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Soft nanoparticles from a University of Pennsylvania research team stick to the plane where oil and water meet, but do not stick to one another. The interface presents a potentially useful set of properties. The nanoparticles freely move past one another while being confined to the interface, effectively acting as a 2D...

Engineers at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama, unboxed some special cargo from the International Space Station on April 6: the first items manufactured in space with a 3D printer.

Dielectric elastomers, popular materials in robotic hands, soft robots, tunable lenses, and pneumatic valves, may now be used to create flapping robotic wings.

UCLA researchers have successfully combined two nanomaterials to create a new energy storage medium that combines the best qualities of batteries and supercapacitors.

The proposed concept uses sensors to detect high-temperature plasma ingestion during entry through a breach in the thermal protection system (TPS) caused by a micrometeoroid orbital debris (MMOD) impact. It uses consumables usually available on human-rated spacecraft such as...

As crewed space missions extend beyond low Earth orbit, the need to reliably recover potable water is critical. Aboard the International Space Station (ISS), the water is recycled from cabin humidity condensate, urine distillate, and hygiene wash wastes. In spacecraft cabin air environments,...

An alignment guide and a mounting interface for two of the repair tools on orbit during the Hubble Space Telescope Servicing Mission 4 (see SM4) were developed. This design can be installed in a timely manner, and was specifically developed for a worksite with minimal access and minimal visual line-of-sight to the...

The current MK-III carbon-graphite/epoxy Hard Upper Torso (HUT)/hatch assembly represented an 8.3 psi (≈57 kPa) technology demonstrator model of a zero pre-breathe suit. In this configuration, the MK-III suit weighed about 120 lb (≈54 kg). Since future lunar/planetary suits will need...

The objective of this work was to develop an innovative deployable boom/structure technology that is ultra-lightweight (<30-grams/meter potential), and has extremely compact stowage volume (>100:1 compaction ratio), broad scalability (no size limits envisioned), high deployed frequency, high...

Two vacuum chambers were used in tandem to perform a launch depressurization test. The test article was mounted in a 10-ft (≈3 m) Vertical Vacuum Chamber (Chamber 248-10). The 25-ft (≈7.6-m) Space Simulator (Chamber 150-25) was rough-pumped and...

A micro-electrofluidic-spray propulsion (MEP) system was built on a micro scale, in which arrays of hundreds of nano-thrusters are etched on silicon wafers like ICs, only a centimeter on a side. Many dozens of these thruster chips can be...

Flight research has shown that adaptive flight control systems can be susceptible to adverse pilot-controller interactions, including pilot-in-the-loop oscillations (PIO). Conventional PIO analysis is performed using a static pilot model and a linear, time-invariant model of the aircraft and its control...

Currently, the only available means of reporting clear air turbulence (CAT) is the pilot report (PIREP), whereby a pilot experiencing turbulence reports their location and associated data. In this report, a system is proposed that would allow the detection of CAT through infrasonic...

The emerging interest in lunar mining poses a threat of contamination to pristine craters at the lunar poles, which act as cold traps for water, and may harbor other valuable minerals. Lunar Prospector type missions will be looking for volatile (molecular) compounds that may be masked by the exhaust...

A software-based innovation called Mesh was developed that provides a single sign-on capability to the built-in public key authentication mechanism of Secure Shell (SSH) using system call interposition. Mesh is a secure, lightweight grid middleware. Each Mesh installation...

This simulation environment of Contact Graph Routing that uses the QualNet network simulator leverages the previously developed space communication models. This software models the Contact Graph Routing (CGR) system proposed for future NASA missions and used in DINETl and DINET2...

The typical approach for producing laser output at the 1651-nm wavelength is via nonlinear frequency conversion. Lasers based on nonlinear conversion are complex, and it is very difficult to provide stability over time and over a wide range of operating...