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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Mount Protects Thin-Walled Glass or Ceramic Tubes From Large Thermal and Vibration Loads
The design allows for the low-stress mounting of fragile objects, like thin walled glass, by using particular ways of compensating, isolating, or releasing the coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE) differences between the mounted object and the mount itself....
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Wireless Inductive Power Device Suppresses Blade Vibrations
Vibration in turbomachinery can cause blade failures and leads to the use of heavier, thicker blades that result in lower aerodynamic efficiency and increased noise. Metal and/or composite fatigue in the blades of jet engines has resulted in blade destruction and loss of lives. Techniques...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Anti-Rotation Device Releasable by Insertion of a Tool
A drive mechanism enables a socket-type wrench to rotate a shaft and prevents accidental rotation of the shaft when the wrench is not coupled to the shaft. In the original intended application, the shaft would be part of an attachment mechanism on a spacecraft, and the purpose to be served by...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Safe, Advanced, Adaptable Isolation System Eliminates the Need for Critical Lifts
The Starr Soft Support isolation system incorporates an automatically reconfigurable aircraft jack into NASA’s existing 1-Hertz isolators. This enables an aircraft to float in mid-air without the need for a critical lift during ground vibration testing (GVT),...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
This innovation comprises a compact drill that uses low-axial preload, via vibrations, that fractures the rock under the bit kerf, and rotates the bit to remove the powdered cuttings while augmenting...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
A Magnetically Coupled Cryogenic Pump
Historically, cryogenic pumps used for propellant loading at Kennedy Space Center (KSC) and other NASA Centers have a bellows mechanical seal and oil bath ball bearings, both of which can be problematic and require high maintenance. Because of the extremely low temperatures, the mechanical seals are made of...
Briefs: Materials
Fire-Retardant Polymeric Additives
Polyhydroxyamide (PHA) and polymethoxyamide (PMeOA) are fire-retardant (FR) thermoplastic polymers and have been found to be useful as an additive for imparting fire retardant properties to other compatible, thermoplastic polymers (including some elastomers). Examples of compatible flammable polymers include...
Briefs: Materials
A lift-gas cracker (LGC) is an apparatus that generates a low-molecular-weight gas (mostly hydrogen with smaller amounts of carbon monoxide and/or carbon dioxide) at low gauge pressure by methanol...
Briefs: Materials
Ionic Liquids to Replace Hydrazine
A method for developing safe, easy-to-handle propellants has been developed based upon ionic liquids (ILs) or their eutectic mixtures. An IL is a binary combination of a typically organic cation and anion, which generally produces an ionic salt with a melting point below 100 °C. Many ILs have melting points near,...
Briefs: Materials
Variable Emittance Electrochromics Using Ionic Electrolytes and Low Solar Absorptance Coatings
One of the last remaining technical hurdles with variable emittance devices or skins based on conducting polymer electrochromics is the high solar absorptance of their top surfaces. This high solar absorptance causes overheating of the skin when facing...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
The detection of volatile vapors of unknown species in a complex field environment is required in many different applications. Mass spectroscopic techniques require subsystems including an...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Correction for Self-Heating When Using Thermometers as Heaters in Precision Control Applications
In precision control applications, thermometers have temperature-dependent electrical resistance with germanium or other semiconductor material thermistors, diodes, metal film and wire, or carbon film resistors. Because resistance readout requires...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Gravitational Wave Detection With Single-Laser Atom Interferometers
A new design for a broadband detector of gravitational radiation relies on two atom interferometers separated by a distance L. In this scheme, only one arm and one laser are used for operating the two atom interferometers. The innovation here involves the fact that the atoms in the...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Titanium Alloy Strong Back for IXO Mirror Segments
A titanium-alloy mirror-holding fixture called a strong back allows the temporary and permanent bonding of a 50° D263 glass x-ray mirror (IXO here stands for International X-ray Observatory). The strong back is used to hold and position a mirror segment so that mounting tabs may be bonded to the...
Briefs: Information Technology
Multi-Modal Image Registration and Matching for Localization of a Balloon on Titan
A solution was developed that matches visible/IR imagery aboard a balloon in Saturn’s moon Titan’s atmosphere to SAR (synthetic aperture radar) and visible/IR data acquired from orbit. A balloon in Titan’s atmosphere must be able to localize itself autonomously...
Briefs: Information Technology
Entanglement in Quantum-Classical Hybrid
It is noted that the phenomenon of entanglement is not a prerogative of quantum systems, but also occurs in other, non-classical systems such as quantum-classical hybrids, and covers the concept of entanglement as a special type of global constraint imposed upon a broad class of dynamical systems....
Briefs: Information Technology
Algorithm for Autonomous Landing
Because of their small size, high maneuverability, and easy deployment, micro aerial vehicles (MAVs) are used for a wide variety of both civilian and military missions. One of their current drawbacks is the vast array of sensors
(such as GPS, altimeter, radar, and the like) required to make a landing. Due to the...
Briefs: Information Technology
Quantum-Classical Hybrid for Information Processing
Based upon quantum-inspired entanglement in quantum-classical hybrids, a simple algorithm for instantaneous transmissions of non-intentional messages (chosen at random) to remote distances is proposed. The idea is to implement instantaneous transmission of conditional information on remote...
Briefs: Information Technology
Small-Scale Dissipation in Binary-Species Transitional Mixing Layers
Motivated by large eddy simulation (LES) modeling of supercritical turbulent flows, transitional states of databases obtained from direct numerical simulations (DNS) of binary-species supercritical temporal mixing layers were examined to understand the subgrid-scale dissipation,...
Briefs: Information Technology
Coding for Parallel Links To Maximize the Expected Value of Decodable Messages
When multiple parallel communication links are available, it is useful to consider link-utilization strategies that provide tradeoffs between reliability and throughput. Interesting cases arise when there are three or more available links. Under the model considered, the...
Briefs: Information Technology
Superpixel-Augmented Endmember Detection for Hyperspectral Images
Superpixels are homogeneous image regions comprised of several contiguous pixels. They are produced by shattering the image into contiguous, homogeneous regions that each cover between 20 and 100 image pixels. The segmentation aims for a many-to-one mapping from superpixels to image...
Briefs: Energy
This report summarizes results from a three-year Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project. The collaborative effort of researchers from Sandia National Laboratories and Rensselaer...
Briefs: Energy
The High Altitude Airship (HAA) has various application potential and mission scenarios that require onboard energy harvesting and power distribution systems. The power...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A²⁰¹Hg⁺ Comagnetometer for ¹⁹⁹Hg⁺ Trapped Ion Space Atomic Clocks
A method has been developed for unambiguously measuring the exact magnetic field experienced by trapped mercury ions contained within an atomic clock intended for space applications. In general, atomic clocks are insensitive to external perturbations that would change...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
SpaceCube 2.0: An Advanced Hybrid Onboard Data Processor
The SpaceCube 2.0 is a compact, high-performance, low-power onboard processing system that takes advantage of cutting-edge hybrid (CPU/FPGA/DSP) processing elements. The SpaceCube 2.0 design concept includes two commercial Virtex-5 field-programmable gate array (FPGA) parts protected by...
Briefs: Lighting
Sandia National Laboratories, Albuquerque, NM Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, NY
This report summarizes results from a three-year Laboratory Directed Research and Development (LDRD) project. The...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Multi-Segment Radius Measurement Using an Absolute Distance Meter Through a Null Assembly
This system was one of the test methods considered for measuring the radius of curvature of one or more of the 18 segmented mirrors that form the 6.5 m diameter primary mirror (PM) of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The assembled telescope will be...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Fiber-Optic Magnetic-Field-Strength Measurement System for Lightning Detection
A fiber-optic sensor system is designed to measure magnetic fields associated with a lightning stroke. Field vector magnitudes are detected and processed for multiple locations. Since physical limitations prevent the sensor elements from being located in close proximity...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Non-Contact Thermal Properties Measurement With Low-Power Laser and IR Camera System
As shown by the Phoenix Mars Lander’s Thermal and Electrical Conductivity Probe (TECP), contact measurements of thermal conductivity and diffusivity (using a modified flux-plate or line-source heat-pulse method) are constrained by a number of factors. Robotic...
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