates the manipulation and...

A miniature, battery-powered, semiautonomous environmental monitoring instrument contains advanced meteorological sensors, a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver for determining its position, radio-communication circuitry, and a controller that performs measurement, control, and data-communication...

An improved charge-termination technique has been developed to obtain a more accurate balance between charge and discharge of rechargeable lithium-ion-based electrochemical cells and batteries. The technique has been demonstrated experimentally and is now in use in a laboratory battery...

A software system has been developed for use in Earth operations centers communicating with a robotic exploratory vehicle (rover) on Mars. The software was designed for and field-tested on the Field Integrated Design and Operations rover — a prototype similar to rovers of the...

A computer program automatically generates topographical maps from data collected by scan-mode synthetic-aperture radar (scanSAR) during the Shuttle Radar Topography Mission (SRTM). A preprocessing subprogram subdivides the SAR data, along with ancillary spacecraft-motion, control,...

An algorithm that can discover potentially interesting objects in image data has been formulated and implemented in software. The algorithm is intended for applications in which the target objects are mathematically ill-defined and/or not known or specified in advance. Potential applications include...

An Automated Test Case Generator computer program generates parameter-based test cases for testing software and hardware systems. Given N parameters — each of which represents a kind of variation for testing — and a finite set of possible values for each parameter, the program generates individual...

The 3MCS computer program assists an instrumentation engineer in performing the 3 essential functions of design, documentation, and configuration management of measurement and control systems in a large test facility — initially, a propulsion-system test facility at Stennis Space...

The Front End Processor (FEP) Real-Time Embedded Software performs command and data-processing functions for an aeronautical MIL-STD-1553B telemetry link and ground support equipment (GSE) in a spacecraft-equipment-testing environment. The FEP is used in the Test, Control, and...

A simple and reliable technique facilitates the addition of silver ions to water supplies to suppress bacterial contamination. In the original application for which the technique was devised, there is a need for Ag+-ion concentrations at a biocidal levels (0.5 mg/L) in 44-L batches of...

A thermoelectric contact cooler/ freezer is designed to utilize thermal conduction to rapidly freeze blood and urine samples in test tubes and syringes. This apparatus is dependable, wastes little energy, contains no moving parts other than a fan, can operate in a wide temperature range and in any orientation...

Electrochemical cells in which molten carbonates would serve as electrolytes have been proposed for use in electrolyzing CO2. The proposal was made in an effort to implement a concept of in situ resource utilization (ISRU) for the exploration of Mars; the basic idea is to generate CO (if needed as...