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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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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2006

Intelligent Rover Execution for Detecting Life in the Atacama Desert

On-board supervisory execution is crucial for the deployment of more capable and autonomous remote explorers. Planetary science is considering robotic explorers operating for long periods of time without ground supervision while interacting with a changing and often hostile environment. Effective and robust operations require on-board supervisory control with a high level of awareness of the principles of functioning of the environment and of the numerous internal subsystems that need to be coordinated. We describe an on-board rover executive that was deployed on a rover as past of the "Limits of Life in the Atacama Desert (LITA)" field campaign sponsored by the NASA ASTEP program. The executive was built using the Intelligent Distributed Execution Architecture (IDEA), an execution framework that uses model-based and plan-based supervisory control of its fundamental computational paradigm. We present the results of the third field experiment conducted in the Atacama desert (Chile) in August - October 2005.

Baskaran, Vijayakumar↗
NASA NTRS2004

EUROPA2: Plan Database Services for Planning and Scheduling Applications

NASA missions require solving a wide variety of planning and scheduling problems with temporal constraints; simple resources such as robotic arms, communications antennae and cameras; complex replenishable resources such as memory, power and fuel; and complex constraints on geometry, heat and lighting angles. Planners and schedulers that solve these problems are used in ground tools as well as onboard systems. The diversity of planning problems and applications of planners and schedulers precludes a one-size fits all solution. However, many of the underlying technologies are common across planning domains and applications. We describe CAPR, a formalism for planning that is general enough to cover a wide variety of planning and scheduling domains of interest to NASA. We then describe EUROPA(sub 2), a software framework implementing CAPR. EUROPA(sub 2) provides efficient, customizable Plan Database Services that enable the integration of CAPR into a wide variety of applications. We describe the design of EUROPA(sub 2) from the perspective of both modeling, customization and application integration to different classes of NASA missions.

Bedrax-Weiss, Tania↗
NASA NTRS2014

Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission Nominal Design and Performance

In 2010, the President announced that, in 2025, the U.S. intended to launch a human mission to an asteroid [1]. This announcement was followed by the idea of a Capability Driven Framework (CDF) [2], which is based on the idea of evolving capabilities from less demanding to more demanding missions to multiple possible destinations and with increased flexibility, cost effectiveness and sustainability. Focused missions, such as a NASA inter-Center study that examined the viability and implications of sending a crew to a Near Earth Asteroid (NEA) [3], provided a way to better understand and evaluate the utility of these CDF capabilities when applied to an actual mission. The long duration of the NEA missions were contrasted with a concept described in a study prepared for the Keck Institute of Space Studies (KISS) [4] where a robotic spacecraft would redirect an asteroid to the Earth-Moon vicinity, where a relatively short duration crewed mission could be conducted to the captured asteroid. This mission concept was included in the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) fiscal year 2014 budget request, as submitted by the NASA Administrator [5]. NASA studies continued to examine the idea of a crewed mission to a captured asteroid in the Earth-Moon vicinity. During this time was an announcement of NASA's Asteroid Grand Challenge [6]. Key goals for the Asteroid Grand Challenge are to locate, redirect, and explore an asteroid, as well as find and plan for asteroid threats. An Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) study was being conducted, which supports this Grand Challenge by providing understanding in how to execute an asteroid rendezvous, capture it, and redirect it to Earth-Moon space, and, in particular, to a distant retrograde orbit (DRO). Subsequent to the returning of the asteroid to a DRO, would be the launch of a crewed mission to rendezvous with the redirected asteroid. This report examines that crewed mission by assessing the Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission (ARCM) nominal design and performance costs associated with an Orion based crewed rendezvous mission to a captured asteroid in an Earth-Moon DRO. The ARM study includes two fundamental mission phases: 1) The Asteroid Redirect Robotic Mission (ARRM) and 2) the ARCM. The ARRM includes a solar electric propulsion based robotic asteroid return vehicle (ARV) sent to rendezvous with a selected near Earth asteroid, capture it, and return it to a DRO in the Earth-Moon vicinity. The DRO is selected over other possible asteroid parking orbits due to its achievability (by both the robotic and crewed vehicles) and by its stability (e.g., no orbit maintenance is required). After the return of the asteroid to the Earth-Moon vicinity, the ARCM is executed and carries a crew of two astronauts to a DRO to rendezvous with the awaiting ARV with the asteroid. The outbound and inbound transfers employ lunar gravity assist (LGA) flybys to reduce the Orion propellant requirement for the overall nominal mission, which provides a nominal mission with some reserve propellant for possible abort situations. The nominal mission described in this report provides a better understanding of the mission considerations as well as the feasibility of such a crewed mission, particularly with regard to spacecraft currently undergoing development, such as the Orion vehicle and the Space Launch System (SLS).

Condon, Gerald↗
NASA NTRS1993

Intelligent Agent Architectures: Reactive Planning Testbed

An Integrated Agent Architecture (IAA) is a framework or paradigm for constructing intelligent agents. Intelligent agents are collections of sensors, computers, and effectors that interact with their environments in real time in goal-directed ways. Because of the complexity involved in designing intelligent agents, it has been found useful to approach the construction of agents with some organizing principle, theory, or paradigm that gives shape to the agent's components and structures their relationships. Given the wide variety of approaches being taken in the field, the question naturally arises: Is there a way to compare and evaluate these approaches? The purpose of the present work is to develop common benchmark tasks and evaluation metrics to which intelligent agents, including complex robotic agents, constructed using various architectural approaches can be subjected.

Rosenschein, Stanley J.↗
NASA NTRS2006

Mission Control Technologies: A New Way of Designing and Evolving Mission Systems

Current mission operations systems are built as a collection of monolithic software applications. Each application serves the needs of a specific user base associated with a discipline or functional role. Built to accomplish specific tasks, each application embodies specialized functional knowledge and has its own data storage, data models, programmatic interfaces, user interfaces, and customized business logic. In effect, each application creates its own walled-off environment. While individual applications are sometimes reused across multiple missions, it is expensive and time consuming to maintain these systems, and both costly and risky to upgrade them in the light of new requirements or modify them for new purposes. It is even more expensive to achieve new integrated activities across a set of monolithic applications. These problems impact the lifecycle cost (especially design, development, testing, training, maintenance, and integration) of each new mission operations system. They also inhibit system innovation and evolution. This in turn hinders NASA's ability to adopt new operations paradigms, including increasingly automated space systems, such as autonomous rovers, autonomous onboard crew systems, and integrated control of human and robotic missions. Hence, in order to achieve NASA's vision affordably and reliably, we need to consider and mature new ways to build mission control systems that overcome the problems inherent in systems of monolithic applications. The keys to the solution are modularity and interoperability. Modularity will increase extensibility (evolution), reusability, and maintainability. Interoperability will enable composition of larger systems out of smaller parts, and enable the construction of new integrated activities that tie together, at a deep level, the capabilities of many of the components. Modularity and interoperability together contribute to flexibility. The Mission Control Technologies (MCT) Project, a collaboration of multiple NASA Centers, led by NASA Ames Research Center, is building a framework to enable software to be assembled from flexible collections of components and services.

Trimble, Jay↗
NASA NTRS2020

Analysis of Sample Acquisition Dynamics Using Discrete Element Method

The analysis presented in this paper is conducted in the framework of the Ocean Worlds Autonomy Testbed for Exploration Research and Simulation (OceanWATERS) project, currently under development at NASA Ames Research Center. OceanWATERS aims at designing a simulation environment which allows for testing autonomy of scientific lander missions to the icy moons of our solar system. Mainly focused on reproducing the end effector interaction with the inherent terrain, this paper introduces a novel discrete element method (DEM)-based approach to determine forces and torques acting on the lander’s scoop during the sample acquisition process. An accurate force feedback from the terrain on the scoop is required by fault-detection and autonomous decision-making algorithms to identify when the requested torque on the robotic arm’s joints exceeds the maximum available torque. Knowledge of the terrain force feedback significantly helps evaluating the arm’s links structural properties and properly selecting actuators for the joints. Models available in literature constitute a partial representation of the dynamics of the interaction. As an example, Balovnev derived an analytical expression of the vertical and horizontal force acting on a bucket while collecting a sample as a function of its geometry and velocity, soil parameters and reached depth. Although the model represents an adequate approximation of the two force components, it ignores the direction orthogonal to the scoop motion and neglects the torque. This work relies on DEM analysis to compensate for analytical models’ deficiencies and inaccuracies, i. e. provide force and torque 3D vectors, defined in the moving reference (body) frame attached to the scoop, at each instant of the sample collection process. Results from the first presented analysis relate to the specific OceanWATERS sampling strategy, which consists of collecting the sample through five consecutive passes with increasing depth, each pass following the same circularlinear- circular trajectory. Data is collected given a specific scoop design interacting with two types of bulk materials, which may characterize the surface of icy planetary bodies: snow and ice. Although specifically concerned with the OceanWATERS design, this first analysis provides the expected force trends for similar sampling strategies and allows to deduce phenomenological information about the general scooping process. In order to further instruct the community on the use of DEM tools as a solution to the sampling collection problem, two more analyses have been carried out, mainly focused on reducing the DEM computation time, which increases with a decrease in particle size. After running a set of identical simulations, where the only changing parameter is the size of the spherical particle, it is observed that the resulting force trajectories, starting from a given particle size, converge to the true trend. It is deducible that a further decrease in size yields negligible improvements in the accuracy, while it sensibly increases computation time. A final analysis aims at discussing limitations of approximating bulk material particles having a complex shape, e. g. ice fragments, with spheres, by comparing force trends resulting in the two cases for the same simulation scenario.

Catanoso, Damiana↗
NASA NTRS2001

Where to look? Automating attending behaviors of virtual human characters

This research proposes a computational framework for generating visual attending behavior in an embodied simulated human agent. Such behaviors directly control eye and head motions, and guide other actions such as locomotion and reach. The implementation of these concepts, referred to as the AVA, draws on empirical and qualitative observations known from psychology, human factors and computer vision. Deliberate behaviors, the analogs of scanpaths in visual psychology, compete with involuntary attention capture and lapses into idling or free viewing. Insights provided by implementing this framework are: a defined set of parameters that impact the observable effects of attention, a defined vocabulary of looking behaviors for certain motor and cognitive activity, a defined hierarchy of three levels of eye behavior (endogenous, exogenous and idling) and a proposed method of how these types interact.

NASA Discipline Space Human Factors↗
NASA NTRS2004

Verifying Diagnostic Software

Livingstone PathFinder (LPF) is a simulation-based computer program for verifying autonomous diagnostic software. LPF is designed especially to be applied to NASA s Livingstone computer program, which implements a qualitative-model-based algorithm that diagnoses faults in a complex automated system (e.g., an exploratory robot, spacecraft, or aircraft). LPF forms a software test bed containing a Livingstone diagnosis engine, embedded in a simulated operating environment consisting of a simulator of the system to be diagnosed by Livingstone and a driver program that issues commands and faults according to a nondeterministic scenario provided by the user. LPF runs the test bed through all executions allowed by the scenario, checking for various selectable error conditions after each step. All components of the test bed are instrumented, so that execution can be single-stepped both backward and forward. The architecture of LPF is modular and includes generic interfaces to facilitate substitution of alternative versions of its different parts. Altogether, LPF provides a flexible, extensible framework for simulation-based analysis of diagnostic software; these characteristics also render it amenable to application to diagnostic programs other than Livingstone.

Lindsey, Tony↗
NASA NTRS2017

Digital Cellular Solid Pressure Vessels: A Novel Approach for Human Habitation in Space

It is widely assumed that human exploration beyond Earth's orbit will require vehicles capable of providing long duration habitats that simulate an Earth-like environment - consistent artificial gravity, breathable atmosphere, and sufficient living space- while requiring the minimum possible launch mass. This paper examines how the qualities of digital cellular solids - high-performance, repairability, reconfigurability, tunable mechanical response - allow the accomplishment of long-duration habitat objectives at a fraction of the mass required for traditional structural technologies. To illustrate the impact digital cellular solids could make as a replacement to conventional habitat subsystems, we compare recent proposed deep space habitat structural systems with a digital cellular solids pressure vessel design that consists of a carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) digital cellular solid cylindrical framework that is lined with an ultra-high molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) skin. We use the analytical treatment of a linear specific modulus scaling cellular solid to find the minimum mass pressure vessel for a structure and find that, for equivalent habitable volume and appropriate safety factors, the use of digital cellular solids provides clear methods for producing structures that are not only repairable and reconfigurable, but also higher performance than their conventionally manufactured counterparts.

Robotics↗
DOE OSTI2026

Multibody for Everybody (M4E): A Symbolic Dynamics Modeling Tool with Applications in Simulation, Control, and Optimization

Developing the analytical model of a multibody system is often the initial step in control and optimization. The analytical model (equations of motion) describes a system’s time evolution under specified forcing conditions. Although developing these equations is easy for simple systems, this process becomes more complex for systems composed of multiple bodies. Deriving equations of motion for complex multibody systems requires specialized expertise in multibody dynamics, is time-consuming, and is susceptible to error. To address this issue, this paper presents an open-source, easy-to-use, systematic framework to derive symbolic equations of motion in both Python and MATLAB using the joint coordinate formulation. This formulation results in a set of ordinary differential equations that use the minimum set of coordinates needed to model a system. The symbolic representation provides better insight into the influence of design parameters on system performance, facilitates sensitivity analysis and parameter studies, and supports direct implementation of control and optimization routines. The tool enables numerical simulation for specified parameter sets, is modular for straightforward integration with other tools and libraries, and allows incorporation of hydrodynamics, mooring, and other external forces. The result is a reproducible, extensible pipeline for modeling, simulation, and design of complex multibody systems. The proposed tool is versatile and can be applied to domains such as robotics, control, and design. In addition, we integrated external libraries that provide capabilities for modeling offshore systems such as underwater robots and marine energy converters.

16 TIDAL AND WAVE POWER↗
NASA NTRS2011

NASA Tech Briefs, December 2011

Topics covered include: 1) SNE Industrial Fieldbus Interface; 2) Composite Thermal Switch; 3) XMOS XC-2 Development Board for Mechanical Control and Data Collection; 4) Receiver Gain Modulation Circuit; 5) NEXUS Scalable and Distributed Next-Generation Avionics Bus for Space Missions; 6) Digital Interface Board to Control Phase and Amplitude of Four Channels; 7) CoNNeCT Baseband Processor Module; 8) Cryogenic 160-GHz MMIC Heterodyne Receiver Module; 9) Ka-Band, Multi-Gigabit-Per-Second Transceiver; 10) All-Solid-State 2.45-to-2.78-THz Source; 11) Onboard Interferometric SAR Processor for the Ka-Band Radar Interferometer (KaRIn); 12) Space Environments Testbed; 13) High-Performance 3D Articulated Robot Display; 14) Athena; 15) In Situ Surface Characterization; 16) Ndarts; 17) Cryo-Etched Black Silicon for Use as Optical Black; 18) Advanced CO2 Removal and Reduction System; 19) Correcting Thermal Deformations in an Active Composite Reflector; 20) Umbilical Deployment Device; 21) Space Mirror Alignment System; 22) Thermionic Power Cell To Harness Heat Energies for Geothermal Applications; 23) Graph Theory Roots of Spatial Operators for Kinematics and Dynamics; 24) Spacesuit Soft Upper Torso Sizing Systems; 25) Radiation Protection Using Single-Wall Carbon Nanotube Derivatives; 26) PMA-PhyloChip DNA Microarray to Elucidate Viable Microbial Community Structure; 27) Lidar Luminance Quantizer; 28) Distributed Capacitive Sensor for Sample Mass Measurement; 29) Base Flow Model Validation; 30) Minimum Landing Error Powered-Descent Guidance for Planetary Missions; 31) Framework for Integrating Science Data Processing Algorithms Into Process Control Systems; 32) Time Synchronization and Distribution Mechanisms for Space Networks; 33) Local Estimators for Spacecraft Formation Flying; 34) Software-Defined Radio for Space-to-Space Communications; 35) Reflective Occultation Mask for Evaluation of Occulter Designs for Planet Finding; and 36) Molecular Adsorber Coating

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2003

Developing An Autonomy Infusion Infrastructure for Robotic Exploration

Future robotic exploration missions will require autonomy in order to accomplish mission goals for operational efficiency and science return. For example, it will require three communication cycles for the Mars Exploration Rovers, Spirit and Opportunity, to place an instrument on a science target. Reducing this time necessitates highly accurate navigation, obstacle avoidance, target tracking, target analysis, manipulation, and fault diagnosis. Technologies to address these and other operational elements are currently being developed at NASA and within academia. However, infusion into missions has always been a difficult task for researchers. In order to keep risk down, mission managers are reluctant to include new technologies unless they have undergone extensive testing and verification under flight-realistic conditions. Furthermore, infusion of new technologies into missions is made more difficult by the variety of software frameworks under which these technologies are developed. Missions would like to see competing solutions demonstrated on a common platform so that they can compare performance and choose the solution best suited to their application.

Bualat, Maria G.↗
NASA NTRS2014

Concepts of Operations for Asteroid Rendezvous Missions Focused on Resources Utilization

Several asteroids are the targets of international robotic space missions currently manifested or in the planning stage. This global interest reflects a need to study these celestial bodies for the scientific information they provide about our solar system, and to better understand how to mitigate the collision threats some of them pose to Earth. Another important objective of these missions is providing assessments of the potential resources that asteroids could provide to future space architectures. In this paper, we examine a series of possible mission operations focused on advancing both our knowledge of the types of asteroids suited for different forms of resource extraction, and the capabilities required to extract those resources for mission enhancing and enabling uses such as radiation protection, propulsion, life support, shelter and manufacturing. An evolutionary development and demonstration approach is recommended within the framework of a larger campaign that prepares for the first landings of humans on Mars. As is the case for terrestrial mining, the development and demonstration approach progresses from resource prospecting (understanding the resource, and mapping the 'ore body'), mining/extraction feasibility and product assessment, pilot operations, to full in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). Opportunities to gather specific knowledge for ISRU via resource prospecting during science missions to asteroids are also examined to maximize the pace of development of needed ISRU capabilities and technologies for deep space missions.

radiation protection↗
NASA NTRS2015

Towards an Open, Distributed Software Architecture for UxS Operations

To address the growing need to evaluate, test, and certify an ever expanding ecosystem of UxS platforms in preparation of cultural integration, NASA Langley Research Center's Autonomy Incubator (AI) has taken on the challenge of developing a software framework in which UxS platforms developed by third parties can be integrated into a single system which provides evaluation and testing, mission planning and operation, and out-of-the-box autonomy and data fusion capabilities. This software framework, named AEON (Autonomous Entity Operations Network), has two main goals. The first goal is the development of a cross-platform, extensible, onboard software system that provides autonomy at the mission execution and course-planning level, a highly configurable data fusion framework sensitive to the platform's available sensor hardware, and plug-and-play compatibility with a wide array of computer systems, sensors, software, and controls hardware. The second goal is the development of a ground control system that acts as a test-bed for integration of the proposed heterogeneous fleet, and allows for complex mission planning, tracking, and debugging capabilities. The ground control system should also be highly extensible and allow plug-and-play interoperability with third party software systems. In order to achieve these goals, this paper proposes an open, distributed software architecture which utilizes at its core the Data Distribution Service (DDS) standards, established by the Object Management Group (OMG), for inter-process communication and data flow. The design decisions proposed herein leverage the advantages of existing robotics software architectures and the DDS standards to develop software that is scalable, high-performance, fault tolerant, modular, and readily interoperable with external platforms and software.

Cross, Charles D.↗
NASA NTRS2021

Autonomous Off-road Navigation over Extreme Terrains with Perceptually-challenging Conditions

We propose a framework for resilient autonomous navigation in perceptuallychallenging unknown environments with mobility-stressing elements such asuneven surfaces with rocks and boulders, steep slopes, negative obstacles like cliffsand holes, and narrow passages. Environments are GPS-denied and perceptuallydegradedwith variable lighting from dark to lit and obscurants (dust, fog, smoke).Lack of prior maps and degraded communication eliminates the possibility of prioror off-board computation or operator intervention. This necessitates real-time onboardcomputation using noisy sensor data. To address these challenges, we proposea resilient architecture that exploits redundancy and heterogeneity in sensing modalities.Further resilience is achieved by triggering recovery behaviors upon failure.We propose a fast settling algorithm to generate robust multi-fidelity traversabilityestimates in real-time. The proposed approach was deployed on multiple physicalsystems including skid-steer and tracked robots, high-speed RC car and legged robotsand as a part of Team CoSTAR’s effort to theDARPASubterranean Challenge, wherethe team won 2nd and 1st place in the Tunnel and Urban Circuit, respectively.

Agha-mohammadi, Ali-akbar↗
NASA NTRS2010

An International Strategy for Human Exploration of the Moon: The International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) Reference Architecture for Human Lunar Exploration

The International Space Exploration Coordination Group (ISECG) was established in response to The Global Exploration Strategy: The Framework for Coordination developed by fourteen space agencies and released in May 2007. Several ISECG participating space agencies have been studying concepts for human exploration of the moon that allow individual and collective goals and objectives to be met. This 18 month study activity culminated with the development of the ISECG Reference Architecture for Human Lunar Exploration. The reference architecture is a series of elements delivered over time in a flexible and evolvable campaign. This paper will describe the reference architecture and how it will inform near-term and long-term programmatic planning within interested agencies. The reference architecture is intended to serve as a global point of departure conceptual architecture that enables individual agency investments in technology development and demonstration, International Space Station research and technology demonstration, terrestrial analog studies, and robotic precursor missions to contribute towards the eventual implementation of a human lunar exploration scenario which reflects the concepts and priorities established to date. It also serves to create opportunities for partnerships that will support evolution of this concept and its eventual realization. The ISECG Reference Architecture for Human Lunar Exploration (commonly referred to as the lunar gPoD) reflects the agency commitments to finding an effective balance between conducting important scientific investigations of and from the moon, as well as demonstrating and mastering the technologies and capabilities to send humans farther into the Solar System. The lunar gPoD begins with a robust robotic precursor phase that demonstrates technologies and capabilities considered important for the success of the campaign. Robotic missions will inform the human missions and buy down risks. Human exploration will start with a thorough scientific investigation of the polar region while allowing the ability to demonstrate and validate the systems needed to take humans on more ambitious lunar exploration excursions. The ISECG Reference Architecture for Human Lunar Exploration serves as a model for future cooperation and is documented in a summary report and a comprehensive document that also describes the collaborative international process that led to its development. ISECG plans to continue with architecture studies such as this to examine an open transportation architecture and other destinations, with expanded participation from ISECG agencies, as it works to inform international partnerships and advance the Global Exploration Strategy.

Laurini, Kathleen C.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Assessing Carbon Properties in Coastal Waters with a New Observing System Testbed

Large rainfall events over land can lead to a substantial flux of carbon and nutrients to estuaries and the coastal ocean. In the mid-Atlantic on the east coast of North America (35° - 42° N), these events often happen due to tropical storm activity as well as less predictable anomalously large midlatitude storms or abrupt spring snow melt runoff. Storms can directly impact the coastal carbon cycle via export of carbon from land to sea, while also stimulating phytoplankton production due to the influx of nutrients to the coastal ocean. To assess the impact of high precipitation and river flow events on the coastal carbon cycle, we have integrated multiple observing platforms in an analytical framework to dynamically observe carbon-related properties. The new observing system testbed (NOS-T) allows for an estimate of phytoplankton and organic carbon stocks in the surface ocean, with a goal of providing near real time analytical capability. A case study of high river discharge in the mid-Atlantic in the summer and fall of 2018 and 2021 were used to examine how riverine carbon manifests along the land-estuary-ocean continuum particularly in Chesapeake Bay. Chesapeake Bay was chosen as the study site because of long term monitoring by the Chesapeake Bay Program and a robust and well-developed regional biogeochemical modeling system, the Chesapeake Bay Environmental Forecast System (CBEFS), that is publicly available. There is also new capability in Chesapeake Bay to combine hyperspectral radiometric data from the Aerosol Robotic Network site that is online in 2022 with in-water observations of optical properties. Precipitation data from the Global Precipitation Measurement IMERG data set was used to establish triggering criteria for storm carbon flux observation. USGS and in-water carbon data were used to establish statistical models to estimate the mass flux of organic carbon into Chesapeake Bay using measured river discharge. The year 2018 was examined as there was record rainfall and near record river flow in the late summer. The CBEFS modeling was compared with in-water estimates of dissolved organic carbon (DOC) to assess the model’s ability to capture storm fluxes of carbon to the ecosystem. Multiple satellite platforms were also used to assess how remote sensing using passive Earth orbiting sensors can be used to observe carbon in this complex coastal region. A set of recommendations have been established to improve sensing capability to measure aquatic carbon during storm events. A unique challenge in these dynamic inland waters is how rapidly carbon fluxes can evolve in space and time, with many sources contributing to the water leaving reflectance that satellites can observe. To improve our ability to quantify carbon stocks and fluxes in near real time, a suite of satellite sensors and high-resolution modeling capability is needed, all supplemented by in situ monitoring. Future inclusion of in-water observations that would be deployed when the system reaches triggering criteria, as well as taskable orbital instruments, will improve estimates of ocean carbon properties and provide the ability to calculate major carbon stocks and fluxes in near real time following episodic storm events.

land-ocean continuum↗
NASA NTRS2016

Concept of Operations for a Prospective "Proving Ground" in the Lunar Vicinity

NASA is studying conceptual architectures for a "Proving Ground" near the Moon or in high lunar orbit to conduct human space exploration missions that bridge the gap between today's operations with the International Space Station (ISS) and future human exploration of Mars beginning in the 2030s. This paper describes the framework of a concept of operations ("Conops") for candidate activities in the Proving Ground. The Conops discusses broad goals that the Proving Ground might address, such as participation from commercial entities, support for human landings on the Moon, use of mature technologies, and growth of capability through a steady cadence of increasingly ambitious piloted missions. Additional Proving Ground objectives are outlined in a companion paper. Key elements in the Conops include the Orion spacecraft (with mission kits for docking and other specialized operations) and the Space Launch System (SLS) heavy-lift rocket. Potential additions include a new space suit, commercial launch vehicles and logistics carriers, Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) stages to move elements between different orbits and eventually take them on excursions to deep space, a core module with multiple docking ports, a habitation block, and robotic and piloted lunar landers. The landers might include reusable ascent modules which could remain docked to in-space elements between lunar sorties. A module providing advanced regenerative life support functions could launch to the ISS, and later move to the Proving Ground. The architecture will include infrastructure for launch preparation, communication, mission control, and range safety. The Conops describes notional missions chosen to guide the design of the architecture and its elements. One such mission might be the delivery of a approximately 10-t Transit Habitat element, comanifested with Orion on a Block 1B SLS launcher, to the Proving Ground. In another mission, the architecture might participate in direct human exploration of an asteroidal boulder brought to high lunar orbit by the Asteroid Redirect Mission. The Proving Ground stack could serve as a staging point and tele-operation center for robotic and piloted Moon landings. With the addition of a SEP stage, the architecture could support months-long excursions within and beyond the Earth's sphere of influence, possibly culminating in a year-long mission to land humans on a near-Earth asteroid. In the last case, after returning to near-lunar space, two of the asteroid explorers could join two crewmembers freshly arrived from Earth for a Moon landing, helping to quantify the risk of landing deconditioned crews on Mars. In a conceptual mission particularly stressing to system design, Proving Ground elements could transit to Mars orbit. Other possible design-driving operations include relocation of the stack with no crew on board, the unpiloted journey of the advanced life support module from ISS to the lunar vicinity, excursions to other destinations in near-Earth space, and additional support for Mars exploration in conjunction with the Evolvable Mars Campaign. The Proving Ground Conops concludes with a discussion of aborts and contingency operations

Love, Stanley G.↗