Electronics & Software

A method of preprocessing lightning-measurement waveforms has been devised to reduce the bandwidth needed to transmit data for computing the locations of lightning strikes. The method is used in a system in which electric fields and electric-field derivatives induced by lightning are...

The Materials Science Division (MSD) at Kennedy Space Center is developing a computer system to maintain a material-science data base coupled with a user-friendly interface on the World Wide Web. The system is designed to eliminate the need for time-consuming and expensive distribution of,...

Never before have secondary schools been able to post-process raw satellite data, and now they can do it in real time. This is credited to advances in technology that have recently made the necessary equipment simple, inexpensive, powerful, and available enough for any school to fit into...

The return-link processor card (RLP) performs all of the fundamental data-processing functions involved in the return of satellite telemetry, in real time at rates up to 400 Mb/s, using industry-standard interface circuitry and connectors with standard sizes and shapes. Previously, four cards, each containing a...

A report presents additional information on the Mechanical System Design/Analysis Tool (MSAT) computer program, which was reported in "Program for Designing a Mechanical System" (LEW-16710, NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 23, No. 9 (September 1999), page 32. To recapitulate: MSAT is a user-friendly, multidisciplinary software system that...

Spectrometers are used for applications such as chemical analysis, remote sensing, environmental measuring, and optical measurements. Most spectrometers utilize prisms and gratings, where the dispersion of light depends upon the angle and rotation of the grating. But gratings and other moving parts are...

An application program for scanning and storage of images and for retrieval of the images via the World Wide Web has been written in the Java programming language to be portable to any computer and operating system that support the Java Virtual Machine 1.02. The program can be run on one...

A wireless information network (WIN) is undergoing development for use by workers at locations scattered across Kennedy Space Center (KSC). This WIN could be a prototype of a larger network that would serve all of NASA; by logical extension, it could also be a prototype of commercial WINs. By use of a combination of...

Four computer programs enable the nearly real-time distribution, analysis, and display of data on temperature, relative humidity, and particle fallout measured by sensors in the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) and the Launch Pad Payload Changeout Room (PCR) at Kennedy Space Center. The...

An electronic circuit has been designed as a prototype of a device that determines whether critical electrical systems have been compromised because of pyrolysis of polyimide-insulated wires. This circuit can be modified to prevent further pyrolysis and to check for indications of...

A software library has been developed for adaptive refinement of unstructured (that is, irregular) tetrahedral or triangular meshes that define two- or three-dimensional coordinates or volume elements used in parallel (that is, multiprocessor) finite-element or finite-volume computations. This...

A software library has been developed for use in parallel adaptive refinement of unstructured (irregular) meshes and grids in parallel scientific and engineering computing. This library can be used in finite-difference, finite-volume, and finite-element application programs that use...

A report discusses the development of a highly complex system of distributed-computing, multidisciplinary design-optimization software, called "CJOpt," for use in research on model 4 of the High-Speed Civil Transport (HSCT) airplane (HSCT4.0). The emphasis in the report is on the...

A unique data-acquisition system converts analog input voltages to 8-bit digital data at a rate as high as 109 samples per second (1 GHz), stores the data, and makes the data available for further processing. The system is compact, is highly resistant to ionizing radiation, consumes relatively...