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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Reducing stiffness-induced gear noise and making lighter-weight gearing components would be a substantial advantage over the current all-metallic configuration. The use of composites to join metallic hubs to the metallic gear rim...
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Briefs: Aerospace
Flap Side Edge Liners for Airframe Noise Reduction
One of the more critical constraints to the continued growth of air traffic is the related concern regarding aircraft noise. This concern has resulted in increasingly stringent noise restrictions for airports, both nationally and internationally. One of the major stretch goals for NASA is to...
Briefs: Aerospace
GEO-CAPE Airborne Simulator (GCAS)
This IRAD (Internal Research and Development) project was conceived as an aircraft instrument and designed with specifications that are closely aligned with the science requirements of the Geostationary Coastal and Air Pollution Events (GEO-CAPE) mission. The work has been used to both advance the technology...
Briefs: Aerospace
Mars Science Laboratory Flight Software
Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) flight software is designed to control all onboard functions of the flight system, consisting of three primary stages — cruise, entry-descent-landing (EDL), and rover — for the three mission phases. These three stages have common as well as distinct mission requirements that...
Briefs: Aerospace
Current trends indicate the significant increase in National Airspace System (NAS) flight congestion and delays. The Airspace Concepts Evaluation System (ACES) provides a NAS modeling and simulation...
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Briefs: Aerospace
MAVEN Flight and Ground Software
This software was developed for GSFC’s MAVEN (Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN) program. The source of the MAVEN software was previously NASA program baselines for Juno, GRAIL, and MRO. Reused and re-engineered code from previous programs was combined with some new code to form the MAVEN program software...
Briefs: Medical
Prediction of Visual Acuity from Wavefront Aberrations
Visual acuity (clearness of vision) usually is measured by an eye doctor using an eye chart. It measures the smallest letters that can be reliably identified by the patient at a specified distance. The traditional test requires the patient to look and report which letters they see.
Briefs: Medical
The disclosed device provides key elements to enabling compact exercise machines that overcome many of the disadvantages of the current spacesuit, as well as medical prosthetics...
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Briefs: Information Technology
Time Series Product Tool (TSPT) Version 2.0
The Time Series Product Tool (TSPT) is a MATLAB-based software application that computes and displays high-quality vegetation and environmental monitoring indices from high temporal revisit rate Moderate resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) and other satellite sensors. The original purpose of the...
Briefs: Software
NASA Data Acquisition System (NDAS)
The test complexes at John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC) require reliable and accurate data acquisition in order to analyze the results of rocket engine tests. Acquisition systems include high-speed data, low-speed data, event monitoring, and video feeds. In order to obtain accurate data, routine calibrations...
Briefs: Information Technology
The motivation for this research is the fact that, for a variety of reasons, networks and their existing authentication and confidentiality infrastructure are becoming more...
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Briefs: Information Technology
Flight Processor Virtualization for Size, Weight, and Power Reduction
This work demonstrated the cost-saving and fault-tolerant benefits of virtualization technology by consolidating the flight software from multiple flight processors into a single virtualized system. In this study, a flight software system that was originally deployed on six...
Briefs: Software
Massively Parallel Dantzig-Wolfe Decomposition Applied to Traffic Flow Scheduling
Traffic flow management (TFM) of the National Airspace System (NAS) endeavors to deliver flights from their origins to their destinations while minimizing delays and respecting all capacities. There are several models for solving this problem. Some models aggregate...
Briefs: Information Technology
Mission Control Technologies (MCT)
MCT enables users to compose software from objects that can be assembled by end users to create integrated functionality. Applications are eliminated in favor of compositions of “live objects” that can be combined in different ways for different users and missions as required, in contrast to the more...
Products
MSC Software Corp., Newport Beach, CA, has introduced the MSC Apex computer-aided engineering (CAE) platform, a Computational Parts-based CAE system. The platform enables predictive product development in the earlier stages...
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Articles: Manufacturing & Prototyping
The technologies NASA develops don’t just blast off into space. They also improve our lives here on Earth. Life-saving search-and-rescue tools, implantable medical devices, advances in commercial aircraft safety,...
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Articles: Materials
Epoxies are versatile polymer systems that are “go-to materials” for electrical, electronic, and microelectronic systems, especially in applications where outstanding electrical insulation...
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Application Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
NI PXI DMM and NI PXI multifunction DAQ module National Instruments Austin, TX 1-800-531-5066 www.ni.com Larger than the Saturn V rocket and designed to eventually...
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Articles: Robotics, Automation & Control
Behrokh Khoshnevis University of Southern California Los Angeles, CA Contour Crafting (CC) is a computerized construction method that 3D prints large-scale structures directly from...
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Articles: Aerospace
The Polariton Interferometer — A Novel Inertial Navigation System Frederick Moxley Louisiana State University Baton Rouge, LA
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Articles: Robotics, Automation & Control
Rikki Razdan, Alan Kielar, Pat Stearns, and Melissa White ISCAN Inc. Woburn, MA The intrinsic speed and precision of the human ocular-motor system makes the eye an...
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Articles: Automotive
Steve Arnold Engine Systems Innovations, Inc. Rancho Palos Verdes, CA Passenger car engines are sized to produce very high horsepower to suit the consumer’s demand...
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Articles: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Michael Zach, Anirudha Sumant, and Jonathan Moritz EChem Nanowires Stevens Point, WI NanoFab Lab … In a Box!™ is a shoebox-sized kit that allows high school students to...
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Articles: Electronics & Computers
A Paradigm Shift for SMT Electronics: Micro-Coil Springs Interconnection for Ceramic and Plastic Grid Array Packaged Integrated Circuits Jim Hester and Mark Strickland NASA Marshall...
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Articles: Medical
HemeChip for Early Diagnosis of Sickle Cell Disease Yunus Alapan, Ryan Ung, Megan Romelfanger, Asya Akkus, Connie Piccone, Jane Little, and Umut Gurkan Case Western Reserve University...
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Articles: Energy
ecovent Systems — Make Every Room the Right Temperature Dipul Patel, Yoel Kelman, Nick Lancaster, Shawn Rose, and Brian Bowen ecovent Systems Boston, MA Most homes...
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Articles: Manufacturing & Prototyping
2014 Create the Future Design Contest
The 2014 Create the Future Design Contest – sponsored by COMSOL, Inc., Mouser Electronics, and Tech Briefs Media Group (publishers of NASA Tech Briefs) – recognized innovation in product design in seven categories: Aerospace & Defense, Automotive/Transportation, Consumer Products, Electronics,...
Who's Who: Photonics/Optics
Jason Moore has worked at NASA Langley since 1995. He currently tests and develops fiber optic technologies, including multicore fibers. He is actively...
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Briefs: Information Technology
Design of Rate-Compatible Protograph LDPC Codes
The most common way to generate a rate-compatible family of codes is puncturing. In this method, one starts with a low-rate mother code and then selectively discards some of the coded bits to arrive at higher-rate codes. This approach is simple, but is not free of problems. Specifically, the mother...