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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Surface-enhanced x-ray fluorescence (SEn-XRF) spectroscopy is a form of surface-enhanced spectroscopy that was conceived as a means of obtaining greater sensitivity in x-ray fluorescence (XRF) spectroscopy....
Briefs: Power
The idea of designing a microfluidic channel to slope upward along the direction of flow of the liquid in the channel has been conceived to help prevent trapping of gas bubbles in...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Infrared Sensor on Unmanned Aircraft Transmits Time-Critical Wildfire Data
Since 2006, NASA’s Dryden Flight Research Center (DFRC) and Ames Research Center have been perfecting and demonstrating a new capability for geolocation of wildfires and the real-time delivery of data to firefighters. Managed for the Western States Fire Mission, the...
Briefs: Energy
Strobe or rotating beacon-type emergency lighting is a requirement on all Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) maintenance and construction vehicles. There is an effort to...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Optimal Flow Control Design
In support of the Blended-Wing-Body aircraft concept, a new flow control hybrid vane/jet design has been developed for use in a boundary-layer-ingesting (BLI) offset inlet in transonic flows. This inlet flow control is designed to minimize the engine fan-face distortion levels and the first five Fourier harmonic half...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
An involute-foil regenerator was designed, microfabricated, and tested in an oscillating-flow test rig. The concept consists of stacked involute-foil nickel disks (see...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Reducing Seal Adhesion in Low Impact Docking Systems
Silicone elastomers, used in seals for airlocks or other sealing surfaces in space, are sticky in their as-received condition. Because of the sticking, a greater force may be needed to separate the mating surfaces. If the adhesion is sufficiently high, a sudden unpredicted movement of the...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Corrosion-Resistant Container for Molten-Material Processing
In a carbothermal process, gaseous methane is passed over molten regolith, which is heated past its melting point to a temperature in excess of 1,625 °C. At this temperature, materials in contact with the molten regolith (or regolith simulant) corrode and lose their structural...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Structures capable of deployment into complex, three-dimensional trusses have well known space technology applications such as the support of spacecraft payloads, communications antennas, radar reflectors, and solar...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
During the early development stage of balloon deployment systems for missions, nichrome wire cable cutters were often used in place of pyro-actuated cutters. Typically, a nichrome wire is wrapped around a bundle...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
High-Volume Airborne Fluids Handling Technologies To Fight Wildfires
NASA recently partnered with the U.S. Forest Service (USFS) on a project to examine mission suitability and recommend policies and procedures for the use of very large aerial firefighting aircraft such as the Boeing 747 and DC-10 aerial retardant delivery aircraft. The aircraft...
Briefs: Materials
The development of more efficient thermoelectric couple technology capable of operating with high-grade heat sources up to 1,275 K is key to improving the...
Briefs: Materials
Modeling of Alkane Oxidation Using Constituents and Species
It is currently not possible to perform simulations of turbulent reactive flows due in particular to complex chemistry, which may contain thousands of reactions and hundreds of species. This complex chemistry results in additional differential equations, making the numerical solution of...
Briefs: Materials
A Computer Model for Analyzing Volatile Removal Assembly
A computer model simulates reactional gas/liquid two-phase flow processes in porous media. A typical process is the oxygen/wastewater flow in the Volatile Removal Assembly (VRA) in the Closed Environment Life Support System (CELSS) installed in the International Space Station (ISS). The...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
An axisymmetric full Navier-Stokes computational fluid dynamics (CFD) study was conducted to examine nozzle exhaust jet plume effects on the sonic boom signature of a supersonic...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Handheld White Light Interferometer for Measuring Defect Depth in Windows
Accurate quantification of defects (scratches and impacts) is vital to the certification of flight hardware and other critical components. The amount of damage to a particular component contributes to the performance, reliability, and safety of a system, which ultimately...
Briefs: Information Technology
Decomposition Algorithm for Global Reachability on a Time-Varying Graph
A decomposition algorithm has been developed for global reachability analysis on a space-time grid. By exploiting the upper block-triangular structure, the planning problem is decomposed into smaller subproblems, which is much more scalable than the original approach.
Briefs: Information Technology
Autonomous GN&C for Spacecraft Exploration of Comets and Asteroids
A spacecraft guidance, navigation, and control (GN&C) system is needed to enable a spacecraft to descend to a surface, take a sample using a touch-and-go (TAG) sampling approach, and then safely ascend. At the time of this reporting, a flyable GN&C system that can accomplish...
Briefs: Information Technology
Efficient Web Services Policy Combination
Large-scale Web security systems usually involve cooperation between domains with non-identical policies. The network management and Web communication software used by the different organizations presents a stumbling block. Many of the tools used by the various divisions do not have the ability to...
Briefs: Information Technology
Using CTX Image Features to Predict HiRISE-Equivalent Rock Density
Methods have been developed to quantitatively assess rock hazards at candidate landing sites with the aid of images from the HiRISE camera onboard NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter. HiRISE is able to resolve rocks as small as 1-m in diameter. Some sites of interest do not have...
Briefs: Information Technology
Inversion Method for Early Detection of ARES-1 Case Breach Failure
A document describes research into the problem of detecting a case breach formation at an early stage of a rocket flight. An inversion algorithm for case breach allocation is proposed and analyzed. It is shown how the case breach can be allocated at an early stage of its development...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Use of ILTV Control Laws for LaNCETS Flight Research
A report discusses the Lift and Nozzle Change Effects on Tail Shock (LaNCETS) test to investigate the effects of lift distribution and nozzle-area ratio changes on tail shock strength of an F-15 aircraft. Specific research objectives are to obtain in-flight shock strength for multiple...
Briefs: Information Technology
Evaluating Descent and Ascent Trajectories Near Non-Spherical Bodies
Spacecraft landing on small bodies pass through regions where conventional gravitation formulations using exterior spherical harmonics are inaccurate. An investigation shows that a formulation using interior solid spherical harmonics might be satisfactory. Interior spherical...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Process To Produce Iron Nanoparticle Lunar Dust Simulant Composite
A document discusses a method for producing nanophase iron lunar dust composite simulant by heating a mixture of carbon black and current lunar simulant types (mixed oxide including iron oxide) at a high temperature to reduce ionic iron into elemental iron. The product is a...
Briefs: Lighting
Strobe or rotating beacon-type emergency lighting is a requirement on all Minnesota Department of Transportation (Mn/DOT) maintenance and construction vehicles. There is an effort to...
Briefs: Lighting
This report describes the process and results of a demonstration of solid-state lighting (SSL) technology combined with occupancy sensors in a set of upright grocery store freezer cases. The...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Optical Sidebands Multiplier
Optical sidebands have been generated with relative frequency tens to hundreds of GHz by using optical sidebands that are generated in a cascade process in high-quality optical resonators with Kerr nonlinearity, such as whispering gallery mode (WGM) resonators. For this purpose, the WGM resonator needs to be optically...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Maximum Likelihood Time-of-Arrival Estimation of Optical Pulses via Photon-Counting Photodetectors
Many optical imaging, ranging, and communications systems rely on the estimation of the arrival time of an optical pulse. Recently, such systems have been increasingly employing photon-counting photodetector technology, which changes the statistics of...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Single Spatial-Mode Room-Temperature-Operated 3.0 to 3.4 μm Diode Lasers
Compact, highly efficient, 3.0 to 3.4 μm light emitters are in demand for spectroscopic analysis and identification of chemical substances (including methane and formaldehyde), infrared countermeasures technologies, and development of advanced infrared scene projectors. The...
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