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At least 253 records · Page 14

The Challenges of Integrating Instrumentation with Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerators

To realize the National Aeronautics and Space Administration s (NASA) goal of landing humans on Mars, development of technologies to facilitate the landing of heavy payloads are being explored. Current entry, decent, and landing technologies are not practical when utilizing these heavy payloads due to mass and volume constraints dictated by limitations imposed by current launch vehicle fairings. Therefore, past and present technologies are now being considered to provide a mass and volume efficient solution, including Inflatable Aerodynamic Decelerators (IADs) [1]. IAD ground and flight tests are currently being conducted to develop and characterize their performance under flight-like conditions. The integrated instrumentation systems, which are key to the performance characterization in each of these tests, have proven to be a challenge compared to the instrumentation of traditional rigid aeroshells. To overcome these challenges, flexible and embedded sensing systems have been developed, along with improved instrumenting techniques. This development opportunity faces many difficult aspects specific to inflatable structures in extreme environments. These include but are not limited to: physical flexibility, packaging, temperature, structural integration and data acquisition [2]. To better define the instrumentation challenges posed by IAD technology development, a survey was conducted to identify valuable measurements for ground and flight testing. From this survey many sensing technologies were explored, resulting in a down-selection to the most viable prospects. These systems were then iterated upon in design to determine the best integration techniques specific to a 3m and 6m stacked torus IAD. Each sensing system was then integrated and employed to support the IAD testing in the National Full-Scale Aerodynamics Complex 40 x 80 wind tunnel at NASA Ames Research Center in the summer of 2012. Another challenge that has been explored is the data acquisition of IAD sensing technologies. Traditionally all space based sensing systems transmit their data through a wired interface. This limits the amount of sensors able to be integrated within the IAD due to volume and routing restrictions of the supporting signal and excitation wires. To alleviate this situation, multiple wireless data acquisition technologies have been researched and developed through rapid prototyping efforts. The final custom multi-nodal wireless system utilized during the summer 2012 IAD test series consisted of four remote nodes and one receiving base station. The system reliably conditioned and acquired 20+ sensors over the course of the wind tunnel test series. These developments in wireless data acquisition techniques can eliminate the need for structural feedthroughs and reduce system mass associated with wiring and wire harnesses. This makes the utilization of flight instrumentation more attractive to future missions, which would result in further improved characterization of IAD technology, and overall, increased scientific knowledge regarding the response of inflatable structures to extreme entry environments. [

Swanson, Gregory T.↗

Search for Compton-backscattered annihilation radiation from the galactic center with the OSSE

An emission feature near 170 keV, interpreted as Compton-backscattered 511 keV positron-annihilation radiation, has been reported twice by balloon-borne germanium spectrometers from within approximately 15 deg of the Galactic center (Leventhal, MacCallum, & Stang 1978; Smith et al. 1993). Upper limits on this feature set by HEAO 3 (Mahoney, Ling, & Wheaton 1993) and other instruments indicate that it must be transient. We have searched data from the Oriented Scintillation Spectrometer Experiment (OSSE) on the Compton Gamma Ray Observatory (CGRO) for this feature, using daily spectral accumulations from all pointings near the Galactic center up to 1993 August, and covering most of the region viewed by the balloon instruments. We find no evidence for backscatter emission. Under the hypothesis that the source is 1E 1740.7-2942, the OSSE data set (186 days) disagrees with the balloon measurements with 99.3% confidence. The average daily 3 sigma OSSE upper limit on bakscatter flux from 1E 1740.7-2942 is 6.8 x 10(exp -4) photons/sq cm/s, compared to the 1.3 x 10(exp -3) photons/sq cm reported by the balloon observations. We also saw no evidence in 186 days for linelike emission from the point source EXS 1737.9-2952 recently discovered by Grindlay, Covault, & Manandhar (1993). This source exhibited bright emission from 83-111 keV, which has been interpreted as doubly backscattered 511 keV radiation. The average daily 3 sigma upper limit from OSSE for this line is 9.8 x 10(exp -4) photons/sq cm/s, or approximately 8% of the reported flux.

Smith, D. M.↗

Space-Derived Sewer Monitor

The QuadraScan Longterm Flow Monitoring System is a second generation sewer monitor developed by American Digital Systems, Inc.'s founder Peter Petroff. Petroff, a former spacecraft instrumentation designer at Marshall Space Flight Center, used expertise based on principles acquired in Apollo and other NASA programs. QuadraScan borrows even more heavily from space technology, for example in its data acquisition and memory system derived from NASA satellites. "One-time" measurements are often plagued with substantial errors due to the flow of groundwater absorbed into the system. These system sizing errors stem from a basic informational deficiency: accurate, reliable data on how much water flows through a sewer system over a long period of time is very difficult to obtain. City officials are turning to "permanent," or long-term sewer monitoring systems. QuadraScan offers many advantages to city officials such as the early warning capability to effectively plan for city growth in order to avoid the crippling economic impact of bans on new sewer connections in effect in many cities today.

Source record↗

Characterizing Wildfires in Western US.: A Cloud-based Case Study for Interdisciplinary Research using NASA Resources

This presentation will demonstrate a case study of interdisciplinary research done in the Amazon Web Services (AWS) cloud platform, in addition to in the local machine. We conduct data analysis next to data by leveraging various cloud-based data in NASA Earthdata Cloud, which are distributed by different missions/NASA Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), and cloud computing resources at NASA. For instance, we directly access multiple datasets stored in the AWS Simple Storage Service (S3) buckets using a Python Jupyter notebook through a JupyterHub interface hosted in AWS (without having to download data), and conduct data analysis next to data in the cloud. We will also show how to share the research results following Open Source policy. This case study characterizes the change in wildfire events in the western United States during the past 20 years. In particular, we focus on the wildfires in California in 2021, one of the most severe wildfire years occurring in the most recent 20 years in California. We will analyze the possible causes of wildfires, such as drought conditions and climate variability, and examine the impacts of wildfires on air quality and atmospheric composition, and on land cover. We will examine the data distributed by the NASA Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC), including aerosols and meteorological data from the NASA Modern-Era Retrospective analysis for Research and Applications version 2 (MERRA-2), precipitation from the Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) and Global Precipitation Climate Project (GPCP), and aerosol index from Ozone Monitoring Instrument (OMI). We also utilize the data distributed by the Physical Oceanography (PO) DAAC, such as Sea Surface Temperature (SST) data from the Group for High Resolution Sea Surface Temperature (GHRSST), and the data distributed by Land Processes (LP) DAAC, such as Normalized Difference Vegetation Index (NDVI).

Xiaohua Pan↗

Design of a surface deformation measuring instrument for the Surface Tension Driven Convection Experiment (STDCE-2)

This final technical report covers the work accomplished (under NAG3-1300) from 1 October 1991 to 1 October 1993. The grant is a direct result of Dr. H. Philip Stahl's (of Rose-Hulman Institute of Technology) participation in the NASA/ASEE Summer Faculty Fellowship Program at NASA Lewis Research Center sponsored by Case Western Reserve University and the Ohio Aerospace Institute. The Surface Tension Driven Convection Experiment (STDCE) is a fundamental fluid physics experiment designed to provide quantitative data on the thermocapillary flow of fluid under the influence of an increased localized surface temperature. STDCE flew on the Space Shuttle Columbia in the First United States Microgravity Laboratory (USML-1) in June 1992. The second flight of this experiment (STDCE-2) is scheduled for 1995. The specific science objectives of STDCE-2 are to determine the extent and nature of thermocapillary flows, the effect of heating mode and level, the effect of the liquid free-surface shape, and the onset conditions for and nature of oscillatory flows. In order to satisfy one of these objectives, an instrument for measuring the shape of an air/oil free surface must be developed.

Stahl, H. Philip↗

Satellite Instrument Calibration for Measuring Global Climate Change. Report of a Workshop at the University of Maryland Inn and Conference Center, College Park, MD. , November 12-14, 2002

Measuring the small changes associated with long-term global climate change from space is a daunting task. To address these problems and recommend directions for improvements in satellite instrument calibration some 75 scientists, including researchers who develop and analyze long-term data sets from satellites, experts in the field of satellite instrument calibration, and physicists working on state of the art calibration sources and standards met November 12 - 14, 2002 and discussed the issues. The workshop defined the absolute accuracies and long-term stabilities of global climate data sets that are needed to detect expected trends, translated these data set accuracies and stabilities to required satellite instrument accuracies and stabilities, and evaluated the ability of current observing systems to meet these requirements. The workshop's recommendations include a set of basic axioms or overarching principles that must guide high quality climate observations in general, and a roadmap for improving satellite instrument characterization, calibration, inter-calibration, and associated activities to meet the challenge of measuring global climate change. It is also recommended that a follow-up workshop be conducted to discuss implementation of the roadmap developed at this workshop.

NATIONAL INSTITUTE OF STANDARDS AND TECHNOLOGY (NI↗

Measurement of C P Violation Observables in D + → K − K + π + Decays

A search for violation of the charge-parity ( C P ) symmetry in the D + → K − K + π + decay is presented, with proton-proton collision data corresponding to an integrated luminosity of 5.4 fb − 1 , collected at a center-of-mass energy of 13 TeV with the LHCb detector. A novel model-independent technique is used to compare the D + and D − phase-space distributions, with instrumental asymmetries subtracted using the D s + → K − K + π + decay as a control channel. The p value for the hypothesis of C P conservation is 8.1%. The C P asymmetry observables A C P | S ϕ π + = ( 0.95 ± 0.4 3 stat ± 0.2 6 syst ) × 10 − 3 and A C P | S K ¯ * 0 K + = ( − 0.26 ± 0.5 6 stat ± 0.1 8 syst ) × 10 − 3 are also measured. These results show no evidence of C P violation and represent the most sensitive search performed through the phase space of a multibody decay. © 2024 CERN, for the LHCb Collaboration 2024 CERN

Aaij, R. (ORCID:0000000305331952)↗

Dynamics of Playa Lakes in the Texas High Plains

The author has identified the following significant results. This project is designed to correlate ERTS-1 satellite imagery signatures with the water balance ecosystem and geology of select playa lake basins in West Texas. The principal work consisted of monitoring the weather instruments, the measurement of water levels and water depths examination of MSS imagery, and measurement of water and mud areas by use of ESIAC (Electronic Satellite Image Analysis Console) at Stanford Research Center, Menlo Park, California. A cost/benefit analysis, comparing the use of ERTS-1 data to more conventionally secured data, revealed that use of ERTS-1 data for such a survey reduces cost from $2.00 to $0.03/square mile.

Reeves, C. C., Jr.↗

1235 Preparing for TEMPO: A Review of Planned Metadata, Data Structure, and Distribution by NASA’s Atmospheric Science Data Center

The Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) is in the Science Directorate located at the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC), in Hampton, Virginia. The ASDC is one of NASA’s Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAAC) and supports over 60 projects and provides access to more than 1,000 archived collections. These datasets were created from satellite measurements, field experiments, and modeled data products. ASDC projects focus on the following Earth science disciplines: Radiation Budget, Clouds, Aerosols, and Tropospheric Composition. The ASDC is the official Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) of record for the upcoming Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument.. The instrument will share a ride on a commercial satellite as a hosted payload and will be launched to an orbit about 22,000 miles above Earth's equator. The investigation will, for the first time, use a space-based instrument to make accurate observations of tropospheric pollution concentrations of ozone, nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde, and aerosols with high resolution and frequency over the U.S, Canada, and Mexico.

Ashlee Autore↗

1235 Preparing for TEMPO: A Review of Planned Metadata, Data Structure, and Distribution by NASA’s Atmospheric Science Data Center

The Atmospheric Science Data Center (ASDC) is in the Science Directorate located at the NASA Langley Research Center (LaRC), in Hampton, Virginia. The ASDC is one of NASA’s Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAAC) and supports over 60 projects and provides access to more than 1,000 archived collections. These datasets were created from satellite measurements, field experiments, and modeled data products. ASDC projects focus on the following Earth science disciplines: Radiation Budget, Clouds, Aerosols, and Tropospheric Composition. The ASDC is the official Distributed Active Archive Center (DAAC) of record for the upcoming Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO) instrument.. The instrument will share a ride on a commercial satellite as a hosted payload and will be launched to an orbit about 22,000 miles above Earth's equator. The investigation will, for the first time, use a space-based instrument to make accurate observations of tropospheric pollution concentrations of ozone, nitrogen dioxide, formaldehyde, and aerosols with high resolution and frequency over the U.S, Canada, and Mexico.

Ashlee Autore↗

Measurement of surface reactions in the space environment

The Atomic Oxygen Measurement Spacecraft, ATOMS, and a suite of associated instruments, designed to measure the performance of improved atomic-oxygen-resistant materials and coatings in orbit and to telemeter the resulting data and video images to earth at intervals during a one-year mission, have been described in a definition study sponsored by the Langley Research Center under NASA's In-Space Technology Experiments Program. The objective of the program is to work toward an improvement of base materials and surface coatings which will resist the serious degradation experienced by the external surfaces of LEO spacecraft as a result of the ablative effects of atmospheric oxygen, possibly catalyzed by solar UV radiation. This miniature orbiting laboratory includes a radio-frequency mass spectrometer, a set of osmium actinometers, and a scanning optical microscope. The design of these instruments and their use in the overall experiment are discussed.

Abdou, Wedad A.↗

Evaluation of telerobotic systems using an instrumented task board

An instrumented task board was developed at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC). An overview of the task board design, and current development status is presented. The task board was originally developed to evaluate operator performance using the Protoflight Manipulator Arm (PFMA) at MSFC. The task board evaluates tasks for Orbital Replacement Unit (ORU), fluid connect and transfers, electrical connect/disconnect, bolt running, and other basic tasks. The instrumented task board measures the 3-D forces and torques placed on the board, determines the robot arm's 3-D position relative to the task board using IR optics, and provides the information in real-time. The PFMA joint input signals can also be measured from a breakout box to evaluate the sensitivity or response of the arm operation to control commands. The data processing system provides the capability for post processing of time-history graphics and plots of the PFMA positions, the operator's actions, and the PFMA servo reactions in addition to real-time force/torque data presentation. The instrumented task board's most promising use is developing benchmarks for NASA centers for comparison and evaluation of telerobotic performance.

Carroll, John D.↗

Blade Surface Pressure Distributions in a Rocket Engine Turbine: Experimental Work With On-Blade Pressure Transducers

Understanding the unsteady aspects of turbine rotor flowfields is critical to successful future turbine designs. A technology program was conducted at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center to increase the understanding of unsteady environments for rocket engine turbines. The experimental program involved instrumenting turbine rotor blades with surface-mounted high frequency response pressure transducers. The turbine model was then tested to measure the unsteady pressures on the rotor blades. The data obtained from the experimental program is unique in three respects. First, much more unsteady data was obtained (several minutes per set point) than has been possible in the past. Also, two independent unsteady data acquisition systems and fundamental signal processing approaches were used. Finally, an extensive steady performance database existed for the turbine model. This allowed an evaluation of the effect of the on-blade instrumentation on the turbine's performance. This unique data set, the lessons learned for acquiring this type of data, and the improvements made to the data analysis and prediction tools will contribute to future turbine programs such as those for reusable launch vehicles.

Hudson, Susan T.↗

Rocket Engine Turbine Blade Surface Pressure Distributions Experiment and Computations

Understanding the unsteady aspects of turbine rotor flow fields is critical to successful future turbine designs. A technology program was conducted at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center to increase the understanding of unsteady environments for rocket engine turbines. The experimental program involved instrumenting turbine rotor blades with miniature surface mounted high frequency response pressure transducers. The turbine model was then tested to measure the unsteady pressures on the rotor blades. The data obtained from the experimental program is unique in two respects. First, much more unsteady data was obtained (several minutes per set point) than has been possible in the past. Also, an extensive steady performance database existed for the turbine model. This allowed an evaluation of the effect of the on-blade instrumentation on the turbine's performance. A three-dimensional unsteady Navier-Stokes analysis was also used to blindly predict the unsteady flow field in the turbine at the design operating conditions and at +15 degrees relative incidence to the first-stage rotor. The predicted time-averaged and unsteady pressure distributions show good agreement with the experimental data. This unique data set, the lessons learned for acquiring this type of data, and the improvements made to the data analysis and prediction tools are contributing significantly to current Space Launch Initiative turbine airflow test and blade surface pressure prediction efforts.

Hudson, Susan T.↗

Medical and surgical applications of space biosensor technology

Researchers in space life sciences are rapidly approaching a technology impasse. Many of the critical questions on the impact of spaceflight on living systems simply cannot be answered with the limited available technologies. Research subjects, particularly small animal models like the rat, must be allowed to function relatively untended and unrestrained for long periods to fully reflect the impact of microgravity and spaceflight on their behavior and physiology. These requirements preclude the use of present hard-wired instrumentation techniques and limited data acquisition systems. Implantable sensors and miniaturized biotelemetry are the only means of capturing the fundamental and critical data. This same biosensor and biotelemetry technology has direct application to Earth-based medicine and surgery. Continuous, on-line data acquisition and improved measurement capabilities combined with the ease and flexibility offered by automated, wireless, and portable instruments and data systems, should provide a boon to the health care industry. Playing a key role in this technology revolution is the Sensors 2000! (S2K!) Program at NASA Ames Research Center. S2K!, in collaboration with space life sciences researchers and managers, provides an integrated capability for sensor technology development and applications, including advanced biosensor technology development, spaceflight hardware development, and technology transfer and commercialization. S2K! is presently collaborating on several spaceflight projects with dual-use medical applications. One prime example is a collaboration with the Fetal Treatment Center (FTC) at the University of California at San Francisco. The goal is to develop and apply implantable chemical sensor and biotelemetry technology to continuously monitor fetal patients during extra-uterine surgery, replacement into the womb, through birth and beyond. Once validated for ground use, the method will be transitioned to spaceflight applications to remotely monitor key biochemical parameters in flight animals. Successful application of NASA implantable biosensor and biotelemetry technologies should accelerate the advancement of this and other modern medical procedures while furthering the exploration of life in space.

NASA Discipline General Space Life Sciences↗

LiveView3D: Real Time Data Visualization for the Aerospace Testing Environment

This paper addresses LiveView3D, a software package and associated data visualization system for use in the aerospace testing environment. The LiveView3D system allows researchers to graphically view data from numerous wind tunnel instruments in real time in an interactive virtual environment. The graphical nature of the LiveView3D display provides researchers with an intuitive view of the measurement data, making it easier to interpret the aerodynamic phenomenon under investigation. LiveView3D has been developed at the NASA Langley Research Center and has been applied in the Langley Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel (UPWT). This paper discusses the capabilities of the LiveView3D system, provides example results from its application in the UPWT, and outlines features planned for future implementation.

Schwartz, Richard J.↗

Quality-Controlled Wind Data from the Kennedy Space Center 915 Megahertz Doppler Radar Wind Profiler Network

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration s (NASA) Kennedy Space Center (KSC) has installed a five-instrument 915-Megahertz (MHz) Doppler Radar Wind Profiler (DRWP) system that records atmospheric wind profile properties. The purpose of these profilers is to fill data gaps between the top of the KSC wind tower network and the lowest measurement altitude of the KSC 50-MHz DRWP. The 915-MHz DRWP system has the capability to generate three-dimensional wind data outputs from approximately 150 meters (m) to 6,000 m at roughly 15-minute (min) intervals. NASA s long-term objective is to combine the 915-MHz and 50-MHz DRWP systems to create complete vertical wind profiles up to 18,300 m to be used in trajectory and loads analyses of space vehicles and by forecasters on day-of-launch (DOL). This analysis utilizes automated and manual quality control (QC) processes to remove erroneous and unrealistic wind data returned by the 915-MHz DRWP system. The percentage of data affected by each individual QC check in the period of record (POR) (i.e., January to April 2006) was computed, demonstrating the variability in the amount of data affected by the QC processes. The number of complete wind profiles available at given altitude thresholds for each profiler in the POR was calculated and outputted graphically, followed by an assessment of the number of complete wind profiles available for any profiler in the POR. A case study is also provided to demonstrate the QC process on a day of a known weather event.

Dryden, Rachel L.↗

Restoration of APOLLO Data by the NSSDC and PDS Lunar Data Node

The Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Packages (ALSEPs), suites of instruments deployed by the Apollo 12. 14, 15, 16 and 17 astronauts on the lunar surface, still represent the only in-situ measurements of the Moon's environment taken over long time periods, Much of these data are housed at the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) at Goddard Space Flight Center but are in forms that are not readily usable, such as microfilm, hardcopy, and magnetic tapes with older, obsolete formats. The Lunar Data Node (LDN) has been formed under the auspices of the Planetary Data System (PDS) Geosciences Node to put relevant, scientifically important Apollo data into accessible digital form for use by researchers and mission planners. The LDN has prioritized the restoration of these data based on their scientific and engineering value and the level of effort required. We will report on progress made and plans for future data restorations.

Williams, David R.↗