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At least 181 records · Page 10

Causes of Interannual to Decadal Variability of Gila River Streamflow over the Past Century

Study region: The Gila River, New Mexico, is characterized by two peaks in streamflow: one in the winter-spring (December-May), and summer (August-September). The region is influenced both by Pacific SST variability as well as the North American Monsoon. Study focus: The mechanisms responsible for the variability of the winter-spring and summer streamflow peaks are investigated by correlation of streamflow with precipitation and sea surface temperature for 1928-2012. Decadal variability in the flow record is examined for a longer term perspective on Gila River streamflow using tree ring-based reconstructions of the Palmer Drought Severity Index (PDSI) and the Standardized Precipitation Index (SPI). New hydrological insights for the region: Results indicate a strong influence of winter-spring precipitation and Pacific SST anomalies on the winter-spring streamflow, with El Nino conditions in the Pacific causing increased precipitation and streamflow. Decadal Pacific variability helps explain the transition from high winter flow in the late 20th century to lower flows in the most recent decade. The summer streamflow has a somewhat weaker correlation with precipitation and Pacific SST than the winter-spring streamflow. Its variability is more likely influenced by local North American Monsoon precipitation variability. PDSI and SPI reconstructions indicate much more severe and extended periods of droughts and pluvials in past centuries as well as periods of concurrent winter and summer drought.

drought↗

Spreading the Word on Safety

Beginning with the Apollo Program in the early 1960s, the NASA White Sands Test Facility (WSTF) has supported every U.S. human exploration space flight program to date. Located in Las Cruces, New Mexico, WSTF is part of Johnson Space Center. The facility's primary mission is to provide the expertise and infrastructure to test and evaluate spacecraft materials, components, and rocket propulsion systems to enable the safe human exploration and utilization of space. WSTF stores, tests, and disposes of Space Shuttle and International Space Station propellants. Since aerospace fluids can have harmful reactions with the construction materials of the systems containing them, a major component of WSTF's work is the study of propellants and hazardous materials. WSTF has a wide variety of resources to draw upon in assessing the fire, explosion, compatibility, and safety hazards of these fluids, which include hydrogen, oxygen, hydrazine fuels, and nitrogen tetroxide. In addition to developing new test methods, WSTF has created technical manuals and training courses for the safe use of aerospace fluids.

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Requirements for a network storage service

Sandia National Laboratories provides a high performance classified computer network as a core capability in support of its mission of nuclear weapons design and engineering, physical sciences research, and energy research and development. The network, locally known as the Internal Secure Network (ISN), comprises multiple distributed local area networks (LAN's) residing in New Mexico and California. The TCP/IP protocol suite is used for inter-node communications. Scientific workstations and mid-range computers, running UNIX-based operating systems, compose most LAN's. One LAN, operated by the Sandia Corporate Computing Computing Directorate, is a general purpose resource providing a supercomputer and a file server to the entire ISN. The current file server on the supercomputer LAN is an implementation of the Common File Server (CFS). Subsequent to the design of the ISN, Sandia reviewed its mass storage requirements and chose to enter into a competitive procurement to replace the existing file server with one more adaptable to a UNIX/TCP/IP environment. The requirements study for the network was the starting point for the requirements study for the new file server. The file server is called the Network Storage Service (NSS) and its requirements are described. An application or functional description of the NSS is given. The final section adds performance, capacity, and access constraints to the requirements.

Kelly, Suzanne M.↗

Requirements for a network storage service

Sandia National Laboratories provides a high performance classified computer network as a core capability in support of its mission of nuclear weapons design and engineering, physical sciences research, and energy research and development. The network, locally known as the Internal Secure Network (ISN), was designed in 1989 and comprises multiple distributed local area networks (LAN's) residing in Albuquerque, New Mexico and Livermore, California. The TCP/IP protocol suite is used for inner-node communications. Scientific workstations and mid-range computers, running UNIX-based operating systems, compose most LAN's. One LAN, operated by the Sandia Corporate Computing Directorate, is a general purpose resource providing a supercomputer and a file server to the entire ISN. The current file server on the supercomputer LAN is an implementation of the Common File System (CFS) developed by Los Alamos National Laboratory. Subsequent to the design of the ISN, Sandia reviewed its mass storage requirements and chose to enter into a competitive procurement to replace the existing file server with one more adaptable to a UNIX/TCP/IP environment. The requirements study for the network was the starting point for the requirements study for the new file server. The file server is called the Network Storage Services (NSS) and is requirements are described in this paper. The next section gives an application or functional description of the NSS. The final section adds performance, capacity, and access constraints to the requirements.

Kelly, Suzanne M.↗

Geologic interpretation of Apollo 6 stereophotography from Baja California to west Texas

Excellent space photography of parts of the southwestern United States and northwestern Mexico was obtained during the unmanned Apollo 6 spaceflight. Two features of this photography made it useful for geologic interpretations: its vertical stereocoverage and its exposure under a relatively low angle of solar illumination through an unusually cloud-free and clear atmosphere. The structural patterns, which were topographically enhanced by the longer shadows, were annotated on the photographs, in order to analyze their trends with respect to the continental tectonic framework, and to attempt to correlate the pattern with known copper or other base metal deposits. The annotated fracture patterns showed the regional trends and their distribution. The area studied was a 100- to 105-mile swath of terrain covering a total land area of approximately 60,000 square statute miles. The coverage began from a point centered on Punta Colnett on the Pacific coast of Baja California and extended to the Sacramento Mountains of New Mexico and west Texas.

Gawarecki, S. J.↗

Keeping Communication Continuous

General Dynamics Decision Systems employees have played a role in supplying telemetry, tracking, and control (TT&C) and other communications systems to NASA and the U.S. Department of Defense for over 40 years. Providing integrated communication systems and subsystems for nearly all manned and unmanned U.S. space flights, the heritage of this Scottsdale, Arizona-based company includes S-band transceivers that enabled millions of Americans to see Neil Armstrong and hear his prophetic words from the Moon in 1969. More recently, Decision Systems has collaborated with NASA s Goddard Space Flight Center to develop transponders, wireless communications devices that pick up and automatically respond to an incoming signal, for NASA s Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). Four generations of Decision Systems TDRSS transponders have been developed under Goddard s sponsorship. The company s Fourth Generation TDRSS User Transponder (TDRSS IV) allows low-Earth-orbiting spacecraft to communicate continuously with a single ground station at White Sands, New Mexico, through a constellation of geostationary relay satellites positioned at key locations around the Earth. In addition to the communications of forward link control commands and return link telemetry data, the TDRSS IV also supports spacecraft orbit tracking through coherent turn-around of a pseudo-noise ranging code and two-way Doppler tracking.When the NSBF adopted the use of global positioning system receivers for balloon position tracking, Decision Systems concluded that a simpler, noncoherent transceiver could provide the NSBF with the necessary TDRSS communications without the additional cost and complexity of a coherent transponder. The solution was to take the core design of the TDRSS IV Transponder, but remove the extra functionality that supported coherent turn-around. This would simplify the production effort, reduce the testing required, and result in a lower cost product with smaller size, weight, and power consumption. Once NSBF and Decision Systems agreed on a concept for this new product, known as the Multi-Mode Transceiver (MMT), the NSBF approached Goddard for approval and funding.

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On the performance of Trellis coded modulation with octal phase shift keying over the TDRSS channel

As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration moves into the 21st century with programs like Space Station Freedom, a manned mission to Mars, and the new Landsat mission, transmission demands on the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS) will very likely exceed the available bandwidth. The Manual Lujan, Jr. Center for Space Telemetering and Telecommunications Systems (CSTTS) at New Mexico State University (NMSU) is studying techniques for increasing the data rate capabilities of TDRSS. These techniques include the use of advanced bandwidth efficient modulation formats to increase the data rate that can be sustained in a TDRSS transponder and the use of lossless bandwidth compression of the data to be transmitted to lower the data rate required from the user spacecraft. Based upon current technology the most promising bandwidth efficient modulation technique is Trellis Coded Modulation (TCM) operating with Octal Phase shift Keying (8PSK). Trellis Coded Modulation coding with 8PSK carrier modulation has the capability to increase the data rate which can be transmitted through the TDRSS spacecraft by a factor of 2 to 2.5 times that available with todays coded QPSK systems with only a small penalty in link performance relative to the existing systems. However, before NASA can safely employ TCM coding it is necessary to prove that this complex format can perform on the real TDRSS link as it does in labs and simulation studies. This proof-of-concept test over a live satellite channel was the objective of the construction and testing performed under this task of the NMSU NASA grant referenced above. In conjunction with NASA, NMSU's CSTTS has constructed a system to test a new candidate TDRSS modulation scheme, TCM 8PSK, that can enhance the information throughput of the TDRSS spacecraft. The test system for this project which was constructed over a period of 18 months by NMSU consisted of two racks of commercial and univeristy-designed and -built equipment. This project has included modifications of an existing White Sands Ground Terminal (WSGT) High Rate QPSK Demodulator to demodulate 8PSK as well as the construction of other support hardware. Also, two TCM codecs (coder/decoders) have been constructed to implement two levels of bandwidth efficiency. One was designed and built by the research team at NMSU while the other was created by the University of Notre Dame with the University of South Australia. The NMSU codec achieves a 2-to-1 increase in data rate per unit bandwidth with a coding gain relative to QPSK of about 3dB. The Notre Dame/South Australia codec achieves a 2.5-to-1 increase in data rate per unit of occupied bandwidth and a coding gain of about 2dB.

Osborne, William P.↗

NASA Data Acquisition System Software Development for Rocket Propulsion Test Facilities

Current NASA propulsion test facilities include Stennis Space Center in Mississippi, Marshall Space Flight Center in Alabama, Plum Brook Station in Ohio, and White Sands Test Facility in New Mexico. Within and across these centers, a diverse set of data acquisition systems exist with different hardware and software platforms. The NASA Data Acquisition System (NDAS) is a software suite designed to operate and control many critical aspects of rocket engine testing. The software suite combines real-time data visualization, data recording to a variety formats, short-term and long-term acquisition system calibration capabilities, test stand configuration control, and a variety of data post-processing capabilities. Additionally, data stream conversion functions exist to translate test facility data streams to and from downstream systems, including engine customer systems. The primary design goals for NDAS are flexibility, extensibility, and modularity. Providing a common user interface for a variety of hardware platforms helps drive consistency and error reduction during testing. In addition, with an understanding that test facilities have different requirements and setups, the software is designed to be modular. One engine program may require real-time displays and data recording; others may require more complex data stream conversion, measurement filtering, or test stand configuration management. The NDAS suite allows test facilities to choose which components to use based on their specific needs. The NDAS code is primarily written in LabVIEW, a graphical, data-flow driven language. Although LabVIEW is a general-purpose programming language; large-scale software development in the language is relatively rare compared to more commonly used languages. The NDAS software suite also makes extensive use of a new, advanced development framework called the Actor Framework. The Actor Framework provides a level of code reuse and extensibility that has previously been difficult to achieve using LabVIEW. The

Herbert, Phillip W., Sr.↗

Research in X-ray Astronomy

This research grant supported an active sounding rocket program at Penn State University over a period of over 10 years. During this period, the grant supported at least 8 graduate students in Astronomy & Astrophysics for at least a portion of their research. During the same period, our group was involved in seven sounding rocket flights, launched from White Sands, New Mexico, and from Woomera, Australia. Most of these rocket flights, and most of the work supported by this grant, involved the use of X-ray CCD cameras. The first X-ray CCD camera ever flown in space was our sounding rocket observation of SN1987A (flight 36.030 in 1987). Subsequent flights utilized improved CCD detectors, culminating in the'state-of-the-art EEV detector developed for our CUBIC mission, which was flown on 36.093 last May. Data from the last three flights, which observed the diffuse X-ray background with CCDS, include detection of the OVII He(alpha) line in the high latitude diffuse background and detection of the Mg XI He(alpha) line in the North Polar Spur. These results have been reported at meetings of the American Astronomical Society and the SPIE. The analysis of flights 36.092 and 36.106 is part of Jeff Mendenhall's PhD thesis and will be published in the Astrophysical Journal next year. The 36.093 data are currently being analyzed by PhD student Laura Cawley. From 1990 to 1996 this grant supported our development and launch of the CUBIC instrument on the SAC-B satellite, which was designed to measure the spectrum of the soft X-ray diffuse background with moderate energy resolution and high S/N ratio. Unfortunately, this mission terminated shortly after launch due to a failure of the Pegasus XL launch vehicle. This work resulted in publication of 4 papers in the SPIE Proceedings and four others in refereed journals, in addition to several other conference proceedings and contributed papers. In addition to the CCD flights described above, this grant has supported preliminary development of a new sounding rocket payload utilizing a replicated Ni mirror that is being developed at PSU in collaboration with MSFC. Initial testing of the coating technology has produced promising results.

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The Washington DC Metro Area Lightning Mapping Array

During the spring and summer of 2006, a network of eight lightning mapping stations has been set up in the greater DC metropolitan area to monitor the total lightning activity in storms over Virginia, Maryland and the Washington DC area. The network is a joint project between New Mexico Tech, NASA, and NOAA/National Weather Service, with real-time data being provided to the NWS for use in their forecast and warning operations. The network utilizes newly available portable stations developed with support from the National Science Foundation. Cooperating institutions involved in hosting mapping stations are Howard University, Montgomery County Community College in Rockville MD, NOAA/NWS's Test and Evaluation Site in Sterling, VA, College of Southern Maryland near La Plata MD, the Applied Physics Laboratory of Johns Hopkins University, Northern Virginia Community College in Annandale, VA, the University of Maryland at Baltimore County, and George Mason University (Prince William Campus) in Manassas, VA. The network is experimental in that its stations a) operate in the upper rather than the lower VHF (TV channel 10, 192-198 MHz) to reduce the radio frequency background noise associated with urban environments, and b) are linked to the central processing site via the internet rather than by dedicated wireless communication links. The central processing is done in Huntsville, AL, and updated observations are sent to the National Weather Service every 2 min. The observational data will also be available on a public website. The higher operating frequency results in a decrease in signal strength estimated to be about 15-20 dB, relative to the LMA networks being operated in northern Alabama and central Oklahoma (which operate on TV channels 5 and 3, respectively). This is offset somewhat by decreased background noise levels at many stations. The receiver threshold levels range from about -95 dBm up to -80 dBm and the peak lightning signals typically extend 15-20 dB above the threshold values. Despite having decreased sensitivity, the network locates lightning in plan position over all of Maryland and Delaware, much of Virginia, and into Southern Pennsylvania and New Jersey. 3-D coverage is provided out to 100-150 km range from the Sterling WFO including the 3 major DC commercial airports (Reagan National, Dulles International, and Baltimore Washington International). The network will eventually consist of 10 or more stations, which will extend and improve its coverage.

Krehbiel, Paul↗

High Resolution X-ray Imaging

NAG5-5020 covered a period of 7.5 years during which a great deal of progress was made in x-ray optical techniques under this grant. We survived peer review numerous times during the effort to keep the grant going. In 1994, when the grant started we were actively pursuing the application of spherical mirrors to improving x-ray telescopes. We had found that x-ray detectors were becoming rapidly more sophisticated and affordable, but that x-ray telescopes were only being improved through the intense application of money within the AXAF program. Clearly new techniques for the future were needed. We were successful in developing and testing at the HELSTF facility in New Mexico a four reflection coma-corrected telescope made from spheres. We were able to demonstrate 0.3 arcsecond resolution, almost to the diffraction limit of the system. The community as a whole was, at that time, not particularly interested in looking past AXAF (Chandra) and the effort needed to evolve. Since we had reached the diffraction limit using non-Wolter optics we then decided to see if we could build an x-ray interferometer in the laboratory. In the lab the potential for improved resolution was substantial. If synthetic aperture telescopes could be built in space, then orders of magnitude improvement would become feasible. In 1998 NASA, under the direction of Dr Nick White of Goddard, started a study to assess the potential and feasibility of x-ray interferometry in space. My work became of central interest to the committee because it indicated that such was possible. In early 1999 we had the breakthrough that allowed us build a practical interferometer. By using flats and hooking up with the Marshall Space Flight Center facilities we were able to demonstrate fringes at 1.25keV on a one millimeter baseline. This actual laboratory demonstration provided the solid proof of concept that NASA needed. As the year progressed the future of x-ray astronomy jelled around the Maxim program. Maxim is a set of two major x-ray astronomy missions based on the concepts I developed and demonstrated under this SR&T grant. The first Maxim is to image the sky at 100 micro-arcsecond resolution. That is one thousand times higher resolution than Hubble. The full Maxim has the ultimate goal of imaging the event horizon of a black hole in an active galactic nucleus (ALAN). This will require 0.1 micro-arcsecond resolution - one million times higher than Hubble! Nonetheless, using the techniques developed under this grant, it has become possible. Maxim Pathfinder is now in the NASA planning for a new start in approximately 20 10. The full Maxim is carried as a vision mission for the post 2015 timeframe. Finally, this grant is the evolved version of the SR&T grant we carried during the 1980s and up to 1994. At that point in time this grant was also working on x-ray optics, but concentrating on x-ray spectroscopy. The techniques developed by 1990 were not chosen for use on Chandra or XMM-Newton because they were too new. During the last year, however, the Constellation-X mission recognized the need for better spectroscopy techniques and tapped our expertise. We were able to support the initial work on Con-X through this program. It now appears that the off-plane mount will be used in Con-X, increasing performance and decreasing cost and risk.

Cash, Webster↗

Utilization of Machine Learning Techniques for Managing the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite Constellation

National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s (NASA) Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) operates a constellation of ten geosynchronous Tracking and Data Relay Satellites (TDRS). The TDRS constellation consists of multiple geosynchronous communication relay satellites located around the equator so they can provide continual coverage of any mission in low earth orbit. The TDRS are located primarily in three oceanic regions around the earth. NASA’s White Sands Complex provides the ground communication support for TDRS located over the Atlantic and Pacific Oceans. Another TDRS ground station in Guam supports the TDRS over the Indian Ocean. With these satellites the TDRS network can provide continuous coverage of satellites in low-earth orbit. The NASA Space Network (SN) project office at GSFC manages the constellation of spacecraft. Major customers of the TDRS constellation include, but are not limited to, the International Space Station and the Hubble Space Telescope. The TDRS constellation has three generations of satellites and has been active for over 30 years providing reliable communication links between customer satellites and corresponding ground stations. However, one of the major concerns for TDRS, and in any space mission, is to ensure the health and safety of the spacecraft. Generally, engineers use telemetry data to monitor and analyze the performance and state of health of the spacecraft. Telemetry data contains hundreds of parameters that monitor each important component in the spacecraft, which can be utilized to recognize and characterize the behavior of the spacecraft. Each parameter contains considerable information to represent time-dependent properties of each spacecraft subsystem and component. During the entire life of a TDRS spacecraft, thousands of gigabytes of telemetry data are transmitted in real-time from the spacecraft to the ground station at the White Sands Complex in Las Cruces, New Mexico, and recorded as historical data sets for engineers to process and analyze the events that occurred on-orbit. These parameters contain the function of multiple spacecraft subsystems, such as the attitude control system (ACS), Thermal, Electrical Power Subsystem (EPS), etc. . The first and second generations have exceeded their required lifetime and NASA is keen to manage these spacecrafts carefully in order to maximize the remaining life using the spacecraft telemetry. The challenge is to know when the risk of losing a spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit exceeds the benefit of continued operations for customer support. In the TDRS fleet, the EPS is the most critical subsystem related to spacecraft operations. Failure of the EPS would strand a spacecraft in geosynchronous orbit. Since EPS provides power to the spacecraft, component failures ultimately lead to the inability to support the spacecraft loads and the communications payload. For instance, TDRS-8 has several anomalies in EPS including the Bus Voltage Limiter (BVL) shunt current, solar array loss of circuits, and failed battery cells. Any of these anomalies can cause critical issues to the spacecraft. Therefore, developing a system to analyze and perform early detection of a potential anomaly is an important issue in telemetry data analysis. In recent years, Telemetry Mining (TM) has been proposed to process telemetry data by using Data Mining (DM) techniques such as classification, clustering, regression and anomaly detection. Anomaly detection, also known as outlier detection, has been widely used in many data mining areas such as remote sensing, medical data processing and digital image processing. The goal of anomaly detection is to detect abnormal data, which contains a relatively low probability of occurrence among the entire data set. Early detection of anomalies is one of the most significant issues in managing the spacecraft configuration. If anomalies can be detected early enough, then the redundant resources can be used to extend the life of the operational spacecraft. We present an unsupervised anomaly detection method to process the EPS data extracted from TDRS-8. This is different from traditional analytical methods, which use telemetry data to illustrate behavior and physical meaning of each spacecraft component. TM connects multiple parameters as a vector and then conducts data analysis on this high dimension telemetry vector. This method is looking at the properties of a high dimensional vector that is able to consider the relationship between different parameters in the anomaly detection problem. This kind of method performs much better than the traditional limit checking method. In addition, we propose a new approach of real-time anomaly detection to process telemetry data in real-time, which can then be applied to spacecraft monitoring with high reliability, low cost and high accuracy.

Machine Learning (ML)↗

Transition region response of the symmetric double probe and its application in the lower ionosphere

The technique is discussed of the symmetric double-probe which readily lends itself to the in situ measurement of plasma temperature in the ionospheric D-region because it can lead to meaningful results under relatively high collision frequencies where the Langmuir probe has been observed to fail. It is shown that the modification to the original collision-free double-probe theory of Johnson and Malter for the determination of electron temperature is never greater than + or - 12%, with a value of (8 + or - 2)% nominally applicable in the case of D-region diagnostics. This technique was successfully operated on a Nike-Cajun payload flown at mid-day from White Sands, New Mexico to an apogee of 78.5 km. The associated electronics and deployed double-probe configuration are presented, and a current-voltage characteristic collected in the ascent stage at 73.7 km is briefly discussed. The values of electron temperature indicated by the sampled data are approximately 30% higher than those predicted by theory for the anticipated state of thermal equilibrium with the ambient neutrals.

Szuszczewicz, E. P.↗

Positive ions and the winter anomaly.

A coordinated rocket program to study winter variability in D-region ionization was conducted at White Sands Missile Range, New Mexico, during the winter of 1970-1971. Parachute-borne blunt probes that measure positive-ion and electron conductivities were flown, in conjunction with other experiments, on Jan. 22 and 26 and Feb. 1, 1971. Both A1 and A3 radiowave absorption techniques were used to indicate anomalous winter days. The two rocket shots in January occurred on such days of high absorption. The first of these was one of quiet solar activity, whereas the second was preceded by a major solar proton event on January 24. The third flight occurred on a normal winter day. We tentatively conclude that we have observed two days of 'anomalous' winter absorption of very different character, one possibly related to a solar disturbance, and one probably entirely induced by meteorological effects. The former day was probably characterized by inhibition of the formation of negative ions due to increased detachment and the latter by decreased ionization loss rate.

Mitchell, J. D.↗