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Briefs: Materials
Improved crucibles consisting mainly of metal-reinforced ceramic ampules have been developed for use in experiments in which material specimens are heated in the crucibles to various high temperatures,...
Briefs: Materials
Adjustable Membrane Mirrors Incorporating G-Elastomers
Lightweight, flexible, large-aperture mirrors of a type being developed for use in outer space have unimorph structures that enable precise adjustment of their surface figures. A mirror of this type includes a reflective membrane layer bonded with an electrostrictive grafted elastomer...
Briefs: Materials
High-Temperature Crystal-Growth Cartridge Tubes Made by VPS
Cartridge tubes for use in a crystal-growth furnace at temperatures as high as 1,600°C have been fabricated by vacuum plasma spraying (VPS). These cartridges consist mainly of an alloy of 60 weight percent molybdenum with 40 weight percent rhenium, made from molybdenum powder coated...
Briefs: Materials
Hall-Effect Thruster Utilizing Bismuth as Propellant
A laboratory-model Hall-effect spacecraft thruster was developed that utilizes bismuth as the propellant. Xenon was used in most prior Hall-effect thrusters. Bismuth is an attractive alternative because it has a larger atomic mass, a larger electron- impact- ionization cross-section, and is...
Briefs: Materials
Applying an electric current to specially coated glass results in radiant heat energy. This process creates a transparent heating element with near- uniform surface temperatures. Manufacturing the...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
An apparatus is being developed for sampling water for signs of microbial life in an ocean hydrothermal vent at a depth of as much as 6.5 km. Heretofore, evidence of microbial life in deep-sea hydrothermal...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Mars Rocket Propulsion System
A report discusses the methane and carbon monoxide/LOX (McLOx) rocket for ascent from Mars as well as other critical space propulsion tasks. The system offers a specific impulse over 370 s — roughly 50 s higher than existing space-storable bio- propellants. Current Mars in-situ propellant production (ISPP)...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Two-Stage Passive Vibration Isolator
The design and testing of a structural system were implemented to hold the optics of the planned Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) at positions and orientations characterized by vibrational translation and rotation errors of no more than a few nanometers or a few milliarcseconds, respectively. Much of the...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Altimetry Using GPS-Reflection/Occultation Interferometry
A Global Positioning System (GPS)- reflection/occultation interferometry was examined as a means of altimetry of water and ice surfaces in polar regions. In GPS- reflection/occultation interferometry, a GPS receiver aboard a satellite in a low orbit around the Earth is used to determine the...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Improved Thermal Design of a Compression Mold
A compression tool used to make 1-in. (2.5-cm) diameter disks of high-temperature polymers was designed to be shorter and of larger diameter than conventional tools to reduce heat loss to the surrounding air, thus making more efficient use of applied heat. This system is less sensitive to the amount and...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Enhanced Pseudo-Waypoint Guidance for Spacecraft Maneuvers
An enhanced version of the scheme reported in “Pseudo-Waypoint Guidance for Proximity Spacecraft Maneuvers” (NPO-42753), NASA Tech Briefs, Vol. 31, No. 6 (June 2007), page 73 was developed. To recapitulate: the scheme provides algorithms for guidance and control (G&C) of a...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Thermally Driven Josephson Effect
A concept is proposed of the thermally driven Josephson effect in superfluid helium. Heretofore, the Josephson effect in a superfluid has been recognized as an oscillatory flow that arises in response to a steady pressure difference between two superfluid reservoirs separated by an array of submicron-sized...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A method of using ellipsometry or polarization analysis of light in total internal reflection of a surface to determine the number density of gold nanoparticles on a smooth substrate...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Gold Nanoparticle Labels Amplify Ellipsometric Signals
The ellipsometric method reported in the immediately preceding article was developed in conjunction with a method of using gold nanoparticles as labels on biomolecules that one seeks to detect. The purpose of the labeling is to exploit the optical properties of the gold nanoparticles in order...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Perturbation Effects on a Supercritical C₇H₁₆/N₂ Mixing Layer
This report presents a computational-simulation study of effects of perturbation wavelengths and initial Reynolds numbers on the transition to turbulence of a heptane/nitrogen mixing layer at supercritical pressure. The governing equations for the simulations were the same as...
Briefs: Information Technology
Schema for Spacecraft-Command Dictionary
An Extensible Markup Language (XML) schema was developed as a means of defining and describing a structure for capturing spacecraft command-definition and tracking information in a single location in a form readable by both engineers and software used to generate software for flight and ground systems. A...
Briefs: Information Technology
Self-Adjusting Hash Tables for Embedded Flight Applications
A common practice in computer science to associate a value with a key is to use a class of algorithms called a hash-table. These algorithms enable rapid storage and retrieval of values based upon a key. This approach assumes that many keys will need to be stored immediately. A new set of...
Briefs: Information Technology
An algorithm generates grid coordinates for a computationally efficient spiral search pattern covering an uncertain rectangular area spanned by a coordinate grid. The algorithm does not require...
Briefs: Information Technology
Algorithm-Based Fault Tolerance Integrated With Replication
In a proposed approach to programming and utilization of commercial off-the-shelf computing equipment, a combination of algorithm-based fault tolerance (ABFT) and replication would be utilized to obtain high degrees of fault tolerance without incurring excessive costs. The basic idea of...
Briefs: Information Technology
Targeting and Localization for Mars Rover Operations
A design and a partially developed application framework were presented for improving localization and targeting for surface spacecraft. The program has value for the Mars Science Laboratory mission, and has been delivered to support the Mars Exploration Rovers as part of the latest version of...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Phase matching of diverse electromagnetic modes (specifically, coexisting optical and microwave modes) in a whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) resonator has been predicted theoretically and verified...
Briefs: Information Technology
Terrain-Adaptive Navigation Architecture
A navigation system designed for a Mars rover has been designed to deal with rough terrain and/or potential slip when evaluating and executing paths. The system also can be used for any off-road, autonomous vehicles. The system uses more sophisticated terrain analysis, but also converges to computational...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Combined GMSK Communications and PN Ranging
A document discusses a method by which GMSK (Gaussian minimum shift keying) modulation and a pseudonoise (PN) ranging signal may be combined. By isolating the in-phase and quadrature components after carrier lock, and extracting their low-pass and band-pass filtered components, there is enough information...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Microwave-to-optical frequency converters based on whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) resonators have been proposed as mixers for the input ends of microwave receivers in which, downstream of the...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Network-Attached Solid-State Recorder Architecture
A document discusses placing memory modules on the high-speed serial interconnect, which is used by a spacecraft’s computer elements for inter-processor communications, to allow all multiple computer system architectures to access the spacecraft data storage at the same time. Each memory board is...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
In wide-band microwave receivers of a type now undergoing development, the incoming microwave signals are electronically preamplified, then frequency-up-converted to optical signals that...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
System-Level Integration of Mass Memory
A report discusses integrating multiple memory modules on the high-speed serial interconnect (IEEE 1393) that is used by a spacecraft’s inter-module communications in order to ease data congestion and provide for a scalable, strong, flexible system that can meet new system-level mass memory requirements.
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
Progress has been made toward solving some practical problems in the implementation of terahertz-to-optical frequency converters utilizing whispering-gallery-mode (WGM) resonators....
Briefs: Information Technology
An Efficient Reachability Analysis Algorithm
A document discusses a new algorithm for generating higher-order dependencies for diagnostic and sensor placement analysis when a system is described with a causal modeling framework. This innovation will be used in diagnostic and sensor optimization and analysis tools. Fault detection, diagnosis, and...
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