Electronics & Software

MASCOT software was created to provide the conceptual aircraft designer accurate predictions of air vehicle stability and control characteristics. The code takes as input mass property data in the form of an inertia tensor, aerodynamic loading data, and propulsion (i.e. thrust) loading data. Using...

MIRO (Microwave Instrument for the Rosetta Orbiter) is a lightweight, uncooled, dual-frequency heterodyne radiometer. The MIRO encountered asteroid Steins in 2008, and during the flyby, MIRO used the Asteroid Mode to measure the emission spectrum of Steins. The Asteroid Mode is one of the seven modes of...

When doing mission analysis and design of an imaging system in orbit around the Earth, answering the fundamental question of imaging performance requires an understanding of the image products that will be produced by the imaging system. At the highest level, this understanding can be gained by a first-principles...

This software, written separately in C and MATLAB as stand-alone packages with equivalent functionality, implements encoders and decoders for a set of nine error-correcting codes and modulators and demodulators for five modulation types. The software can be used as a single program to simulate the performance of...

A technique based on Evolutionary Computational Methods (ECMs) was developed that allows for the automated optimization of complex computationally modeled systems, such as autonomous systems. The primary technology, which enables the ECM to find optimal...

An approach has been developed for interpolating non-uniformly sampled data, with applications in signal and image reconstruction. This innovation generalizes the Whittaker-Shannon sampling theorem by emphasizing two assumptions explicitly (definition of a band-limited function and...

Science investigators need to quickly and effectively assess past observations of specific locations on a planetary surface. This innovation involves a location-based search technology that was adapted and applied to planetary science data to support a spatial query capability for mission operations software.

One-dimensional Fast Fourier Transform (FFT) operations work fastest on grids whose size is divisible by a power of two. Because of this, padding grids (that are not already sized to a power of two) so that their size is the next highest power of two can speed up operations. While this works well...

An algorithm was developed that determines the fuel-optimal spacecraft guidance trajectory that takes into account uncertainty, in order to guarantee that mission safety constraints are satisfied with the required probability. The algorithm uses convex optimization to solve for the...

Work was carried out in determination of the mathematical origin of randomness in quantum mechanics and creating a hidden statistics of Schrödinger equation; i.e., to expose the transitional stochastic process as a “bridge” to the quantum world. The governing equations of hidden statistics would...

A simple technique was developed to account for the higher order mode coupling between adjacent coupling slots in the feed waveguide of a planar slot array. The method uses an equation relating the slot impedance to the slot voltage and a reaction integral involving the...

A document describes a system to reliably gather the hang-angle inclination of the orbiter. The system comprises a wireless handheld master station (which contains the main station software) and a wireless remote station (which contains the inclinometer sensors, the RF transceivers, and the remote...

A document describes a series of models created for the determination of the probability of survival of critical spacecraft components from particle strike damage caused by hyper-velocity impact of meteoroids and/or orbital debris. These models were integrated with both...

This circuit design implements an integrator intended to allow digitization of the energy output of a pulsed laser, or the energy of a received pulse of laser light. It integrates the output of a detector upon which the laser light is incident. The integration is performed constantly, either by...

In recent years, some remote-sensing applications require advanced airborne multi-sensor systems to provide high performance reflective and emissive spectral imaging measurement rapidly over large areas. The key or unique problem of characteristics is associated with a black box back-end system...

The Coronagraph Performance Error Budget (CPEB) tool automates many of the key steps required to evaluate the scattered starlight contrast in the dark hole of a space-based coronagraph. The tool uses a Code V prescription of the optical train, and uses...