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Briefs: Green Design & Manufacturing
Briefs: Materials
An improved class of formulations for PMR polyimide resins retards the imidization that undesirably occurs during handling and storage. While imidization is desired at the final...
Briefs: Materials
Silica-Filled EPDM Rubbers as Ablative Insulating Materials
Silica-filled polymers made from ethylene propylene diene monomer (EPDM) have been found to be useful as ablative thermal-insulation materials. These polymers have been investigated as candidates to replace some previously developed polymeric ablative rocket-engine insulating materials...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Cryogenic Flow Sensor
An acousto-optic cryogenic flow sensor (CFS) determines mass flow of cryogens for spacecraft propellant management. The CFS operates unobtrusively in a high-pressure, high-flowrate cryogenic environment to provide measurements for fluid quality as well as mass flow rate. Experimental hardware uses an optical...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Robust mud detection is a critical perception requirement for Un manned Ground Vehicle (UGV) auton omous offroad navigation. A military UGV stuck in a mud body during a mission may have to be sacrificed or rescued,...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Gas Flow Detection System
This system provides a portable means to detect gas flow through a thin-walled tube without breaking into the tubing system. The flow detection system was specifically designed to detect flow through two parallel branches of a manifold with only one inlet and outlet, and is a means for verifying a space shuttle program...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
An improved method of mapping the capacitive contribution to cross-talk among pixels in an imaging array of sensors (typically, an imaging photodetector array) has been devised for use...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Fiber-Based Laser Transmitter for Oxygen A-Band Spectroscopy and Remote Sensing
A fiber-based laser transmitter has been designed for active remote-sensing spectroscopy. The transmitter uses a master-oscillator- power-amplifier (MOPA) configuration with a distributed feedback diode-laser master oscillator and an erbium-doped fiber amplifier. The...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Low-Profile, Dual-Wavelength, Dual-Polarized Antenna
A single-aperture, low-profile antenna design has been developed that supports dual-polarization and simultaneous operation at two wavelengths. It realizes multiple beams in the elevation plane, and supports radiometric, radar, and conical scanning applications.
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Time-Separating Heating and Sensor Functions of Thermistors in Precision Thermal Control Applications
A method allows combining the functions of a heater and a thermometer in a single device, a thermistor, with minimal temperature read errors. Because thermistors typically have a much smaller thermal mass than the objects they monitor, the thermal...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
The cellular reflectarray antenna is intended to replace conventional parabolic reflectors that must be physically aligned with a particular satellite in geostationary orbit. These arrays are designed for specified...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Ethernet-Enabled Power and Communication Module for Embedded Processors
The power and communications module is a printed circuit board (PCB) that has the capability of providing power to an embedded processor and converting Ethernet packets into serial data to transfer to the processor. The purpose of the new design is to address the shortcomings...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Two-Dimensional Synthetic-Aperture Radiometer
A two-dimensional synthetic-aperture radiometer, now undergoing development, serves as a test bed for demonstrating the potential of aperture synthesis for remote sensing of the Earth, particularly for measuring spatial distributions of soil moisture and ocean-surface salinity. The goal is to use the...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A proposed one-dimensional synthetic-aperture microwave radiometer could serve as an alternative to either the two-dimensional synthetic-aperture radiometer described in the immediately...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Electrical Switching of Perovskite Thin-Film Resistors
Electronic devices that exploit electrical switching of physical properties of thin films of perovskite materials (especially colossal magnetoresistive materials) have been invented. Unlike some related prior devices, these devices function at room temperature and do not depend on externally...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Electrically Variable Resistive Memory Devices
Nonvolatile electronic memory devices that store data in the form of electrical-resistance values, and memory circuits based on such devices, have been invented. These devices and circuits exploit an electrically-variableresistance phenomenon that occurs in thin films of certain oxides that exhibit the...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Some modifications that could be made, separately or together, have been conceived as improvements of the generic design of a structure of the type described in “Hybrid Inflatable...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Electrostatic Separator for Beneficiation of Lunar Soil
A charge separator has been constructed for use in a lunar environment that will allow for separation of minerals from lunar soil. Any future lunar base and habitat must be constructed from strong, dense materials to provide for thermal and radiation protection. It has been proposed that lunar...
Briefs: Materials
Wider-Opening Dewar Flasks for Cryogenic Storage
Dewar flasks have been proposed as containers for relatively long-term (25 days) storage of perishable scientific samples or other perishable objects at a temperature of –175 °C. The refrigeration would be maintained through slow boiling of liquid nitrogen (LN2). For the purposes of the...
Briefs: Materials
Supercapacitor Electrolyte Solvents With Liquid Range Below –80 °C
A previous NASA Tech Brief [“Low-Temperature Supercapacitors” (NPO-44386) NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 32, No 7 (July 2008), page 32] detailed ongoing efforts to develop non-aqueous supercapacitor electrolytes capable of supporting operation at temperatures below commercially...
Briefs: Materials
Silicon Oxycarbide Aerogels for High-Temperature Thermal Insulation
A high-performance, silicon oxycarbide (SiOC) aerogel material is suitable for use as thermal insulation at temperatures approaching 1,200 °C. These aerogel composites were created using cost-effective and commercially available polymeric precursors (the polymethylsiloxane resin,...
Briefs: Materials
New designs, and materials appropriate for such designs, are under investigation in an effort to develop coronagraph occulting masks having broad-band spectral characteristics...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Turbulence and the Stabilization Principle
Further results of research, reported in several previous NASA Tech Briefs articles, were obtained on a mathematical formalism for postinstability motions of a dynamical system characterized by exponential divergences of trajectories leading to chaos (including turbulence).
Briefs: Physical Sciences
An improved thermal-gradient cloud condensation nucleus spectrometer (CCNS) has been designed to provide several enhancements over prior thermal- gradient counters, including fast response and...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
An improved mathematical model has been developed of the time dependence of buildup or decay of electric charge in a high-resistivity (nominally insulating) material. The model is...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Terahertz Mapping of Microstructure and Thickness Variations
A noncontact method has been devised for mapping or imaging spatial variations in the thickness and microstructure of a layer of a dielectric material. The method involves (1) placement of the dielectric material on a metal substrate, (2) through-the-thickness pulse-echo measurements by...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Efficient Algorithmic Interleaver for Turbo Decoder
An efficient bit-interleaving algorithm for a turbo encoder differs from prior such algorithms in that it does not require memory to store permutation mappings and can work with constituent decoders that produce multiple bit reliabilities per decoding stage. The algorithm can be implemented in...
Top Stories
Blog: Design
A Stretchable OLED that Can Maintain Most of Its Luminescence
INSIDER: Design
Advancing All-Solid-State Batteries
Blog: Power
My Opinion: We Need More Power Soon — Is Nuclear the Answer?
Blog: Energy
Batteries that Can Withstand the Cold
Quiz: Power
Blog: Robotics, Automation & Control
Microscopic Swimming Machines that Can Sense, Respond to Surroundings
Webcasts
On-Demand Webinars: Transportation
Advantages of Smart Power Distribution Unit Design for Automotive &...
Upcoming Webinars: Unmanned Systems
Quiet, Please: NVH Improvement Opportunities in the Early Design...
Upcoming Webinars: AR/AI
From Spreadsheets to Insights: Fast Data Analysis Without Complex...
Upcoming Webinars: Electronics & Computers
Cooling a New Generation of Aerospace and Defense Embedded...
Upcoming Webinars: AR/AI
Beyond AI-Copy-Paste Engineering: Advanced AI-Integration Success...
Upcoming Webinars: Energy
