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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.

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At least 199 records · Page 11

International Space Station Environmental Control and Life Support System Acceptance Testing for the Pressurized Mating Adapters

The International Space Station (ISS) Pressurized Mating Adapters (PMAs) Environmental Control and Life Support (ECLS) System is comprised of three subsystems: Atmosphere Control and Supply (ACS), Temperature and Humidity Control (THC), and Water Recovery and Management (WRM). PMAs 1 and 2 flew to ISS on Flight 2A and Pressurized Mating Adapter (PMA) 3 flew to ISS on Flight 3A. This paper provides a summary of the PMAs ECLS design and a detailed discussion of the ISS ECLS Acceptance Testing methodologies utilized for the PMAs.

Williams, David E.↗

Space artificial gravity facilities - An approach to their construction

In the course of adaptation to a space microgravity environment, humans experience cardiovascular deconditioning, loss of muscle mass, and loss of bone minerals. One possible solution to these space adaptation problems is to simulate earth's gravity using the centripetal acceleration created by a rotating system. The design and construction of rotating space structures pose many challenges. Before committing to the use of artificial gravity in future space missions, a man-rated Variable Gravity Research Facility (VGRF) should be developed in earth orbit as a gravitational research tool and testbed. This paper addresses the requirements and presents preliminary concepts for such a facility.

Wercinski, P. F.↗

Space-Based Reconfigurable Software Defined Radio Test Bed Aboard International Space Station

The National Aeronautical and Space Administration (NASA) recently launched a new software defined radio research test bed to the International Space Station. The test bed, sponsored by the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Office within NASA is referred to as the SCaN Testbed. The SCaN Testbed is a highly capable communications system, composed of three software defined radios, integrated into a flight system, and mounted to the truss of the International Space Station. Software defined radios offer the future promise of in-flight reconfigurability, autonomy, and eventually cognitive operation. The adoption of software defined radios offers space missions a new way to develop and operate space transceivers for communications and navigation. Reconfigurable or software defined radios with communications and navigation functions implemented in software or VHDL (Very High Speed Hardware Description Language) provide the capability to change the functionality of the radio during development or after launch. The ability to change the operating characteristics of a radio through software once deployed to space offers the flexibility to adapt to new science opportunities, recover from anomalies within the science payload or communication system, and potentially reduce development cost and risk by adapting generic space platforms to meet specific mission requirements. The software defined radios on the SCaN Testbed are each compliant to NASA's Space Telecommunications Radio System (STRS) Architecture. The STRS Architecture is an open, non-proprietary architecture that defines interfaces for the connections between radio components. It provides an operating environment to abstract the communication waveform application from the underlying platform specific hardware such as digital-to-analog converters, analog-to-digital converters, oscillators, RF attenuators, automatic gain control circuits, FPGAs, general-purpose processors, etc. and the interconnections among different radio components.

Communications↗

Damage Tolerance of Candidate Sandwich Structure for the Space Launch System (SLS) Payload Adapter Fitting (PAF)

This Technical Memorandum presents results from a damage tolerance study undertaken in support of the payload adapter fitting (PAF) for the Space Launch System (SLS) program at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). The study consisted of determining the compression-after-impact (CAI) strength of candidate carbon/epoxy face sheet sandwich structure that has been identified for potential use to manufacture the PAF hardware. Two types of core material that have been considered for use on the PAF structure were used in this study. One was an aluminum honeycomb and the other was a Rohacell foam. Levels of barely visible impact damage (BVID) were determined for the types of sandwich structure tested in this study and this level of damage was used for CAI strength testing. It was found that the honeycomb core sandwich structure failed by face sheet failure and the foam core sandwich structure failed by core shear failure. CAI strength values were normalized by weight of the sandwich structure since lower mass is desirable for this structure.

sandwich structure↗

Adaptive Numerical Algorithms in Space Weather Modeling

Space weather describes the various processes in the Sun-Earth system that present danger to human health and technology. The goal of space weather forecasting is to provide an opportunity to mitigate these negative effects. Physics-based space weather modeling is characterized by disparate temporal and spatial scales as well as by different physics in different domains. A multi-physics system can be modeled by a software framework comprising of several components. Each component corresponds to a physics domain, and each component is represented by one or more numerical models. The publicly available Space Weather Modeling Framework (SWMF) can execute and couple together several components distributed over a parallel machine in a flexible and efficient manner. The framework also allows resolving disparate spatial and temporal scales with independent spatial and temporal discretizations in the various models. Several of the computationally most expensive domains of the framework are modeled by the Block-Adaptive Tree Solar wind Roe Upwind Scheme (BATS-R-US) code that can solve various forms of the magnetohydrodynamics (MHD) equations, including Hall, semi-relativistic, multi-species and multi-fluid MHD, anisotropic pressure, radiative transport and heat conduction. Modeling disparate scales within BATS-R-US is achieved by a block-adaptive mesh both in Cartesian and generalized coordinates. Most recently we have created a new core for BATS-R-US: the Block-Adaptive Tree Library (BATL) that provides a general toolkit for creating, load balancing and message passing in a 1, 2 or 3 dimensional block-adaptive grid. We describe the algorithms of BATL and demonstrate its efficiency and scaling properties for various problems. BATS-R-US uses several time-integration schemes to address multiple time-scales: explicit time stepping with fixed or local time steps, partially steady-state evolution, point-implicit, semi-implicit, explicit/implicit, and fully implicit numerical schemes. Depending on the application, we find that different time stepping methods are optimal. Several of the time integration schemes exploit the block-based granularity of the grid structure. The framework and the adaptive algorithms enable physics based space weather modeling and even forecasting.

Toth, Gabor↗

Three-Dimensional Normal Human Neutral Progenitor Tissue-Like Assemblies: A Model for Persistent Varicella-Zoster Virus Infection and Platform to Study Oxidate Stress and Damage in Multiple Hit Scenarios

The environment of space results in a multitude of challenges to the human physiology that present barriers to extended habitation and exploration. Over 40 years of investigation to define countermeasures to address space flight adaptation has left gaps in our knowledge regarding mitigation strategies partly due to the lack of investigative tools, monitoring strategies, and real time diagnostics to understand the central causative agent(s) responsible for physiologic adaptation and maintaining homeostasis. Spaceflight-adaptation syndrome is the combination of space environmental conditions and the synergistic reaction of the human physiology. Our work addresses the role of oxidative stress and damage (OSaD) as a negative and contributing Risk Factor (RF) in the following areas of combined spaceflight related dysregulation: i) radiation induced cellular damage [1], [2] ii) immune impacts and the inflammatory response [3], [4] and iii) varicella zoster virus (VZV) reactivation [5]. Varicella-zoster (VZV)/Chicken Pox virus is a neurotropic human alphaherpes virus resulting in varicella upon primary infection, suppressed by the immune system becomes latent in ganglionic neurons, and reactivates under stress events to re-express in zoster and possibly shingles. Our laboratory has developed a complex three-dimensional (3D) normal human neural tissue model that emulates several characteristics of the human trigeminal ganglia (TG) and allows the study of combinatorial experimentation which addresses, simultaneously, OSaD associated with Spaceflight adaptation and habitation [6]. By combining the RFs of microgravity, radiation, and viral infection we will demonstrate that living in the space environment leads to significant physiological consequences for the peripheral and subsequently the central nervous system (PNS, CNS) associated with OSaD generation and consequentially endangers long-duration and exploration-class missions.

Goodwin, Thomas J.↗

Space motion sickness preflight adaptation training Preliminary studies with prototype trainers

Based on the otolith tilt-translation reinterpretation hypothesis (Parker et al., 1985), preflight adaptation procedures and several preflight adaptation trainers (PATs) have been developed. Two PAT prototypes, the Miami University Seesaw (MUS) and the Dynamic Environmental Simulator (DES), include a physical room that is moved relative to the restrained subject. Results from the MUS and DES PAT experiments indicate that exposure to the produced sensory rearrangement can change eye movement reflexes. The changes persisted for a period longer than the training exposure period, indicating similarity with the eye-movement reflexes observed immediately postflight in weightlessness-adapted astronauts. It is concluded that the apparatus and procedures to preadapt astronauts to the sensory rearrangement of weightless space flight can be developed on the basis of the reported PATs and procedures. The third PAT prototype tested, which employs a computer-generated scene, failed to produce changes similar to those recorded in the MUS and DES experiments.

Parker, D. E.↗

Adaptive array antenna for satellite cellular and direct broadcast communications

Adaptive phased-array antennas provide cost-effective implementation of large, light weight apertures with high directivity and precise beamshape control. Adaptive self-calibration allows for relaxation of all mechanical tolerances across the aperture and electrical component tolerances, providing high performance with a low-cost, lightweight array, even in the presence of large physical distortions. Beam-shape is programmable and adaptable to changes in technical and operational requirements. Adaptive digital beam-forming eliminates uplink contention by allowing a single electronically steerable antenna to service a large number of receivers with beams which adaptively focus on one source while eliminating interference from others. A large, adaptively calibrated and fully programmable aperture can also provide precise beam shape control for power-efficient direct broadcast from space. Advanced adaptive digital beamforming technologies are described for: (1) electronic compensation of aperture distortion, (2) multiple receiver adaptive space-time processing, and (3) downlink beam-shape control. Cost considerations for space-based array applications are also discussed.

Horton, Charles R.↗

Three-Dimensional Normal Human Neural Progenitor Tissue-Like Assemblies: A Model for Persistent Varicell-Zoster Virus Infection and Platform to Study Viral Infectivity and Oxidative Stress and Damage

The environment of space results in a multitude of challenges to the human physiology that present barriers to extended habitation and exploration. Over 40 years of investigation to define countermeasures to address space flight adaptation has left gaps in our knowledge regarding mitigation strategies partly due to the lack of investigative tools, monitoring strategies, and real time diagnostics to understand the central causative agent(s) responsible for physiologic adaptation and maintaining homeostasis. Spaceflight-adaptation syndrome is the combination of space environmental conditions and the synergistic reaction of the human physiology. Our work addresses the role of oxidative stress and damage (OSaD) as a negative and contributing Risk Factor (RF) in the following areas of combined spaceflight related dysregulation: i) radiation induced cellular damage [1], [2] ii) immune impacts and the inflammatory response [3], [4] and iii) varicella zoster virus (VZV) reactivation [5]. Varicella-zoster (VZV)/Chicken Pox virus is a neurotropic human alphaherpesvirus resulting in varicella upon primary infection, suppressed by the immune system becomes latent in ganglionic neurons, and reactivates under stress events to re-express in zoster and possibly shingles. Our laboratory has developed a complex threedimensional (3D) normal human neural tissue model that emulates several characteristics of the human trigeminal ganglia (TG) and allows the study of combinatorial experimentation which addresses, simultaneously, OSaD associated with Spaceflight adaptation and habitation [6].

Goodwin, T. J.↗

Behavioral biology of mammalian reproduction and development for a space station

Space Station research includes two kinds of adaption to space: somatic (the adjustments made by an organism, within its lifetime, in response to local conditions), and transgenerational adaption (continuous exposure across sequential life cycles of genetic descendents). Transgenerational effects are akin to evolutionary process. Areas of a life Sciences Program in a space station address the questions of the behavioral biology of mammalian reproduction and development, using the Norway rat as the focus of experimentation.

Alberts, J. R.↗

Space physiology and medicine (2nd edition)

The fundamental biomedical issues involved in manned space flight are examined in review chapters contributed by leading U.S. experts. Sections are devoted to the history of manned space flight, the space environment, space-flight systems and procedures, physiological adaptation to space flight, health maintenance of space crewmembers, and medical problems of space flight. Extensive diagrams, drawings, graphs, photographs, and tables of numerical data are provided.

Nicogossian, Arnauld E.↗

Reanalysis of Rodent Data from Spacelab Life Sciences-1

The space bioscience field has long been plagued by the challenge of spaceflight with effects of radiation and microgravity. Having multiple and repeated spaceflight experiments for model organisms to solve these space stressors is costly and time consuming. Therefore, reusing and reanalyzing legacy experiments is one way that scientists can draw new conclusions in a timely manner and without using too many resources. Moreover, advances in general biological knowledge allows legacy experiments to be placed into more complete context.Here we aim to analyze all data and metadata taken from rats flown on the SLS-1 mission to create a comprehensive biological model that can be supplemented with current data to allow new discoveries in how space flown organisms adapt to the space environment. Our approach begins with the identification of all the data and metadata, including graphs and tables, for SLS-1 in NASA archives and other sources. Then, each piece of data and metadata will be digitized, reformatted and analyzed. Lastly, a previously developed astronaut model will be used to create the data framework and a comprehensive biological rodent model. The datasets we are using is from the 1991 SpaceLab Life Science 1 (SLS-1) NASA Mission. This was the first designated spacelab mission flown. All 29 rodents were tested for nine days in two different habitats: Research Animal Holding Facility (RAHF) and Animal Enclosure Module (AEM). The rodents were prepared for a live return and compared to a ground control. A total of 30 rodent experiments were accepted as flight studies on the mission. By digitization and reorganizing SLS-1 rat data we will both directly generate new insights and indirectly enable other scientists to by providing the data and metadata in a digitized form.

Space Biology↗

Reanalysis of Rodent Data from Spacelab Life Science-1

The space bioscience field has long been plagued by the challenge of spaceflight with effects of radiation and microgravity. Having multiple and repeated spaceflight experiments for model organisms to solve these space stressors is costly and time consuming. Therefore, reusing and reanalyzing legacy experiments is one way that scientists can draw new conclusions in a timely manner and without using too many resources. Moreover, advances in general biological knowledge allows legacy experiments to be placed into more complete context.Here we aim to analyze all data and metadata taken from rats flown on the SLS-1 mission to create a comprehensive biological model that can be supplemented with current data to allow new discoveries in how space flown organisms adapt to the space environment. Our approach begins with the identification of all the data and metadata, including graphs and tables, for SLS-1 in NASA archives and other sources. Then, each piece of data and metadata will be digitized, reformatted and analyzed. Lastly, a previously developed astronaut model will be used to create the data framework and a comprehensive biological rodent model. The datasets we are using is from the 1991 SpaceLab Life Science 1 (SLS-1) NASA Mission. This was the first designated spacelab mission flown. All 29 rodents were tested for nine days in two different habitats: Research Animal Holding Facility (RAHF) and Animal Enclosure Module (AEM). The rodents were prepared for a live return and compared to a ground control. A total of 30 rodent experiments were accepted as flight studies on the mission. By digitization and reorganizing SLS-1 rat data we will both directly generate new insights and indirectly enable other scientists to by providing the data and metadata in a digitized form.

Space Biology↗