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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 235 records · Page 13
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Air Quality (AQ) Monitoring From Space By NASA Using Tempo

In an era marked by escalating environmental concerns, understanding the Earth's atmosphere and its complex interactions is paramount. The Tropospheric Emission Monitoring of POllution (TEMPO) instrument is a cutting-edge venture by NASA that stands at the forefront of Earth observation technology and exemplifies NASA's commitment to unraveling the intricacies of the air we breathe. TEMPO was launched with the primary objective of monitoring air quality. This story map explores the innovative technology behind the TEMPO instrument, its mission objectives, tools and services provided by the Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) for data access and the potential impact of TEMPO data findings on our health and Earth's environmental future.

Hazem Mahmoud↗
NASA NTRS2015

Cyrogenic Life Support Technology Development Project

KSC has used cryogenic life support (liquid air based) technology successfully for many years to support spaceflight operations. This technology has many benefits unique to cryogenics when compared to traditional compressed gas systems: passive cooling, lighter, longer duration, and lower operating pressure. However, there are also several limiting factors that have prevented the technology from being commercialized. The National Institute of Occupational Safety and Health, Office of Mine Safety and Health Research (NIOSH-OMSHR) has partnered with NASA to develop a complete liquid air based life support solution for emergency mine escape and rescue. The project will develop and demonstrate various prototype devices and incorporate new technological innovations that have to date prevented commercialization.

compressed gas systems: passive cooling↗
NASA NTRS2009

NASA's Impact in Florida: A Tech Transfer Perspective

The Innovative Partnerships Program (IPP) Office at NASA's Kennedy Space Center is dedicated to forming partnerships that can positively contribute to -- and benefit from -- NASA's research and development (R&D) and technology innovations. This document discusses the IPP-driven impacts of NASA in Florida.

Dunn, Carol↗
DOE OSTI2025

Futureproofing through 2035 for the AI and HPC Power Density Trend

HPC and AI are businesses necessitating growth for providing performance improvement with increased power and cooling. As HPC and AI computers and their supporting facilities approach utility scale with a frequency of technology innovation outpacing utility and construction timelines, understanding and designing for this trend has become critical. This paper will provide historical trend data for facilities and compute racks, relate power trend data to cooling technology capabilities, and reason through constraints impacting anticipated future power densities to aid the reader in futureproofing a facility’s power and cooling systems through the mid-2030’s.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS2012

Technologies Enabling Exploration of Skylights, Lava Tubes and Caves

Robotic exploration of skylights and caves can seek out life, investigate geology and origins, and open the subsurface of other worlds to humankind. However, exploration of these features is a daunting venture. Planetary voids present perilous terrain that requires innovative technologies for access, exploration, and modeling. This research developed technologies for venturing underground and conceived mission architectures for robotic expeditions that explore skylights, lava tubes and caves. The investigation identified effective designs for mobile robot architecture to explore sub-planetary features. Results provide insight into mission architectures, skylight reconnaissance and modeling, robot configuration and operations, and subsurface sensing and modeling. These are developed as key enablers for robotic missions to explore planetary caves. These results are compiled to generate "Spelunker", a prototype mission concept to explore a lunar skylight and cave. The Spelunker mission specifies safe landing on the rim of a skylight, tethered descent of a power and communications hub, and autonomous cave exploration by hybrid driving/hopping robots. A technology roadmap was generated identifying the maturation path for enabling technologies for this and similar missions.

Robot↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

An Approach for Defining IASMS Services, Functions, and Capabilities

Assuring safety in the NAS with the inclusion of new entrants, such as Advanced Air Mobility (AAM), will require overcoming unique safety challenges that result from combining innovative technologies with novel airspace concepts for moving people and cargo using autonomous vehicles. The focus of the In-time Aviation Safety Management System (IASMS) is to overcome AAM’s safety assurance challenges. The IASMS Concept of Operations (ConOps) describes an interconnected set of services, functions, and capabilities (SFCs) designed to manage operational risks, identify unknown risks, and inform system designs. This paper describes an approach for defining SFCs based on technology trends in research, assessment of known and unknown risks in voluntary safety reports, and causal and contributing factors in aviation accidents and incidents. This approach would identify potential SFCs that further expand the Monitor, Assess, and Mitigate (M-A-M) functionality that represents the enabling framework of the IASMS. Safety implications that will result from integration of AAM in the transformation of the National Airspace System (NAS) were addressed in National Academies committees reports on AAM and IASMS. Development of a ConOps for IASMS was a top recommendation and can be represented as a reframing of safety assurance that builds on real-time alerting such as the Traffic Alert and Collision Avoidance System, and adds the more encompassing in-time temporal parameter in recognition of the different timelines for collecting and assessing safety data for risk mitigations. For example, mining for safety trends from data sources such as the Aviation Safety Information Analysis and Sharing system occurs over a longer time period. Research on AAM operations poses that SFCs can be designed to monitor the safety margin appropriate for AAM including with regards to the distance between current flight parameters and nominal ideal conditions. These in-time comparisons will become more complex as the density of operations increases at least in certain areas and can include planned and actual 4D trajectory, and in-time comparisons having implications on conflict modeling and prediction including expected and actual departure time, fix/waypoint crossing times, and arrival time. These comparisons would be integrated as part of SFCs that redefine and inform new safety margin. An increased safety margin improves management of operational risks while reducing the potential for anomalies. An increased safety margin also has implications for operator confidence in the certainty of its operations and trust in automation. Technology trends in research could be used to refine existing SFCs and define needs for additional SFCs that provide safety improvements to the design and operation of vehicles, airspace design, and operator performance requirements. NASA is developing innovative approaches to safeguard against major accidents and incidents that have occurred in the NAS and those anticipated with the inclusion of envisioned AAM operations. The innovations use operational performance data to monitor, detect, and predict flight variations exceeding safe nominal patterns, such as would be caused by navigational error, severe weather complications, or hijacking of UAS controls. These innovative approaches have high potential to prevent accidents and incidents in the new AAM era. It is anticipated that elements of the innovations will evolve into SFCs for the IASMS. Voluntary safety reports can be monitored to identify anomalies related to design or operational performance risks. Reports could be periodically monitored and assessed for specific topics. Reports might serve as weak signals or precursors indicative of emergent risk such as when combined with other safety information. The architecture could include SFCs that are based on voluntary safety reports recognizing the periodic temporal nature of data analysis. As previously mentioned, aviation accidents with their causal and contributing precursors can inform the need for SFCs in the IASMS. Accidents and incidents at San Francisco International Airport such as Asiana 214 and Air Canada 759 illustrate how combinations of different factors lead to increased risk. These types of precursors and different factors have implications on the types of SFCs that could be needed to monitor and manage different sources and types of design and operational risk. Continuing to assure the safety of AAM as designs and operations gain in complexity can be accompanied by defining SFCs that also increase in complexity. These SFCs can leverage information from findings and recommendations synthesized across on-going research, voluntary safety reports, and accident and incident reports. These SFCs can serve to refine accuracy of algorithms and resolve limitations with current practices. The IASMS architecture represents the framework for the SFCs and their critical role in safety assurance.

In-Time Aviation Safety Management System↗
DOE OSTI2025

Hanford Tank Waste Technology Development Integration and Innovation Synergy

The Chief Technology Office (CTO) within Hanford Tank Waste Operations & Closure (H2C) identifies technology development needs and develops solutions for tank waste treatment. One key element of the technology development (TD) program is the annual Technology Development Integrated Coordination (TDIC) meeting series. The main goal of these meetings is to inform the National Laboratories and other entities of the needs identified by the end users of the technology. In turn, the meetings provide an opportunity for National Laboratories and others to provide insight into potential solutions. This dynamic facilitates dialogues that frequently identify not only new, innovative approaches, but also enhancements to ongoing technology development projects.

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
NASA NTRS1972

STARSITE Program: Search To Assess Re- sources, Social, Institutional, Technical, and Environmental, toward a decision-making mechanism

The systems approach was used in the seminar on the complex multidisciplinary problem of housing and related environment conditions. The main areas of study are the following; historical overview of housing; diagrammatic presentation of the problem; technological innovations and contributions; management, economic, legal, and political considerations; environment and natural resources; human needs and behavior; model of the housing industry; and potential for implementation. It is felt that a greater attempt should be made to transfer aerospace technology to the housing industry; however, the emphasis of the conference was directed to the modern management techniques developed by NASA. Among the conclusions are the following: The extent and character of the housing problem should be defined. Increased coordination of housing programs within and between Federal agencies is essential. Development of physically sophisticated building systems requires Federal support. New towns of differing life styles need to be created. Physiological and psychological reactions to environmental enclosure need to be defined.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2014

Exploration of Planetary Skylights and Tunnels

While planetary pits and caves have been fiction for a century, they have been seen from orbit only in the last few years. These discoveries exceed the fantasies in diversity, scale, and abundance. For pits and caves, this is the age of discovery, ranging from a few pits on the Moon and Mars in 2009 to hundreds within the time of this research, with many more to come. Pits with subsurface voids have been confirmed on the Moon and Mars and indicated on Venus, Phobos, Eros, Gaspra, Ida, Enceladus, and Europa. Compelling next steps are surface and subsurface exploration.Pits and caves are opportunistic study targets for unique origins, geology, and climate that will broadly impact planetary science. Holes on Mars are of particular interest because their interior caves are relatively protected from the harsh surface, making them good candidates to contain Martian life. Pits are prime targets for possible future spacecraft, robots, and even human interplanetary explorers. Caves and caverns could be ready-_made shelters for future Moon and Mars explorers and colonists. Discoveries to date look down from on high with satellites but cannot reveal the wonders of caves. They cannot enter, touch, or view pits up close. Genuine exploration is only achievable through surface missions. Robotic missions can assess suitability for safe entry and habitation, plus inform techniques for developing subsurface infrastructure.Missions into planetary voids redefine the future of exploration, science, and habitation beyond Earth. We can reach this future only by targeting specific technological advancement now. Prior missions and current roadmap priorities target regions of benign terrain. While in-cave concepts have been postulated, the critical technologies have not been identified and demonstrated.While robotic exploration of skylights and caves can seek out life, investigate geology and origins, and open the subsurface of other worlds to humankind, it is a daunting venture. Planetary voids present perilous terrain requiring innovative technologies for access, exploration, and modeling. These same technologies are broadly applicable to explorations of rough and/or subsurface planetary environments, including caves, craters, cliffs, and rock fields. This research speculates on the possibilities and means of such exploration with fundamental contributions to exploring, modeling, and visualizing this new class of large-scale, highly three-dimensional concave planetary features.

Whittaker, Red↗
DOE OSTI2025

Dynamic Capacitive Wireless Power Transfer System for Electric Vehicles (CRADA Final Report)

Road transportation accounts for 23% of our nation's total energy consumption, 59% of our petroleum consumption and 22% of our total emissions. Electric vehicles (EVs) have much higher well-to-wheel efficiency compared to gasoline vehicles and can reduce our dependence on oil, minimize emissions, improve local air quality and provide a platform for technological innovation and economic growth. While major progress has been made in the development of electric vehicles, their penetration remains under 1 The main hurdles in their widespread adoption are high cost, limited range and long charging times, due to limitations in battery technology. An approach to overcome these hurdles is to substantially reduce the on-board energy storage and instead deliver power wirelessly to the vehicle while it is in motion dynamic wireless power transfer (WPT). For EV charging applications, researchers have traditionally focused on inductive WPT. An issue with inductive WPT systems is that for magnetic flux guidance and shielding, they require ferrite cores, making them expensive, bulky and difficult to embed in the roadway. Under an ARPA-E IDEAS grant, the CU Boulder team has recently developed an alternative approach to WPT based on capacitive coupling that is much smaller, lighter, less expensive, and easier to embed in the roadway than inductive WPT; and have demonstrated a 1.2-kW 6.78-MHz version of this capacitive WPT system on a stationary platform. Under this seed grant program, preliminary work will be carried out on a dynamic capacitive WPT system to prepare a strong proposal for the ARPA-E OPEN 2018 FOA.

33 ADVANCED PROPULSION SYSTEMS↗
NASA NTRS2001

The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM) - Revolutionary astronomy, breakthrough technology

The Space Interferometry Mission (SIM), with a target launch date of 2009, will be one of the premiere missions in the Astronomical Search for Origins (ASO) Program, the bold NASA endeavor to understand the origins of galaxies, of planetary systems around distant stars, and perhaps the origins of life itself. This adventure of discovery will be enabled by an explosive growth of innovative technology, as exciting in its own right as the underlying scientific quest.

ASO↗
NASA NTRS1998

Rover and Telerobotics Technology Program

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory's (JPL's) Rover and Telerobotics Technology Program, sponsored by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), responds to opportunities presented by NASA space missions and systems, and seeds commerical applications of the emerging robotics technology. The scope of the JPL Rover and Telerobotics Technology Program comprises three major segments of activity: NASA robotic systems for planetary exploration, robotic technology and terrestrial spin-offs, and technology for non-NASA sponsors. Significant technical achievements have been reached in each of these areas, including complete telerobotic system prototypes that have built and tested in realistic scenarios relevant to prospective users. In addition, the program has conducted complementary basic research and created innovative technology and terrestrial applications, as well as enabled a variety of commercial spin-offs.

Weisbin, Charles R.↗
DOE OSTI2025

A cradle-to-grave life-cycle-assessment of dry-processed Li-ion batteries for electric vehicles

Maxwell-type dry processing has emerged as a promising manufacturing technology for high-areal-loading Li-ion battery electrodes, offering a significant advantage by eliminating the use of the toxic and costly NMP solvent. This study developed a cradle-to-grave life-cycle-assessment model to evaluate the environmental impacts of this innovative technology, benchmarking the results against the conventional NMP-based technique for a configured 42 kWh NMC622-graphite battery pack. Furthermore, the findings reveal that the dry-processing method merits a 4.8% lower energy consumption and achieves environmental impacts up to 47.5% lower in 12 out of 13 categories, highlighting its environmental benefits compared with the NMP-based manufacturing processes.

Electrode↗
NASA NTRS1987

Pathfinder technologies for bold new missions

Project Pathfinder is a proposed U.S. Space Research and Technology program intended to enable bold new missions of space exploration. Pathfinder continues the advancement of technological capabilities and extends the foundation established under the Civil Space Technology Initiative, CSTI. By filling critical technological gaps, CSTI enhances access to Earth orbit and supports effective operations and science missions therein. Pathfinder, with a longer-term horizon, looks to a future that builds on Shuttle and Space Station and addresses technologies that support a range of exploration missions including: a return to the Moon to build an outpost; piloted missions to Mars; and continued scientific exploration of Earth and the other planets. The program's objective is to develop, within reasonable time frames, those emerging and innovative technologies that will make possible both new and enhanced missions and system concepts.

Sadin, Stanley R.↗
NASA NTRS1992

Application of Taguchi methods to dual mixture ratio propulsion system optimization for SSTO vehicles

The application of advanced technologies to future launch vehicle designs would allow the introduction of a rocket-powered, single-stage-to-orbit (SSTO) launch system early in the next century. For a selected SSTO concept, a dual mixture ratio, staged combustion cycle engine that employs a number of innovative technologies was selected as the baseline propulsion system. A series of parametric trade studies are presented to optimize both a dual mixture ratio engine and a single mixture ratio engine of similar design and technology level. The effect of varying lift-off thrust-to-weight ratio, engine mode transition Mach number, mixture ratios, area ratios, and chamber pressure values on overall vehicle weight is examined. The sensitivity of the advanced SSTO vehicle to variations in each of these parameters is presented, taking into account the interaction of each of the parameters with each other. This parametric optimization and sensitivity study employs a Taguchi design method. The Taguchi method is an efficient approach for determining near-optimum design parameters using orthogonal matrices from design of experiments (DOE) theory. Using orthogonal matrices significantly reduces the number of experimental configurations to be studied. The effectiveness and limitations of the Taguchi method for propulsion/vehicle optimization studies as compared to traditional single-variable parametric trade studies is also discussed.

Stanley, Douglas O.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA's Unsteady Pressure-Sensitive Paint Research and Operational Capability Developments

In the last three years, several advancements have been made to produce a new state-of-the-art capability in the field of Aerosciences. NASA’s Aerosciences Evaluations and Test Capabilities (AETC) Portfolio Office has funded a multi-year project to produce the unsteady Pressure-Sensitive Paint (uPSP) technology as an operational capability in key ground test facilities at NASA. The research and development has primarily been conducted at NASA Ames Research Center’s (ARC) Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel (UPWT) 11-by 11-ft Transonic Wind Tunnel (TWT). The NASA ARC UPWT is one of the ground test facilities under NASA AETC’s Portfolio Office. AETC’s goals are to provide the tools to deliver the technology innovations and breakthroughs necessary to address increasingly complex research and development challenges. AETC’s integrated approach will consider the complimentary high-end compute capabilities necessary to advance analysis in conjunction with ground experimental capabilities. The uPSP Capability Challenge Project is a demonstration of several different technologies: 1) the unsteady Pressure-Sensitive Paint (uPSP) technology, and 2) Project: Red Rover, establishing a secure, reliable, fast connection between experimental and computation facilities, leveraging NASA’s computational resources within the High-End Compute Capability (HECC) Project for processing, storing, and sharing data efficiently. This project demonstrates the technical diversity and technical inclusion need to advance the field of Aerosciences. The approach to combine subject matter experts in experimental methods, optical methods, production wind tunnel testing, network engineering, high-end computing, signal processing, grid generation, and visualization while establishing the required infrastructure for subject matter experts to have access to the data while the wind tunnel test is being conducted. The most recent advancements for the uPSP technology have focused on three key areas: development of data products, robust processing pipeline, operational efficiencies and uncertainty quantification.

buffet↗
NASA NTRS1996

NASA/DOD Aerospace Knowledge Diffusion Research Project: US Scientific and Technical Information Policy - Paper 57

In fiscal year 1994, the United States government spent about $68 billion for science and technology. Although there is general agreement among policy makers that the results of this expenditure can be used to enhance technological innovation and improve economic competitiveness, there is no coherent scientific and technical information (STI) policy. The absence of a cohesive policy and STI policy framework means that the transfer and utilization of STI goes uncoordinated. This chapter examines the U.S. government's role in funding science and technology, reviews Federal STI activities and involvement in the transfer and use of STI resulting from federally-funded science and technology, presents issues surrounding the use of federally-funded STI, and offers recommendations for improving the transfer and use of STI.

Pinelli, Thomas E.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Overview of NASA’s Science Mission Directorate Small Satellites Programs and Advances in Transformative Science Measurements with Small Satellites

Small satellites have become an accepted platform for enabling high-quality science measurements and observations. NASA missions have leveraged advances in sensor miniaturization, technology innovations, and new small satellite mission architectures to support high spatial and temporal measurements, continuity measurements, and constellations in response to science objectives described in NASA’s Decadal Surveys. Across six divisions of the Science Mission Directorate (SMD), over 12 years, SMD has funded 88 CubeSat/ SmallSat Missions and 59 Studies to date. Currently, SMD has 53 small spacecraft science missions (87spacecraft) in implementation or formulation. This paper provides the background of efforts to promote the implementation of small satellites within NASA as a balanced portfolio for the agency’s science, technology, and exploration goals. We include analysis of SmallSat awards and trends funded by SMD through Research Opportunities in Space and Earth Sciences (ROSES), Small Innovative Missions for Planetary Exploration (SIMPLEx), and Small Explorer (SMEX) and Medium Explorer (MIDEX) calls over the last 12years. The data source of this assessment is a subset of the NASA SmallSat Coordination Group Database, a collection of all known funded NASA SmallSat and CubeSat missions and studies. This paper also provides an overview of small satellite programs and selected missions from SMD’s divisions: Astrophysics, Heliophysics, Earth Science, and Planetary Science, and describes SMD’s efforts in fostering an incremental and continuous path to achieve high-priority science through transformative science measurements. This paper recognizes the latest observations and trends of the NASA CubeSat / SmallSat Science missions with masses ranging between 1kg to 500kg.

Small Satellites, SMD SmallSat, CubeSat,↗