Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Engineering Gaps”

Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 181 records · Page 10
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1973

The Viking mortar - Design, development, and flight qualification.

Approximately 25,400 ft above the local surface of Mars, a radar height sensor fires the Viking mortar, which ejects a 53-ft D sub o disk-gap-band (DGB) parachute. The parachute decelerates and stabilizes the Viking lander sufficiently for the terminal engine system to take over and effect a soft landing. The general design and environmental requirements for the mortar system are presented; various illustrations of the mortar components and how the mortar system functions also are presented. Primary emphasis is placed on manufacturing, developing, and qualification testing of the mortar system.

Brecht, J. P.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Problem Reporting Taxonomy and Data Preparation Tool Evaluation

A member of the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) Systems Engineering Office (SEO) Technical Discipline Team (TDT) requested a SEO-managed activity to perform a gap analysis on the proposed NASA Standard 0006, "Common NASA Taxonomy for Problem Reporting, Analysis, and Resolution", and to create an input filter and set of instructions for using the data-mining/data-cleansing tool TechOasis1 with Space Shuttle Program (SSP) problem reporting data. The work that achieved these objectives and deployment of TechOasis are discussed in this report.

Beil, Robert J.↗
NASA NTRS2024

Impact of Spaceflight on Earth’s Atmosphere: Climate, Ozone, and the Upper Atmosphere

In order to eliminate potential risk from the lack of scientific understanding and resolve the current inability to assess how a rapidly growing space industry will affect Earth’s atmosphere, a well-defined research effort is recommended. As demonstrated in the white paper “Impacts of Spaceflight on the Global Atmosphere: Current Understanding, Knowledge Gaps, NASA’s Role, and Roadmap", we must improve our ability to model and observe rocket engine combustion, far field rocket plume evolution, impacts on the upper atmosphere, global launch impacts, reentry gas and aerosol production, far field reentry plume evolution, and global reentry impacts. The highly successful Atmospheric Chemistry of Combustion Emissions Near the Tropopause (ACCENT) program serves as a model for the proposed effort. ACCENT was a multiagency research program that included observation and modeling of rocket plumes and played a critical role to remove the threat of regulatory action against the Space Shuttle’s solid rocket motors. A similar effort today would be a combination of remote, in situ, and laboratory measurements that feed into model development and assessment of future launch and reentry emissions.

Ozone Layer↗
NASA NTRS2009

Exploration Life Support Technology Development for Lunar Missions

Exploration Life Support (ELS) is one of NASA's Exploration Technology Development Projects. ELS plans, coordinates and implements the development of new life support technologies for human exploration missions as outlined in NASA's Vision for Space Exploration. ELS technology development currently supports three major projects of the Constellation Program - the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), the Altair Lunar Lander and Lunar Surface Systems. ELS content includes Air Revitalization Systems (ARS), Water Recovery Systems (WRS), Waste Management Systems (WMS), Habitation Engineering, Systems Integration, Modeling and Analysis (SIMA), and Validation and Testing. The primary goal of the ELS project is to provide different technology options to Constellation which fill gaps or provide substantial improvements over the state-of-the-art in life support systems. Since the Constellation missions are so challenging, mass, power, and volume must be reduced from Space Shuttle and Space Station technologies. Systems engineering analysis also optimizes the overall architecture by considering all interfaces with the life support system and potential for reduction or reuse of resources. For long duration missions, technologies which aid in closure of air and water loops with increased reliability are essential as well as techniques to minimize or deal with waste. The ELS project utilizes in-house efforts at five NASA centers, aerospace industry contracts, Small Business Innovative Research contracts and other means to develop advanced life support technologies. Testing, analysis and reduced gravity flight experiments are also conducted at the NASA field centers. This paper gives a current status of technologies under development by ELS and relates them to the Constellation customers who will eventually use them.

Ewert, Michael K.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Medical System Concept of Operations for Mars Exploration Mission-11: Exploration Medical Capability (ExMC) Element - Human Research Program

NASA’s exploration missions to Mars will have durations of 2-3 years and will take humans farther away from Earth than ever before. This will result in a paradigm shift for mission planning, spacecraft design, human systems integration, and in-flight medical care. Constraints on real-time communication, resupply, and medical evacuation are major architectural drivers. These constraints require medical system development to be tightly integrated with mission and vehicle design to provide crew autonomy and enable mission success. This concept of operations provides a common vision of medical care for developing a medical system for Mars exploration missions. It documents an overview of the stakeholder needs and goals of a medical system and provides examples of the types of activities the system will be used for during the mission. Development of the concept of operations considers mission variables such as distance from Earth, duration of mission, time to definitive medical care, communication protocols between crewmembers and ground support, personnel capabilities and skill sets, medical hardware and software, and medical data management. The information provided in this document informs the ExMC Systems Engineering effort to define the functions to be provided by the medical system. In addition, this concept of operations will inform the subsequent systems engineering process of developing technical requirements, system architectures, interfaces, and verification and validation approaches for the medical system. This document supports the closure of ExMC Gap Med01: We do not have a concept of operations for medical care during exploration missions, corresponding to the ExMC-managed human system risk: Risk of Adverse Health Outcomes & Decrements in Performance due to Inflight Medical Conditions. This document is applicable to the ExMC Element Systems Engineering process and may be used for collaboration within the Human Research Program.

Urbina, Michelle↗
NASA NTRS1978

Helicopter Acoustics

Exterior and interior noise problems are addressed both from the physics and engineering as well as the human factors point of view. The role of technology in closing the gap between what the customers and regulating agencies would like to have and what is available is explored. Noise regulation concepts, design, operations and testing for noise control, helicopter noise prediction, and research tools and measurements are among the topics covered.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1984

Technology for the product and process data base

The computerized product and process data base is increasingly recognized to be the cornerstone component of an overall system aimed at the integrated automation of the industrial processes of a given company or enterprise. The technology needed to support these more effective computer integrated design and manufacturing methods, especially the concept of 3-D computer-sensible product definitions rather than engineering drawings, is not fully available and rationalized. Progress is being made, however, in bridging this technology gap with concentration on the modeling of sophisticated information and data structures, high-performance interactive user interfaces and comprehensive tools for managing the resulting computerized product definition and process data base.

Barnes, R. D.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Research at NASA's NFAC wind tunnels

The National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex (NFAC) is a unique combination of wind tunnels that allow the testing of aerodynamic and dynamic models at full or large scale. It can even accommodate actual aircraft with their engines running. Maintaining full-scale Reynolds numbers and testing with surface irregularities, protuberances, and control surface gaps that either closely match the full-scale or indeed are those of the full-scale aircraft help produce test data that accurately predict what can be expected from future flight investigations. This complex has grown from the venerable 40- by 80-ft wind tunnel that has served for over 40 years helping researchers obtain data to better understand the aerodynamics of a wide range of aircraft from helicopters to the space shuttle. A recent modification to the tunnel expanded its maximum speed capabilities, added a new 80- by 120-ft test section and provided extensive acoustic treatment. The modification is certain to make the NFAC an even more useful facility for NASA's ongoing research activities. A brief background is presented on the original facility and the kind of testing that has been accomplished using it through the years. A summary of the modification project and the measured capabilities of the two test sections is followed by a review of recent testing activities and of research projected for the future.

Edenborough, H. Kipling↗
NASA NTRS1996

Sequence-of-events-driven automation of the deep space network

In February 1995, sequence-of-events (SOE)-driven automation technology was demonstrated for a Voyager telemetry downlink track at DSS 13. This demonstration entailed automated generation of an operations procedure (in the form of a temporal dependency network) from project SOE information using artificial intelligence planning technology and automated execution of the temporal dependency network using the link monitor and control operator assistant system. This article describes the overall approach to SOE-driven automation that was demonstrated, identifies gaps in SOE definitions and project profiles that hamper automation, and provides detailed measurements of the knowledge engineering effort required for automation.

Hill, R., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS1996

Sequence-of-Events-Driven Automation of the Deep Space Network

In February 1995, sequence-of-events (SOE)-driven automation technology was demonstrated for a Voyager telemetry downlink track at DSS 13. This demonstration entailed automated generation of an operations procedure (in the form of a temporal dependency network) from project SOE information using artificial intelligence planning technology and automated execution of the temporal dependency network using the link monitor and control operator assistant system. This article describes the overall approach to SOE-driven automation that was demonstrated, identifies gaps in SOE definitions and project profiles that hamper automation, and provides detailed measurements of the knowledge engineering effort required for automation.

Hill, R., Jr.↗
NASA NTRS2003

Reusable Solid Rocket Motor Nozzle Joint 5 Redesign

Torque tension testing of a newly designed Reusable Solid Rocket Motor nozzle bolted assembly was successfully completed. Test results showed that the 3-sigma preload variation was as expected at the required input torque level and the preload relaxation were within the engineering limits. A shim installation technique was demonstrated as a simple process to fill a shear lip gap between nozzle housings in the joint region. A new automated torque system was successfully demonstrated in this test. This torque control tool was found to be very precise and accurate. The bolted assembly performance was further evaluated using the Nozzle Structural Test Bed. Both current socket head cap screw and proposed multiphase alloy bolt configurations were tested. Results indicated that joint skip and bolt bending were significantly reduced with the new multiphase alloy bolt design. This paper summarizes all the test results completed to date.

Lui, R. C.↗
NASA NTRS2007

Coordination and Cooperation to Achieve the GEOSS Space Segment: A Systems Approach

Established in April 2007, the SEO has made significant accomplishments in the support of CEOS and the virtual constellations. These accomplishments include (1) constellation trade studies for Atmospheric Composition and Land Surface Imaging, (2) a new engineering framework for requirements definition, assessment and architecture planning, (3) completion of a draft requirements document and gap analysis for the Atmospheric Composition Virtual Constellation, and (4) the development of a DVD video highlighting CEOS and the Virtual Constellation concept.

Killough, Brian D., Jr.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Characterization and Modeling of Large Collapsible Tubular Mast Booms

This paper will document the analysis of high-strain composite booms in the joint NASA-German Aerospace Center (DLR) Deployable Composite Booms (DCB) project. The collapsible tubular mast (CTM) booms were manufactured at NASA Langley Research Center, where constituent material coupons were also characterized, and shipped to DLR in Germany for testing of beam properties and the strength of the DLR flight-like root deployer design. With this data, a finite element model of the booms was built, calibrated to one set of experimental measurements, and used to produce a simplified beam model for further engineering studies.The final paper will discuss the process of building this beam model and the treatment of gaps in experimental characterization.

Olive R. Stohlman↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA’s Planetary Protection Program to Assure Mission Safety and Success

NASA’s planetary protection program seeks to understand and control harmful contamination of solar systems targets of exploration by terrestrial contamination and prevent harmful biological contamination of the Earth-Moon system by extraterrestrial life, should it exist. To accomplish these objective’s NASA has developed a balanced safety and mission assurance strategy that leverages COSPAR Policy guidelines, workshops, scientific consensus, partnerships and international working groups to develop policy and implementation guidelines. Upcoming crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, as well as robotic missions to small solar system bodies, Europa, Titan and Mars are some of the driving activities of astrobiological interest that continue to emphasize the importance of planetary protection throughout the project life cycle. Development of a responsive and updated agency planetary protection policy has been a focus area in supporting upcoming mission opportunities for exploration to include Mars sample return and crewed mission concepts. An extensive update of this policy is underway which encompasses crewed and robotic procedural polices, a general technical requirements standard, and an implementation handbook. During this timeframe NASA has been working with the international community to develop scientific consensus, and to identify and fill in knowledge gaps for developing balanced policy guidelines, incorporation of risk informed decision making and quantitative technical standards. NASA has developed a planetary protection roadmap as a technology management strategy to track and monitor the development of each knowledge gaps. The Committee of Space Research (COSPAR) Policy on Planetary Protection and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine’s Committee of Planetary Protection are used to inform updates to the planetary protection polices and guidelines. This integrated strategy for planetary protection seeks to provide a transparent, structured approach for enabling missions, providing guidance for NASA and NASA partnered missions, and being responsive to the increased interest and activities in space exploration whilst maintaining an understanding and control of harmful contamination.

James Benardini↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA's Planetary Protection Program to Assure Mission Safety and Success

NASA's planetary protection program seeks to understand and control harmful contamination of solar systems targets of exploration by terrestrial contamination and prevent harmful biological contamination of the Earth-Moon system by extraterrestrial life, should it exist. To accomplish these objective's NASA has developed a balanced safety and mission assurance strategy that leverages COSPAR Policy guidelines, workshops, scientific consensus, partnerships and international working groups to develop policy and implementation guidelines. Upcoming crewed missions to the Moon and Mars, as well as robotic missions to small solar system bodies, Europa, Titan and Mars are some of the driving activities of astrobiological interest that continue to emphasize the importance of planetary protection throughout the project life cycle.Development of a responsive and updated agency planetary protection policy has been a focus area in supporting upcoming mission opportunities for exploration to include Mars sample return and crewed mission concepts. An extensive update of this policy is underway which encompasses crewed and robotic procedural polices, a general technical requirements standard, and an implementation handbook. During this timeframe NASA has been working with the international community to develop scientific consensus, and to identify and fill in knowledge gaps for developing balanced policy guidelines, incorporation of risk informed decision making and quantitative technical standards. NASA has developed a planetary protection roadmap as a technology management strategy to track and monitor the development of each knowledge gaps. The Committee of Space Research (COSPAR) Policy on Planetary Protection and the National Academies of Science, Engineering, and Medicine's Committee of Planetary Protection are used to inform updates to the planetary protection polices and guidelines. This integrated strategy for planetary protection seeks to provide a transparent, structured approach for enabling missions, providing guidance for NASA and NASA partnered missions, and being responsive to the increased interest and activities in space exploration whilst maintaining an understanding and control of harmful contamination.

Planetary Protection↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Capability Gaps Assessment and Identification of Critical Technology Elements for Mars Transit Habitat

The Habitation Systems Development Office (HP40) at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center supports systems engineering, integration, and project management for next generation space habitats. For in space operations and eventual transport of humans to Mars, NASA will rely on a Mars Transit Habitat (TH). The TH will be designed for an up to 1,200-day Mars mission and will carry all food and supplies needed to support four crew for this duration. In the current concept of operations, Mars TH transfers to near rectilinear halo orbit (NRHO) following launch and docks at Gateway as a visiting vehicle. While there, the TH will complete system shakedown testing and a series of analog missions which will grow from 3 to 6+ months in duration TH also augments Gateway’s habitation capabilities beyond 60-days. Proposed Gateway-TH missions will far exceed the longest duration cislunar human missions to date. These shakedown missions will also be the first operational readiness tests of Mars TH’s long-duration deep space systems, and of the split crew (two crew on the surface, two crew in space) operations that are vital to the approach for the first human Mars mission. Once shakedown missions are complete, Mars TH departs Gateway to aggregate with the Mars propulsion system in NRHO before onboarding the crew and final supplies in Earth orbit via a co-manifested Orion-logistics module. Orion and the LM return to Earth prior to the now aggregated Deep Space Transport vehicle’s journey to Mars. Development of the Mars TH requires significant technology development and maturation. Each year the agency performs a capability gaps assessment, where gaps developed by subject matter experts (SMEs) in various engineering/science disciplines are linked to architectural elements in formulation and prioritized. A gap captures the difference between the current state-of-the-art and the maturity of the capability that is needed to enable or enhance a mission as it is currently envisioned in the government reference architecture. HP40 conducted a gap analysis for Mars TH which will be summarized in this poster. Gaps classified as enabling (which means the mission cannot achieve success without gap closure) were subsequently used to identify critical technology elements (CTEs) for Mars TH. This identification of CTEs was also informed by an examination of the product breakdown structure for Mars TH and focused conversations with SMEs in specific technology areas. CTEs identified for Mars TH to date include the following (note this is not a comprehensive list – CTEs listed represent those in MSFC’s capability areas): inflatable softgoods for habitation; enhanced CO2 recovery; life support systems with greater levels of reliability and maintainability; autonomous guidance, navigation, command and control; and radiators for the Mars TH application. The habitation systems development team is currently delving deeper into each CTE to assess technology approaches being pursued, their maturity, and the degree of difficulty in maturation to meet projected Mars TH timelines. This poster will summarize work to date on the identification of enabling capability gaps linked to Mars TH and provide insight into the associated CTEs and technology maturation efforts.

technology development↗
NASA NTRS1995

Automation based on knowledge modeling theory and its applications in engine diagnostic systems using Space Shuttle Main Engine vibrational data

Humans can perform many complicated tasks without explicit rules. This inherent and advantageous capability becomes a hurdle when a task is to be automated. Modern computers and numerical calculations require explicit rules and discrete numerical values. In order to bridge the gap between human knowledge and automating tools, a knowledge model is proposed. Knowledge modeling techniques are discussed and utilized to automate a labor and time intensive task of detecting anomalous bearing wear patterns in the Space Shuttle Main Engine (SSME) High Pressure Oxygen Turbopump (HPOTP).

Kim, Jonnathan H.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Adiabatic diesel engine component development: Reference engine for on-highway applications

The main objectives were to select an advanced low heat rejection diesel reference engine (ADRE) and to carry out systems analysis and design. The ADRE concept selection consisted of: (1) rated point performance optimization; (2) study of various exhaust energy recovery scenarios; (3) components, systems and engine configuration studies; and (4) life cycle cost estimates of the ADRE economic worth. The resulting ADRE design proposed a reciprocator with many advanced features for the 1995 technology demonstration time frame. These included ceramic air gap insulated hot section structural components, high temperature tribology treatments, nonmechanical (camless) valve actuation systems, and elimination of the cylinder head gasket. ADRE system analysis and design resulted in more definition of the engine systems. These systems include: (1) electro-hydraulic valve actuation, (2) electronic common rail injection system; (3) engine electronic control; (4) power transfer for accessory drives and exhaust energy recovery systems; and (5) truck installation. Tribology and performance assessments were also carried out. Finite element and probability of survival analyses were undertaken for the ceramic low heat rejection component.

Hakim, Nabil S.↗