Magazine

State-of-the-art integrated circuits (ICs) for microprocessors routinely dissipate power densities on the order of 50 W/cm2. This large power is due to the localized heating of ICs operating at high frequencies and must be managed for future highfrequency microelectronic...

Polyimide aerogels have been cross-linked through multifunctional amines. This invention builds on “Polyimide Aerogels With Three-Dimensional Cross-Linked Structure,” (LEW-18486-1), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 34, No. 8 (August 2010), page 38, and may be considered as a continuation of that invention, which results in a...

The International X-ray Observatory project seeks to make an X-ray telescope assembly with 14,000 flexible glass segments. The glass used is commercially available SCHOTT D263 glass. Thermal expansion causes the mirror to distort out of alignment. A housing material is...

One common but challenging problem in cryogenic engineering is to produce a mount that has excellent thermal isolation but is also rigid. Such mounts can be achieved by suspending the load from a network of fibers or strings held in tension. Kevlar fibers are often used for this purpose owing to their high...

Frequently there is an inability to process and analyze samples of low biomass due to limiting amounts of relevant biomaterial in the sample. Furthermore, molecular biological protocols geared towards increasing the density of recovered cells and biomolecules of interest,...

Medical ultrasound or echocardiographic studies are highly operatordependent and generally require lengthy training and internship to perfect. To obtain quality echocardiographic images in remote environments, such as on-orbit, remote guidance of studies has been employed. This technique...

Future human exploration of Mars will rely on local Martian resources to reduce the mass, cost, and risk of space exploration launched from Earth. NASA’s In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) Project seeks to produce mission consumables from local Martian resources, such as...

The minimum-shift-keying (MSK) radar waveform is formed by periodically extending a waveform that separately modulates the in-phase and quadraturephase components of the carrier with offset pulse-shaped pseudo noise (PN) sequences. To generate this waveform, a pair of periodic PN sequences is each passed through a...

Alignment of two-element telescopes is a classic problem. During recent integration and test of the Space Interferometry Mission’s (SIM’s) Astrometric Beam Combiner (ABC), the innovators were faced with aligning two such telescope subsystems in the presence...

A document describes a new way to integrate thermal protection materials on external surfaces of vehicles that experience the severe heating environments of atmospheric entry from space. Cured blocks of thermal protection materials are bonded into...

A multidisciplinary team of researchers at MIT and in Spain has found a new mathematical approach to simulating the electronic behavior of noncrystalline materials, which may eventually play an important part in new devices including solar cells, organic LED lights, and printable, flexible...

An organization would like to increase the oxygen barrier in thermoplastic elastomers by an order of magnitude or more to preserve the shelf life of food/beverages. This organization is seeking an order-of-magnitude improvement in oxygen blocking, without a substantial increase in...

iGlobe is open-source software built on NASA World Wind virtual globe technology. iGlobe provides a growing set of tools for weather science, climate research, and agricultural analysis. Up until now, these types of sophisticated tools have been developed in isolation by national...

The CARVE Small Aircraft Data Distribution System acquires the aircraft location and attitude data that is required by the various programs running on a distributed network. This system distributes the data it acquires to the data acquisition programs for inclusion in their data files.

The Datacasting software, which consists of a server and a client, has been developed as part of the Earth Science (ES) Datacasting project. The goal of ES Datacasting is to provide scientists the ability to automatically and continuously download Earth science data that meets a precise, predefined need, and then to...