Tech Briefs

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A comprehensive library of technical briefs from engineering experts at NASA and major government, university, and commercial laboratories covering all aspects of innovations in electronics, software, photonics, imaging, motion control, automation, sensors, test, materials, manufacturing, mechanical, and mechatronics.

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Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Using a Ubiquitous Conductor to Power and Interrogate Wireless Passive Sensors and Construct a Sensor Network

Many methods have been developed for interrogation of wireless passive sensors. Surface acoustic wave (SAW) sensors and RF reflection sensors can receive and reflect electronic magnetic waves that are broadcast and received by the...

Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Full-Field Inverse Finite Element Method for Deformed Shape- and Stress-Sensing of Plate and Shell Structures

Structural health management systems that, by way of real-time monitoring, help mitigate accidents due to structural failures, will become integral technologies of the next-generation aerospace vehicles. Advanced sensor arrays and signal...

Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Pressure-Optimized Optical Breath Gas Analyzer for Portable Life Support Systems

Optical detection of gaseous carbon dioxide, water vapor (humidity), and oxygen is desired in Portable Life Support Systems (PLSS) incorporating state-of-the-art CO2 scrubbing architectures. Earlier broadband detectors are nearing their end of life, and...

Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Lightweight Metal Rubber Textile Sensor for In-Situ Lunar Health Monitoring

Extravehicular activities (EVAs) are dangerous to astronauts for a number of reasons, including high levels of physical exertion, potential for impacts by space debris particulates that could puncture the spacesuit and cause depressurization, Moon dust exposure that is...

Briefs: Aerospace
Autonomous Leading-Edge Slat Device for Reduction of Aeroacoustic Noise Associated with Aircraft Wings

Conventional transport aircraft wing design is driven mainly by cruise efficiency, i.e., adequate lift is generated at high speed for level flight with minimal drag. Conventional high-lift systems (leading edge slats and trailing edge flaps)...

Briefs: Aerospace
StormGen Weather Editor

Experiments that take into account the impact of convective weather on airspace operations, future concepts, and flight deck tools require a source of weather data that is readily available, of predictable quality, and tailorable to experimental objectives. Real-world weather data is sparse, highly random, and...

Briefs: Aerospace
Pair-wise Trajectory Management (PTM) Airborne Human Machine Interface (HMI) Display Design

Pair-wise Trajectory Management (PTM) is a concept that utilizes airborne and ground-based capabilities to enable airborne spacing operations in oceanic regions. The goal of PTM is to use enhanced surveillance, along with airborne tools, to manage the...

Briefs: Aerospace

Airframe noise is a significant part of the overall noise of typical transport aircraft during the approach and landing phases of flight. Airframe noise reduction...

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Briefs: Aerospace
Aircraft Engine Exhaust Nozzle System for Jet Noise Reduction

Conventional aircraft typically include propulsion engines that are under the wing or tail surfaces. Each propulsion engine system includes an engine housed in a nacelle with an inlet and a nozzle system. Primary component noise sources from the engine system include the noise...

Briefs: Aerospace
Rotorcraft Noise Model (RNM)

The Rotorcraft Noise Model (RNM) is a suite of computer models that predicts far-field noise for single or multiple flight vehicle operations. RNM calculates the effects of sound propagation over varying ground terrain for acoustic sources using geometrical theory of diffraction algorithms, and through a horizontally...

Briefs: Medical
Lateral Displacement Device for Blood Cell Separation

Separation of particles based on size is one of the essential components in biochemical analysis, environmental assays, and industrial and biomedical applications. Filtration is one of the most frequently used techniques to separate particles. A mechanical filter can be used to remove,...

Briefs: Medical
Using a Blood Clot in Microfluidic Valving Applications

The lack of reliable microvalves impedes many lab-on-a-chip applications for blood analysis. On the other hand, blood clotting — the formation of solid blood aggregate to stop bleeding — provides a natural valving mechanism. It is therefore very attractive to use this mechanism for...

Briefs: Medical
Portable Resting State Detection System Using Functional Near-Infrared Spectroscopy

The ability to distinguish between high and low levels of task engagement is important for detecting and preventing performance decrements during safety-critical operational tasks in the real world. Examples of such tasks include commercial aviation, monitoring...

Briefs: Software
Data Encoding and Parallelization Porting Techniques to Transform Binary Data Formats to Hadoop/MapReduce

The objective of this invention is to transform applications that process big data in arbitrary formats using the MapReduce parallel programming model and executed on the open-source Hadoop platform. Many legacy data-intensive applications...

Briefs: Information Technology
Crisis Mapping Toolkit (CMT) V1

The increasing availability of accessible geospatial data with a turnaround time of days or hours provides unique opportunities for responders to better plan responses to crises, and to inform victims, friends, and relatives of local crisis conditions. However, this raw data is not readily interpretable by the...

Briefs: Information Technology
Real-Bogus Machine Learning Systems at the Intermediate Palomar Transient Factory

The intermediate Palomar Transient Factory (iPTF) is a wide-field sky survey of the optical transient sky (e.g., supernovae, variable stars) that uses image subtraction for the discovery of astronomical transients. Astronomical transients, such as supernovae, are...

Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Invertible Time Invariant Linear Filtering (InTILF) Method for Pattern Detection and Modeling of Stochastic One- or Two- Dimensional Data

X-ray astronomy offers the opportunity to observe important phenomena, including the early accretion of massive black holes and detecting diffuse ionized intergalactic gas that is heated to X-ray temperatures...

Briefs: Imaging

High-performance thermal imagers like Mars Climate Sounder (MCS) on the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) and the Diviner Lunar Radiometer Experiment on the Lunar...

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Briefs: Imaging
Characterizing Richness of Previously Unmapped Terrain and Estimating its Impact on Navigation Performance using 3D Range Sensors in Flight

Landers to large planetary bodies such as Mars typically use a secondary reconnaissance spacecraft to generate high-fidelity 3D terrain maps that are subsequently used for landing site selection and creating...

Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Extensible Data Gateway Environment (EDGE)

The NASA Physical Oceanography Distributed Active Archive Center (PO.DAAC) is NASA’s designated data center for information relevant to the physical state of the ocean. Its core datamanagement and workflow system, Data Management and Archive System (DMAS), is responsible for processing hundreds of...

Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
SEA5: Space Environment Automated Alerts & Anomaly Analysis Assistant

The Community Coordinated Modeling Center (CCMC) provides a wide range of space weather tools and services for the general scientific community. One such product that facilitates space weather situational awareness is collectively known as the Integrated Space Weather Analysis...

Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
JPL CO2 Virtual Science Data Environment (VSDE)

The JPL CO2 Virtual Science Data Environment (VSDE) (http://co2.jpl.nasa.gov) is a comprehensive effort to bring together the models, data, and tools necessary for atmospheric CO2 research. The VSDE site is designed to provide streamlined Web-based discovery and access to multiple global and...

Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Flight Test Maneuvers for Efficient Aerodynamic Modeling

Flight testing is expensive. It is therefore important that necessary flight data be collected in the most efficient manner possible. Inputs traditionally used for flight test maneuvers to collect aircraft stability and control data include doublets, impulses (stick raps), multisteps, and...

Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Python Advanced Microwave Precipitation Radiometer Data Toolkit (PyAMPR)

Advanced Microwave Precipitation Radiometer (AMPR) brightness temperature data from NASA field projects are in ASCII format. This Python script defines a class that will read in a single file from an individual aircraft flight and pull out timing, brightness temperatures...

Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis for Earthquakes

Advanced Rapid Imaging and Analysis for Earthquakes (ARIA-EQ) will be the first coordinated effort to automate geodetic imaging capabilities so they can be used for hazard response. The innovation is an automatic geodetic imaging data system that is the foundation for an operational hazard...

Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Data Ordering Genetic Optimization (DOGO) System

Observations in modern datasets have a continuum of quality that can be hard to quantify. For example, satellite observations are subject to often-subtle mixtures of confounding forces that distort the observation’s utility to a varying extent. For the Orbiting Carbon Observatory-2 (OCO-2)...

Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition

Saliva is an easily accessible body fluid containing important biological markers of physiological regulation in the body. The ability to use saliva to monitor the health and...

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Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Cryogenic Propellant Feed System Analytical Tool

The Propellant Feed System Analytical Tool (PFSAT) predicts heat leak based on insulation type, installation technique, line supports, penetrations, and instrumentation. It also determines the optimum orifice diameter for an optional thermodynamic vent system (TVS) to counteract heat leak into the...

Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Radiation-Hardened, High-Voltage, Quad-Channel Amplifier

Aradiation-hard, 130-Volt, 100-KHz capable, quad-channel operational amplifier with corresponding power supply and 6th-order Bessel filter circuitry has been designed, fabricated, and successfully tested. To control two-axis microelectromechanical systems (MEMS)-based mirrors, a...

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Tech Update: 3D Printing for Transportation in 2024

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Building an Automotive EMC Test Plan

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The Moon and Beyond from a Thermal Perspective

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