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Briefs: Information Technology
Model for Simulating a Spiral Software-Development Process
A discrete-event simulation model, and a computer program that implements the model, have been developed as means of analyzing a spiral software-development process. This model can be tailored to specific development environments for use by software project managers in making quantitative...
Briefs: Information Technology
Adapting ASPEN for Orbital Express
By studying the Orbital Express mission, modeling the spacecraft and scenarios, and testing the system, a technique has been developed that uses recursive decomposition to represent procedural actions declaratively, schemalevel uncertainty reasoning to make uncertainty reasoning tractable, and lightweight, natural...
Briefs: Information Technology
Algorithm That Synthesizes Other Algorithms for Hashing
An algorithm that includes a collection of several subalgorithms has been devised as a means of synthesizing still other algorithms (which could include computer code) that utilize hashing to determine whether an element (typically, a number or other datum) is a member of a set (typically, a...
Briefs: Green Design & Manufacturing
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A method gathers scene information from a low-cost camera system. Existing surveillance systems using sufficient cameras for continuous coverage of a large field necessarily generate enormous...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Data Acquisition System for Multi-Frequency Radar Flight Operations Preparation
A three-channel data acquisition system was developed for the NASA Multi-Frequency Radar (MFR) system. The system is based on a commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) industrial PC (personal computer) and two dual-channel 14-bit digital receiver cards. The decimated complex...
Briefs: Software
Integrating Radar Image Data With Google Maps
A public Web site has been developed as a method for displaying the multitude of radar imagery collected by NASA’s Airborne Synthetic Aperture Radar (AIR-SAR) instrument during its 16-year mission. Utilizing NASA’s internal AIRSAR site, the new Web site features more sophisticated visualization...
Briefs: Software
Mercury Toolset for Spatiotemporal Metadata
Mercury http://mercury.ornl.gov is a set of tools for federated harvesting, searching, and retrieving metadata, particularly spatiotemporal metadata. Version 3.0 of the Mercury toolset provides orders of magnitude improvements in search speed, support for additional metadata formats, integration with...
Briefs: Software
Social Tagging of Mission Data
Mars missions will generate a large amount of data in various forms, such as daily plans, images, and scientific information. Often, there is a semantic linkage between images that cannot be captured automatically. Software is needed that will provide a method for creating arbitrary tags for this mission data so that...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Interface Supports Lightweight Subsystem Routing for Flight Applications
A wireless avionics interface exploits the constrained nature of data networks in flight systems to use a lightweight routing method. This simplified routing means that a processor is not required, and the logic can be implemented as an intellectual property (IP) core in a...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Demonstration of a Submillimeter-Wave HEMT Oscillator Module at 330 GHz
In this work, radial transitions have been successfully mated with a HEMT-based MMIC (high-electron-mobility-transistor-based monolithic microwave integrated circuit) oscillator circuit. The chip has been assembled into a WR2.2 waveguide module for the basic implementation with...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Flexible Peripheral Component Interconnect Input/Output Card
The Flexible Peripheral Component Interconnect (PCI) Input/Output (I/O) Card is an innovative circuit board that provides functionality to interface between a variety of devices. It supports user-defined interrupts for interface synchronization, tracks system faults and failures, and...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Several different experimental monolithic microwave integrated circuit (MMIC) amplifiers have been designed to operate in frequency bands ranging from 350 to 500 GHz and were undergoing...
Briefs: Software
Public Risk Assessment Program
The Public Entry Risk Assessment (PERA) program addresses risk to the public from shuttle or other spacecraft re-entry trajectories. Managing public risk to acceptable levels is a major component of safe spacecraft operation. PERA is given scenario inputs of vehicle trajectory, probability of failure along that...
Briefs: Software
Particle Swarm Optimization Toolbox
The Particle Swarm Optimization Toolbox is a library of evolutionary optimization tools developed in the MAT-LAB environment. The algorithms contained in the library include a genetic algorithm (GA), a single-objective particle swarm optimizer (SOPSO), and a multi-objective particle swarm optimizer (MOPSO)....
Briefs: Software
Telescience Support Center Data System Software
The Telescience Support Center (TSC) team has developed a database-driven, increment-specific Data Requirement Document (DRD) generation tool that automates much of the work required for generating and formatting the DRD. It creates a database to load the required changes to configure the TSC data...
Briefs: Software
Update on PISCES
An updated version of the Platform Independent Software Components for the Exploration of Space (PISCES) software library is available. A previous version was reported in “Library for Developing Spacecraft-Mission-Planning Software” (MSC-22983), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 25, No. 7 (July 2001), page 52. To recapitulate: This...
Briefs: Software
Ground and Space Radar Volume Matching and Comparison Software
This software enables easy comparison of ground- and space-based radar observations. The software was initially designed to compare ground radar reflectivity from operational, ground based S- and C-band meteorological radars with comparable measurements from the Tropical Rainfall...
Briefs: Software
Web-Based Interface for Command and Control of Network Sensors
This software allows for the visualization and control of a network of sensors through a Web browser interface. It is currently being deployed for a network of sensors monitoring Mt. Saint Helen’s volcano; however, this innovation is generic enough that it can be deployed for any type...
Briefs: Software
Orbit Determination Toolbox
The Orbit Determination Toolbox is an orbit determination (OD) analysis tool based on MATLAB and Java that provides a flexible way to do early mission analysis. The toolbox is primarily intended for advanced mission analysis such as might be performed in concept exploration, proposal, early design phase, or rapid design...
Briefs: Software
Distributed Observer Network
The Distributed Observer network (DON) is a NASA-collaborative environment that leverages game technology to bring three-dimensional simulations to conventional desktop and laptop computers in order to allow teams of engi-
neers working on design and operations, either individually or in groups, to view and collaborate...
Briefs: Software
Computer-Automated Evolution of Spacecraft X-Band Antennas
A document discusses the use of computer-aided evolution in arriving at a design for X-band communication antennas for NASA’s three Space Technology 5 (ST5) satellites, which were launched on March 22, 2006. Two evolutionary algorithms, incorporating different representations of the...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Practical Loop-Shaping Design of Feedback Control Systems
An improved methodology for designing feedback control systems has been developed based on systematically shaping the loop gain of the system to meet performance requirements such as stability margins, disturbance attenuation, and transient response, while taking into account the actuation...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Fully Printed High-Frequency Phased-Array Antenna on Flexible Substrate
To address the issues of flexible electronics needed for surface-to-surface, surface-to-orbit, and back-to-Earth communications necessary for manned exploration of the Moon, Mars, and beyond, a room-temperature printing process has been developed to create active, phased-array...
Briefs: Materials
Modeling of Failure for Analysis of Triaxial Braided Carbon Fiber Composites
In the development of advanced aircraft-engine fan cases and containment systems, composite materials are beginning to be used due to their low weight and high strength. The design of these structures must include the capability of withstanding impact loads from a released...
Briefs: Materials
An alternative method of low-temperature plasma functionalization of carbon nanotubes provides for the simultaneous attachment of molecular groups of multiple (typically two or three)...
Briefs: Materials
Catalyst for Carbon Monoxide Oxidation
In many applications, it is highly desirable to operate a CO2 laser in a sealed condition, for in an open system the laser requires a continuous flow of laser gas to remove the dissociation products that occur in the discharge zone of the laser, in order to maintain a stable power output. This adds to the...
Briefs: Materials
Titanium Hydroxide — a Volatile Species at High Temperature
Titanium hydroxide, TiO(OH)2 (g), has been identified as the primary reaction product of TiO2 (s) + H2O (g) at high temperatures (1,200–1,400 °C) through the use of the transpiration technique. This technique is a well-established method used to measure equilibrium pressures at 1 atm....
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Hybrid Heat Exchangers
A hybrid light-weight heat exchanger concept has been developed that uses high-conductivity carbon-carbon (C–C) composites as the heat-transfer fins and uses conventional high-temperature metals, such as Inconel, nickel, and titanium as the parting sheets to meet leakage and structural requirements.
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