Magazine

The proposed concept uses sensors to detect high-temperature plasma ingestion during entry through a breach in the thermal protection system (TPS) caused by a micrometeoroid orbital debris (MMOD) impact. It uses consumables usually available on human-rated spacecraft such as...

A highly reflective, white conductive coating system was developed using a layered approach with a combination of commercially available white conductive pigments within a conductive binder system. The top coating is a space-stable, radiation-resistant, highly reflective...

Gas-distribution layers (GDLs) are water-management structures used in fuel cells and electrolyzers. GDLs are critical components that prevent flooding of the fuel cell electrode by product water, thus preserving open channels for reactant gas to reach the electrode....

As crewed space missions extend beyond low Earth orbit, the need to reliably recover potable water is critical. Aboard the International Space Station (ISS), the water is recycled from cabin humidity condensate, urine distillate, and hygiene wash wastes. In spacecraft cabin air environments,...

An alignment guide and a mounting interface for two of the repair tools on orbit during the Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission 4 (see SM4) were developed. This design can be installed in a timely manner, and was specifically developed for a worksite with minimal access and minimal visual line-of-sight to the...

The current MK-III carbon-graphite/epoxy Hard Upper Torso (HUT)/hatch assembly represented an 8.3 psi (≈57 kPa) technology demonstrator model of a zero pre-breathe suit. In this configuration, the MK-III suit weighed about 120 lb (≈54 kg). Since future lunar/planetary suits will need...

The objective of this work was to develop an innovative deployable boom/structure technology that is ultra-lightweight (<30-grams/meter potential), and has extremely compact stowage volume (>100:1 compaction ratio), broad scalability (no size limits envisioned), high deployed frequency, high...

Ring seals are used in rotating union applications where a fluid flow or hydraulic pressure signal is transferred from a static reference frame to a rotating component, such as a shaft, for the purpose of providing lubrication and/or a hydraulic signal to a component(s) in a rotating frame of reference. Ring seals are...

Two vacuum chambers were used in tandem to perform a launch depressurization test. The test article was mounted in a 10-ft (≈3 m) Vertical Vacuum Chamber (Chamber 248-10). The 25-ft (≈7.6-m) Space Simulator (Chamber 150-25) was rough-pumped and...

A micro-electrofluidic-spray propulsion (MEP) system was built on a micro scale, in which arrays of hundreds of nano-thrusters are etched on silicon wafers like ICs, only a centimeter on a side. Many dozens of these thruster chips can be...

Flight research has shown that adaptive flight control systems can be susceptible to adverse pilot-controller interactions, including pilot-in-the-loop oscillations (PIO). Conventional PIO analysis is performed using a static pilot model and a linear, time-invariant model of the aircraft and its control...

Currently, the only available means of reporting clear air turbulence (CAT) is the pilot report (PIREP), whereby a pilot experiencing turbulence reports their location and associated data. In this report, a system is proposed that would allow the detection of CAT through infrasonic...

The emerging interest in lunar mining poses a threat of contamination to pristine craters at the lunar poles, which act as cold traps for water, and may harbor other valuable minerals. Lunar Prospector type missions will be looking for volatile (molecular) compounds that may be masked by the exhaust...

The interactive visualization of large astrophysical datasets is a formidable challenge. Cosmological simulations performed on current terascale facilities typically generate datasets up to 100 gigabytes in size. In order to understand the complex three-dimensional structure within these...

DMLtoC.xsl is an XSLT (Extensible Stylesheet Language Transformations) transform that converts a vehicle model described in DAVE-ML (an XML markup language) into a “C” language version of the same model. DAVE-ML is a markup language for describing aerodynamic vehicle models. A DAVE-ML...

This invention provides a visual and textual system, including a set of intuitive icons representing different activities, for indicating status of and/or change in a document or documents and/or in project operations, using the icons to indicate the presence of different classes of changes that have...

A software-based innovation called Mesh was developed that provides a single sign-on capability to the built-in public key authentication mechanism of Secure Shell (SSH) using system call interposition. Mesh is a secure, lightweight grid middleware. Each Mesh installation...

This simulation environment of Contact Graph Routing that uses the QualNet network simulator leverages the previously developed space communication models. This software models the Contact Graph Routing (CGR) system proposed for future NASA missions and used in DINETl and DINET2...

JavaGenes is a general-purpose software program that implements several different data optimization techniques. The program is intended for problems that have no gradient, comparing genetic algorithms with stochastic hill climbing and simulated annealing to generate optimal design solutions. JavaGenes can create many...