Physical Sciences

A self-nulling beam combiner is proposed that completely eliminates the phase inversion subsystem from the nulling interferometer, and instead uses the intrinsic phase shifts in the beam splitters. Simplifying the flight instrument in this way will be a valuable enhancement of mission...

The Portable Handheld Optical Window Inspection Device (PHOWID) is a measurement system for imaging small defects (scratches, pits, micrometeor impacts, and the like) in the field. Designed primarily for window inspection, PHOWID attaches to a smooth surface with suction cups, and raster scans a...

Accurate quantification of defects (scratches and impacts) is vital to the certification of flight hardware and other critical components. The amount of damage to a particular component contributes to the performance, reliability, and safety of a system, which ultimately...

A method was developed for performing relatively high-speed wavefront sensing and control to overcome thermal instabilities in a segmented primary mirror telescope [e.g., James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) at L2], by using the onboard fine guidance sensor (FGS) to minimize expense and...

Optical hardware has been developed to measure the depth of defects in the Space Shuttle Orbiter’s windows. In this hardware, a mirror is translated such that its position corresponds to the defect’s depth, so the depth measurement problem is transferred to a mirror-position measurement problem. This is...

Aircraft-engine rotating equipment usually operates at high temperature and stress. Non-invasive inspection of microcracks in those components poses a challenge for the non-destructive evaluation community. A low-profile ultrasonic guided wave sensor can detect cracks in situ. The key feature of the...

A large-format hybridized AlGaN photodiode array with an adjustable bandwidth features stray-light control, ultra-low dark-current noise to reduce cooling requirements, and much higher radiation tolerance than previous technologies. This technology reduces the size, mass, power, and cost of...

The Ps-aerogel system [Ps is positronium (an electron-positron-hydrogen-like atom)] has been evaluated and optimized as a potential tool for planetary exploration missions. Different configurations of use were assessed, and the results provide a...

A proposed method of automated, precise alignment of a ground-based astronomical telescope would eliminate the need for initial manual alignment. The method, based on automated identification of known stars and other celestial objects in the telescope field of view, would also eliminate...

Optical combs generated by a monolithic resonator with Kerr-medium can be used in a number of applications, including orbital clocks and frequency standards of extremely high accuracy, such as astronomy, molecular spectroscopy, and the like. The main difficulty of this approach...

The liquid rocket engine stability prediction software (LCI) predicts combustion stability of systems using LOX-LH2 propellants. Both longitudinal and transverse mode stability characteristics are calculated. This software has the unique feature of being able to predict system limit amplitude.

MISR (Multi-angle Imaging SpectroRadiometer) INteractive eXplorer (MINX) is an interactive visualization program that allows a user to digitize smoke, dust, or volcanic plumes in MISR multiangle images, and automatically retrieve height and wind profiles associated with those plumes. This innovation can perform 9-camera...

The development of realistic cloud parameterizations for climate models requires accurate characterizations of sub-grid distributions of thermodynamic variables. To this end, a software tool was developed to characterize cloud water-content distributions in climate-model sub-grid scales.

This software generates high-quality plans for carrying out mine-sweeping activities under resource constraints. The autonomous planning and replanning system for unmanned underwater vehicles (UUVs) takes as input a set of prioritized mine-sweep regions, and a...

Two software programs, marstie and marsnav, work together to generate pointing corrections and rover micro-localization for in-situ images. The programs are based on the PIG (Planetary Image Geometry) library, which handles all mission dependencies. As a result, there is no mission-specific...

The Dayside Ionospheric Superfountain modified SAMI2 code predicts the uplift, given storm-time electric fields, of the dayside near-equatorial ionosphere to heights of over 800 kilometers during magnetic storm intervals. This software is a simple 2D code developed over many years at the Naval Research Laboratory,...

HPHall software simulates and tracks the time-dependent evolution of the plasma and erosion processes in the discharge chamber and near-field plume of Hall thrusters. HPHall is an axisymmetric solver that employs a hybrid fluid/ particle-in-cell (Hybrid-PIC)...

BioNet v2 is a peer-to-peer middleware that enables digital communication devices to “talk” to each other. It provides a software development framework, standardized application, network-transparent device integration services, a flexible messaging model, and network communications for distributed...

SPS-DSPI software has been revised so that Goddard optical engineers can operate the instrument, instead of data programmers. The user interface has been improved to view the data collected by the SPS-DSPI, with a real-time mode and a play-back...

A low-cost, portable, and simplified system has been developed that is suitable for in-situ calibration and/or evaluation of multi-axis inertial measurement instruments (e.g., accelerometers). This system overcomes facility restrictions and maintains or improves the calibration quality for users of...

A low-cost and reliable system assesses the integrity of composite fan-containment structures. The system utilizes a network of miniature sensors integrated with the structure to scan the entire structural area for any impact events and resulting structural damage, and to...

Diffraction gratings are optical components with regular patterns of grooves, which angularly disperse incoming light by wavelength in a single plane, called dispersion plane. Traditional gratings on flat substrates do not perform wavefront transformation in the plane perpendicular to the...

A quasi-optical front end allows any arbitrary polarization to be transmitted by controlling the timing, amplitude, and phase of the two input ports. The front end consists of two independent channels — horizontal and vertical. Each channel has two ports — transmit and receive. The transmit signal is...

An electro-optical imaging device is capable of autonomously determining the range to objects in a scene without the use of active emitters or multiple apertures. The novel, automated, low-power imaging system is based on a plenoptic camera design that was constructed as a breadboard system....