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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Gimballing Spacecraft Thruster
A gimballing spacecraft reaction-control-system thruster was developed that consists of a small hydrogen/oxygen-burning rocket engine integrated with a Canfield joint. (Named after its inventor, a Canfield joint is a special gimbal mount that is strong and stable yet allows a wide range of motion.) One especially...
Briefs: Unmanned Systems
An ocean thermal energy conversion (OTEC), now undergoing development, is a less-massive, more-efficient means of exploiting the same basic principle as that of the proposed system described in...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Reflector Surface Error Compensation in Dual-Reflector Antennas
By probing the field on a small subreflector at a minimal number of points, the main reflector surface errors can be obtained and subsequently used to design a phase-correction subreflector that can compensate for main reflector errors. The compensating phase-error profile across the...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
The name “enriched storable oxidizers” (ESOs) has been coined for a family of optimized mixtures of between two and four oxidizer fluids. For most applications, the constituents of these...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Planar Submillimeter-Wave Mixer Technology With Integrated Antenna
High-performance mixers at terahertz frequencies require good matching between the coupling circuits such as antennas and local oscillators and the diode embedding impedance. With the availability of amplifiers at submillimeter wavelengths and the need to have multi-pixel imagers...
Briefs: Information Technology
Reactive Collision Avoidance Algorithm
The reactive collision avoidance (RCA) algorithm allows a spacecraft to find a fuel-optimal trajectory for avoiding an arbitrary number of colliding spacecraft in real time while accounting for acceleration limits. In addition to spacecraft, the technology can be used for vehicles that can accelerate in any...
Briefs: Information Technology
Modeling Common-Sense Decisions in Artificial Intelligence
A methodology has been conceived for efficient synthesis of dynamical models that simulate common-sense decision-making processes. This methodology is intended to contribute to the design of artificial-intelligence systems that could imitate human commonsense decision making or assist...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Graph-Based Path-Planning for Titan Balloons
A document describes a graph-based path-planning algorithm for balloons with vertical control authority and little or no horizontal control authority. The balloons are designed to explore celestial bodies with atmospheres, such as Titan, a moon of Saturn. The algorithm discussed enables the balloon to...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Nanolaminate Membranes as Cylindrical Telescope Reflectors
A document discusses a proposal to use axially stretched metal nanolaminate membranes as lightweight parabolic cylindrical reflectors in the Dual Anamorphic Reflector Telescope (DART) — a planned spaceborne telescope in which the cylindrical reflectors would be arranged to obtain a point...
Briefs: Information Technology
Fast Solution in Sparse LDA for Binary Classification
An algorithm that performs sparse linear discriminant analysis (Sparse-LDA) finds near-optimal solutions in far less time than the prior art when specialized to binary classification (of 2 classes). Sparse-LDA is a type of feature- or variable-selection problem with numerous applications in...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Air-Sea Spray Airborne Radar Profiler Characterizes Energy Fluxes in Hurricanes
A report discusses ASAP (Air-sea Spray Airborne Profiler), a dual-wavelength radar profiler that provides measurement information about the droplet size distribution (DSD) of sea-spray, which can be used to estimate heat and moisture fluxes for hurricane research....
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Large Telescope Segmented Primary Mirror Alignment
A document discusses a broadband (white light) point source, located at the telescope Cassegrain focus, which generates a cone of light limited by the hole in the secondary mirror (SM). It propagates to the aspheric null-mirror, which is optimized to make all the reflected rays to be normal to the...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Simplified Night Sky Display System
A document describes a simple night sky display system that is portable, lightweight, and includes, at most, four components in its simplest configuration. The total volume of this system is no more than 106 cm3 in a disassembled state, and weighs no more than 20 kilograms. The four basic components are a...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Determination of neutral winds and ion drifts in low-Earth-orbit missions requires measurements of the angular and energy distributions of the flux of neutrals and ions...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Three proposed methods for measuring trace quantities of hydrazines involve ionization and detection of hydrazine derivatives. These methods are intended to overcome the limitations of prior...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
The Cryogenic Moisture Apparatus (CMA) is designed for quantifying the amount of moisture from the surrounding air that is taken up by cryogenic-tank-insulating material specimens while under typical conditions of...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A transportable atom interferometer-based gravity gradiometer has been developed at JPL to carry out measurements of Earth’s gravity field at ever finer spatial resolutions, and...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Instrument for Analysis of Greenland’s Glacier Mills
A new instrument is used to study the inner workings of Greenland’s glacier mills by riding the currents inside a glacier’s moulin. The West Greenland Moulin Explorer instrument was deployed into a tubular shaft to autonomously record temperature, pressure, 3D acceleration, and location. It...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Wavefront Correction for Large, Flexible Antenna Reflector
A wavefront-correction system has been proposed as part of an outer-space radio communication system that would include a large, somewhat flexible main reflector antenna, a smaller subreflector antenna, and a small array feed at the focal plane of these two reflector antennas. Part of the...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Specially designed focusing of light beams has been proposed as a means of improving the performances of optical buffers based on cells containing hot atomic vapors (e.g., rubidium...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Specially designed focusing of light beams has been proposed as a means of improving the performances of optical buffers based on cells containing hot atomic vapors (e.g., rubidium...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Low-Friction, Low-Profile, High-Moment Two-Axis Joint
The two-axis joint is a mechanical device that provides two-degrees-of-freedom motion between connected components. A compact, moment-resistant, twoaxis joint is used to connect an electromechanical actuator to its driven structural members. Due to the requirements of the overall mechanism, the...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Miniature Multi-Axis Mechanism for Hand Controllers
A hand controller provides up to three axes of motion, and all required feel characteristics (stiffness and breakout torques) located inside a hollow handle within the grip of the hand. This is achieved using a miniature gimbal mechanism that allows for independent motion about one, two, or three...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
A magnetostrictive brake has been designed as a more energy-efficient alternative to a magnetic fail-safe brake in a robot. (In the specific application, “fail-safe” signifies that the brake is normally engaged; that...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Active and Passive Hybrid Sensor
A hybrid ocean wind sensor (HOWS) can map ocean vector wind in low to hurricane-level winds, and non-precipitating and precipitating conditions. It can acquire active and passive measurements through a single aperture at two wavelengths, two polarizations, and multiple incidence angles. Its low profile, compact...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Quick-Response Thermal Actuator for Use as a Heat Switch
This work improves the performance of a heat switch, or a thermal actuator, by delivering heat to the actuator in a more efficient manner. The method uses a heat pipe as the plunger or plug instead of just using a solid piece of metal. The heat pipe could be one tailored for fast transient...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
AlGaN Ultraviolet Detectors for Dual-Band UV Detection
This innovation comprises technology that has the ability to measure at least two ultraviolet (UV) bands using one detector without relying on any external optical filters. This allows users to build a miniature UVA and UVB monitor, as well as to develop compact, multicolor imaging technologies...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Perlite is the most typical insulating powder used to separate the inner and outer shells of cryogenic tanks. The inner tank holds the low-temperature commodity, while the outer...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A proposed radiation-detecting apparatus would provide information on the kinetic energies, directions, and electric charges of highly energetic incident subatomic particles. The apparatus was originally...
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