Tech Briefs

Electronics & Software

Access our comprehensive library of technical briefs on electronics and software, from engineering experts at NASA and major government, university, and commercial laboratories.

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Briefs: Software
Autonomous Phase Retrieval Calibration
The Palomar Adaptive Optics System actively corrects for changing aberrations in light due to atmospheric turbulence. However, the underlying internal static error is unknown and uncorrected by this process. The dedicated wavefront sensor device necessarily lies along a different path than the science camera,...
Briefs: Information Technology
Receive Mode Analysis and Design of Microstrip Reflectarrays
Traditionally microstrip or printed reflectarrays are designed using the “transmit mode” technique. In this method, the size of each printed element is chosen so as to provide the required value of the reflection phase such that a collimated beam results along a given direction. The...
Briefs: Information Technology
Chance-Constrained Guidance With Non-Convex Constraints
Missions to small bodies, such as comets or asteroids, require autonomous guidance for descent to these small bodies. Such guidance is made challenging by uncertainty in the position and velocity of the spacecraft, as well as the uncertainty in the gravitational field around the small body. In...
Briefs: Energy
A design of a highly efficient and lightweight space magnetic cooler has been developed at Goddard Space Flight Center that can continuously provide remote/distributed cooling at temperatures in the range of 2 K with a heat sink at about 15 K. The innovative design uses a cryogenic circulator that enables the cooler to operate at a high cycle frequency to achieve a large cooling capacity.
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Briefs: Energy
Polymer nanofibers are nanoscale materials whose properties can be adjusted to provide desirable light management performance for high efficiency solid-state lighting...
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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
On-Wafer S-Parameter Measurements in the 325-508-GHz Band
New circuits have been designed and fabricated with operating frequencies over 325 GHz. In order to measure S-parameters of these circuits, an extensive process of wafer dicing and packaging, and waveguide transition design, fabrication, and packaging would be required. This is a costly and...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Reconfigurable Microwave Phase Delay Element for Frequency Reference and Phase-Shifter Applications
A technique was developed to provide a reconfigurable high-precision microwave electrical phase delay for resonators and phase shifters. The invention employs multiple branches of transmission lines with open-ended or ground-ended terminations as...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
High-Throughput, Adaptive FFT Architecture for FPGA-Based Spaceborne Data Processors
Exponential growth in microelectronics technology such as field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) has enabled high-performance spaceborne instruments with increasing onboard data processing capabilities. As a commonly used digital signal processing (DSP) building...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
High-Speed Isolation Board for Flight Hardware Testing
There is a need to provide a portable and cost-effective galvanic isolation between ground support equipment and flight hardware such that any unforeseen voltage differential between ground and power supplies is eliminated. An interface board was designed for use between the ground support...
Briefs: Software
3D Orbit Visualization for Earth-Observing Missions
This software visualizes orbit paths for the Orbiting Carbon Observatory (OCO), but was designed to be general and applicable to any Earth-observing mission. The software uses the Google Earth user interface to provide a visual mechanism to explore spacecraft orbit paths, ground footprint...
Briefs: Software
MaROS: Web Visualization of Mars Orbiting and Landed Assets
Mars Relay operations currently involve several e-mails and phone calls between lander and orbiter teams in order to settle on an agreed time for performing a communication pass between the landed asset (i.e. rover or lander) and orbiter, then back to Earth. This new application aims to...
Briefs: Software
RAPID: Collaborative Commanding and Monitoring of Lunar Assets
RAPID (Robot Application Programming Interface Delegate) software utilizes highly robust technology to facilitate command-ing and monitoring of lunar assets. RAPID provides the ability for intercenter communication, since these assets are developed in multiple NASA centers.
Briefs: Software
Image Segmentation, Registration, Compression, and Matching
A novel computational framework was developed of a 2D affine invariant matching exploiting a parameter space. Named as affine invariant parameter space (AIPS), the technique can be applied to many image-processing and computer-vision problems, including image registration, template...
Briefs: Software
Image Calibration
Calibrate_Image calibrates images obtained from focal plane arrays so that the output image more accurately represents the observed scene. The function takes as input a degraded image along with a flat field image and a dark frame image produced by the focal plane array and outputs a corrected image. The three most prominent...
Briefs: Software
Rapid ISS Power Availability Simulator
The ISS (International Space Station) Power Resource Officers (PROs) needed a tool to automate the calculation of thousands of ISS power availability simulations used to generate power constraint matrices. Each matrix contains 864 cells, and each cell represents a single power simulation that must be run. The...
Briefs: Information Technology
Ascent Heating Thermal Analysis on Spacecraft Adaptor Fairings
When the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) is launched, the spacecraft adaptor (SA) fairings that cover the CEV service module (SM) are exposed to aero heating. Thermal analysis is performed to compute the fairing temperatures and to investigate whether the temperatures are within the...
Briefs: Information Technology
Prioritized LT Codes
The original Luby Transform (LT) coding scheme is extended to account for data transmissions where some information symbols in a message block are more important than others. Prioritized LT codes provide unequal error protection (UEP) of data on an erasure channel by modifying the original LT encoder. The prioritized algorithm...
Briefs: Information Technology
Fast Image Texture Classification Using Decision Trees
Texture analysis would permit improved autonomous, onboard science data interpretation for adaptive navigation, sampling, and downlink decisions. These analyses would assist with terrain analysis and instrument placement in both macroscopic and microscopic image data products. Unfortunately,...
Briefs: Information Technology
More-Accurate Model of Flows in Rocket Injectors
An improved computational model for simulating flows in liquid-propellant injectors in rocket engines has been developed. Models like this one are needed for predicting fluxes of heat in, and performances of, the engines. An important part of predicting performance is predicting fluctuations of...
Briefs: Information Technology
Improved Systematic Pointing Error Model for the DSN Antennas
New pointing models have been developed for large reflector antennas whose construction is founded on elevation over azimuth mount. At JPL, the new models were applied to the Deep Space Network (DSN) 34-meter antenna’s subnet for corrections of their systematic pointing errors; it...
Briefs: Information Technology
Observability and Estimation of Distributed Space Systems via Local Information-Exchange Networks
Spacecraft formation flying involves the coordination of states among multiple spacecraft through relative sensing, inter-spacecraft communication, and control. Most existing formation-flying estimation algorithms can only be supported via highly...
Briefs: Information Technology
In-Orbit Instrument-Pointing Calibration Using the Moon as a Target
A method was developed for in-orbit measurement of the relative pointing of spectrometer channels, and the relationship between the spectrometer channels and the spacecraft coordinate system. In this innovation, individual scans of the Moon, from the three channels, were used to...
Briefs: Information Technology
Constraint Embedding Technique for Multibody System Dynamics
Multibody dynamics play a critical role in simulation testbeds for space missions. There has been a considerable interest in the development of efficient computational algorithms for solving the dynamics of multibody systems. Mass matrix factorization and inversion techniques and the O(N)...
Briefs: Information Technology
Entanglement in Self-Supervised Dynamics
A new type of correlation has been developed similar to quantum entanglement in self-supervised dynamics (SSD). SSDs have been introduced as a quantum-classical hybrid based upon the Madelung equation in which the quantum potential is replaced by an information potential. As a result, SSD preserves the...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Reliability of Ceramic Column Grid Array Interconnect Packages Under Extreme Temperatures
A paper describes advanced ceramic column grid array (CCGA) packaging interconnects technology test objects that were subjected to extreme temperature thermal cycles. CCGA interconnect electronic package printed wiring boards (PWBs) of polyimide were...
Briefs: Medical
The MDMouse system incorporates a pre-existing medical device into a conventional computer control mouse. The tool is designed to measure blood pressure outside of the medical environment, and to provide that...
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Briefs: Lighting
Polymer nanofibers are nanoscale materials whose properties can be adjusted to provide desirable light management performance for high-efficiency solid-state lighting (SSL)...
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Briefs: Lighting
Early phosphor-converted white light-emitting diodes (LEDs) produced light with poor color characteristics in terms of color rendering index (CRI) and correlated color...
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Briefs: Green Design & Manufacturing
Grid-Tied Photovoltaic Power System
A grid-tied photovoltaic (PV) power system is connected directly to the utility distribution grid. Facility power can be obtained from the utility system as normal. The PV system is synchronized with the utility system to provide power for the facility, and excess power is provided to the utility.

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