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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 NTRS1999

Space Mechanisms Technology Workshop Proceedings

Over the years, NASA has experienced a number of troublesome mechanism anomalies. Because of this, the NASA Office of Safety and Mission Assurance initiated a workshop to evaluate the current space mechanism state-of-the-art and to determine the obstacles that will have to be met in order to achieve NASA's future missions goals. Seventy experts in the field attended the workshop. The experts identified current and perceived future space mechanisms obstacles. For each obstacle, the participants identified technology deficiencies, the current state-of-the-art, and applicable NASA, DOD, and industry missions. In addition, the participants at the workshop looked at technology needs for current missions, technology needs for future missions, what new technology is needed to improve the reliability of mechanisms, what can be done to improve technology development and the dissemination of information, and what do we do next.

Fusaro, Robert L.↗
NASA NTRS2007

Gyro Evaluation for the Mission to Jupiter

As an important component in NASA's New Frontiers Program, the Jupiter Polar Orbiter (Juno) mission is designed to investigate in-depth physical properties of Jupiter. It will include the giant planet's ice-rock core and atmospheric studies as well as exploration of its polar magnetosphere. It will also provide the opportunity to understand the origin of the Jovian magnetic field. Due to severe radiation environment of the Jovian system, this mission inherently presents a significant technical challenge to Attitude Control System (ACS) design since the ACS sensors must survive and function properly to reliably maneuver the spacecraft throughout the mission. Different gyro technologies and their critical performance characteristics are discussed, compared and evaluated to facilitate a choice of appropriate gyro-based inertial measurement unit to operate in a harsh Jovian environment to assure mission success.

physical properties↗
NASA NTRS2013

Acoustic Emission Health Monitoring of Fill Purge COPV's Used in Aerospace and Automotive Applications and Designed for Long Cycle Life

Cumulative composite damage in composite pressure vessels (CPVs) currently is not monitored on-orbit. Consequently, hazards due to catastrophic burst before leak (BBL) or compromised CPV reliability cannot be ascertained or mitigated, posing a risk to crew and mission assurance. The energy associated with CPV rupture can be significant, especially with high pressure gases are under containment, and the energy releases can be severe enough to cause injury, death, loss of assets or mission. Dual-Use Rationale: CPVs similar to those used by NASA on ISS, for example, are finding increasing use in automotive and transportation industry applications. These CPVs generally have a nonload sharing liner and are repeatedly filled over their service lifetime, typically with hydrogen or compressed natural gas (CNG). The same structural health monitoring equipment and software developed by NASA WSTF for evaluating, in real-time, the health of NASA CPVs on ISS will be used to evaluate the health of automotive CPVs, the only differences being the type and design of the CPV, and the in-service lifetime pressure histories. HSF Need(s)/Performance Characteristic(s) Supported: 1) Enable on-board vehicle systems management for mission critical functions at destinations with > 3 second time delay 2) Enable autonomous nominal operations and FDIR for crewed and un-crewed systems 3) Reduce on-board crew time to sustain and manage vehicle by factor of 2x at destinations with > 6 second time delay (see Crew Autonomy sheet) 4) Reduce earth-based mission ops "back room engineering" requirements for distant mission support delay (see Mission Autonomy sheet)

Waller, Jess↗
NASA NTRS2025

NASA Planetary Protection Handbook

This handbook provides guidance to mission providers and Planetary Protection (PP) practitioners on implementing PP measures for both robotic and crewed space missions. This handbook represents major updates to PP practices since a previously drafted handbook from 2010. In 2017, NASA reorganized the Office of Planetary Protection (OPP) from the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) to a Technical Authority (TA) within the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OSMA). With this organizational change came a complete overhaul of NASA’s PP policy and technical standards. This handbook reflects the latest NASA PP policy updates in NPR 8715.24, Planetary Protection Provisions for Robotic Extraterrestrial Missions and technical requirements of NASA-STD-8719.27, Implementing Planetary Protection Requirements for Space Flight. This handbook is a companion document to the NPR and technical standard and provides guidance, best practices, background information, and advice for practitioners to consider when implementing PP on NASA missions and NASA-partnered missions.

Nick Benardini↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Use of Preliminary PRA to Inform Decisions During Initial NASA Gateway Development

How do you use Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) to support a program in development before designs are even known? Traditional PRAs require detailed design information and early in a program life cycle such information is not available. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) developed a preliminary PRA for the Gateway Program based upon NASA reference designs utilizing data and models from pervious PRA studies as surrogates for the Gateway systems. Gateway will be a lunar outpost that supports missions to the moon and includes several elements/modules developed by NASA and International Partners. NASA SMA began supporting Gateway in fall 2017 during initial formulation and continues to support the Gateway Program today. This paper will explore how the NASA SMA developed preliminary PRA was used to inform Gateway Program decisions with specific examples provided.

PRA↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Use of Preliminary PRA to Inform Decisions During Initial NASA Gateway Development

How do you use Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA) to support a program in development before designs are even known? Traditional PRAs require detailed design information and early in a program life cycle such information is not available. National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Safety and Mission Assurance (SMA) developed a preliminary PRA for the Gateway Program based upon NASA reference designs utilizing data and models from previous PRA studies as surrogates for the Gateway systems. Gateway will be a lunar outpost that supports missions to the moon and includes several elements/modules developed by NASA and International Partners. NASA SMA began supporting Gateway in fall 2017 during initial formulation and continues to support the Gateway Program today. This paper will explore how the NASA SMA developed preliminary PRA was used to inform Gateway Program decisions with specific examples provided.

PRA↗
NASA NTRS2001

Smarter Software For Enhanced Vehicle Health Monitoring and Inter-Planetary Exploration

The existing philosophy for space mission control was born in the early days of the space program when technology did not exist to put significant control responsibility onboard the spacecraft. NASA relied on a team of ground control experts to troubleshoot systems when problems occurred. As computing capability improved, more responsibility was handed over to the systems software. However, there is still a large contingent of both launch and flight controllers supporting each mission. New technology can update this philosophy to increase mission assurance and reduce the cost of inter-planetary exploration. The advent of model-based diagnosis and intelligent planning software enables spacecraft to handle most routine problems automatically and allocate resources in a flexible way to realize mission objectives. The manifests for recent missions include multiple subsystems and complex experiments. Spacecraft must operate at longer distances from earth where communications delays make earthbound command and control impractical. NASA's Ames Research Center (ARC) has demonstrated the utility of onboard diagnosis and planning with the Remote Agent experiment in 1999. KSC has pioneered model-based diagnosis and demonstrated its utility for ground support operations. KSC and ARC are cooperating in research to improve the state of the art of this technology. This paper highlights model-based reasoning applications for Moon and Mars missions including in-situ resource utilization and enhanced vehicle health monitoring.

Larson, William E.↗
NASA NTRS2018

Total and Spectral Solar Irradiance Sensor (TSIS) Project Status

TSIS-1 studies the Sun's energy input to Earth and how solar variability affects climate. TSIS-1 will measure both the total amount of light that falls on Earth, known as the total solar irradiance (TSI), and how that light is distributed among ultraviolet, visible and infrared wavelengths, called solar spectral irradiance (SSI). TSIS-1 will provide the most accurate measurements of sunlight and continue the long-term climate data record. TSIS-1 includes two instruments: the Total Irradiance Monitor (TIM) and the Spectral Irradiance Monitor (SIM), integrated into a single payload on the International Space Station (ISS). The TSIS-1 TIM and SIM instruments are upgraded versions of the two instruments that are flying on the Solar Radiation and Climate Experiment (SORCE) mission launched in January 2003. NASA Goddard's TSIS project responsibilities include project management, system engineering, safety and mission assurance, and engineering oversight for TSIS-1. TSIS-1 was installed on the International Space Station in December 2017. At the end of the 90-day commissioning phase, responsibility for TSIS-1 operations transitions to the Earth Science Mission Operations (ESMO) project at Goddard for its 5-year operations. NASA contracts with the University of Colorado Laboratory for Atmospheric and Space Physics (LASP) for the design, development and testing of TSIS-1, support for ISS integration, science operations of the TSIS-1 instrument, data processing, data evaluation, calibration and delivery to the Goddard Earth Science Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC).

TSIS↗
NASA NTRS2006

A Predictive Approach to Eliminating Errors in Software Code

NASA s Metrics Data Program Data Repository is a database that stores problem, product, and metrics data. The primary goal of this data repository is to provide project data to the software community. In doing so, the Metrics Data Program collects artifacts from a large NASA dataset, generates metrics on the artifacts, and then generates reports that are made available to the public at no cost. The data that are made available to general users have been sanitized and authorized for publication through the Metrics Data Program Web site by officials representing the projects from which the data originated. The data repository is operated by NASA s Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) Facility, which is located in Fairmont, West Virginia, a high-tech hub for emerging innovation in the Mountain State. The IV&V Facility was founded in 1993, under the NASA Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, as a direct result of recommendations made by the National Research Council and the Report of the Presidential Commission on the Space Shuttle Challenger Accident. Today, under the direction of Goddard Space Flight Center, the IV&V Facility continues its mission to provide the highest achievable levels of safety and cost-effectiveness for mission-critical software. By extending its data to public users, the facility has helped improve the safety, reliability, and quality of complex software systems throughout private industry and other government agencies. Integrated Software Metrics, Inc., is one of the organizations that has benefited from studying the metrics data. As a result, the company has evolved into a leading developer of innovative software-error prediction tools that help organizations deliver better software, on time and on budget.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2010

Constellation Probabilistic Risk Assessment (PRA): Design Consideration for the Crew Exploration Vehicle

Managed by NASA's Office of Safety and Mission Assurance, a pilot probabilistic risk analysis (PRA) of the NASA Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) was performed in early 2006. The PRA methods used follow the general guidance provided in the NASA PRA Procedures Guide for NASA Managers and Practitioners'. Phased-mission based event trees and fault trees are used to model a lunar sortie mission of the CEV - involving the following phases: launch of a cargo vessel and a crew vessel; rendezvous of these two vessels in low Earth orbit; transit to th$: moon; lunar surface activities; ascension &om the lunar surface; and return to Earth. The analysis is based upon assumptions, preliminary system diagrams, and failure data that may involve large uncertainties or may lack formal validation. Furthermore, some of the data used were based upon expert judgment or extrapolated from similar components~systemsT. his paper includes a discussion of the system-level models and provides an overview of the analysis results used to identify insights into CEV risk drivers, and trade and sensitivity studies. Lastly, the PRA model was used to determine changes in risk as the system configurations or key parameters are modified.

Prassinos, Peter G.↗
NASA NTRS2003

(CICT) Computing, Information, and Communications Technology Overview

The goal of the Computing, Information, and Communications Technology (CICT) program is to enable NASA's Scientific Research, Space Exploration, and Aerospace Technology Missions with greater mission assurance, for less cost, with increased science return through the development and use of advanced computing, information and communications technologies. This viewgraph presentation includes diagrams of how the political guidance behind CICT is structured. The presentation profiles each part of the NASA Mission in detail, and relates the Mission to the activities of CICT. CICT's Integrated Capability Goal is illustrated, and hypothetical missions which could be enabled by CICT are profiled. CICT technology development is profiled.

VanDalsem, William R.↗
NASA NTRS2005

Environmental Conditions for Space Flight Hardware: A Survey

Interest in generalization of the physical environment experienced by NASA hardware from the natural Earth environment (on the launch pad), man-made environment on Earth (storage acceptance an d qualification testing), the launch environment, and the space environment, is ed to find commonality among our hardware in an effort to reduce cost and complexity. NASA is entering a period of increase in its number of planetary missions and it is important to understand how our qualification requirements will evolve with and track these new environments. Environmental conditions are described for NASA projects in several ways for the different periods of the mission life cycle. At the beginning, the mission manager defines survivability requirements based on the mission length, orbit, launch date, launch vehicle, and other factors . such as the use of reactor engines. Margins are then applied to these values (temperature extremes, vibration extremes, radiation tolerances, etc,) and a new set of conditions is generalized for design requirements. Mission assurance documents will then assign an additional margin for reliability, and a third set of values is provided for during testing. A fourth set of environmental condition values may evolve intermittently from heritage hardware that has been tested to a level beyond the actual mission requirement. These various sets of environment figures can make it quite confusing and difficult to capture common hardware environmental requirements. Environmental requirement information can be found in a wide variety of places. The most obvious is with the individual projects. We can easily get answers to questions about temperature extremes being used and radiation tolerance goals, but it is more difficult to map the answers to the process that created these requirements: for design, for qualification, and for actual environment with no margin applied. Not everyone assigned to a NASA project may have that kind of insight, as many have only the environmental requirement numbers needed to do their jobs but do not necessarily have a programmatic-level understanding of how all of the environmental requirements fit together.

Plante, Jeannette↗
NASA NTRS2004

Evaluation of Open-Source Hard Real Time Software Packages

Reliable software is, at times, hard to find. No piece of software can be guaranteed to work in every situation that may arise during its use here at Glenn Research Center or in space. The job of the Software Assurance (SA) group in the Risk Management Office is to rigorously test the software in an effort to ensure it matches the contract specifications. In some cases the SA team also researches new alternatives for selected software packages. This testing and research is an integral part of the department of Safety and Mission Assurance. Real Time operation in reference to a computer system is a particular style of handing the timing and manner with which inputs and outputs are handled. A real time system executes these commands and appropriate processing within a defined timing constraint. Within this definition there are two other classifications of real time systems: hard and soft. A soft real time system is one in which if the particular timing constraints are not rigidly met there will be no critical results. On the other hand, a hard real time system is one in which if the timing constraints are not met the results could be catastrophic. An example of a soft real time system is a DVD decoder. If the particular piece of data from the input is not decoded and displayed to the screen at exactly the correct moment nothing critical will become of it, the user may not even notice it. However, a hard real time system is needed to control the timing of fuel injections or steering on the Space Shuttle; a delay of even a fraction of a second could be catastrophic in such a complex system. The current real time system employed by most NASA projects is Wind River's VxWorks operating system. This is a proprietary operating system that can be configured to work with many of NASA s needs and it provides very accurate and reliable hard real time performance. The down side is that since it is a proprietary operating system it is also costly to implement. The prospect of replacing this somewhat costly implementation is the focus of one of the SA group s current research projects. The explosion of open source software in the last ten years has led to the development of a multitude of software solutions which were once only produced by major corporations. The benefits of these open projects include faster release and bug patching cycles as well as inexpensive if not free software solutions. The main packages for hard real time solutions under Linux are Real Time Application Interface (RTAI) and two varieties of Real Time Linux (RTL), RTLFree and RTLPro. During my time here at NASA I have been testing various hard real time solutions operating as layers on the Linux Operating System. All testing is being run on an Intel SBC 2590 which is a common embedded hardware platform. The test plan was provided to me by the Software Assurance group at the start of my internship and my job has been to test the systems by developing and executing the test cases on the hardware. These tests are constructed so that the Software Assurance group can get hard test data for a comparison between the open source and proprietary implementations of hard real time solutions.

Mattei, Nicholas S.↗
NASA NTRS2009

Deep Impact Delta II Launch Vehicle Cracked Thick Film Coating on Electronic Packages Technical Consultation Report

The Deep Impact spacecraft was launched on a Boeing Delta II rocket from Cape Canaveral Air Force Station (CCAFS) on January 12, 2005. Prior to the launch, the Director of the Office of Safety and Mission Assurance (OS&MA) requested the NASA Engineering and Safety Center (NESC) lead a team to render an independent opinion on the rationale for flight and the risk code assignments for the hazard of cracked Thick Film Assemblies (TFAs) in the E-packages of the Delta II launch vehicle for the Deep Impact Mission. The results of the evaluation are contained in this report.

Cameron, Kenneth D.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Rapid Response Risk Assessment in New Project Development

A capability for rapidly performing quantitative risk assessments has been developed by JSC Safety and Mission Assurance for use on project design trade studies early in the project life cycle, i.e., concept development through preliminary design phases. A risk assessment tool set has been developed consisting of interactive and integrated software modules that allow a user/project designer to assess the impact of alternative design or programmatic options on the probability of mission success or other risk metrics. The risk and design trade space includes interactive options for selecting parameters and/or metrics for numerous design characteristics including component reliability characteristics, functional redundancy levels, item or system technology readiness levels, and mission event characteristics. This capability is intended for use on any project or system development with a defined mission, and an example project will used for demonstration and descriptive purposes, e.g., landing a robot on the moon. The effects of various alternative design considerations and their impact of these decisions on mission success (or failure) can be measured in real time on a personal computer. This capability provides a high degree of efficiency for quickly providing information in NASA s evolving risk-based decision environment

Graber, Robert R.↗
NASA NTRS2022

Unlocking the Spacecraft and Human Habitat Microbiome to Enable the Next Generation of Space Exploration

Planetary protection is the discipline that prevents harmful contamination of the solar system during exploration activities. The current international guidelines and NASA policy addressing biological contamination on spacecraft surfaces contains prescriptive guidelines of spore requirements (e.g., 300 spores/m2, 5×105 spores per spacecraft) applicable to spacecraft bound for Mars. To verify these requirements spacecraft engineers sample spacecraft surfaces throughout the assembly, test and launch operations phase of the mission using damp water cotton swabs and polyester wipes. After sampling, the potential biological contamination is enumerated using a series of traditional microbiology techniques to include sonication, heat shocking at 80°C for 15min to select for spores, and growth on tryptic soy agar at 32°C for 72 hours. To enable crewed missions to Mars and robotic exploration of the Ocean Worlds a risk informed decision making / performance-based approach to assess biological contamination offers a promising solution in the trade space. Recognizing the need for a performance-based approach, NASA’s new Planetary Protection policies now incorporate the agility for missions to be able to leverage a performance or prescriptive approach. One of top contenders in the option space is a coupled quantitative, descriptive and functional based approach to be able to assess the quantity, types and capabilities of the biological contamination present on spacecraft surfaces. A tailored, mission by mission assurance case could then be formulated by building an argument around the target body, projected capabilities surrounding the types of organisms their potential for survival and proliferation, and ability to be transported on the target body to contaminate an area of biological interest. A performance-based requirement would then be used to demonstrate the mission’s compliance in protecting the planetary environment safety objectives. This symposium talk will showcase the background and need case for NASA to develop such a capability as well as provide an update on the efforts underway in developing a transparent and responsible performance-based approach to biological contamination assessments on spacecraft surfaces.

Habitat Microbiome↗
NASA NTRS2004

How Systems Engineering and Risk Management Defend Against Murphy's Law and Human Error

Systems Engineering and Risk Management processes can work synergistically to defend against the causes of many mission ending failures. Defending against mission ending failures is facilitated by fostering a team that has a healthy respect for Murphy's Law and a team with a of curiosity for how things work, how they can fail, and what they need to know. This curiosity is channeled into making the unknowns known or what is uncertain more certain. Efforts to assure mission success require the expenditure of energy in the following areas: 1. Understanding what defines Mission Success as guided by the customer's needs, objectives and constraints. 2. Understanding how the system is supposed to work and how the system is to be produced, fueled by the curiosity of how the system should work and how it should be produced. 3. Understanding how the system can fail and how the system might not be produced on time and within cost, fueled by the curiosity of how the system might fail and how production might be difficult. 4. Understanding what we need to know and what we need learn for proper completion of the above three items, fueled by the curiosity of what we might not know in order to make the best decisions.

Bay, Michael↗
NASA NTRS2016

Station Program Note Pull Automation

Upon commencement of my internship, I was in charge of maintaining the CoFR (Certificate of Flight Readiness) Tool. The tool acquires data from existing Excel workbooks on NASA's and Boeing's databases to create a new spreadsheet listing out all the potential safety concerns for upcoming flights and software transitions. Since the application was written in Visual Basic, I had to learn a new programming language and prepare to handle any malfunctions within the program. Shortly afterwards, I was given the assignment to automate the Station Program Note (SPN) Pull process. I developed an application, in Python, that generated a GUI (Graphical User Interface) that will be used by the International Space Station Safety & Mission Assurance team here at Johnson Space Center. The application will allow its users to download online files with the click of a button, import SPN's based on three different pulls, instantly manipulate and filter spreadsheets, and compare the three sources to determine which active SPN's (Station Program Notes) must be reviewed for any upcoming flights, missions, and/or software transitions. Initially, to perform the NASA SPN pull (one of three), I had created the program to allow the user to login to a secure webpage that stores data, input specific parameters, and retrieve the desired SPN's based on their inputs. However, to avoid any conflicts with sustainment, I altered it so that the user may login and download the NASA file independently. After the user has downloaded the file with the click of a button, I defined the program to check for any outdated or pre-existing files, for successful downloads, to acquire the spreadsheet, convert it from a text file to a comma separated file and finally into an Excel spreadsheet to be filtered and later scrutinized for specific SPN numbers. Once this file has been automatically manipulated to provide only the SPN numbers that are desired, they are stored in a global variable, shown on the GUI, and transferred over to a new Excel worksheet for comparison. I managed to get my application to acquire the CSWG (Computer Safety Working Group) and the SPNWG (Space Station Working Group) SPN's with just two mouse clicks for each pull, as opposed to several from the original process. When all three pulls are performed, an Excel sheet containing all three different results will be generated for the user to compare and determine which SPN's will be presented or reviewed the following month. The experience from this internship has been spectacular. As a high school senior who will begin attending college in the fall, this internship has been both educationally and occupationally beneficial. The internship has allowed me the opportunities to learn new programming languages, effectively network with NASA personnel from a variety of departments at JSC, and allowed me to learn new professional skills and etiquette. My internship at NASA's Johnson Space Center has further motivated me to pursue a Master's degree in Software Engineering and strive for a prosperous career with NASA as a civil servant.

Delgado, Ivan↗