Physical Sciences

accurate inertial navigation system (INS) is coupled with GPS receivers to provide stable and highly accurate positioning, attitude, and inertial measurements while being subjected to highly dynamic maneuvers. In contrast to conventional methods that use extensive, ground-based, real-time tracking...

This process is designed to estimate the thickness change of a material through data analysis of a digitized version of an xray (or a digital x-ray) containing the material (with the thickness in question) and various tooling. Using this process, it is...

This device provides non-invasive beat-to-beat blood pressure measurements and can be worn over the upper arm for prolonged durations. Phase and waveform analyses are performed on filtered proximal and distal photoplethysmographic (PPG) waveforms obtained from the brachial artery. The phase analysis is used...

A concept has been developed for a new fuel cell individual-cell-voltage monitor that can be directly connected to a multi-cell fuel cell stack for direct substack power provisioning. It can also provide voltage isolation for applications in high-voltage fuel cell stacks. The technology consists of...

NASA is in the process of modernizing its communications infrastructure to accompany the development of a Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) to replace the shuttle. With this effort comes the opportunity to infuse more advanced coded modulation techniques, including low-density parity-check (LDPC) codes that...

Large cryogenic liquid hydrogen tanks are composed of inner and outer shells. The outer shell is exposed to the ambient environment while the inner shell holds the liquid hydrogen. The region between these two shells is evacuated and typically filled with a powder-like...

Online detection techniques to monitor the health of rotating engine components are becoming increasingly attractive to aircraft engine manufacturers in order to increase safety of operation and lower maintenance costs. Health monitoring remains a challenge...

A document describes the Antenna Calibration & Measurement Equipment (ACME) system that will provide the Deep Space Network (DSN) with instrumentation enabling a trained RF engineer at each complex to perform antenna calibration measurements and to generate antenna calibration data. This data includes...

Micro aerial vehicles have limited sensor suites and computational power. For reconnaissance tasks and to conserve energy, these systems need the ability to autonomously land at vantage points or enter buildings (ingress). But for autonomous navigation, information is needed to...

A package of software computes the time-dependent propagation of a narrow laser beam in an arbitrary threedimensional (3D) medium with absorption and scattering, using the transientdiscrete- ordinates method and a direct integration method. Unlike prior software that utilizes a Monte Carlo method, this...

Great progress has been made in both micromechanical resonators and microoptical resonators over the past decade, and a new field has recently emerged combining these mechanical and optical systems. In such optomechanical systems, the two resonators are strongly coupled with one influencing the...

Scalable Integrated Multi-Mission Support System (SIMSS) Simulator Release 2.0 software is designed to perform a variety of test activities related to spacecraft simulations and ground segment checks. This innovation uses the existing SIMSS framework, which...

In most analytical investigations, there is a need to process complex field samples for the unique detection of analytes, especially when detecting low-concentration organic molecules that may identify extraterrestrial life. Wet chemistry based instruments are the techniques of choice for most...

This new release of MBDyn is a software engine that calculates the dynamics states of kinematic, rigid, or flexible multibody systems. An MBDyn multibody system may consist of multiple groups of articulated chains, trees, or closed-loop topologies. Transient top ologies are handled through...

Force sensing is an essential requirement for dexterous robot manipulation, e.g., for extravehicular robots making vehicle repairs. Although strain gauges have been widely used, a new sensing approach is desirable for applications that require greater robustness,...

This software processes the flyby spectra of the Chirp Transform Spectrometer (CTS) of the Microwave Instrument for Rosetta Orbiter (MIRO). The tool corrects the effect of Doppler shift and local-oscillator (LO) frequency shift during the flyby mode of MIRO operations. The...

This suite of IDL programs provides identification and comprehensive characterization of the dynamical features of the jet streams in the upper troposphere, the lower stratospheric polar night jet, and the tropopause. The output of this software not only provides comprehensive...

The Multi-Mission Power Analysis Tool (MMPAT) simulates a spacecraft power subsystem including the power source (solar array and/or radioisotope thermoelectric generator), bus-voltage control, secondary battery (lithium-ion or nickel-hydrogen), thermostatic heaters, and power-consuming equipment....

The Jupiter Environment Tool (JET) is a custom UI plug-in for STK that provides an interface to Jupiter environment models for visualization and analysis. Users can visualize the different magnetic field models of Jupiter through various rendering methods, which are fully integrated within STK’s 3D Window. This allows...

This software solved the problem of displaying terrains that are usually too large to be displayed on standard workstations in real time. The software can visualize terrain data sets composed of billions of vertices, and can display these data sets at greater than 30 frames per second.

This software is used to locate Earthscience satellite data and climate-model analysis outputs in space and time. This enables the direct comparison of any set of data with different spatial and temporal resolutions. It is written in three separate modules that are clearly separated for their functionality and...

A multi-university research team led by North Carolina State University will be developing methods to create two-dimensional (2-D) materials capable of folding themselves into three-dimensional (3-D) objects when exposed to light. The effort, which is funded by a grant from the National...

If you’re a racing fan who has always thought that, given the opportunity, you could match your technical skills wheel-to-wheel with some of the best engineers in the sport, you’ve got one last chance to make your dream come true. Mega-distributor Mouser Electronics has been conducting a unique competition this year called the...

Researchers at the Harvard School of Engineering and Applied Sciences (SEAS), collaborating with the Weizmann Institute of Science in Israel, have now demonstrated a drastically new way of achieving negative refraction in a metamaterial.The primary advantages of the new technology...

A document discusses solutions to the problem of submarines having to rise above water to detect airplanes in the general vicinity. Two solutions are provided, in which a sensor is located just under the water surface, and at a few to tens of meter depth under the water surface.