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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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NASA NTRS2016

Human Flight to Lunar and Beyond - Re-Learning Operations Paradigms

For the first time since the Apollo era, NASA is planning on sending astronauts on flights beyond Low-Earth Orbit (LEO). The Human Space Flight (HSF) program started with a successful initial flight in Earth orbit, in December 2014. The program will continue with two Exploration Missions (EM) to Lunar orbit: EM-1 will be unmanned and EM-2, carrying astronauts, will follow. NASA established a multi-center team to address the communications, and related navigation, needs. This paper will focus on the lessons learned in the team, planning for the missions' parts that are beyond Earth orbit. Many of these lessons had to be re-learned, as the HSF program after operated for many years in Earth orbit. Fortunately, the experience base from tracking robotic missions in deep space by the Deep Space Network (DSN) and close interaction with the HSF community to understand the unique needs (e.g. 2-way voice) resulted in a ConOps that leverages of both the deep space robotic and the Human LEO experiences. Several examples will be used to highlight the unique operational needs for HSF missions beyond Earth Orbit, including: - Navigation. At LEO, HSF missions can rely on Global Positioning System (GPS) devices for orbit determination. For Lunar-and-beyond HSF missions, techniques such as precision 2-way and 3-way Doppler and ranging, Delta-Difference-of-range, and eventually on-board navigation will be used. - Impact of latency - the delay associated with Round-Trip-Light-Time (RTLT). Imagine trying to have a 2-way discussion (audio or video) with an astronaut, with a 2-3 sec delay inserted (for Lunar distances) or 20 minutes delay (for Mars distances). - Balanced communications link. For robotic missions, there has been a heavy emphasis on the downlink data rates, bringing back science data from the instruments on-board the spacecraft. Uplink data rates were of secondary importance, used to send commands to the spacecraft. The ratio of downlink-to-uplink data rates was often 10:1 or more. For HSF, rates for uplink and downlink, at least for high-quality video, need to be similar.

Kenny, Ted↗

NASA NTRS2011

Life Support and Habitation Systems: Crew Support and Protection for Human Exploration Missions Beyond Low Earth Orbit

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has recently expanded its mission set for possible future human exploration missions. With multiple options there is interest in identifying technology needs across these missions to focus technology investments. In addition to the Moon and other destinations in cis-lunar space, other destinations including Near Earth Objects and Mars have been added for consideration. Recently, technology programs and projects have been re-organizing to better meet the Agency s strategic goals and address needs across these potential future missions. Life Support and Habitation Systems (LSHS) is one of 10 Foundational Domains as part of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration s Exploration Technology Development Program. The chief goal of LSHS is to develop and mature advanced technologies to sustain human life on missions beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO) to increase reliability, reduce dependency on resupply and increase vehicle self-sufficiency. For long duration exploration missions, further closure of life support systems is of interest. Focus includes key technologies for atmosphere revitalization, water recovery, waste management, thermal control and crew accommodations. Other areas of focus include technologies for radiation protection, environmental monitoring and fire protection. The aim is to recover additional consumable mass, reduce requirements for power, volume, heat rejection, crew involvement, and meet exploration vehicle requirements. This paper provides a brief description of the LSHS Foundational Domain as defined for fiscal year 2011.

Barta, Daniel J.↗

NASA NTRS1985

Optimal symmetric flight studies

Several topics in optimal symmetric flight of airbreathing vehicles are examined. In one study, an approximation scheme designed for onboard real-time energy management of climb-dash is developed and calculations for a high-performance aircraft presented. In another, a vehicle model intermediate in complexity between energy and point-mass models is explored and some quirks in optimal flight characteristics peculiar to the model uncovered. In yet another study, energy-modelling procedures are re-examined with a view to stretching the range of validity of zeroth-order approximation by special choice of state variables. In a final study, time-fuel tradeoffs in cruise-dash are examined for the consequences of nonconvexities appearing in the classical steady cruise-dash model. Two appendices provide retrospective looks at two early publications on energy modelling and related optimal control theory.

Weston, A. R.↗

NASA NTRS2014

Non-Flammable Containment Bag and Enclosure Development for International Space Station Use

Work conducted on the International Space Station (ISS) requires the use of a significant quantity of containment bags to hold specimens, equipment, waste, and other material. The bags are in many shapes and sizes, and are typically manufactured from polyethylene materials. The amount of bags being used on ISS has grown to the point where fire safety has become a concern because of the flammability of polyethylene. Recently, a new re‐sealable bag design has been developed that is manufactured from a specialized non‐flammable material called Armorflex 301 that was designed specifically for this application. Besides being non‐flammable, Armorflex 301 is also FDA compliant, clear, flexible, and damage tolerant. The bags can be made with closure mechanisms that resemble ZipLoc® bags, or can be open top. Sample bags have been laboratory tested by NASA to verify materials properties, and evaluated by astronauts on the ISS in 2012. Flexloc bag manufacturing will commence in 2014 to support a transition away from polyethylene on ISS. In addition to re‐sealable bags, other larger containment systems such as flexible gloveboxes, deployable clean rooms, and other devices manufactured from Armorflex 301 are being explored for use on ISS and in similar confined space locations where flammability is an issue. This paper will describe the development of the Armorflex 301 material, the Flexloc bag, and other containment systems being explored for use in confined areas

Inamdar, Sunil↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Open Science for Life in Space: Data Sharing and Tools for Knowledge Discovery

The next era in human space exploration is rapidly approaching and will require the use of countermeasures to deep space health hazards. The development of countermeasures (or, the re-purposing of existing agents) will be highly dependent on our understanding of basic biological responses to space stressors (e.g. ionizing radiation, altered gravitational fields, altered day-night cycles, confinement, isolation, hostile-closed environments, distance-duration from Earth, exposure to celestial regolith, etc.). The fast-growing array of space biological data, which in the past was simply archived after minimal analysis, holds great potential if it can be reorganized and formatted for Open Science. Organizing the data for such analysis is a challenge because of its diverse nature (molecular, cellular, tissue, imaging, whole organism and behavior). We will discuss here several strategies that NASA’s Biological and Physical Science Division has put in place to maximize the return on investment for spaceflight bioscience data. Open Science, as a scientific philosophy, is the concept that the more people who have access to the data, the more knowledge will be gained from it. This guiding principle led NASA to develop GeneLab in 2015. GeneLab houses spaceflight and relevant ground-based multi-omics data, and has grown to ~400 transcriptomic, proteomic, metabolomic and epigenomic datasets from plant, rodent, small animal, and microbial space experiments. GeneLab provides users with various tools for data analysis and a visualization portal that allows users to interact with gene expression data from space-related ‘omics experiments. Open Science is also about building scientific communities, and with this spirit in mind, GeneLab has spawned several Analysis Working Groups (AWGs), comprised of more than 200 volunteer scientists. The AWGs initially provided feedback on the processing pipeline and metadata ‘omics standards for GeneLab. Over the last few years, they have become a community-driven science enterprise, engaging in large meta-analysis of GeneLab datasets, resulting in 10 publications (beyond the originally submitted research). Overall, the Open Science nature of GeneLab has resulted in a high degree of data re-use, resulting in 38 additional publications derived from the original 67 publication over the past four years. The enormous success and knowledge gained from GeneLab has led to a collection of sister NASA “Open Science Data Repositories (OSDR)” and research support groups. These include the NASA Ames Life Sciences Data Archive (ALSDA), the NASA Biological Institutional Scientific Collection (NBISC), and the Biospecimen Sharing Program (BSP). All are adopting the GeneLab data architecture system to maximize open-access, find-ability, accessibility, interoperability, and reusability (FAIR). ALSDA collects and curates phenotypic-physiological bioimaging-behavioral data from space and space-relevant non-human experiments, oftentimes coming from the same omics-associated experimental datasets found in GeneLab. Since 2021, a community of ~100 researchers have rallied around ALSDA, to provide feedback in a new ALSDA AWG focused on phenotypic-physiological investigation-sample-assay metadata standards (e.g., Micro-Computed Tomography, Light/Fluorescence Microscopy, Western Blot, Flow Cytometry, Novel Object Recognition, Elevated Plus Maze, etc. of ~50 assays collected). These standards are part of a new single point-of-entry data submission portal for all non-human Space Biology and Human Research Program principal investigators, to submit, curate, and share their research data. With open-access space biological data now collected and curated together with rich metadata, and with the potential for linkage to “big data” from the international biological and medical communities (NIH, EBI, etc.), the artificial intelligence and machine learning (AI/ML) era has started for Space Biology. Several other talks will cover these topics in this conference.

life sciences↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Open Science Data Repository: Maximizing Spaceflight Bioscience Data

space biology↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Inner Magnetospheric Physics

The inner magnetosphere extends from just above the topside ionosphere to approximately 8 RE geocentric distance. Magnetospheric physics is a young science that only started to be recognized as a region with the space observations by Explorer 1 in 1958. The region is mostly populated by ionized gas or plasma from Earth’s ionosphere. Plasma populations are differentiated by their energies primarily. From the least energetic to most are the plasmasphere, ring current, and radiation belts, extending from about 1 eV to 10 MeV in energy and from 1,000s cm-3 down to a few particles per cubic centimeter and less, respectively. The solar wind and solar erupted coronal mass ejections (CMEs) arriving and interacting with Earth’s magnetic field creates a dynamo effect that drives million ampere currents along magnetic field lines that close through the ionosphere. The solar wind dynamo also creates a 100s kV electric field across the magnetosphere that drives convective motion of the plasma within it. The solar wind driven currents compress Earth’s magnetic field on the sunward side and greatly extents the field on the nightside to form the magnetotail. The energy stored in the magnetotail is impulsively released when magnetic field lines there merge, releasing energy into the plasma trapped by the magnetic field. Those plasma become the ring current that loses plasma into the atmosphere to produce the aurora and at the same time ring current plasma can be further energized by wave-particle interactions to become the radiation belts. The presentation will review these topics and a few of the underlying physical processes that are involved in this highly coupled planetary system.

inner magnetosphere↗

NASA NTRS2012

Memoized Symbolic Execution

This paper introduces memoized symbolic execution (Memoise), a novel approach for more efficient application of forward symbolic execution, which is a well-studied technique for systematic exploration of program behaviors based on bounded execution paths. Our key insight is that application of symbolic execution often requires several successive runs of the technique on largely similar underlying problems, e.g., running it once to check a program to find a bug, fixing the bug, and running it again to check the modified program. Memoise introduces a trie-based data structure that stores the key elements of a run of symbolic execution. Maintenance of the trie during successive runs allows re-use of previously computed results of symbolic execution without the need for re-computing them as is traditionally done. Experiments using our prototype embodiment of Memoise show the benefits it holds in various standard scenarios of using symbolic execution, e.g., with iterative deepening of exploration depth, to perform regression analysis, or to enhance coverage.

Yang, Guowei↗

NASA NTRS2000

The Myths of Mars: Why We're Not There Yet, and How to Get There

This paper is a controversial look at some of the beliefs (myths) held by the space community which block us from formulating a successful Mars Exploration strategy. The origins and consequences of these myths are presented in contrast with attitudes and actions which would have a better chance of getting us to Mars than we currently have.

Shirley, Donna L.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Validation of Fitness for Duty Standards Using Pre- and Post-Flight Capsule Egress and Suited Functional Performance Tasks in Simulated Reduced Gravity (Pilot Egress Fitness)

As NASA prepares for exploration missions, it will be critical to understand and build upon known crew capabilities. Specifically, we need to know the functional capacities of crew at different stages of a mission and characterize these profiles so that the appropriate vehicle requirements and mission concepts of operations (ConOps) can be developed. One of the most complex phases of any missions is when there is a transition between gravity environments. For instance, both physiological adaptation to microgravity and subsequent re-entry into a gravity environment result in reduced functional capacity, even with rigorous adherence to inflight countermeasures. Quantification of the astronauts’ post-landing functional performance is necessary to design ConOps for exploration missions. Specifically, these two high-risk tasks may have to be performed soon after gravity transitions: •Unassisted capsule egress task after return to Earth •Planetary extravehicular activity (EVA) soon after landing on Mars or the Moon This study has been broken down into two phases. A pilot phase to assess the overall feasibility and demonstrate the capability to do these tasks shortly after landing and the full Egress Fitness study, which will be part of the CIPHER complement. This study uses a functional task approach to characterize performance of these high-risk tasks in long-duration ISS crewmembers before flight and shortly after return to Earth. Prior to any testing, each astronaut subject completes a suit fit check to ensure adequate sizing and mobility to be able to complete the EVA tasks. Pilot Egress Fitness pre-flight and post-flight testing includes an Earth based emergency egress out of a functional capsule mockup, and a short Mars gravity EVA simulation including suit donning, hatch egress, ladder descent, task board cable operations, baggage transfer over sand/rocky regolith, alignment with a rear entry port, and suit egress. Pre-flight testing can occur almost anytime pre-flight, but post-flight scheduling is much more critical with the capsule egress test occurring 1-4 hours after landing and the planetary EVA approximately 18-36 hours after landing. Data collected for both tasks includes task completion time, photo, and video. The EVA portion also includes collection of metabolic and heart rate. Pilot Egress Fitness study has completed baseline pre-flight testing on 3 astronaut subjects. Post-flight testing of the first two subjects will be completed in November 2021 and the final subject around March 2022. Results and lessons learned from this pilot study will inform the full Egress Fitness study, which will incorporate additional pre-flight sessions, longer EVA tasks, and post-flight testing on R+1, 4, and 7 to characterize the timeframe of recovery

J R Norcross↗

NASA NTRS2000

Mars Exploration 2003 to 2013: An Integrated Perspective

The science goals for the Mars exploration program, together with the HEDS precursor environmental and technology needs, have been carefully laid out over the last several years and serve as a solid starting point for re-planning the program in an orderly way. Most recently, the science and HEDS communities have recognized the significance of subsurface sampling as a key component in "following the water": 1) to achieve science goals related to the search for evidence of life and 2) to gain access to the most valuable resource -- water. Accessing samples from hundreds and even thousands of meters beneath the surface is a challenge that will call for technology development and for one or more demonstration missions. Recent mission failures and concerns about the complexity of the previously planned MSR missions indicate that, before we are ready to undertake sample return and deep sampling, the Mars exploration program needs to include 1) technology development missions and 2) basic landing site assessment missions. These precursor missions should demonstrate the capability for reliable & accurate soft landing and in situ propellant production. The precursor missions will need to carry out close-up site observations, ground-penetrating radar mapping from orbit and conduct seismic surveys. The needs of the science and HEDS program requirements have much in common and clearly the programs should be planned as a single, continuous exploration effort. (We note that, although we are not yet ready to carry out sample return missions, we already have the capability to make impressive gains in in situ exploration by deploying full-scale rovers with mobility upward of ten kilometers.) A prudent minimum list of missions can be derived from the numerous goals and requirements; they can be sequenced in an orderly way to ensure that time is available to feed forward the results of the precursor missions.

Briggs, G.↗

DOE OSTI2021

Re-entrance to a ferromagnetic insulator with oxygen-vacancy ordering in the La 0.7 Sr 0.3 MnO 3 /SrTiO 3 superlattice

The charge-density wave is correlated with the properties in transition metal oxides, and regulating this state is important to explore the potential of oxides. Defects could modulate the local environment, in which the effect is subject to the concentration and arrangement, and an artificial arrangement of defect-ordering is highly expected to design the material properties. In this work, the ordering of oxygen vacancies with a preferred location on the (001) La/SrO plane by self-structural optimization was induced in La 0.7 Sr 0.3 MnO 3 /SrTiO 3 superlattices with medium oxygen pressure during SrTiO 3 deposition, and then the ferromagnetic charge-ordering (CO)/charge-density-wave (CDW) state was formed in La 0.7 Sr 0.3 MnO 3 with susceptibility to magnetic field, temperature, and superlattice configuration. In addition, re-entrance to the ferromagnetic insulator CO/CDW could be induced by a high magnetic field. The selective occupancy of oxygen vacancies on the (001) La/SrO plane and the phase fluctuation around the CO/CDW-to-ferromagnetic metal phase transition were critical to the above properties. The interfacial diffusion with atomic-level resolution to control oxygen vacancies could be used in other magnetoelectric systems and corresponding device applications.

75 CONDENSED MATTER PHYSICS, SUPERCONDUCTIVITY AND↗

NASA NTRS1997

Space and the Frontier Mythos: A Re-Examination

Some modern space philosophies emphasize the historical parallels between the conquest of the Martian frontier and the expansion into the American West. These parallels are used as a rationale for planning the exploration and large-scale settlement of Mars. However, many of these historical allegories are in error. Vast differences exist between the geographical realities of Mars and the western frontier. Furthermore, westward expansion took place within a set of political, economic, social, and technological circumstances that are unlikely to be repeated in Martian exploration. The physical conditions and geographical realities of the Martian frontier in exploration and settlement terms are closer to the Antarctic continent. The American West, which had been inhabited by humans for thousands of years, offered a relative degree of comfort to new arrivals. We do not find large numbers of people migrating to the Canadian High Arctic or other polar regions to live. The inhospitable nature of these polar regions are the major limitation to the human desire to live there. The conquest of the American West took place within the context of a complex set of circumstances. Americans believed they had a 'manifest destiny' to extend their civilization across the continent. Many people also went west in search of a better life: for gold, land or other opportunities. The technology also existed at that point to allow large numbers of people to head west on their own at minimal cost. The settlement of Mars will be far different. It is for these reasons that we believe Antarctica is a much better analog for the exploration of Mars. Therefore, Martian exploration and settlement plans should be adjusted accordingly.

Cockell, Charles S.↗

NASA NTRS1991

Aerodynamic calculations related to tethered sub-satellite experiments

The results are presented of four aerodynamic studies that were in support of a broader, preliminary inquiry concerning the potential use of downward-deployed tethered sub-satellites for in-flight aerothermodynamic research. There are a multitude of questions regarding the general tethered satellite concept and the present report addresses only a few of these. A method for estimating drag and local surface pressure and shear on orbiting or re-entereing bodies is described, and examples based on the planned TSS-2 (Tethered Satellite System) are given. The problem of pressure measurement are explored, taking into account thermal transpiration, lag time, and the disturbed flow field created by the satellite body. The performance of an aerodynamic stabilizer, a ring-tail design, is calculated and its influence on satellite motion is illustrated. A method for optimizing future satellite shapes for desired aerodynamic properties is transitional rarefied flow with given geometric constraints is proposed and examples are shown.

Potter, J. Leith↗

NASA NTRS2006

Real Time On-line Space Research Laboratory Environment Monitoring with Off-line Trend and Prediction Analysis

One of the responsibilities of the NASA Glenn Principal Investigator Microgravity Services is to support NASA sponsored investigators in the area of reduced-gravity acceleration data analysis, interpretation and the monitoring of the reduced-gravity environment on-board various carriers. With the International Space Station currently operational, a significant amount of acceleration data is being down-linked and processed on ground for both the space station onboard environment characterization (and verification) and scientific experiments. Therefore, to help principal investigator teams monitor the acceleration level on-board the International Space Station to avoid undesirable impact on their experiment, when possible, the NASA Glenn Principal Investigator Microgravity Services developed an artificial intelligence monitoring system, which detects in near real time any change in the environment susceptible to affect onboard experiments. The main objective of the monitoring system is to help research teams identify the vibratory disturbances that are active at any instant of time onboard the International Space Station that might impact the environment in which their experiment is being conducted. The monitoring system allows any space research scientist, at any location and at any time, to see the current acceleration level on-board the Space Station via the World Wide Web. From the NASA Glenn s Exploration Systems Division web site, research scientists can see in near real time the active disturbances, such as pumps, fans, compressor, crew exercise, re-boost, extra-vehicular activity, etc., and decide whether or not to continue operating or stopping (or making note of such activity for later correlation with science results) their experiments based on the g-level associated with that specific event. A dynamic graphical display accessible via the World Wide Web shows the status of all the vibratory disturbance activities with their degree of confidence as well as their g-level contribution to the environment. The system can detect both known and unknown vibratory disturbance activities. It can also perform trend analysis and prediction by analyzing past data over many Increments of the space station for selected disturbance activities. This feature can be used to monitor the health of onboard mechanical systems to detect and prevent potential system failure as well as for use by research scientists during their science results analysis. Examples of both real time on-line vibratory disturbance detection and off-line trend analysis are presented in this paper. Several soft computing techniques such as Kohonen s Self-Organizing Feature Map, Learning Vector Quantization, Back-Propagation Neural Networks, and Fuzzy Logic were used to design the system.

Jules, Kenol↗

NASA NTRS2013

SpiderFab(TradeMark):Process for On-Orbit Construction of Kilometer-Scale Apertures

The SpiderFab effort investigated the value proposition and technical feasibility of radically changing the way we build and deploy spacecraft by enabling space systems to fabricate and integrate key components on-orbit. Weeveloped an architecture for a SpiderFab system, identifying the key capabilities, and detailed two concept implementations of this architecture, one specialized for fabricating support trusses for large solar arrays, and the second a robotic system capable of fabricating spacecraft components such as antenna reflectors. We then performed analyses to evaluate the value proposition for on-orbit fabrication, and in each case found that the dramatic improvements in structural performance and packing efficiency enabled by on-orbit fabrication can provide order-of-magnitude improvements in key system metrics. For phased-‐array radars, SpiderFab enables order-of-magnitude increases in gain-per-stowed-volume. For the New Worlds Observer mission, SpiderFab construction of a starshade can provide a ten-fold increase in the number of Earth-like planets discovered per dollar. For communications systems, SpiderFab can change the cost equation for large antenna reflectors, enabling affordable deployment of much larger apertures than feasible with current deployable technologies. To establish the technical feasibility, we identified methods for combining several additive manufacturing technologies with robotic assembly technologies, metrology sensors, and thermal control techniques to provide the capabilities required to implement a SpiderFab system. We performed proof-of-concept level testing of these approaches, in each case demonstrating that the proposed solutions are feasible, and establishing the SpiderFab architecture at TRL-3. Further maturation of SpiderFab to mission-readiness is well-suited to an incremental development program. Affordable smallsat demonstrations will prepare the technology for full-scale demonstration that will unlock the full potential of the SpiderFab architecture by flight qualifying and validating an on-orbit fabrication and integration process that can be re-used to reduce the life-cycle cost and increase power, bandwidth, resolution, and sensitivity for a wide range of NASA Science and Exploration missions.

Hoyt, Robert↗

NASA NTRS2010

Coordinating Multiple Spacecraft Assets for Joint Science Campaigns

This paper describes technology to support a new paradigm of space science campaigns. These campaigns enable opportunistic science observations to be autonomously coordinated between multiple spacecraft. Coordinated spacecraft can consist of multiple orbiters, landers, rovers, or other in-situ vehicles (such as an aerobot). In this paradigm, opportunistic science detections can be cued by any of these assets where additional spacecraft are requested to take further observations characterizing the identified event or surface feature. Such coordination will enable a number of science campaigns not possible with present spacecraft technology. Examples from Mars include enabling rapid data collection from multiple craft on dynamic events such as new Mars dark slope streaks, dust-devils or trace gases. Technology to support the identification of opportunistic science events and/or the re-tasking of a spacecraft to take new measurements of the event is already in place on several individual missions such as the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) Mission and the Earth Observing One (EO1) Mission. This technology includes onboard data analysis techniques as well as capabilities for planning and scheduling. This paper describes how these techniques can be cue and coordinate multiple spacecraft in observing the same science event from their different vantage points.

automated commanding↗

NASA NTRS2017

Space Launch System Update

NASA has a phased approach to ensure our nation's leadership in space exploration, beginning in Earth orbit, developing our skills in lunar space, and extending those skills and technologies to a human mission to Mars. We're currently in Phase 0, using the ISS to better understand living and working in space. You may have heard about our "twin study" with astronauts Scott and Mike Kelly that's giving us valuable information on the effects of microgravity environments on the human body during long stays in LEO. During Phase 1 in the 2020s, SLS will be used to lift the pieces of a "deep space gateway" outpost to lunar orbit. Developing and operating the gateway will get us to Mars in a step-by-step fashion, with lessons learned in each phase of the process informing the next steps. First step of moving humans farther into the solar system is completing and flying SLS and Orion.

Cobb, Sharon↗