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The most common approach for assessing the abundance of viable bacterial endospores is the culture-based plating method. However, culture-based approaches are heavily biased and oftentimes incompatible with upstream sample processing strategies, which make viable...

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...

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...

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...

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,...

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...

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...

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...

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...

Scientists at MIT and the University of Pennsylvania are taking more than inspiration from nature — they’re taking ingredients. The group has genetically engineered muscle cells to flex in response to light, and is using the light-sensitive tissue to build highly articulated robots. This...

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...

Researchers at the Army Research Laboratory (ARL) are testing new technologies it created for the Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) that could give commercial and military maintenance programs earlier warning of problems. Condition-based maintenance, known as CBM, will get safer aircraft...

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...