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Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Sample Caching Subsystem
A paper describes the Sample Caching Subsystem (SCS), a method for storing planetary core and soil samples in a container that seals the samples away from the environment to protect the integrity of the samples and any organics they might contain. This process places samples in individual sleeves that are sealed within a...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Multistage Passive Cooler for Spaceborne Instruments
A document describes a three-stage passive radiative cooler for a cryogenic spectrometer to be launched into a low orbit around the Moon. This cooler is relatively lightweight and compact, and its basic design is scalable and otherwise adaptable to other applications in which there are...
Briefs: Information Technology
GVIPS Models and Software
Two reports discuss, respectively, (1) the generalized viscoplasticity with potential structure (GVIPS) class of mathematical models and (2) the Constitutive Material Parameter Estimator (COMPARE) computer program. GVIPS models are constructed within a thermodynamics- and potential-based theoretical framework, wherein one...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Stowable Energy-Absorbing Rocker-Bogie Suspensions
A report discusses the design of the rocker-bogie suspensions of the Mars Exploration Rover vehicles, which were landed on Mars in January 2004. Going beyond the basic requirements regarding mobility on uneven terrain, the design had to satisfy requirements (1) to enable each suspension to contort...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
This method uses a magnetic-fieldresponse contact sensor that is designed to identify surface contact and motion between contact locations. The sensor has three components: (1)...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
A magnetic field response sensor is designed to measure displacement or rotation rate without a physical connection to a power source, microprocessor, data acquisition equipment, or...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
The figure schematically depicts a portable microleak-detection system that has been built especially for use in testing hydrogen tanks made of polymer-matrix composite materials. (As used here, "microleak"...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Cryogenic Shrouds for Testing Thermal-Insulation Panels
Cryogenic shrouds have been designed and built for use in thermo- mechanical testing of samples of thermal- insulation panels on cryogenic vessels. In the original application for which these shrouds were specifically designed, the samples are representative of the large area thermal-...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
A free-to-roll (FTR) test technique and test rig make it possible to evaluate both the transonic performance and the wing-drop/rock behavior of a high-strength airplane model in a single...
Briefs: Materials
Modeling software is generally used to show the fields and flows that are impossible to see with the eye or instruments. A group of researchers has done just the opposite:...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
Freeze tape casting is a means of making preforms of ceramic sheets that, upon subsequent completion of fabrication processing, can have anisotropic and/or functionally graded...
Briefs: Manufacturing & Prototyping
A method of electrophoretic deposition (EPD) on substrates that are porous and electrically non-conductive has been invented. Heretofore, in order to perform an EPD, it has been necessary to...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
The upper part of the figure illustrates the major functional blocks of a direction-sensitive analog tachometer circuit based on the use of an unexcited two-phase brushless dc motor as a rotation...
Briefs: Semiconductors & ICs
A method of fabricating flexible assemblies comprising flexible integrated circuits bonded onto or into flexible membranes has been developed. The method provides for bonding of thinned...
Briefs: Software
Algorithm-Based Fault Tolerance for Numerical Subroutines
A software library implements a new methodology of detecting faults in numerical subroutines, thus enabling application programs that contain the subroutines to recover transparently from single-event upsets. The software library in question is fault-detecting middleware that is wrapped...
Briefs: Software
Computational Support for Technology- Investment Decisions
Strategic Assessment of Risk and Technology (START) is a user-friendly computer program that assists human managers in making decisions regarding research- and- development investment portfolios in the presence of uncertainties and of non- technological constraints that include budgetary...
Briefs: Software
DSN Resource Scheduling
TIGRAS is client-side software, which provides tracking-station equipment planning, allocation, and scheduling services to the DSMS (Deep Space Mission System). TIGRAS provides functions for schedulers to coordinate the DSN (Deep Space Network) antenna usage time and to resolve the resource usage conflicts among tracking...
Briefs: Software
Distributed Operations Planning
Maestro software provides a secure and distributed mission planning system for long-term missions in general, and the Mars Exploration Rover Mission (MER) specifically. Maestro, the successor to the Science Activity Planner, has a heavy emphasis on portability and distributed operations, and requires no data...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
Phase-oriented gear systems are differential planetary transmissions in which each planet gear has two sets of unequal numbers of teeth indexed at prescribed relative angles (phases). The figure illustrates an...
Briefs: Mechanical & Fluid Systems
The CubeSat standard (10 × 10 × 10 cm and weighing 1kg) has evolved into one of the most widely accepted families of picosatellite designs. A CubeSat can...
Briefs: Medical
Two devices — a magnetic separator and a special filter denoted a self-regenerating separator (SRS) — have been developed for separating sludge from the stream of wastewater...
Briefs: Medical
Portable Unit for Metabolic Analysis
The Portable Unit for Metabolic Analysis (PUMA) is an instrument that measures several quantities indicative of human metabolic function. Specifically, this instrument makes time-resolved measurements of temperature, pressure, flow, and the partial pressures of oxygen and carbon dioxide in breath during both...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A variant of the flash diffusivity technique has been devised for determining the thermal diffusivities, and thus the thermal conductivities, of individual aligned fibers. The technique...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
The High Altitude/ Re-Entry Vehicle Infrared Imaging (HARVII) system is a portable instrumentation system for tracking and thermal imaging of a possibly distant and moving object. The HARVII is...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
An improved readout scheme has been proposed for high-resolution thermometers, (HRTs) based on the use of superconducting quantum interference devices (SQUIDs) to measure temperature-...
Briefs: Information Technology
A method of computing channel capacities and error rates in multipulse pulse-position modulation (multipulse PPM) has been developed. The method makes it possible, when designing an optical...
Briefs: Information Technology
An alternative method of adaptive selection of Golomb power-of-two (GPO2) codes has been devised for use in efficient, lossless encoding of sequences of non-negative integers from discrete...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
VCO PLL Frequency Synthesizers for Spacecraft Transponders
Two documents discuss a breadboard version of advanced transponders that, when fully developed, would be installed on future spacecraft to fly in deep space. These transponders will be required to be capable of operation on any deepspace-communications uplink frequency channel between 7,145...
Briefs: Electronics & Computers
Wide Tuning Capability for Spacecraft Transponders
A document presents additional information on the means of implementing a capability for wide tuning of microwave receiver and transmitter frequencies in the development reported in the immediately preceding article, "VCO PLL Frequency Synthesizers for Spacecraft Transponders" (NPO-42909). The...
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