Stories
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Briefs: Physical Sciences
A spill-resistant vessel has been developed for dispensing an alkali-metal vapor. Vapors of alkali metals (most commonly, cesium or rubidium, both of which melt at temperatures slightly above room...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Stroboscopic Interferometer for Measuring Mirror Vibrations
Stroboscopic interferometry is a technique for measuring the modes of vibration of mirrors that are lightweight and, therefore, unavoidably flexible. The technique was conceived especially for modal characterization of lightweight focusing mirror segments to be deployed in outer space;...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A dilatometer based on a laser interferometer is being developed to measure mechanical creep and coefficients of thermal expansion (CTEs) of materials at temperatures ranging from ambient down to 15 K. This...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
In their quest for the twin grails of high production volume and extreme precision in the manufacture of both spherical and aspherical optical surfaces,...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
An optical communications terminal (OCT) is being developed to enable transmission of data at a rate as high as 2.5 Gb/s, from an aircraft or spacecraft to a ground station. In addition to...
Briefs: Aerospace
Stellar Gyroscope for Determining Attitude of a Spacecraft
A paper introduces the concept of a stellar gyroscope, currently at an early stage of development, for determining the attitude or spin axis, and spin rate of a spacecraft. Like star trackers, which are commercially available, a stellar gyroscope would capture and process images of stars to...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
The figure depicts the planned Actuated Hybrid Mirror Telescope (AHMT), which is intended to demonstrate a new approach to the design and construction of wide-aperture spaceborne telescopes for astronomy and...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A proposed thermoelectric device would exploit natural temperature differences between air and soil to harvest small amounts of electric energy. Because the air/soil temperature difference...
Briefs: Sensors/Data Acquisition
A broadband phase-contrast wave-front sensor has been proposed as a real-time wave-front sensor in an adaptive-optics system. The proposed sensor would offer an alternative to the Shack-Hartmann...
Briefs: Medical
Chamber for Growing and Observing Fungi
Unlike prior fungus growing apparatuses, this chamber makes it possible to examine a fungus culture without disrupting it. Partly resembling a small picture frame, the chamber includes a metal plate having a rectangular through the thickness opening with recesses for a top and a bottom cover glass, an inlet...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Chemical sensors based on optical ring resonators are undergoing development. A ring resonator according to this concept is a closed-circuit dielectric optical waveguide. The outermost layer of this...
Briefs: Medical
A prototype of an electroporation system for sterilizing wastewater or drinking water has been developed. In electroporation, applied electric fields cause transient and/or permanent changes in the...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Flexible Metal-Fabric Radiators
Flexible metal-fabric radiators have been considered as alternative means of dissipating excess heat from spacecraft and space suits. The radiators also may be useful in such special terrestrial applications as rejecting heat from space-suit-like protective suits worn in hot work environments. In addition to...
Briefs: Materials
Nanotechnology breakthroughs are happening every day. NASA Tech Briefs' Nano 2005 nano engineering conference, November 10-11 at the Marriott Boston Newton, will help you keep pace with the engineering...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Manufacturers of multiplexers, attenuators, amplifiers, and other fiber-optic components must characterize their products for parameters such as insertion loss and...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
In one of the first real-world applications of photonic crystals, two companies partnered to produce a photonic crystal enhanced (PCE) micro-hotplate device with...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
GaAs QWIP Array Containing More Than a Million Pixels
A 1,024 × 1,024-pixel array of quantumwell infrared photodetectors (QWIPs) has been built on a 1.8 × 1.8-cm GaAs chip. In tests, the array was found to perform well in detecting images at wavelengths from 8 to 9 μm in operation at temperatures between 60 and 70 K. The largest-format QWIP...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Progress has been made in continuing efforts to develop optical flight-control and navigation sensors for miniature robotic aircraft. The designs of these sensors are inspired by the...
Articles: Medical
As advances in cellular biology, gene mapping, and other areas of medicine continue, amazing technologies for diagnosing, treating, and even curing diseases are emerging. Specifically,...
Briefs: Communications
Optical-Electrical-Optical (OEO) wavelength translation (WT) based on small-form-factor pluggable (SFP) transceivers is meeting with increased...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A standalone, handheld, through-wall radar unit is under development to provide three-dimensional feedback on the location and movement of people inside buildings. Applications include military...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Internal heating is a key issue for vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs), a semiconductor microlaser diode that emits light in a cylindrical beam vertically from the surface of a fabricated...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A broadband external-cavity diode laser (ECDL) has been invented for use in spectroscopic surveys preparatory to optical detection of gases. Heretofore, commercially available ECDLs have been designed, in...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Solar photovoltaic cells would be designed to exploit photonic-bandgap (PBG) materials to enhance their energy- conversion efficiencies, according to a proposal. Whereas the...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A method of determining the position and attitude of a body equipped with a Global Positioning System (GPS) receiver includes an accounting for the location of the nonunique phase...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Holographic glass light-shaping diffusers (GLSDs) are optical components for use in special-purpose illumination systems (see figure). When properly positioned with respect to lamps and areas to...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
A compact windscreen has been conceived for a microphone of a type used outdoors to detect atmospheric infrasound from a variety of natural and man-made sources. Wind at the microphone site contaminates received...
Briefs: Physical Sciences
Automated Counting of Particles To Quantify Cleanliness
A machine vision system, similar to systems used in microbiological laboratories to count cultured microbes, has been proposed for quantifying the cleanliness of nominally precisely cleaned hardware by counting residual contaminant particles. The system would include a microscope equipped with...
Briefs: Medical
Multicompartment Liquid- Cooling/Warming Protective Garments
Shortened, multicompartment liquid-cooling/ warming garments (LCWGs) for protecting astronauts, firefighters, and others at risk of exposure to extremes of temperature are undergoing development. Unlike prior liquid circulation thermal-protection suits that provide either cooling or...
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