Tech Briefs

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: Software
Jitter Controller Software
Sinusoidal jitter is produced by simply modulating a clock frequency sinusoidally with a given frequency and amplitude. But this can be expressed as phase jitter, frequency jitter, or cycle-to-cycle jitter, rms or peak, absolute units, or normalized to the base clock frequency. Jitter using other waveforms requires...
Briefs: Software
μShell Minimalist Shell for Xilinx Microprocessors
μShell is a lightweight shell environment for engineers and software developers working with embedded microprocessors in Xilinx FPGAs. (μShell has also been successfully ported to run on ARM Cortex-M1 microprocessors in Actel ProASIC3 FPGAs, but without project-integration support.) μShell...
Briefs: Software
The In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) Regolith & Environmental Science and Oxygen & Lunar Volatiles Extraction (RESOLVE) software provides...
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Briefs: Software
This computing environment is the next generation of geodetic image processing technology for repeat-pass Interferometric Synthetic Aperture (InSAR) sensors, identified by the community as a needed...
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Coastal On-line Assessment and Synthesis Tool 2.0
COAST (Coastal On-line Assessment and Synthesis Tool) is a 3D, open-source Earth data browser developed by leveraging and enhancing previous NASA open-source tools. These tools use satellite imagery and elevation data in a way that allows any user to zoom from orbit view down into any place on...
Briefs: Software
Software Displays Data on Active Regions of the Sun
The Solar Active Region Display System is a computer program that generates, in near real time, a graphical display of parameters indicative of the spatial and temporal variations of activity on the Sun. These parameters include histories and distributions of solar flares, active region growth,...
Briefs: Software
This innovation provides the user with autonomous on-screen monitoring, embedded computations, and tabulated output...
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Briefs: Software
Monitoring Areal Snow Cover Using NASA Satellite Imagery
The objective of this project is to develop products and tools to assist in the hydrologic modeling process, including tools to help prepare inputs for hydrologic models and improved methods for the visualization of stream-flow forecasts. In addition, this project will facilitate the use of...
Briefs: Software
The Computer-Aided Parallelizer and Optimizer (CAPO) automates the insertion of compiler directives (see figure) to facilitate parallel processing on Shared Memory Parallel (SMP) machines. While CAPO...
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Briefs: Software
Bundle Security Protocol for ION
This software implements bundle authentication, conforming to the Delay-Tolerant Networking (DTN) Internet Draft on Bundle Security Protocol (BSP), for the Interplanetary Overlay Network (ION) implementation of DTN. This is the only implementation of BSP that is integrated with ION.
Briefs: Software
MaROS: Information Management Service
This software is provided by the Mars Relay Operations Service (MaROS) task to a variety of Mars projects for the purpose of coordinating communications sessions between landed spacecraft assets and orbiting spacecraft assets at Mars. The Information Management Service centralizes a set of functions previously...
Briefs: Software
Mission Operations Planning and Scheduling System (MOPSS)
MOPSS is a generic framework that can be configured on the fly to support a wide range of planning and scheduling applications. It is currently used to support seven missions at Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) in roles that include science planning, mission planning, and real-time...
Briefs: Information Technology
The Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) software provides graphic visualization tools that enable easy comparison of ground- and space-based radar observations. It was initially designed to compare...
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Briefs: Software
Thermal Protection System Imagery Inspection Management System —TIIMS
TIIMS is used during the inspection phases of every mission to provide quick visual feedback, detailed inspection data, and determination to the mission management team. This system consists of a visual Web page interface, an SQL database, and a graphical image generator. These...
Briefs: Software
The G-TAG software tool was developed under the R&TD on Integrated Autonomous Guidance, Navigation, and Control for Comet Sample Return, and...
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Briefs: Software
This software graphically displays all pertinent information from a Predicted Events File (PEF) using the Java Swing framework, which allows for multi-platform support. The PEF is hard to weed through when looking...
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Briefs: Software
MatchGUI: A Graphical MATLAB-Based Tool for Automatic Image Co-Registration
MatchGUI software, based on MATLAB, automatically matches two images and displays the match result by superimposing one image on the other. A slider bar allows focus to shift between the two images. There are tools for zoom, auto-crop to overlap region, and basic image...
Briefs: Energy
The objective of this project was to develop and then demonstrate the efficacy of a cost-effective approach for a low-defect-density substrate on which aluminum indium gallium nitride (AlInGaN)...
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Briefs: Energy
The primary objective of this project was to develop and implement a method that compensates for the inefficiency of the green light-emitting diode (LED). The proposed engineering solution was to use RGBW combination...
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Acquiring cheap, moving video was impossible in a vacuum environment, due to camera overheating. This overheating is brought on by the lack of cooling media in vacuum. A water-jacketed camera cooler enclosure machined and...
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Briefs: Information Technology
Thermal Management Tools for Propulsion System Trade Studies and Analysis
Energy-related subsystems in modern aircraft are more tightly coupled with less design margin. These subsystems include thermal management subsystems, vehicle electric power generation and distribution, aircraft engines, and flight control. Tighter coupling, lower design...
Briefs: Information Technology
Large Eddy Simulation Study for Fluid Disintegration and Mixing
A new modeling approach is based on the concept of large eddy simulation (LES) within which the large scales are computed and the small scales are modeled. The new approach is expected to retain the fidelity of the physics while also being computationally efficient. Typically, only...
Briefs: Information Technology
Technique for Solving Electrically Small to Large Structures for Broadband Applications
Fast iterative algorithms are often used for solving Method of Moments (MoM) systems, having a large number of unknowns, to determine current distribution and other parameters. The most commonly used fast methods include the fast multipole method (FMM), the...
Briefs: Information Technology
Accelerated Adaptive MGS Phase Retrieval
The Modified Gerchberg-Saxton (MGS) algorithm is an image-based wavefront-sensing method that can turn any science instrument focal plane into a wavefront sensor. MGS characterizes optical systems by estimating the wavefront errors in the exit pupil using only intensity images of a star or other point source...
Briefs: Information Technology
Introduction to Physical Intelligence
A slight deviation from Newtonian dynamics can lead to new effects associated with the concept of physical intelligence. Non-Newtonian effects such as deviation from classical thermodynamic as well as quantum-like properties have been analyzed.
Briefs: Information Technology
To mitigate atmospheric errors caused by the troposphere, which is a limiting error source for spaceborne interferometric synthetic aperture radar...
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Briefs: Information Technology
Technique for Calculating Solution Derivatives With Respect to Geometry Parameters in a CFD Code
A solution has been developed to the challenges of computation of derivatives with respect to geometry, which is not straightforward because these are not typically direct inputs to the computational fluid dynamics (CFD) solver. To overcome these...

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