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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 253 records · Page 14

Doppler-radar observation of the evolution of downdrafts in convective clouds

A detailed analysis of the 20 July 1977 thunderstorm complex which formed and evolve over the South Park region in Central Colorado is presented. The storm was extensively analyzed using multiple Doppler radar and surface mesonet data, developed within an environment having very weak wind shear. The storm owed its intensification to the strength of the downdraft, which was nearly coincident with the region where the cloud had grown. The noteworthy features of this storm were its motion to the right of the cloud-level winds, its multicellular nature and discrete propagation, its north-south orientation, and its relatively large storm size and high reflectivity factor (55 dBZ). This scenario accounts for the observed mesoscale and cloud-scale event. A line of convergence was generated at the interface between the easterly upslope winds and westerly winds. During stage II, the convergence line subsequently propagated down the slopes of the Mosquito Range, and was the main forcing mechanism for the development of updraft on the west flank of the storm. The formation of downdraft on the eastern side of updraft blacked surface inflow, and created a detectable gust front. As the original downdraft intensified, the accumulation of evaporatively-chilled air caused the intensification of the mesohigh, which likely destroyed the earlier convergence line and created a stronger convergence line to the east, which forced up-lifting of the moist, westerly inflow and caused the formation of updraft to the east. An organized downdraft circulation, apparently maintained by precipitation drag and evaporational cooling, was responsible in sustaining a well-defined gust front. The storm attained its highest intensity as a consequence of merging with a neighboring cloud. The interaction of downdrafts or gust fronts from two intense cells appeared to be the primary mechanism of this merging process as suggested by Simpson et al. (1980). The merging process coincided with more rain than occurred in unmerged echoes.

Motallebi, N.↗

NASA's Earth Resources Laboratory - Seventeen years of using remotely sensed satellite data in land applications

The activities of the Earth Resources Laboratoy (ERL) for the past seventeen years are reviewed with particular reference to four typical applications demonstrating the use of remotely sensed data in a geobased information system context. The applications discussed are: a fire control model for the Olympic National Park; wildlife habitat modeling; a resource inventory system including a potential soil erosion model; and a corridor analysis model for locating routes between geographical locations. Some future applications are also discussed.

Cashion, Kenneth D.↗

Visions of our Planet's Atmosphere, Land and Oceans: NASA/NOAA Electronic Theater 2002

The NASA/NOAA Electronic Theater presents Earth science observations and visualizations in a historical perspective. Fly in from outer space to the Olympic Medals Plaza, the new Gateway Center, and the University of Utah Stadium Site of the Olympic Opening and Closing Ceremonies in Salt Lake City. Fly in and through the Park City, and Snow Basin sites of the 2002 Winter Olympic Alpine Venues using 1 m IKONOS "Spy Satellite" data. See the four seasons of the Wasatch Front as observed by Landsat 7 at 15m resolution and watch the trees turn color in the Fall, snow come and go in the mountains and the reservoirs freeze and melt. Go back to the early weather satellite images from the 1960s and see them contrasted with the latest US and international global satellite weather movies Including hurricanes & "tornadoes". See the latest visualizations of spectacular images from NASA/NOAA remote sensing missions like Terra, GOES, TRMM, SeaWiFS, Landsat 7 including new 1 - min GOES rapid scan image sequences of Nov 9th 2001 Midwest tornadic thunderstorms and have them explained. See how High-Definition Television (HDTV) is revolutionizing the way we communicate science. (In cooperation with the American Museum of Natural History in NYC) See dust storms in Africa and smoke plumes from fires in Mexico. See visualizations featured on the covers Of Newsweek, TIME, National Geographic, Popular Science & on National & International Network TV. New computer software. tools allow us to roam & zoom through massive global images e.g. Landsat tours of the US, and Africa, showing desert and mountain geology as well as seasonal changes in vegetation. See animations of the polar ice packs and the motion of gigantic Antarctic Icebergs from SeaWinds data. Spectacular new visualizations of the global atmosphere & oceans are shown. See vertexes and currents in the global oceans that bring up the nutrients to feed tin) algae and draw the fish, whales and fisherman. See the how the ocean blooms in response to these currents and El Nino/La Nina climate changes. See the city lights, fishing fleets, gas flares and biomass burning of the Earth at night observed by the "night-vision" DMSP military satellite. The demonstration is interactively driven by a SGI Octane Graphics Supercomputer with two CPUs, 4 Gigabytes of RAM and 0.5 Terabyte of disk using two projectors across a super sized panoramic 48 foot screen. In addition new HDTV technology will be demonstrated from a portable computer server.

Hasler, A. F.↗

Visions of our Planet's Atmosphere, Land and Oceans: NASA/NOAA Electronic Theater 2002

The NASA/NOAA Electronic Theater presents Earth science observations and visualizations in a historical perspective. Fly in from outer space to the Olympic Medals Plaza, the new Gateway Center, and the University of Utah Stadium Site of the Olympic Opening and Closing Ceremonies in Salt Lake City. Fly in and through the Park City, and Snow Basin sites of the 2002 Winter Olympic Alpine Venues using 1 m IKONOS "Spy Satellite" data. See the four seasons of the Wasatch Front as observed by Landsat 7 at 15m resolution and watch the trees turn color in the Fall, snow come and go in the mountains and the reservoirs freeze and melt. Go back to the early weather satellite images from the 1960s and see them contrasted with the latest US and international global satellite weather movies including hurricanes & "tornadoes". See the latest visualizations of spectacular images from NASA/NOAA remote sensing missions like Terra, GOES, TRMM, SeaWiFS, Landsat 7 including new 1 - min GOES rapid scan image sequences of Nov 9th 2001 Midwest tornadic thunderstorms and have them explained. See how High-Definition Television (HDTV) is revolutionizing the way we communicate science. (In cooperation with the American Museum of Natural History in NYC) See dust storms in Africa and smoke plumes from fires in Mexico. See visualizations featured on the covers of Newsweek, TIME, National Geographic, Popular Science & on National & International Network TV. New computer software tools allow us to roam & zoom through massive global images e.g. Landsat tours of the US, and Africa, showing desert and mountain geology as well as seasonal changes in vegetation. See animations of the polar ice packs and the motion of gigantic Antarctic Icebergs from SeaWinds data. Spectacular new visualizations of the global atmosphere & oceans are shown. See vortexes and currents in the global oceans that bring up the nutrients to feed tiny algae and draw the fish, whales and fisherman. See the how the ocean blooms in response to these currents and El Nino/La Nina climate changes. See the city lights, fishing fleets, gas flares and bio-mass burning of the Earth at night observed by the "night-vision" DMSP military satellite. The demonstration is interactively driven by a SGI Octane Graphics Supercomputer with two CPUs, 4 Gigabytes of RAM and 0.5 Terabyte of disk using two projectors across a super sized panoramic 48 foot screen. In addition new HDTV technology will be demonstrated from a portable computer server.

Hasler, A. F.↗

Providing Housing, Food and Medical Support for 25,000 Katrina Evacuees with 12 Hours Notice: The Harris County Medical Support of the Superdome Evacuees

Hurricane Katrina was responsible for trapping 25,000 people in the New Orleans Superdome and isolating many others throughout Louisiana and Mississippi. The transport of these evacuees to the Reliant Park (Houston, Texas) used 500 buses each containing about 55 people. Processing the arriving evacuees included addressing their health status and medical needs as follows: an initial triage at disembarkation, a secondary triage in the Reliant Astrodome and Center, and definitive clinical care in the Reliant Arena "Katrina" Clinic. Baylor College of Medicine (BCM) physicians boarded buses and identified the sickest for emergency transport to Harris County Hospital District (HCHD) hospitals. BCM departments represented included pediatrics, family and community medicine, internal medicine, radiology, obstetrics and gynecology, orthopedics, surgery, and psychiatry. Astrodome and Center triage was managed by BCM physicians and staffed by HCHD Nurses and volunteers from Texas and beyond. The Reliant Astrodome, Center and Arena reached peak headcounts of 15,000,4500, and 2500, respectively Most evacuees visiting the triage sites in the Astrodome and Center were treated using "over-the-counter" medications with the remaining being transported to the "Katrina" clinic. The clinic was equipped with a lab, pharmacy, digital X-ray, and ultrasound machines in addition to electronic patient records created using 80 computer terminals. The Katrina clinic saw more than 15,000 patients during 15 days of operations (2,000 on the first full day), administered 10,000 tetanus shots, and filled thousands of prescriptions. At the peak of operations, the clinic saw 150 patients/hour with 25 physicians scheduled for each 12-hour shift. Approximately 900 people were transported to hospital emergency rooms. Within 3 weeks of arriving at the Reliant Park facilities, more than 90% of the families found permanent housing, enrolled children in schools, and found work. Using data obtained from manual and electronic medical records, this presentation will document the major milestones and lessons learned from this extraordinary project to help the Katrina evacuees.

Hamilton, Douglas↗

Tracking performance of the polarity-type costas loop at low SNR for UQPSK signal

Carrier tracking performance of the polarity type costas loop is analyzed for unbalanced quadriphase-shift-keyed (UQPSK) signals at low SNR. Squaring losses for various SNR, IF bandwidth, and data rate ratios are presented. The RMS phase jitter for a particular loop is computed for various I and Q channel power and data rate ratios. Experimental results using a breadboard costas loop are also included.

Park, Y. H.↗

Hubble Space Telescope secondary mirror vertex radius/conic constant test

The Hubble Space Telescope backup secondary mirror was tested to determine the vertex radius and conic constant. Three completely independent tests (to the same procedure) were performed. Similar measurements in the three tests were highly consistent. The values obtained for the vertex radius and conic constant were the nominal design values within the error bars associated with the tests. Visual examination of the interferometric data did not show any measurable zonal figure error in the secondary mirror.

Parks, Robert↗

Dawn Orbit Determination Team: Modeling and Fitting of Optical Data at Vesta

The Dawn spacecraft was launched on September 27th, 2007. Its mission is to consecutively rendezvous with and observe the two largest bodies in the main asteroid belt, Vesta and Ceres. It has already completed over a year's worth of direct observations of Vesta (spanning from early 2011 through late 2012) and is currently on a cruise trajectory to Ceres, where it will begin scientific observations in mid-2015. Achieving this data collection required careful planning and execution from all Dawn operations teams. Dawn's Orbit Determination (OD) team was tasked with reconstruction of the as-flown trajectory as well as determination of the Vesta rotational rate, pole orientation and ephemeris, among other Vesta parameters. Improved knowledge of the Vesta pole orientation, specifically, was needed to target the final maneuvers that inserted Dawn into the first science orbit at Vesta. To solve for these parameters, the OD team used radiometric data from the Deep Space Network (DSN) along with optical data reduced from Dawn's Framing Camera (FC) images. This paper will de-scribe the initial determination of the Vesta ephemeris and pole using a combination of radiometric and optical data, and also the progress the OD team has made since then to further refine the knowledge of Vesta's body frame orientation and rate with these data.

imagery↗

Debye Dielectric Model Function for Seawater Based on Expanded L-Band Measurement Data Set

New seawater dielectric measurements have recently been made over a broad range of salinities and temperatures at the George Washington University (GW). These measurements have been used to refine the existing dielectric model function of seawater for salinity retrieval. The mathematical structure of the new model function has been investigated to: (a) look for a physical basis for the mathematical form; and (b) to optimize the accuracy of data fitting. The Debye model has been chosen to represent the dielectric constant of seawater as a function of salinity (S), temperature (T) and frequency (f). The retrieved salinity using the Debye model has good agreement with the in-situ data collected by Argo floats. The global differences in retrieved salinity and in-situ data will be presented at the meeting.

ocean salinity↗

Analysis of forest structure using thematic mapper simulator data

The potential of Thematic Mapper Simulator (TMS) data for sensing forest structure information has been explored by principal components and feature selection techniques. In a survey of forest structural properties conducted for 123 field sites of the Sequoia National Park, the canopy closure could be well estimated (r = 0.62 to 0.69) by a variety of channel bands and band ratios, without reference to the forest type. Estimation of the basal area was less successful (r = 0.51 or less) on the average, but could be improved for certain forest types when data were stratified by floristic composition. To achieve such a stratification, individual sites were ordinated by a detrended correspondence analysis based on the canopy of dominant species. The analysis of forest structure in the Sequoia data suggests that total basal area can be best predicted in stands of lower density, and in younger even-aged managed stands.

Peterson, D. L.↗

Western Rainier Seismic Zone Airborne Laser Swath Mapping

Airborne laser swath mapping (ALSM) of the Puget Lowland conducted by TerraPoint LLC for the Purget Sound Lidar Concortium (PSLC), has been successful in revealing Holocene fault scarps and lendsliders hidden beneath the dense, temperate rain forest cover and in quantifying shoreline terrace uplift. Expanding the PSLC efforts, NASA-USGS collaboration is now focusing on topographic mapping of seismogenic zones adjacent to volcanois in the western Cascades range in order to assess the presence of active faulting and tectonic deformation, better define the extend of lahars and understand their flow processes, and characterize landslide occurrence. Mapping of the western Rainier zone (WRZ) was conducted by TerraPoint in late 2002, after leaf fall and before snow accumulation. The WRZ is a NNW-trending, approx. 30 km-long zone of seismicity west of Mount Rainier National Park. The Puget Lowland ALSM methods were modified to accommodate challenges posed by the steep, high relief terrian. The laser data, acquired with a density of approx. 2 pulses /sq m, was filtered to identify returns from the ground from which a bare Earth digital elevation model (DEM) was produced with a grid size of 1.8 m. The RMS elevation accuracy of the DEM in flat, unvegetated areas is approx. 10cm based on consistency between overlapping flight swaths and comparisons to ground control points. The resulting DEM substantially improves upon Shuttle Radar Topography Mission and USGS photogrammetric mapping. For example, the DEM defines the size and spatial distribution of flood erratics left by the Electron lahar and of megaclasts within the Round Pass lahar, important for characterizing the lahar hydraulics. A previously unknown lateral levee on the Round Pass lahar is also revealed. In addition, to illustrating geomorfic feature within the WRZ, future plans for laser mapping of the Saint Helens and Darrington seismic zones will be described.

Harding, David J.↗

On the Development of a New Nonequilibrium Chemistry Model for Mars Entry

This paper represents a summary of results to date of an on-going effort at NASA Ames Research Center to develop a physics-based non-equilibrium model for hypersonic entry into the Martian atmosphere. Our approach is to first compute potential energy surfaces based on accurate solutions of the electronic Schroedinger equation and then use quasiclassical trajectory calculations to obtain reaction cross sections and rate coefficients based on these potentials. We have presented new rate coefficients for N2 dissociation and CO dissociation and exchange reactions. These results illustrate shortcomings with some of the rate coefficients in Parks original T-Tv model for Mars entries and with some of the 30-45 year old shock tube data. We observe that the shock tube experiments of CO + O dissociation did not adequately account for the exchange reaction that leads to formation of C + O2. This reaction is actually the primary channel for CO removal in the shock layer at temperatures below 10,000 K, because the reaction enthalpy for exchange is considerably lower than the comparable value for dissociation.

quasiclassical trajectory calculation↗

Evaluation of constraint stabilization procedures for multibody dynamical systems

Comparative numerical studies of four constraint treatment techniques for the simulation of general multibody dynamic systems are presented, and results are presented for the example of a classical crank mechanism and for a simplified version of the seven-link manipulator deployment problem. The staggered stabilization technique (Park, 1986) is found to yield improved accuracy and robustness over Baumgarte's (1972) technique, the singular decomposition technique (Walton and Steeves, 1969), and the penalty technique (Lotstedt, 1979). Furthermore, the staggered stabilization technique offers software modularity, and the only data each solution module needs to exchange with the other is a set of vectors plus a common module to generate the gradient matrix of the constraints, B.

Park, K. C.↗

Final design of a space debris removal system

The objective is the removal of medium sized orbital debris in low Earth orbits. The design incorporates a transfer vehicle and a netting vehicle to capture the medium size debris. The system is based near an operational space station located at 28.5 degrees inclination and 400 km altitude. The system uses ground based tracking to determine the location of a satellite breakup or debris cloud. This data is unloaded to the transfer vehicle, and the transfer vehicle proceeds to rendezvous with the debris at a lower altitude parking orbit. Next, the netting vehicle is deployed, tracks the targeted debris, and captures it. After expending the available nets, the netting vehicle returns to the transfer vehicle for a new netting module and continues to capture more debris in the target area. Once all the netting modules are expended, the transfer vehicle returns to the space station's orbit, where it is resupplied with new netting modules from a space shuttle load. The new modules are launched by the shuttle from the ground, and the expended modules are taken back to Earth for removal of the captured debris, refueling, and repacking of the nets. Once the netting modules are refurbished, they are taken back into orbit for reuse. In a typical mission, the system has the ability to capture 50 pieces of orbital debris. One mission will take about six months. The system is designed to allow for a 30 degree inclination change on the outgoing and incoming trips of the transfer vehicle.

Carlson, Erika↗

How to handle 6GBytes a night and not get swamped

The Macho Project has undertaken a 5 year effort to search for dark matter in the halo of the Galaxy by scanning the Magellanic Clouds for micro-lensing events. Each evening's raw image data will be reduced in real-time into the observed stars' photometric measurements. The actual search for micro-lensing events will be a post-processing operation. The theoretical prediction of the rate of such events necessitates the collection of a large number of repeated exposures. The project designed camera subsystem delivers 64 Mbytes per exposure with exposures typically occurring every 500 seconds. An ideal evening's observing will provide 6 Gbytes of raw image data and 40 Mbytes of reduced photometric measurements. Recognizing the difficulty of digging out from a snowballing cascade of raw data, the project requires the real-time reduction of each evening's data. The software team's implementation strategy centered on this non-negotiable mandate. Accepting the reality that 2 full time people needed to implement the core real-time control and data management system within 6 months, off-the-shelf vendor components were explored to provide quick solutions to the classic needs for file management, data management, and process control. Where vendor solutions were lacking, state-of-the-art models were used for hand tailored subsystems. In particular, petri nets manage process control, memory mapped bulletin boards provide interprocess communication between the multi-tasked processes, and C++ class libraries provide memory mapped, disk resident databases. The differences between the implementation strategy and the final implementation reality are presented. The necessity of validating vendor product claims are explored. Both the successful and hindsight decisions enabling the collection and processing of the nightly data barrage are reviewed.

Allsman, R.↗

Investigation of image enhancement techniques for the development of a self-contained airborne radar navigation system

This study was devoted to an investigation of the feasibility of applying advanced image processing techniques to enhance radar image characteristics that are pertinent to the pilot's navigation and guidance task. Millimeter (95 GHz) wave radar images for the overwater (i.e., offshore oil rigs) and overland (Heliport) scenario were used as a data base. The purpose of the study was to determine the applicability of image enhancement and scene analysis algorithms to detect and improve target characteristics (i.e., manmade objects such as buildings, parking lots, cars, roads, helicopters, towers, landing pads, etc.) that would be helpful to the pilot in determining his own position/orientation with respect to the outside world and assist him in the navigation task. Results of this study show that significant improvements in the raw radar image may be obtained using two dimensional image processing algorithms. In the overwater case, it is possible to remove the ocean clutter by thresholding the image data, and furthermore to extract the target boundary as well as the tower and catwalk locations using noise cleaning (e.g., median filter) and edge detection (e.g., Sobel operator) algorithms.

Phatak, A. V.↗