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Briefs: Aerospace
Center/TRACON Automation System Software Suite
Air traffic control within the US is getting more complicated as the number of aircraft increases. There is a great need to increase the efficiency of the system so that flight delays are minimized without having to build new airports or runways. At the same time, safety must be maintained so that...
Briefs: Aerospace
There are two commonly used options to transport large-volume and heavy cargo across the ocean: container ships and airline transport aircraft. Container ships take about 3 to 4 weeks to deliver...
Briefs: Medical
This chemical detector, based on a miniaturized, pulse-discharged ionization detector (mini-PDID), makes it possible to diagnose illnesses by identifying volatile organic compounds...
Briefs: Communications
Wideband Retroreflector
There are many known methods of retransmitting radio wave signals intra-building and inter-building, as well as ground-to-aircraft or ground-to-satellite. Some techniques modulate the reflection coefficient of an antenna. Prior art has used frequency multiplication or field effect transistor (FET) mixing to modulate the...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Microstructural Explorations Inside Fuel Cells
Solid oxide fuel cells (SOFCs), a promising technology that can efficiently produce energy using fossil fuels with no moving parts and low emissions, present a particularly perplexing economic challenge: current systems operate at maximum efficiency between 700 and 1000 degrees Celsius, but such high...
Briefs: Imaging
After more than 16 years of operation, NASA’s Earth Observing–1 (EO-1) spacecraft was decommissioned on March 30 of this year. The Advanced Land Imager (ALI) developed by MIT...
Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Recognition-based biosensors capable of specifically detecting chemicals, toxins, and bio-agents in their environment are of increasing importance. An important goal in biosensor evolution is...
Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Phone signals spend at least some time traveling over fiber-optic cables. To ensure that the information gets where it needs to go, and to help researchers find better ways to ferry this information around,...
Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
NASA’s Glenn Research Center has developed and patented the Compact Full-Field Ion Detector System (CFIDS), a radiation particle detection system that provides information on the kinetic...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Low-Pressure Plasma Cleaning of Aerospace Components Using Breathing/Compressed Air
A method for precision cleaning of aerospace components is needed that does not use hazardous or environmentally harmful commodities. Historically, precision cleaning methods have utilized solvents that have contributed to the depletion of the ozone layer or had...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has developed a new radar approach that uses a single phased array antenna and a single-pass configuration to generate interferograms, known as Digital Beamforming...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
The Mars 2020 coring drill will generate a significant amount of dust and debris (known as fines) due to the volume of milled material displaced by the corer's annulus. These cuttings must be removed to ensure that the...
Briefs: Robotics, Automation & Control
Robots are conventionally made mobile by rolling on wheels; however, wheeled robots have limited ability to traverse large obstacles. Obstacles much taller than the robot's wheels can prevent passage,...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Oil spills have become an environmental problem due to the growth of offshore oil exploration, production, and transportation. There are several...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
The Flying Carpet is a platform of any shape, size, or material that is suspended by a four-point cable system. The platform can serve as a movable scaffolding and worker...
Briefs: Materials
NASA's Langley Research Center has developed a system that provides both structural support and protection attributes in a failsafe manner. This innovation incorporates the use of a...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
End-of-life electronic devices such as smartphones, computers, televisions, and other electronics contain significant amounts of valuable metals including base metals (zinc, tin, lead, nickel, and...
Briefs: Materials
NASA's Langley Research Center has developed a new class of polyimide composite electrical insulation materials for wires, cable, and bus pipe. These new insulation materials have been shown to withstand a 12-hour...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
The huge demand for switching components exceeding silicon's (Si) current density limitation of 200 A/cm2 has pushed the enhancement of alternative semiconductor materials such as...
Briefs: Robotics, Automation & Control
SIMbot is an updated version of the ballbot, an elegantly simple robot whose tall, thin body moves on top of a sphere slightly smaller than a bowling ball. SIMbot features a motor with just one...
Briefs: Robotics, Automation & Control
Researchers at NASA's Johnson Space Center (JSC), in collaboration with General Motors and Oceaneering, have designed a state-of-the-art, highly dexterous, humanoid robot: Robonaut 2 (R2). R2...
Briefs: Software
Launch Trajectory Acquisition System (LTAS) Source Slaving Selector (LS3)
The LTAS Source Slaving Selector application was developed to transmit LTAS data in User Datagram Protocol (UDP) packets using the LTAS data from one of multiple incoming UDP streams. Users select the data stream via a graphical user interface (GUI), which also displays a...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Positioning Stage
Assembly of optic-electronic devices requires precision alignment of optical fibers with lasers or sensors, and then bonding. A worker looking through a microscope at the end of a fiber conventionally executes this precision alignment and bonding process.
Briefs: Materials
To comply with the Restriction of Hazardous Substances (RoHS) directive, pure tin is replacing lead-tin alloys in commercial electronic devices. Unfortunately, tin can grow whiskers...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Additive-Manufactured, Very Lightweight, Diamond Turned Aspheric Mirror
Industrial-grade, lightweight mirrors used in military and aeronautics have tight specifications brought on by demanding performance parameters. For example, a mirror that is used in an orbiting telescope would have to be extremely lightweight, stiff, and be configured to...
Briefs: Materials
Electrically Conductive, Optically Transparent Polymer/Carbon Nanotube Composites
NASA's Langley Research Center researchers have developed a novel method for making carbon nanotubes that are very uniform in size. A template is used to guide the carbon nanotube growth so that all nanotubes are uniform in size. The carbon nanotubes can be used...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Tufts University engineers have invented a chip-sized, high-speed modulator that operates at terahertz (THz) frequencies at room temperature and at low voltages without consuming DC...
Briefs: Robotics, Automation & Control
Researchers at the NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC), in collaboration with General Motors and Oceaneering, have designed a state-of-the-art, highly dexterous, humanoid robot:...
Briefs: Software
Acoustic Propagation and Emulation Toolset (APET)
Currently, APET includes a modified version of the Rotorcraft Noise Model (RNM, version 7). It also includes the newly developed Spectral Attenuation Method (SAM), which contains the Ray Tracing Program (RTP) and two versions of a Green's Function Parabolic Equation (GFPE) code. The third component...
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Webcasts
Upcoming Webinars: AR/AI
The Real Impact of AR and AI in the Industrial Equipment Industry
Upcoming Webinars: Motion Control
Next-Generation Linear and Rotary Stages: When Ultra Precision...
Upcoming Webinars: Energy
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How Wearables Are Enhancing Smart Drug Delivery
Podcasts: Power
SAE Automotive Podcast: Solid-State Batteries
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