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Briefs: Aerospace
Heat shields are essentially used as the brakes to stop spacecraft from burning up and crashing on entry and reentry into a planet's atmosphere. Current spacecraft heat shield methods include huge...
Briefs: Communications
Objects in our daily lives, such as speakers, refrigerators, and even cars, are becoming “smarter” day by day as they connect to the Internet and exchange data, creating the Internet of Things (IoT)....
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
MEMS Switch Extends Life of Cellphones
A new type of microelectromechanical system (MEMS) was developed that uses electrostatic levitation to provide a more robust system. All cellphones use MEMS switches for wireless communication, but traditionally there are just two electrodes. The switches open and close numerous times during just one hour, but...
Briefs: Aerospace
NASA Langley Research Center has developed a new approach for designing aircraft liner cores for noise reduction. The cores are comprised of multiple honeycomb-shaped chambers, each...
Briefs: Semiconductors & ICs
Outsourcing machine learning is a rising trend in industry. Major tech firms have launched cloud platforms that conduct computation-heavy tasks, such as running data through a convolutional...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Self-Stabilizing, Distributed, Symmetric, Fault-Tolerant Synchronization
Distributed systems have become an integral part of safety-critical computing applications, necessitating system designs that incorporate complex fault-tolerant resource management functions to provide globally coordinated operations with ultra-reliability. As a result, robust...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Traditional methods, such as reverse osmosis, that remove contaminants from water are expensive and energy-intensive. Researchers have developed technology to remove contaminants from water, but...
Briefs: Test & Measurement
NASA's Langley Research Center has developed a method that introduces solids and particulates — specifically aerogels — into composites or...
Briefs: Energy
Real-Time, Fuel-Optimal, Powered Descent Guidance Using Interpolated Time-of-Flight and Propellant Mass
Soft landing using rockets requires a trajectory to be planned for the lander from rocket ignition — typically several kilometers in altitude and moving at up to 200 m/s — to the point near the surface with near-zero velocity. The exact...
Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
The technological ramp to fully autonomous vehicles presents significant challenges for companies developing autonomous vehicle programs. Advanced sensor technology, high-speed and...
Briefs: Materials
Titanium is as strong as steel but about twice as light. These properties depend on the way a metal's atoms are stacked, but random defects that arise in the...
Briefs: Propulsion
Interoperable Intelligent Controllers for Process Management and Control Networks
NASA Johnson Space Center developed reprogrammable and interchangeable electronic controllers that can attach to a system or subsystem wirelessly or through plug-and-play capability. Originally designed to work with rocket engines, this technology can control...
Briefs: Software
Small-Body Dynamics Toolkit Version 5.0
The Small-Body Dynamics Toolkit (SBDT) v5.0 is a collection of primitive-body-specific trajectory design and analysis tools written in MATLAB®. The SBDT gives the user the capabilities to propagate, analyze, and visualize spacecraft trajectories and the dynamical environment near realistic asteroid, comet,...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Sublimable Propellant Source for Iodine-Fed Ion Propulsion System
NASA Marshall has developed a system for generating iodine vapor from solid iodine for use as a propellant in a Hall or ion thruster propulsion system. Xenon has generally been the preferred propellant for these spacecraft ion propulsion systems but more recently, iodine-based...
Briefs: Energy
Fuel Cell/Fuel Cell Hybrid System
Fuel cells can deliver clean, reliable, and uninterrupted power nearly 100 percent of the time. Fuel cells offer the advantage of efficiency by converting chemical energy directly to electricity. They have no moving parts, thereby eliminating failures associated with pumps, blowers, heat exchangers, and other...
Briefs: Materials
Composite Advances Lignin as Renewable 3D Printing Material
Lignin is the material left over from the processing of biomass. It gives plants rigidity and also makes biomass resistant to being broken down into useful products. Researchers combined a melt-stable hardwood lignin with conventional plastic, a low-melting nylon, and carbon fiber to...
Briefs: Energy
A customizable nanomaterial was developed that combines metallic strength with a foam-like ability to compress and spring back. The material can store and release mechanical energy on the nanoscale, and fits...
Briefs: Software
Effects of Reynolds and Mach Numbers in Large Eddy Simulation of Supersonic Round Jets
Rockets/landers arrive on the Moon with supersonic speed and impact lunar regolith. There is no reliable software to computationally simulate in an effective way the supersonic plumes escaping from these rockets/devices. A Large Eddy Simulation (LES) model and...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Most electronics only function within a certain temperature range but blending two organic materials together creates electronics that withstand extreme heat. The new plastic material could reliably conduct...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Optimal Computational Vision Pipeline (OCVP)
Optimal Computational Vision Pipeline (OCVP) software uses a novel algorithm that allows overlapping point clouds obtained from sensors with displaced position and orientation to be fused together in a common coordinate system with a rigorously linear solution for position and orientation parameters;...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Computer-Controlled Exercise Equipment
While a wide variety of computer-controlled exercise machines for training and rehabilitation exist — some of which can be automatically adjusted to vary resistance or incline — such systems provide for preprogrammed changes in load or resistance. What is needed is a system that overcomes the limitations...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Numerous devices in everyday life use computerized cameras to identify objects — think of automated teller machines that can “read” handwritten dollar amounts when...
Briefs: Aerospace
CHEBY Toolkit for Processing and Editing Chebyshev Files
This software fits trajectory ephemerides and thrust profiles with a Chebyshev polynomial representation, and stores this fit in data files suitable for upload to a spacecraft. In addition, a number of utility modules are provided to assist with inspection and diagnosis of issues with data...
Briefs: Aerospace
From airplane wings, to overhead power lines, to the giant blades of wind turbines, a buildup of ice can cause problems ranging from impaired performance all the way to catastrophic...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Molding is a popular method for the mass production of objects. Essentially, two (or more) mold pieces are fit together, leaving the shape of the desired object as a hole. During fabrication,...
Briefs: Lighting
Single-Crystal SiGe/Sapphire Epitaxy
NASA's Langley Research Center has developed a new low-temperature method of SiGe/sapphire growth that produces the same single-crystal films with much less thermal loading effort to the substrate. This eliminates the time-consuming and costly high heating, long thermal soak times, and interfacial Si layer....
Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
An innovative optical sensing and tracking system was designed to detect, track, and determine object distance and direction in a wide, full, solid angle (160 × 160°) with an extremely high...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Geckos, spiders, and beetles have special adhesive elements on their feet, enabling them to easily run along ceilings or walls. The science of bionics tries to imitate and control such biological...
Briefs: Data Acquisition
Biometric-Based User Authentication
Rapid adoption of mobile platforms such as smartphones and tablet computers has increased the range of applications and data on mobile devices. The use of these devices to communicate sensitive or confidential data requires, among other things, strong front-end user authentication procedures and/or protocols to...
Top Stories
Blog: Design
A Stretchable OLED that Can Maintain Most of Its Luminescence
INSIDER: Design
Advancing All-Solid-State Batteries
Blog: Power
My Opinion: We Need More Power Soon — Is Nuclear the Answer?
Blog: Energy
Batteries that Can Withstand the Cold
Quiz: Power
Blog: Robotics, Automation & Control
Microscopic Swimming Machines that Can Sense, Respond to Surroundings
Webcasts
On-Demand Webinars: Transportation
Advantages of Smart Power Distribution Unit Design for Automotive &...
Upcoming Webinars: Unmanned Systems
Quiet, Please: NVH Improvement Opportunities in the Early Design...
Upcoming Webinars: AR/AI
From Spreadsheets to Insights: Fast Data Analysis Without Complex...
Upcoming Webinars: Electronics & Computers
Cooling a New Generation of Aerospace and Defense Embedded...
Upcoming Webinars: AR/AI
Beyond AI-Copy-Paste Engineering: Advanced AI-Integration Success...
Upcoming Webinars: Energy
