Electronics & Software

BISTAT is a computer program for use in aiming a spaceborne bistatic-radar transmitting antenna at a remote planet that has an atmosphere, such that after refraction by the atmosphere and reflection from the surface of the planet, the radar signal travels toward a receiver on Earth....

Version 3.1 of Symbolic Constraint Maintenance Grid (SCMG) is a software system that provides a general conceptual framework for utilizing pre-existing programming techniques to perform symbolic transformations of data. SCMG also provides a language (and an associated communication method and protocol) for...

A computer program implements a thermal model of an insulated wire carrying electric current and surrounded by a vacuum. The model includes the effects of Joule heating, conduction of heat along the wire, and radiation of heat from the outer surface of the insulation on the wire. The model takes...

The Compressible Flow Toolbox is primarily a MATLAB-language implementation of a set of algorithms that solve approximately 280 linear and nonlinear classical equations for compressible flow. The toolbox is useful for analysis of one-dimensional steady flow with either constant entropy, friction, heat transfer, or Mach...

The NASA Glenn Research Center General Multi-Block Navier-Stokes Convective Heat Transfer Code, Glenn- HT, has been used extensively to predict heat transfer and fluid flow for a variety of steady gas turbine engine problems. Recently, the Glenn-HT code has been completely rewritten in Fortran...

Phantom is a computer code intended primarily for real-fluid turbomachinery problems. It is based on Corsair, an ideal-gas turbomachinery code, developed by the same authors, which evolved from the ROTOR codes from NASA Ames. Phantom is applicable to real and ideal fluids, both compressible...

ANSYS/CARES/PDS is a software system that combines the ANSYS Probabilistic Design System (PDS) software with a modified version of the Ceramics Analysis and Reliability Evaluation of Structures Life (CARES/Life) Version 6.0 software. [A prior version of CARES/Life was reported in "Program for...

Version 2.0 of the Strain Rate Dependent Analysis of Polymer Matrix Composites (STRANAL-PMC) software has been released. A prior version was reported in "Analyzing Loads and Strains in Polymer-Matrix Composites" (LEW- 17227), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 26, No. 11 (November 2002), page 36. To recapitulate: Modified versions of...

The commercial HyperSizer aerospacecomposite- material-structure-sizing software has been enhanced by incorporating capabilities for representing coupled thermal, piezoelectric, and piezomagnetic effects on the levels of plies, laminates, and stiffened panels. This enhancement is based on a...

Loci-STREAM is an evolving computational fluid dynamics (CFD) software tool for simulating possibly chemically reacting, possibly unsteady flows in diverse settings, including rocket engines, turbomachines, oil refineries, etc. Loci-STREAM implements a pressure-based flow-solving algorithm that utilizes unstructured grids....

Software for a system to control the trajectories of multiple spacecraft flying in formation is being developed to reflect underlying concepts of (1) a decentralized approach to guidance and control and (2) reconfigurability of the control system, including reconfigurability of the software...

Proprotor Aeroelastic Stability Analysis, now at version 4.5 (PASTA 4.5), is a FORTRAN computer program for analyzing the aeroelastic stability of a tilt-rotor aircraft in the airplane mode of flight. The program employs a 10-degree-of-freedom (DOF), discrete- coordinate, linear mathematical...

The Surface Attitude Position and Pointing (SAPP) software, which runs on computers aboard the Mars Exploration Rovers, tracks the positions and attitudes of the rovers on the surface of Mars. Each rover acquires data on attitude from a combination of accelerometer readings and images of the Sun...

Synthetic LISA is a computer program for simulating the responses of the instrumentation of the NASA/ESA Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA) mission, the purpose of which is to detect and study gravitational waves. Synthetic LISA generates synthetic time series of the LISA fundamental...

SOFTC is an advanced software implementation of a signal correlator for verylong- baseline interferometry (VLBI) for measuring positions of natural celestial objects and distant spacecraft. Because of increases in processing speeds of general- purpose computers, software VLBI correlators have become viable...

Generalized Fluid System Simulation Program (GFSSP) version 4 is a generalpurpose computer program for analyzing steady-state and transient flows in a complex fluid network. [GFSSP version 2.01 was reported in a prior issue of NASA Tech Briefs.] The program is capable of modeling compressibility,...

General EQFlux is a computer program that converts the measure of the damage done to solar cells in outer space by impingement of electrons and protons having many different kinetic energies into the measure of the damage done by an equivalent fluence of electrons, each having kinetic...

Automated Camera Calibration (ACAL) is a computer program that automates the generation of calibration data for camera models used in machine vision systems. Machine vision camera models describe the mapping between points in threedimensional (3D) space in front of the camera and the corresponding points in...

A computer program predicts the performances of solid-state lasers that operate at wavelengths from ultraviolet through mid-infrared and that comprise various combinations of stable and unstable resonators, optical parametric oscillators (OPOs), and sum-frequency generators (SFGs),...

A database of properties of meteors, and software that provides access to the database, are being developed as a contribution to continuing efforts to model the characteristics of meteors with increasing accuracy. Such modeling is necessary for evaluation of the risk of penetration of spacecraft by meteors. For...

SmaggIce version 1.8 is a set of software tools for geometrical modeling of, and generation of grids that conform to, both clean and iced airfoils. A prior version (SmaggIce 1.2) was described in "Preparing and Analyzing Iced Airfoils" (LEW-17399), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 28, No. 8 (August 2004), page 32. Ice shapes, especially...

TES L1B Subsystem is a computer program that performs several functions for the Tropospheric Emission Spectrometer (TES). The term "L1B" (an abbreviation of "level 1B"), refers to data, specific to the TES, on radiometric calibrated spectral radiances and their corresponding noise equivalent spectral radiances (NESRs),...

TES Level 2 Subsystem is a set of computer programs that performs functions complementary to those of the program summarized in the immediately preceding article. TES Level-2 data pertain to retrieved species (or temperature) profiles, and errors thereof. Geolocation, quality, and other data (e.g., surface...

speed has been made in the algorithm and implementing software reported in "Modified Recursive Hierarchical Segmentation of Data" (GSC-14681-1), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 30, No. 6 (June 2006), page 51. That software performs recursive hierarchical segmentation of data having spatial...

A computer program has been written to facilitate real-time sifting of scientific data as they are acquired to find data patterns deemed to warrant further analysis. The patterns in question are of a type denoted array patterns, which are specified by nested parenthetical expressions....

A computer program that preprocesses multispectral image data has been developed to provide the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission with a means of exploiting the additional correlation present in such data without appreciably increasing the complexity of compressing the data. When used in...