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Briefs: Physical Sciences
Stable Calibration of Raman Lidar Water-Vapor Measurements
A method has been devised to ensure stable, long-term calibration of Raman lidar measurements that are used to determine the altitude-dependent mixing ratio of water vapor in the upper troposphere and lower stratosphere. Because the lidar measurements yield a quantity proportional to the...
Briefs: Information Technology
An improved adaptive method of processing image data in an artificial neural network has been developed to enable automated, real-time recognition of possibly moving objects under...
Briefs: Information Technology
Root Source Analysis/ValuStream™ — a Methodology for Identifying and Managing Risks
Root Source Analysis (RoSA) is a systems-engineering methodology that has been developed at NASA over the past five years. It is designed to reduce costs, schedule, and technical risks by systematically examining critical assumptions and the state of the...
Briefs: Information Technology
Ensemble: an Architecture for Mission-Operations Software
"Ensemble" is the name of an open architecture for, and a methodology for the development of, spacecraft mission-operations software. Ensemble is also potentially applicable to the development of non-spacecraft mission-operations-type software.
Briefs: Physical Sciences
On-Orbit Multi-Field Wavefront Control With a Kalman Filter
A document describes a multi-field wavefront control (WFC) procedure for the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) on-orbit optical telescope element (OTE) fine-phasing using wavefront measurements at the NIRCam pupil. The control is applied to JWST primary mirror (PM) segments and secondary...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
The Interplanetary Overlay Networking Protocol Accelerator
A document describes the Inter - planetary Overlay Networking Protocol Accelerator (IONAC) — an electronic apparatus, now under development, for relaying data at high rates in spacecraft and interplanetary radio-communication systems utilizing a delay-tolerant networking protocol. The...
Briefs: Nanotechnology
Nano-engineered catalysts, and a method of fabricating them, have been developed in a continuing effort to improve the performances of direct methanol fuel cells as candidate power...
Briefs: Nanotechnology
Capillography (from the Latin capillus, “hair”, and the Greek graphein, “to write”) is a recently conceived technique for forming mats of nanofibers into useful patterns. The concept was inspired by...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Power amplifiers comprising InP-based high-electron-mobility transistors (HEMTs) in coplanar-waveguide (CPW) circuits designed for operation at frequencies of hundreds of gigahertz, and a...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
The world’s first silicon-based complementary metal oxide/semi-conductor (CMOS) integrated-circuit voltage-controlled oscillator (VCO) operating in a frequency range around 324 GHz...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
The shapes of waveforms generated by commercially available analytical separation devices, such as some types of mass spectrometers and differential mobility spectrometers are, in general, inadequate...
Briefs: Materials
Group-III Nitride Field Emitters
Field-emission devices (cold cathodes) having low electron affinities can be fabricated through lattice- mismatched epitaxial growth of nitrides of elements from group III of the periodic table. Field emission of electrons from solid surfaces is typically utilized in vacuum microelectronic devices, including some...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
An improved broadband planar magic-T junction that incorporates microstrip/slotline transitions has been developed. In comparison with a prior broadband magic-T junction incorporating...
Briefs: Photonics/Optics
An improved packaging approach has been devised for filling a hollow-core photonic-crystal fiber (HC-PCF) with a gas, sealing the HC-PCF to retain the gas, and providing for optical connections and,...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Thermal Spray Formation of Polymer Coatings
This innovation forms a sprayable polymer film using powdered precursor materials and an in-process heating method. This device directly applies a powdered polymer onto a substrate to form an adherent, mechanically-sound, and thickness-regulated film. The process can be used to lay down both fully dense...
Briefs: Materials
A method of making more-complex molecules from simpler ones has emerged as a by-product of an experimental study in outer-space atom/ surface collision physics. The...
Briefs: Materials
A family of aerogel-matrix composite materials having thermal-stability and mechanical-integrity properties better than those of neat aerogels has been developed. Aerogels are known to be excellent...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Simple, easy-to-use, highly effective tooling has been devised for maintaining alignment of bolt holes in mating structures during assembly and disassembly of the structures. The...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
The figure presents a cross-sectional view of a supercharged, variable-compression, two-cycle, internal-combustion engine that offers significant advantages over prior such engines. The improvements are...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Flexible Structural-Health-Monitoring Sheets
A generic design for a type of flexible structural- health- monitoring sheet with multiple sensor/actuator types and a method of manufacturing such sheets has been developed. A sheet of this type contains an array of sensing and/or actuation elements, associated wires, and any other associated circuit...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
The design, fabrication, and microgravity flight-testing are part of a continuing development of palm-sized mobile robots that resemble spiders (except that they have six legs apiece, whereas a spider...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Advanced Active-Magnetic-Bearing Thrust-Measurement System
An advanced thrust-measurement system utilizes active magnetic bearings to both (1) levitate a floating frame in all six degrees of freedom and (2) measure the levitation forces between the floating frame and a grounded frame. This system was developed for original use in measuring the...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Thermally actuated hydraulic pumps have been proposed for diverse applications in which direct electrical or mechanical actuation is undesirable and the relative slowness of thermal actuation can be tolerated....
Briefs: Medical
Purifying Nucleic Acids From Samples of Extremely Low Biomass
A new method is able to circumvent the bias to which one commercial DNA extraction method falls prey with regard to the lysing of certain types of microbial cells, resulting in a truncated spectrum of microbial diversity. By prefacing the protocol with glass-bead-beating agitation...
Briefs: Medical
The term “Multi-Angle and Rear Viewing Endoscopic tooL” (MARVEL) denotes an auxiliary endoscope, now undergoing development, that a surgeon would use in conjunction...
Briefs: Packaging & Sterilization
UV-Resistant Non-Spore-Forming Bacteria From Spacecraft-Assembly Facilities
Four species of non-spore-forming bacteria collected from clean-room surfaces in spacecraft-assembly facilities could survive doses of ultraviolet (UV) radiation that would suffice to kill most known cultivable bacterial species. In a previous study, high UV resistance was...
Briefs: Test & Measurement
An alternative approach to apertureless near- field optical spectroscopy involving an atomic-force microscope (AFM) entails less complexity of equipment than does a prior approach. The...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A method of simplified computational modeling of oxidation of hydrocarbons is undergoing development. This is one of several developments needed to enable accurate computational simulation of...
Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
Hard-X-Ray/Soft-γ-Ray Imaging Sensor Assembly for Astronomy
An improved sensor assembly has been developed for astronomical imaging at photon energies ranging from 1 to 100 keV. The assembly includes a thallium-doped cesium iodide scintillator divided into pixels and coupled to an array of high-gain avalanche photodiodes (APDs). Optionally, the...
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