Tech Briefs

Nanosatellites are very small satellites that can conduct various space missions using microelectronics, primarily in near-Earth orbits. Aerospace engineering students need to learn about the working principles and control of nanosatellites. However, the cost of an actual nanosatellite...

The NASA App showcases a huge collection of the latest NASA content in a mobile optimized format, including images, videos on-demand, NASA Television, mission information, news and feature stories, tweets, ISS sighting opportunities, satellite tracking, Third Rock Radio, featured educational content, and much more for iOS and Android...

CreateMEPReport.pl software is designed to read through a description of observations scheduled to be taken by the instruments onboard the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO) spacecraft to categorize the observations, and then present totals for the categories...

SequenceMiner was developed to address the problem of detecting and describing anomalies in large sets of high-dimensional symbol sequences. sequenceMiner works by performing unsupervised clustering (grouping) of sequences using the normalized longest common...

The Time-Scaled Activity Diagram Simulator software simulates and animates time-tagged events as an overlay on activity and internal block diagrams in MagicDraw as a plugin application. “Events” are quite generic and include atomic actions, compound actions, signal and message exchanges, invocations, and...

Crewed space vehicle training has always required highfidelity models of vehicle systems. Many of these systems, particularly of the “flow” variety, benefit from modeling the system as a whole, rather than relying only on the interactions between individual components. In general, system properties...

This innovation reads in a proprietary formatted binary data format known as Scatterometer Image Reconstruction (SIR), and converts these data files to netCDF-classic format. This software is provided as a command-line tool for Linux/UNIX-based systems, and includes built-in regression testing...

Understanding and predicting transition from laminar to turbulent flow in hypersonic boundary layers is an active and important field of research because transitional and turbulent heating can be four or more times higher than laminar heating on...

X-ray survey missions require nested grazing incidence telescopes with a large field of view (1° or larger) and moderately high resolution across the field of view. This cannot be accomplished using flat focal plane detectors. The telescopes have excellent on-axis resolution, but unacceptable...

During on-orbit servicing of non-cooperative satellites, the relative position of the satellite with respect to the servicing vehicle is needed. Non-cooperative satellites do not have devices to assist the pose estimation (such as markers or reflector), so a system that uses the natural features of the...

This solar tracker integrates a camera with a field of view (FOV) large enough to easily image the entire solar disc — co-boresited with a narrow-band spectrometer that measures the frequency of a Doppler shifted line — with an algorithm designed to drive zero Doppler shift rotation axis of the Sun.

Government Resource for Algorithm Verification, Independent Test, and Evaluation (GRAVITE) system is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) system, developed and deployed by Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Ground Project to support Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val), Data Quality Monitoring, and Algorithm...

The Orion Crew Module has a pressurized cabin of approximately 20 m3 in volume. There are a number of cold plates within the Crew Module for thermal management. An optical communication type of payload...

Current cryogenic insulation materials suffer from various drawbacks including high cost and weight, lack of structural or load-bearing capability, fabrication complexity, and property anisotropy. A need clearly exists for lightweight thermal insulation that is isotropic and...

A versatile, novel, multifunctional hybrid structural composite of a high-hydrogen epoxy matrix (UN-10) coupled with boron and carbon fibers (IM-7) has been developed. Prototype laminates of 18×18 in. (≈46×46 cm), with the nominal areal density of 0.35 g/cm2, were fabricated in this...

This innovation provides for significantly improved protection from micrometeoroid and orbital debris (MMOD) particles, and reliably determines the location, depth, and extent of MMOD impact damage.

Metering structures of remote sensing instruments often have large openings or access holes. Shear panels that are X-shaped, such as those proposed for the Neutron Star Interior Composition Explorer (NICER), generally consist of C-channels and L-brackets to minimize...

The Advanced Technology Microwave Sounder (ATMS) Antenna Beam Analysis Software uses a suite of test data to calculate the ATMS instrument beam pointing, and secondarily, the polarization state, in the coordinates of the onboard optical cube. The software uses measurement inputs of RF radiation pattern...

Government Resource for Algorithm Verification, Independent Test, and Evaluation (GRAVITE) system is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) system, developed and deployed by Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Ground Project to support Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val), Data Quality Monitoring, and Algorithm...

Government Resource for Algorithm Verification, Independent Test, and Evaluation (GRAVITE) system is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) system, developed and deployed by Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Ground Project to support Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val), Data Quality Monitoring, and...

Government Resource for Algorithm Verification, Independent Test, and Evaluation (GRAVITE) system is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) system, developed and deployed by Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Ground Project to support Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val), Data Quality Monitoring, and Algorithm...

Government Resource for Algorithm Verification, Independent Test, and Evaluation (GRAVITE) system is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) system, developed and deployed by Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Ground Project to support Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val), Data Quality Monitoring, and Algorithm...

The Science Processing and Data Management (SPDM) system’s primary functions are to control and monitor science processes and data products for Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) Science Data System (SDS). SPDM adapts the Apache/OODT Framework 0.3 as the basic infrastructure. Although the...

The Hyperlinked Overview of Piloted Evaluations (HOPE) application provides an interface for users to enter data on pilots, metrics, configurations, tasks, and data collection sessions, as well as descriptive information for each item and the experiment as a whole. As this...

Government Resource for Algorithm Verification, Independent Test, and Evaluation (GRAVITE) system is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Administration (NOAA) system, developed and deployed by Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Ground Project to support Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val), Data Quality Monitoring, and Algorithm...

Government Resource for Algorithm Verification, Independent Test, and Evaluation (GRAVITE) system is a National Oceanic and Atmospheric Ad - ministration (NOAA) system, developed and deployed by Joint Polar Satellite System (JPSS) Ground Project to support Calibration and Validation (Cal/Val), Data Quality Monitoring, and Algorithm...