-1
5850
30
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Previous oil containment booms have an open top that allows natural gas to escape, and have significant oil leakage due to wave action. Also, a subsea pyramid oil trap exists, but cannot move relative to...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Oxygen-Methane Thruster
An oxygen-methane thruster was conceived with integrated igniter/injector capable of nominal operation on either gaseous or liquid propellants. The thruster was designed to develop 100 lbf (≈445 N) thrust at vacuum conditions and use oxygen and methane as propellants. This continued development included refining the design...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Lunar Navigation Determination System — LaNDS
A portable comprehensive navigational system has been developed that both robotic and human explorers can use to determine their location, attitude, and heading anywhere on the lunar surface independent of external infrastructure (needs no Lunar satellite network, line of sight to the Sun or Earth,...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Supercritical CO₂ Cleaning System for Planetary Protection and Contamination Control Applications
Current spacecraft-compatible cleaning protocols involve a vapor degreaser, liquid sonication, and alcohol wiping. These methods are not very effective in removing live and dead microbes from spacecraft piece parts of slightly complicated geometry,...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Design and Performance of a Wideband Radio Telescope
The Goldstone Apple Valley Radio Telescope (GAVRT) is an outreach project, a partnership involving NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL ), the Lewis Center for Educational Research (LCER), and the Apple Valley Unified School District near the NASA Goldstone deep space communication complex....
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Launch Method for Kites in Low-Wind or No-Wind Conditions
Airborne observations using lightweight camera systems are desirable for a variety of applications. This system was contemplated as a method to provide a simple remote sensing aerial platform. Kites have been successfully employed for aerial observations, but have historically required...
Briefs: Information Technology
Finite Element Models for Electron Beam Freeform Fabrication Process
Electron beam freeform fabrication (EBF3) is a member of an emerging class of direct manufacturing processes known as solid freeform fabrication (SFF); another member of the class is the laser deposition process. Successful application of the EBF3 process requires precise control...
Briefs: Information Technology
IMAGESEER — IMAGEs for Education and Research
IMAGESEER is a new Web portal that brings easy access to NASA image data for non-NASA researchers, educators, and students. The IMAGESEER Web site and database are specifically designed to be utilized by the university community, to enable teaching image processing (IP) techniques on NASA data, as...
Briefs: Information Technology
Vehicle Detection for RCTA/ANS (Autonomous Navigation System)
Using a stereo camera pair, imagery is acquired and processed through the “JPLV” stereo processing pipeline. From this stereo data, large 3D blobs are found. These blobs are then described and classified by their shape to determine which are vehicles and which are not. Prior vehicle...
Briefs: Information Technology
HyDE Framework for Stochastic and Hybrid Model-Based Diagnosis
Hybrid Diagnosis Engine (HyDE) is a general framework for stochastic and hybrid model-bused diagnosis that offers flexibility to the diagnosis application designer. The HyDE architecture supports the use of multiple modeling paradigms at the component and system level. Several...
Briefs: Information Technology
Autonomous Information Unit for Fine-Grain Data Access Control and Information Protection in a Net-Centric System
As communication and networking technologies advance, networks will become highly complex and heterogeneous, interconnecting different network domains. There is a need to provide user authentication and data protection in order to...
Briefs: Information Technology
Image Mapping and Visual Attention on the Sensory Ego-Sphere
The Sensory Ego-Sphere (SES) is a short-term memory for a robot in the form of an egocentric, tessellated, spherical, sensory-motor map of the robot’s locale. Visual attention enables fast alignment of overlapping images without warping or position optimization, since an attentional...
Briefs: Information Technology
Foam-on-Tile Damage Model
An impact model was developed to predict how three specific foam types would damage the Space Shuttle Orbiter insulating tiles. The inputs needed for the model are the foam type, the foam mass, the foam impact velocity, the foam impact incident angle, the type being impacted, and whether the tile is new or aged (has flown...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Instrument Package Manipulation Through the Generation and Use of an Attenuated-Fluent Gas Fold
This document discusses a technique that provides a means for suspending large, awkward loads, instrument packages, components, and machinery in a stable, controlled, and precise manner. In the baseplate of the test machine, a pattern of grooves and...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Multicolor Detectors for Ultrasensitive Long-Wave Imaging Cameras
A document describes a zeptobolometer for ultrasensitive, long-wavelength sensors. GSFC is developing pixels based on the zeptobolometer design that sense three THz wavelengths simultaneously.
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) Command and Data Handling Flight Electronics Subsystem
A document describes a high-performance, modular, and state-of-the-art Command and Data Handling (C&DH) system developed for use on the Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) mission. This system implements a complete hardware C&DH subsystem in a single...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Electro-Optic Segment- Segment Sensors for Radio and Optical Telescopes
A document discusses an electro-optic sensor that consists of a collimator, attached to one segment, and a quad diode, attached to an adjacent segment. Relative segment-segment motion causes the beam from the collimator to move across the quad diode, thus generating a...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Optical Communications Receiver
Specialized mixed-signal (radio frequency and digital) hardware and processing techniques are employed to enable processing of the multi-GHz signal bandwidth, along with the instruction of an inter-symbol guard time (ISGT) to facilitate synchronization to the received pulse-position modulation (PPM) signal.
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Low-Noise, Large-Area Quad Photoreceivers Based on Low-Capacitance Quad Photodiodes
The Laser Interferometry Space Antenna’s (LISAs) scientific mission to detect gravity waves demands stringent noise limits on the system components, especially the large-area quad photoreceiver front end, for ultra-high-precision (≈10 pm/Hz1/2) distance...
Briefs: Information Technology
Wavefront Sensing Analysis of Grazing Incidence Optical Systems
Wavefront sensing is a process by which optical system errors are deduced from the aberrations in the image of an ideal source. The method has been used successfully in near-normal incidence, but not for grazing incidence systems. This innovation highlights the ability to examine...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
RxGen General Optical Model Prescription Generator
RxGen is a prescription generator for JPL’s in-house optical modeling software package called MACOS (Modeling and Analysis for Controlled Optical Systems), which is an expert optical analysis software package focusing on modeling optics on dynamic structures, deformable optics, and controlled...
Briefs: Lighting
It was not too long ago that basic science lectures began with the three forms of matter: gases, liquids and solids—and somewhere along the line plasmas were occasionally added to the list. But to be precise, a plasma is...
Briefs: Lighting
Looking for an item in a large department store or mall can be like searching for a needle in a haystack, but that could change thanks to a hybrid location identification system that uses radio frequency...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Portable Fourier Transform Spectroscopy for Analysis of Surface Contamination and Quality Control
Progress has been made into adapting and enhancing a commercially available infrared spectrometer for the development of a handheld device for in-field measurements of the chemical composition of various samples of materials. The intent is to duplicate...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
'In Situ' Geochemical Analysis and Age Dating of Rocks Using Laser Ablation-Miniature Mass Spectrometer
A miniaturized instrument for performing chemical and isotopic analysis of rocks has been developed. The rock sample is ablated by a laser and the neutral species produced are analyzed using the JPL-invented miniature mass spectrometer. The...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
An ultimate goal of the climate change, snow science, and hydrology communities is to measure snow water equivalent (SWE) from satellite measurements. Seasonal...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Photogrammetry Tool for Forensic Analysis
A system allows crime scene and accident scene investigators the ability to acquire visual scene data using cameras for processing at a later time. This system uses a COTS digital camera, a photogrammetry calibration cube, and 3D photogrammetry processing software.
Briefs: Software
Doppler Lidar Signal Processing Suite (DLiSPS)
DLiSPS is a collection of software modules that processes lidar data and displays/archives the output products. It has the same features as the real-time version written in C++, except the hardware control capability, with many other functionalities for off-line lidar signal processing. DLiSPS is...
Briefs: Information Technology
Physics Mining of Multi-Source Data Sets
Powerful new parallel data mining algorithms can produce diagnostic and prognostic numerical models and analyses from observational data. These techniques yield higher-resolution measures than ever before of environmental parameters by fusing synoptic imagery and time-series measurements. These techniques...
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: Electronics & Computers
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: Defense
Cooling a New Generation of Aerospace and Defense Embedded...
Upcoming Webinars: Software
Beyond AI-Copy-Paste Engineering: Advanced AI-Integration Success...
Upcoming Webinars: Energy
