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Briefs: Electronics & Computers
High-Capacity Nickel-Hydrogen Cells
Nickel-hydrogen electrochemical cells with capacities of 350 ampere-hours have been developed. These cells are intended primarily for use in government and commercial satellites; they have been fully qualified to satisfy performance requirements for operation in geosynchronous satellites for as long as 15 years....
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A compact Ka-band power amplifier has been built with GaAs field-effect transistors (FETs) and microstrip conductors on a quartz substrate. Prior to the development of this amplifier, Ka-band...
Briefs: Materials
Skutterudite Thermoelectric Unicouples for Generating Power
A report presents some results of continuing efforts to develop advanced thermoelectric devices and, more particularly, thermoelectric unicouples for generating electric power from diverse thermal sources, including automotive exhausts and other waste-heat sources. The basic principles of...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Miniature proportional + integral + derivative (PID) temperature controllers that would be implemented as hybrid microcircuits have been proposed to satisfy special requirements to minimize size...
Briefs: Information Technology
External Data and Attribute Hyperlink Programs for Promis•e®
External Data and Attribute Hyperlink are computer programs that can be added to Promis•e®, which is a commercial software system that automates routine tasks in the design (including drawing schematic diagrams) of electrical control systems. The programs were developed under the...
Briefs: Software
Software for Parallel Computation of 3D Thermal Convection
A computer program solves the differential equations of three-dimensional (3D) thermal convection of an incompressible fluid by use of a parallel-processing, finite volume numerical scheme. The equations of conservation of momentum, and energy are integrated over macroscopic control...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Software for Simulating Two-Phase Systems
Møtran (signifying "multi-phase transient") is a package of software for simulating flows in two-phase (gas/liquid) fluid systems like networks of such components as pipes, T junctions, pumps, evaporators, and condensers. The software is based on a two-fluid formulation that can accommodate unequal...
Briefs: Software
Fourth-Generation Software for SEU Testing
RBK4 is a computer program for testing electronic components for susceptibility to single-event upsets (SEUs). RBK4 controls the computer on which it is executed to communicate with both the board holding the device under test (DUT), a power supply, and other laboratory instruments including custom...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Software for Improved Processing of DRWP Signals
The Automated Adaptive Signal Processing (AASP) computer program extracts wind data from the outputs of Doppler-radar wind profilers (DRWPs). Unlike prior software used for this purpose, AASP does not rely on manual intervention to prevent a DRWP system from locking onto and tracking...
Briefs: Materials
Refrigerant Blends Containing Trifluoroiodomethane
Blends of refrigerant fluids have been developed as improved alternatives to conventional chlorofluorocarbon (CFC) and hydrochlorofluorocarbon (HCFC) refrigerants, which contribute to depletion of stratosphere ozone. Each blend of this type is a zeotropic or nearly azeotropic mixture of...
Briefs: Materials
Heat-Exchanger Rocket Engine
The proposed rocket engine includes a combustion chamber actively cooled by liquid oxygen: Heat from the combustion chamber vaporizes the flowing liquid oxygen, and the absorption of latent heat of vaporization contributes to cooling of the combustion-chamber wall. The resulting high-vapor-quality (mostly vapor)...
Briefs: Materials
Stable Ohmic Contacts on SiC Devices for High Temperatures
Ti3SiC2 has been proposed as a mate- rial for ohmic contacts on SiC-based electronic and microelectromechanical devices intended to operate at temperatures >600 °C and/or in corrosive environments. Although SiC is stable and devices made of SiC are capable of functioning at elevated...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Improved Lightweight Freeze-Tolerant Tubes
Improved designs have been conceived for lightweight tubes that can withstand the large (as much as 8 or 9 volume percent) freeze/thaw expansions and contractions of typical heat-transfer fluids like water and ammonia. Intended originally for radiators for rejecting waste heat from spacecraft, these...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Simple mechanisms have been devised to facilitate the blowdown of large diesel engines. As explained below, these mechanisms reduce the amount of time and effort that must be expended to...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Uncertainty Models From Ground Vibration Testing
Structural dynamics are often an important consideration when evaluating system characteristics. A concern related to structural dynamics is the analysis of flutter for a flight vehicle. The instability associated with flutter can be quite sensitive to the structural dynamics; therefore, analysis of...
Briefs: Information Technology
Compressed Symbology — Making Its Mark at NASA
Compressed symbology is a product-identification method that was pioneered by NASA for tracking space-shuttle parts and is now being used to mark everything from groceries to automobile parts. Based on a system of two-dimensional marks applied to parts, compressed symbology was developed at NASA's...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Large-Aperture Telescope Synthesized From Small Mirrors
A report proposes a design concept for synthesizing a reflecting telescope with a large-aperture (diameter ≈100 m) primary mirror from a sparse arrangement of four smaller (diameter ≈10 m) primary mirrors. The telescope would be placed in orbit for viewing Earth with high resolution....
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Spacecraft Nuclear Reactor Would Be Fueled in Orbit
Two reports summarize progress thus far in the continuing development of a spacecraft nuclear reactor, some or all of the fuel rods of which would not be loaded until the spacecraft was in orbit. (Keeping the fuel rods out of the reactor core before and during launch is intended to...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Designs for Safer Launching of Spacecraft Fission System
A report proposes the development of two different mechanisms that would prevent inadvertent startup of reactors in nuclear-fission-based propulsion and power systems in future spacecraft. The purpose of this development is to contribute to safety by ensuring that radioactivity is kept to...
Briefs: Information Technology
Automated Planning and Scheduling for a Large Interferometer
A report discusses the potential application of artificial intelligence (AI) to planning, scheduling, and control of the optical configuration and other aspects of the operations of a large astronomical interferometer. Scientific demand and technical requirements necessitate...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Cooperative Communication by Low-Power Radio Transmitters
A report proposes a method of cooperative modulation between (1) low-power radio transceivers associated with sensors geographically dispersed on a remote planet for relaying information between the sensors and an Earth station. The method, denoted node selection on orthogonal...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Uplink/Downlink Spacecraft Radio Occultation Measurements
A report proposes a method to increase the accuracy of Doppler measurements made at the beginnings and endings of Earth/spacecraft radio occultations. Such measurements can reveal structural details of occulting objects in outer space. Heretofore, one-way measurements have been...
Briefs: Materials
Development of Alternatives to Hydrazines as Propellants
A brief report summarizes an investigation of less-toxic alternatives to toxic monopropellant fluids used in launch vehicles, upper stages, and spacecraft propulsion. The toxic fluids in question are (1) hydrazine and its derivatives, used, variously, as fuels or by themselves as...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
ASIC for Controlling a Power-Switching MOSFET
A report describes an application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) for controlling a power-switching metal oxide semiconductor field-effect transistor (MOSFET) in a spacecraft power-supply system. Denoted an SCA (for switch-control ASIC), this ASIC is designed to be radiation-hard and to...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
An improved technique of limited-precision arithmetic has been devised for use in convolutional filtering of image data prior to conversion of the data to binary form. Both...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Network for Forecasting Weather and Diffusion of Toxins
The Meteorological Range Safety Support System/Eastern Range Dispersion Assessment System (MARSS/ERDAS) is a system of interconnected computer workstations designed to acquire, process, and disseminate nearly real-time meteorological data and outputs of mathematical models of the atmospheric...
Briefs: Software
Software for Processing Serial Cross Sections Into 3D Images
The Reconstruction of Serial Sections (ROSS) computer program processes data from a series of tomograms to generate a three-dimensional (3D) representation of an object, and further processes data from the 3D representation to enable the viewing of any part of the object from any of an...
Briefs: Software
Software for Displaying and Comparing Wind-Tunnel Data
DARWIN is a computer program that provides access, via the Internet, to geographically dispersed NASA computer archives of both meta-data and raw test data from wind tunnels and raw simulation data from computational fluid dynamics (CFD) sites. DARWIN facilitates the manipulation and...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Integrated Environmental Monitoring Instrument
A miniature, battery-powered, semiautonomous environmental monitoring instrument contains advanced meteorological sensors, a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver for determining its position, radio-communication circuitry, and a controller that performs measurement, control, and data-communication...
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