Electronics & Software

An international team of researchers, led by Penn State, has developed ultrasensitive gas sensors based on the infusion of boron atoms into the tightly bound matrix of carbon atoms known as graphene. The group is composed of researchers from six countries and includes the 2010 Noble laureate and...

No CubeSat-compatible, Deep Space Network (DSN)-compatible communications and navigation transponder exists at the time of this reporting. In order for CubeSats and other small spacecraft to go into deep space, a DSN-compatible capability is needed.

Interest in the use of THz detectors outside the laboratory for space, atmospheric, and terrestrial applications has grown immensely in the past half-century. Of particular interest in recent years is the development of the quantum cascade laser (QCL) as a THz frequency source.

There is limited space available to install numerous avionics boxes with the caveat that each box is a line replacement unit (LRU). Access to enable the removal of the boxes is limited, and it is critical that no tools and/or loose parts exist to ensure that no damage is done to aft-located components....

There are two broad classes of methods for measuring skin friction (or wall shear): indirect and direct. The direct methods generally employ a movable element of the actual surface surrounded by a very small gap and connected to some type of flexure. One then measures the displacement of...

The I2C/SPI Verilog core consists of a combined register transfer logic (RTL) Verilog code for a general-purpose I2C and serial-to-parallel interface (SPI) slave for implementations targeting field programmable gate arrays (FPGAs) and application specific integrated circuits (ASICs)....

Electrical checkout and testing is a critical part of the overall space integration and test flow. Verifying proper harness and connector signal interfaces is key to ensuring component health and overall system functionality. Break-out boxes (BOBs) are used to give test...

The EXPRESS Logistics Carrier (ELC) system was built by NASA Goddard for installation on the International Space Station (ISS). Four ELC systems are on ISS. Each ELC site includes two data nodes. The ELC requirements call for a radiation-hardened 10BASE-T Ethernet interface at each data...

The bit error rate (BER) is a wellunderstood metric for measuring communications system performance. When a system is not amenable to analytical performance analysis, a Monte Carlo simulation is often used to determine the performance. In such simulations, it is necessary...

Secure communication over long distances requires robust encryption. While current encryption algorithms exist using classical methods, there are no unconditionally secure methods of distributing encryption keys classically. However, by exploiting...

This software provides a portable, flexible memory testing application meeting the NASA Space Telecommunications Radio System (STRS) specification. As an STRS-compliant application, the tester application is portable to any STRS-compliant hardware/software platform. Thanks to...

Dynamic frame sizing was added to the existing AOS Packet Service FPGA implementation. This capability provides in-flight system calibration functionality, allowing the spacecraft and ground station the means to optimize a communication link by...

In high-latency, low-bandwidth networks such as those employed when communicating with an extraterrestrial object via wireless communication over hundreds or thousands of miles, it may be difficult or expensive to communicate large quantities of information in a reliable...

Secure, efficient, and effective communication is critical for the multinational Cassini mission to Saturn. Cassini teams share information through the use of internal Web pages. The challenge was to develop dynamic Web pages that did not require special understanding of HTML complexities and the...

In response to the requirements of the Space-Based Relay Study (SBRS) undertaken by NASA in 2013, as well as the Integrated Radio and Optical Communications (iROC) project being conducted by NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) beginning in 2012, a calculation procedure was required to rapidly assess the operation of...