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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 NTRS2019

Electra: A Modular-Based Expansion of NASA's Supercomputing Capability

NASA has increasingly relied on high-performance computing (HPC) re- sources for computational modeling, simulation, and data analysis to meet the science and engineering goals of its missions in space exploration, aeronautics, and Earth and space science. The NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division at Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, Calif., hosts NASA’s premier supercomputing resources, integral to achieving and enhancing the success of the agency’s missions. NAS provides a balanced environment, funded under the High-End Computing Capability (HECC) project, comprised of world-class supercomputers, including its flagship distributed-memory cluster, Pleiades; high-speed networking; and massive data storage facilities, along with multi-disciplinary support teams for user support, code porting and optimization, and large-scale data analysis and scientific visualization. However, as scientists have increased the fidelity of their simulations and engineers are conducting larger parameter-space studies, the requirements for supercomputing resources have been growing by leaps and bounds. With the facility housing the HECC systems reaching its power and cooling capacity, NAS undertook a prototype project to investigate an alternative approach for housing supercomputers. Modular supercomputing, or container-based computing, is an innovative concept for expanding NASA’s HPC capabilities. With modular supercomputing, additional containers—similar to portable storage pods—can be connected together as needed to accommodate the agency’s ever-increasing demand for computing resources. In addition, taking advantage of the local weather permits the use of cooling technologies that would additionally save energy and reduce annual water usage. The first stage of NASA’s Modular Supercomputing Facility (MSF) prototype, which resulted in a 1,000 square-foot module on a concrete pad with room for 16 compute racks, was completed in Fall 2016 and an SGI (now HPE) computer system, named Electra, was deployed there in early 2017. Cooling is performed via an evaporative system built into the module, and preliminary experience shows a Power Usage Effectiveness (PUE) measurement of 1.03. Electra achieved over a petaflop on the LINPACK benchmark, sufficient to rank number 96 on the November 2016 TOP500 list [14]. The system consists of 1,152 InfiniBand-connected Intel Xeon Broadwell-based nodes. Its users access their files on a facility-wide file system shared by all HECC compute assets via Mellanox MetroX InfiniBand extenders, which connect the Electra fabric to Lustre routers in the primary facility over fiber-optic links about 900 feet long. The MSF prototype has exceeded expectations and is serving as a blueprint for future expansions. In the remainder of this chapter, we detail how modular data center technology can be used to expand an existing compute resource. We begin by describing NASA’s requirements for supercomputing and how resources were provided prior to the integration of the Electra module-based system.

Biswas, Rupak↗
NASA NTRS2016

Innovation at the Edge of Space- An Engine for Global Opportunities

Microgravity based commercial opportunities are broad, with applications ranging from fiber optics, device-grade semiconductor crystals, space beads, new materials, cells microencapsulation, 3D tissues and cell cultures, genetic and molecular changes of immune suppression, protein and virus crystal growth, perfume and hair care. To date, primarily the knowledge gained from observing and understanding new end states of systems unraveled in microgravity has been translated into unique technologies and business opportunities on Earth. In some instances existing flight qualified hardware is immediately available for commercial RD for small-scale in-space manufacturing. Overall, products manufactured in microgravity have key properties usually surpassing the best terrestrial counterparts. Commercially, these products have an attractive touch of space which aids in marketing.The talk will addresses the potential benefits of microgravity research for a variety of terrestrial markets by (1) surveying the level of awareness and interest of parties from different commercial sectors (2) assessing the potential of microgravity to stimulate innovation in future product development and (3) formulating a synergistic strategy to use microgravity for economic growth and public benefit.Our findings originating primarily from discussions with 100+ non-aerospace private companies among the high-tech Silicon Valley ecosystem, show that the opportunities and benefits of using the ISS are largely not considered by experts, primarily due to a lack of awareness of the breadth of terrestrial applications that have been enabled or enhanced by microgravity RD. Based on this dialogue, the concept of microgravity verticals is developed to translate the benefits of the microgravity environment into blue ocean business opportunities for various key US commercial sectors.

orbital economy↗
NASA NTRS2017

NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) Division

High Performance Computing (HPC) has become an integral part of NASAs Aeronautics research and application endeavors. HPC requirements for Aeroscience applications are increasing by leaps and bounds as scientists and engineers increase the fidelity of the simulations and the size of the engineering databases needed for NASA missions. In this talk we present several such applications and describe how they have benefited from the use of supercomputing. We provide an overview of the resources available at NASA Advanced Supercomputing (NAS) facility at Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, and also describe the progress in performance of Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) codes on current and future HPC technologies. We also discuss some of the challenges in efficiently exploiting the underlying computational resources for such codes.

Mehrotra, Piyush↗
NASA NTRS2018

NASA Smallsat Technology Advancement and Rapid Test Program

In the heart of Silicon Valley, NASA Ames Research Center has been at the forefront of nanosat development and adoption for the past 20 years. Continuing these efforts, a new program has begun focused on advancing smallsat technologies by on-orbit demonstration of new capabilities in sensors, subsystems and components with a rapid deployment cadence. The initial goal is to have at least two experiment platforms launched every year and to increase the cadence from there. We intend to bridge the TRL valley of death and make incremental progress with actual on-orbit demonstration. New technologies that will enable future NASA, commercial and DoD missions and leveraging SBIR efforts will be targeted and prioritized for flight opportunities. The workshop and labs developing these systems will rely on COTS technology as much as possible and have a great degree of freedom with development practices and policies. Success will be determined by the series of experiments over multiple flights, not by the performance of any one experiment. Lessons learned from the TechEdSat program will be used to incorporate student involvement to enhance the creativity and energy of the program while working alongside experienced engineers. In this presentation, we lay out the framework for this program and invite the community to participate in advancing all of our interests.

Vaughan, R.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Advanced Composite Solar Sail System: Demonstrating Deployable Composite Solar Sails for Future Deep Space Small Spacecraft

NASA is developing new deployable structures and materials technologies for solar sail propulsion systems destined for future low-cost deep space missions. Solar sails eliminate the need for conventional rocket propellants, relying instead upon the pressure of sunlight to generate continuous thrust. They can operate indefinitely, limited only by the space environment durability of the solar sail materials and spacecraft electronic systems.At NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, researchers and engineers are planning a mission to demonstrate the next generation of solar sail technology for small interplanetary spacecraft. As part of this development effort, the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) will demonstrate deployment of an approximately 800 square foot (74 square meter) composite boom (mast) solar sail system in low-Earth orbit. This will be the first use of composite booms as well as sail packing and deployment systems for a solar sail in orbit.

composite materials↗
NASA NTRS2019

Advanced Composite Solar Sail System Animation

At NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, researchers and engineers are planning a mission to demonstrate the next generation of solar sail technology for small interplanetary spacecraft. As part of this development effort, the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System (ACS3) will demonstrate deployment of an approximately 800 square foot (74 square meter) composite boom solar sail system in low-Earth orbit. This will be the first use of composite booms as well as sail packing and deployment systems for a solar sail in orbit. Also developed for ACS3 is an innovative tape-spool boom extraction system to minimize blossoming, or jamming, of the coiled booms during deployment.

Horner, Scott D.↗
NASA NTRS2020

NASA Next-Generation Sensing Technologies for Earth & Planetary Science

Dr. Ved Chirayath's seminar will highlight new sensing technologies and airborne platforms he is developing for Earth & Space Science as director of the NASA Silicon Valley Laboratory for Advanced Sensing. His talk will feature recent work on Fluid Lensing, the first remote sensing technology capable of imaging through ocean waves in 3D at sub-cm resolutions, MiDAR, a next-generation active hyperspectral remote sensing and optical communications instrument, airborne gas sensing of multipollutant combustion sources, and a plasma actuated unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV) that utilized high-voltage dielectric discharge devices to achieve the first plasma controlled flight in history.Fluid Lensing and the NASA FluidCam instrument have been used extensively to provide distortion-free 3D multispectral imagery from UAVs of shallow marine systems around the world. MiDAR is being deployed on aircraft and underwater remotely operated vehicles (ROVs) as a new method to remotely sense living and nonliving structures in extreme environments as an analog for future Ocean Worlds robotic exploration missions. Finally, Chirayath will present preliminary results from NeMO-Net, a supercomputer-based neural network that uses a citizen science video game for global multimodal coral reef benthic habitat mapping, fusing remote sensing data from Fluid Lensing, MiDAR, NASA's Earth Observing System, and commercial satellites, to better understand the present and past dynamics of shallow marine systems. Together, these maturing technologies present promising new ways in which to explore terrestrial, marine, and aerial systems on Earth, and, ultimately, aid in the search for extraterrestrial life within our solar system and beyond.

Chirayath, Ved↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

2021 NASA Ames Earth Science Division Seminar Series

The Earth Science Division at NASA Ames Research Center in Silicon Valley, CA, conducts research in various topics including theoretical and experimental research into radiative transfer, remote sensing, aerosols, clouds, and climate change, as well as ways in which this research can be applied for decision making. You can find out more about the division at: https://www.nasa.gov/centers/ames/earthscience. The seminar series invites nationally and internationally recognized researchers to present their research. Seminars are held biweekly on Thursdays and are open to everyone int he Ames Science Directorate

Tushar Prabhakar↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Science, Exploration and the Human Experience.

Dr. Darlene S. Lim is a research scientist at NASA's Ames Research Center in California's Silicon Valley, and the Deputy Project Scientist and Science Operations Lead for NASA's Volatiles Investigating Polar Exploration Rover (VIPER) Lunar Mission. The VIPER lunar rover mission is a mobile robot that will go to the South Pole of the Moon to get a close-up view of the location and concentration of water ice that could eventually be harvested to sustain human exploration on the Moon, Mars — and beyond. VIPER represents the first resource mapping mission on another celestial body and presents a unique operational paradigm within the history of robotic spaceflight. Throughout her career, Darlene has led several NASA-funded programs that have been focused on blending field science research with the development of capabilities and concepts for future human-robotic spaceflight to the Moon and Mars. These research activities have taken her around the world, from pole to pole, land to sea, and to many lakes in between, where she has studied life in extreme environments, the way people conduct science, and how they need to be supported in their work of discovery and exploration. At the center of each of these endeavors is the human - the person who must interact with others, with technology, and with the environment of interest, to apply the scientific method towards the accrual and expansion of knowledge about the planet that we live on and beyond. Darlene has been working with teams of scientists and engineers from a variety of disciplines to hone her understanding of the process by which their interactions and research needs can be supported and enabled under intense operational conditions such as those associated with Moon and Mars exploration. Darlene’s presentation will take the audience through the arc of her research over the past two decades culminating in her on-going work with the NASA VIPER lunar rover mission.

Darlene Sze Shien Lim↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Future of NASA Exploration of Air and Space

Dr. Tu will talk about the current and future missions of NASA in aviation and space, provide an overview of NASA’s Ames Research Center located in Silicon Valley, CA, and discuss his personal journey starting as a student intern in the earlier days of computational fluid dynamics.

Future↗
DOE OSTI2021

Full configuration interaction simulations of exchange-coupled donors in silicon using multi-valley effective mass theory

Abstract Donor spins in silicon have achieved record values of coherence times and single-qubit gate fidelities. The next stage of development involves demonstrating high-fidelity two-qubit logic gates, where the most natural coupling is the exchange interaction. To aid the efficient design of scalable donor-based quantum processors, we model the two-electron wave function using a full configuration interaction method within a multi-valley effective mass theory. We exploit the high computational efficiency of our code to investigate the exchange interaction, valley population, and electron densities for two phosphorus donors in a wide range of lattice positions, orientations, and as a function of applied electric fields. The outcomes are visualized with interactive images where donor positions can be swept while watching the valley and orbital components evolve accordingly. Our results provide a physically intuitive and quantitatively accurate understanding of the placement and tuning criteria necessary to achieve high-fidelity two-qubit gates with donors in silicon.

Joecker, Benjamin (ORCID:0000000302635440)↗
DOE OSTI2025

Valley splitting correlations across a silicon quantum well containing germanium

Quantum dots in SiGe/Si/SiGe heterostructures host coherent electron spin qubits, which are promising for future quantum computers. The silicon quantum well hosts near-degenerate electron valley states, creating a low-lying excited state that is known to reduce spin qubit readout and control fidelity. The valley energy splitting is dominated by the microscopic disorder in the SiGe alloy and at the Si/SiGe interfaces, and while Si devices are compatible with large-scale semiconductor manufacturing, achieving a uniformly large valley splitting energy across a many-qubit device spanning mesoscopic distances is an outstanding challenge. In this work we study valley splitting variations in a 1D quantum dot array, formed in a Si 0.972 Ge 0.028 quantum well, manufactured by Intel. We observe correlations in valley splitting, at both sub-100 nm (single gate) and > 1 μm (device) lengthscales, that are consistent with alloy disorder-dominated theory and simulation. Our results develop the mesoscopic understanding of Si/SiGe heterostructures necessary for scalable device design.

Marcks, Jonathan C. [Argonne National Laboratory (↗
DOE OSTI2026

Advanced pathways for hydrogen production: a collective view from a technical experts meeting

Hydrogen is an essential fuel and feedstock that can be produced in multiple ways to meet requirements for technological sectors that include energy storage, transportation, petroleum refining, and ammonia synthesis. To consider the future state of hydrogen manufacturing, a team of experts has assembled and examined three emerging hydrogen production technologies – photoelectrochemical, biological, and thermochemical. Each of these emerging technologies holds significant long-term potential for cost reduction while lowering industrial emissions associated with conventional methods of hydrogen manufacture (e.g., steam methane reforming) by using sunlight and renewable resources as primary sources of energy and feedstock, respectively. All three are currently at low technology readiness levels, however their applications, cost reduction opportunities and performance improvement pathways are under active development. In this work, opportunities and outlook for research that can directly advance the technologies are discussed.

08 HYDROGEN↗
DOE OSTI2022

A silicon singlet–triplet qubit driven by spin-valley coupling

Spin–orbit effects, inherent to electrons confined in quantum dots at a silicon heterointerface, provide a means to control electron spin qubits without the added complexity of on-chip, nanofabricated micromagnets or nearby coplanar striplines. Here, we demonstrate a singlet–triplet qubit operating mode that can drive qubit evolution at frequencies in excess of 200 MHz. This approach offers a means to electrically turn on and off fast control, while providing high logic gate orthogonality and long qubit dephasing times. We utilize this operational mode for dynamical decoupling experiments to probe the charge noise power spectrum in a silicon metal-oxide-semiconductor double quantum dot. In addition, we assess qubit frequency drift over longer timescales to capture low-frequency noise. We present the charge noise power spectral density up to 3 MHz, which exhibits a 1/ f α dependence consistent with α ~ 0.7, over 9 orders of magnitude in noise frequency.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
DOE OSTI2021

Valley splittings in Si/SiGe quantum dots with a germanium spike in the silicon well

Silicon-germanium heterostructures have successfully hosted quantum dot qubits, but the intrinsic near-degeneracy of the two lowest valley states poses an obstacle to high-fidelity quantum computing. Here we present a modification to the Si/SiGe heterostructure by the inclusion of a spike in germanium concentration within the quantum well in order to increase the valley splitting. The heterostructure is grown by chemical vapor deposition and magnetospectroscopy is performed on gate-defined quantum dots to measure the excited state spectrum. We demonstrate a large and widely tunable valley splitting as a function of applied vertical electric field and lateral dot confinement. We further investigate the role of the germanium spike by means of tight-binding simulations in single-electron dots and show a robust doubling of the valley splitting when the spike is present, as compared to a standard (spike-free) heterostructure. This doubling effect is nearly independent of the electric field, germanium content of the spike, and spike location. This experimental evidence of a stable, tunable quantum dot, despite a drastic change to the heterostructure, provides a foundation for future heterostructure modifications.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗