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Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Plasma pyrolysis of methane has been investigated for utility as a process for producing hydrogen. This process was conceived as a means of recovering hydrogen from methane produced as a...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Self-Deployable Membrane Structures
Currently existing approaches for deployment of large, ultra-lightweight gossamer structures in space rely typically upon electromechanical mechanisms and mechanically expandable or inflatable booms for deployment and to maintain them in a fully deployed, operational configuration. These support structures, with...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Reactivation of a Tin-Oxide-Containing Catalyst
The electrons in electric-discharge CO2 lasers cause dissociation of some CO2 into O2 and CO, and attach themselves to electronegative molecules such as O2, forming negative O2 ions, as well as larger negative ion clusters by collisions with CO or other molecules. The decrease in CO2 concentration due...
Briefs: Materials
Products and manufacturing processes can be sensitive to outgassed chemical compounds, resulting in the use of adhesives, encapsulants, and sealants that have been specially formulated for low-outgassing performance....
Briefs: Materials
Functionalization of Single-Wall Carbon Nanotubes by Photo-Oxidation
A new technique for carbon nanotube oxidation was developed based upon the photo-oxidation of organic compounds. The resulting method is more benign than conventional oxidation approaches and produces single-wall carbon nanotubes (SWCNTs) with higher levels of oxidation.
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Mass balances usually use a strain gauge that requires an impedance measurement and is susceptible to noise and thermal drift. A piezoelectric balance can be used to measure mass directly by monitoring...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Acoustic Liner for Turbomachinery Applications
The purpose of this innovation is to reduce aircraft noise in the communities surrounding airports by significantly attenuating the noise generated by the turbomachinery, and enhancing safety by providing a containment barrier for a blade failure. Acoustic liners are used in today’s turbofan engines...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
A bladderless water tank (see figure) has been developed that contains capillary devices that allow it to be filled and emptied, as needed, in microgravity. When filled with water, the tank...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Large-Flow-Area Flow-Selective Liquid/Gas Separator
This liquid/gas separator provides the basis for a first stage of a fuel cell product water/oxygen gas phase separator. It can separate liquid and gas in bulk in multiple gravity environments. The system separates fuel cell product water entrained with circulating oxygen gas from the outlet of a...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Metering Gas Strut for Separating Rocket Stages
A proposed gas strut system would separate a liquid-fueled second rocket stage from a solid-fueled first stage using an array of pre-charged struts. The strut would be a piston-and-cylinder mechanism containing a compressed gas. Adiabatic expansion of the gas would drive the extension of the strut....
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Counterflowing Jet Subsystem Design
A counterflowing jet design (a spacecraft and trans-atmospheric subsystem) employs centrally located, supersonic cold gas jets on the face of the vehicle, ejecting into the oncoming free stream. Depending on the supersonic free-stream conditions and the ejected mass flow rate of the counterflowing jets, the bow...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
True Shear Parallel Plate Viscometer
This viscometer (which can also be used as a rheometer) is designed for use with liquids over a large temperature range. The device consists of horizontally disposed, similarly sized, parallel plates with a precisely known gap. The lower plate is driven laterally with a motor to apply shear to the liquid in the...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
An improved magnetic levitation apparatus (“Maglev Facility”) has been built for use in experiments in which there are requirements to impose variable gravity (including zero gravity) in order...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Focusing Diffraction Grating Element With Aberration Control
Diffraction gratings are optical components with regular patterns of grooves, which angularly disperse incoming light by wavelength in a single plane, called dispersion plane. Traditional gratings on flat substrates do not perform wavefront transformation in the plane perpendicular to the...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Universal Millimeter-Wave Radar Front End
A quasi-optical front end allows any arbitrary polarization to be transmitted by controlling the timing, amplitude, and phase of the two input ports. The front end consists of two independent channels — horizontal and vertical. Each channel has two ports — transmit and receive. The transmit signal is...
Briefs: Information Technology
3D GeoWall Analysis System for Shuttle External Tank Foreign Object Debris Events
An analytical, advanced imaging method has been developed for the initial monitoring and identification of foam debris and similar anomalies that occur post-launch in reference to the space shuttle’s external tank (ET). Remote sensing technologies have been used to...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Hidden Statistics Approach to Quantum Simulations
Recent advances in quantum information theory have inspired an explosion of interest in new quantum algorithms for solving hard computational (quantum and non-quantum) problems. The basic principle of quantum computation is that the quantum properties can be used to represent structure data, and...
Briefs: Information Technology
Determining Atmospheric-Density Profile of Titan
A method was developed for measuring the atmospheric density of Titan, the largest moon of Saturn, to create an accurate density profile as a function of altitude. This will allow mission planners to select safe flyby altitudes, and for navigation engineers to accurately predict the delta-v...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Plenoptic Imager for Automated Surface Navigation
An electro-optical imaging device is capable of autonomously determining the range to objects in a scene without the use of active emitters or multiple apertures. The novel, automated, low-power imaging system is based on a plenoptic camera design that was constructed as a breadboard system....
Briefs: Imaging
Reconstituted Three-Dimensional Interactive Imaging
A method combines two-dimensional images, enhancing the images as well as rendering a 3D, enhanced, interactive computer image or visual model. Any advanced compiler can be used in conjunction with any graphics library package for this method, which is intended to take digitized images and...
Briefs: Software
Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) for the HyspIRI Spectrometer Mission
The OSSE software provides an integrated end-to-end environment to simulate an Earth observing system by iteratively running a distributed modeling workflow based on the HyspIRI Mission, including atmospheric radiative transfer, surface albedo effects, detection, and...
Briefs: Software
Probabilistic Design and Analysis Framework
PRODAF is a software package designed to aid analysts and designers in conducting probabilistic analysis of components and systems. PRODAF can integrate multiple analysis programs to ease the tedious process of conducting a complex analysis process that requires the use of multiple software packages. The...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Excavator Design Validation
The Excavator Design Validation tool verifies excavator designs by automatically generating control systems and modeling their performance in an accurate simulation of their expected environment. Part of this software design includes interfacing with human operations that can be included in simulation-based studies and...
Briefs: Software
Momentum Management Tool for Low-Thrust Missions
A momentum management tool was designed for the Dawn low-thrust interplanetary spacecraft en route to the asteroids Vesta and Ceres, in an effort to better understand the early creation of the solar system. Momentum must be managed to ensure the spacecraft has enough control authority to perform...
Briefs: Software
Mixed Real/Virtual Operator Interface for ATHLETE
The mixed real/virtual operator interface for ATHLETE (MSim-ATHLETE) is a new software system for operating manipulation and inspection tasks in JPL’s ATHLETE (All-Terrain Hex-Legged Extra-Terrestrial Explorer). The system presents the operator with a graphical model of the robot and a palette of...
Briefs: Software
Antenna Controller Replacement Software
The Antenna Controller Replacement (ACR) software accurately points and monitors the Deep Space Network (DSN) 70-m and 34-m high-efficiency (HEF) ground-based antennas that are used to track primarily spacecraft and, periodically, celestial targets. To track a spacecraft, or other targets, the antenna must be...
Briefs: Software
Efficient Parallel Engineering Computing on Linux Workstations
A C software module has been developed that creates lightweight processes (LWPs) dynamically to achieve parallel computing performance in a variety of engineering simulation and analysis applications to support NASA and DoD project tasks. The required interface between the module and...
Briefs: Software
The FAILSAFE project is developing concepts and prototype implementations for software health management in mission-critical, real-time embedded systems. The project unites features of the...
Briefs: Software
This software has been designed to detect water bodies that are out in the open on cross-country terrain at mid- to far-range (approximately 20–100 meters), using imagery acquired from a stereo pair of...
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