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Search indexed NASA NTRS and DOE OSTI research on propulsion, heat transfer, battery materials and energy systems. Follow report and document links to the original sources.

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At least 37 records · Page 2
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS1996

Qualitative Analysis for Maintenance Process Assessment

In order to improve software maintenance processes, we first need to be able to characterize and assess them. These tasks must be performed in depth and with objectivity since the problems are complex. One approach is to set up a measurement-based software process improvement program specifically aimed at maintenance. However, establishing a measurement program requires that one understands the problems to be addressed by the measurement program and is able to characterize the maintenance environment and processes in order to collect suitable and cost-effective data. Also, enacting such a program and getting usable data sets takes time. A short term substitute is therefore needed. We propose in this paper a characterization process aimed specifically at maintenance and based on a general qualitative analysis methodology. This process is rigorously defined in order to be repeatable and usable by people who are not acquainted with such analysis procedures. A basic feature of our approach is that actual implemented software changes are analyzed in order to understand the flaws in the maintenance process. Guidelines are provided and a case study is shown that demonstrates the usefulness of the approach.

Brand, Lionel↗
NASA NTRS1988

Langley advanced real-time simulation (ARTS) system

A system of high-speed digital data networks was developed and installed to support real-time flight simulation at the NASA Langley Research Center. This system, unlike its predecessor, employs intelligence at each network node and uses distributed 10-V signal conversion equipment rather than centralized 100-V equipment. A network switch, which replaces an elaborate system of patch panels, allows the researcher to construct a customized network from the 25 available simulation sites by invoking a computer control statement. The intent of this paper is to provide a coherent functional description of the system. This development required many significant innovations to enhance performance and functionality such as the real-time clock, the network switch, and improvements to the CAMAC network to increase both distances to sites and data rates. The system has been successfully tested at a usable data rate of 24 M. The fiber optic lines allow distances of approximately 1.5 miles from switch to site. Unlike other local networks, CAMAC does not buffer data in blocks. Therefore, time delays in the network are kept below 10 microsec total. This system underwent months of testing and was put into full service in July 1987.

Crawford, Daniel J.↗
NASA NTRS1994

Dynamics Explorer 1, retarding ion mass spectrometer summary spectrograms: 81/280 to 81/365 spin-time spectrograms for H(+), He(+), O(+), N(+), O(++), M/Z=2, and molecular ions

The Retarding Ion Mass Spectrometer (RIMS) experiment onboard the Dynamics Explorer 1 (DE 1) satellite was designed to perform energy and mass-per-charge analysis on low-energy ions (less than 50 eV) with mass/charge ratios ranging from 1 to 40 amu/Z. The DE 1 satellite, carrying the RIMS experiment, was launched into an elliptical polar orbit on August 3, 1981. The approximately 7.5 hour orbit has perigee of 675 km altitude and apogee of 24,875 km altitude. This document, as well as those that follow in this series, contains summary RIMS data spectrograms for each orbit for which RIMS data are available. The RIMS instrument began returning science data on day 280 of 1981 and continued to return usable data until the end of the DE mission in March 1991. It should be noted that studies of the RIMS data set should be conducted only with a thorough awareness of the material described in the introduction section presented here, or in collaboration with a scientist familiar with RIMS data analysis.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1994

Dynamics Explorer 1, retarding ion mass spectrometer summary spectrograms: 82/001 to 82/109 spin-time spectrograms for H(+), He(+), O(+), N(+), O(++), M/Z=2, and molecular ions

The Retarding Ion Mass Spectrometer (RIMS) experiment onboard the Dynamics Explorer 1 (DE 1) satellite was designed to perform energy and mass-per-change analysis on low-energy ions (less than 50 eV) with mass/charge ratios ranging from 1 to 40 amu/Z. The DE 1 satellite, carrying the RIMS experiment, was launched into an elliptical polar orbit on August 3, 1981. The approximate 7.5 hour orbit has perigee of 675 km altitude and apogee of 24,875 km altitude. This document, and those that follow in this series, contains summary RIMS data spectrograms for each orbit for which RIMS data are available. The RIMS instrument began returning science data on day 280 of 1981 and continued to return usable data until the end of the DE mission in March 1991. It should be noted that studies of the RIMS data set should be conducted only with a thorough awareness of the material described in the introduction section presented here, or in collaboration with a scientist familiar with RIMS data analysis.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1995

Dynamics Explorer 1, retarding ion mass spectrometer summary spectrograms-82/110 to 82/229 spin-time spectrograms for H(+), He(+), O(+), N(+), O(++), M/Z = 2, and molecular ions

The retarding ion mass spectrometer (RIMS) experiment onboard the Dynamics Explorer 1 (DE 1) satellite was designed to perform energy and mass-per-charge analysis on low-energy ions (less than 50 eV) with mass/charge ratios ranging from 1 to 40 amu/Z. The DE 1 satellite, carrying the RIMS experiment, was launched into an elliptical polar orbit on August 3, 1981. The approximately 7.5 hour orbit has perigee of 675 km altitude and apogee of 24,875 km altitude. this document and those that following in this series, contains summary RIMS data spectrograms for each orbit for which RIMS data are available. The RIMS instrument began returning science data on day 280 of 1981 and continued to return usable data until the end of the DE mission in March 1991. It should be noted that studies of the RIMS data set should be conducted only with a thorough awareness of the material described in the introduction section presented here, or in collaboration with a scientist familiar with RIMS data analysis.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1995

Dynamics Explorer 1, retarding ion mass spectrometer summary spectrograms-82/230 to 82/265 spin-time spectrograms for H(+), He(+), O(+), N(+), O(++), M/Z = 2, and molecular ions

The retarding ion mass spectrometer (RIMS) experiment onboard the Dynamics Explorer 1 (DE 1) satellite was designed to perform energy and mass-per-charge analysis on low-energy ions (less than 50 eV) with mass/charge ratios ranging from 1 to 40 amu/Z. the DE 1 satellite, carrying the RIMS experiment, was launched into an elliptical polar orbit on August 3, 1981. The approximately 7.5 hour orbit has perigee of 675 km altitude and apogee of 24,875 km altitude. This document and those that follow in this series, contain summary RIMS data spectrograms for each orbit for which RIMS data are available. The RIMS instrument began returning science data on day 280 of 1981 and continued to return usable data until the end of the DE mission in March 1991. It should be noted that studies of the RIMS data set should be conducted only with a thorough awareness of the material described in the introduction section presented here, or in collaboration with a scientist familiar with RIMS data analysis.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2010

Data Access Services that Make Remote Sensing Data Easier to Use

This slide presentation reviews some of the processes that NASA uses to make the remote sensing data easy to use over the World Wide Web. This work involves much research into data formats, geolocation structures and quality indicators, often to be followed by coding a preprocessing program. Only then are the data usable within the analysis tool of choice. The Goddard Earth Sciences Data and Information Services Center is deploying a variety of data access services that are designed to dramatically shorten the time consumed in the data preparation step. On-the-fly conversion to the standard network Common Data Form (netCDF) format with Climate-Forecast (CF) conventions imposes a standard coordinate system framework that makes data instantly readable through several tools, such as the Integrated Data Viewer, Gridded Analysis and Display System, Panoply and Ferret. A similar benefit is achieved by serving data through the Open Source Project for a Network Data Access Protocol (OPeNDAP), which also provides subsetting. The Data Quality Screening Service goes a step further in filtering out data points based on quality control flags, based on science team recommendations or user-specified criteria. Further still is the Giovanni online analysis system which goes beyond handling formatting and quality to provide visualization and basic statistics of the data. This general approach of automating the preparation steps has the important added benefit of enabling use of the data by non-human users (i.e., computer programs), which often make sub-optimal use of the available data due to the need to hard-code data preparation on the client side.

Lynnes, Christopher↗
NASA NTRS1984

Guidelines for submitting data to the National Space Science Data Center

The mission of the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC) is to disseminate space science data for further analysis beyond that provided by the principal investigators (PIs) or team leaders (TLs) and their coworkers. Consequently, the NSSDC is responsible for the acquisition, organization, storage, retrieval, announcement, and distribution of scientific data obtained mainly from satellites and spacecraft. Any scientist may acquired data from the NSSDC and use them in further studies, either alone or in conjunction with data from ground-based or spacecraft experiments. With the responsibility for archiving data is the concomitant responsibility for distributing the documentation necessary to make those data usable. Since the group most knowledgeable about a particular experiment and its data is the PI or TL and his coworkers, and since the NSSDC cannot possibly supply the qualified personnel needed to write this documentation comprehensively, it is the responsibility of the PI or TL to provide the essential documentation. The NSSDC will support this effort by defining what is needed, by reviewing what is provided, and by reproducing and distributing the resulting documentation with the data. For a high-use data set, the NSSDC may publish the documentation as a Data Users Note; for a low-use data set, the NSSDC may distribute a Xerox, microfilm, or microfiche copy of the documentation.

Source record↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

MPATH (Measuring Performance for Autonomy Teaming with Humans) Ground Control Station: Design Approach and Initial Usability Results

Envisioned future Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) operations will require a transition of aircraft command and control from onboard pilots to remote operators. The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has developed a research ground control station (GCS) software called MPATH (Measuring Performance for Autonomy Teaming with Humans) to study the human factors of remote operators in a representative AAM environment, where small uncrewed aerial systems (sUAS; simulated or real) act as surrogates for larger AAM aircraft. A primary focus of the research being conducted with the MPATH GCS is scalability (i.e., one human managing multiple vehicles). MPATH has demonstrated to be a useful capability for human factors research and remote operations. Two initial usability studies and a multi-vehicle control assessment were recently conducted, and usability data and operator feedback were collected. Generally, participants rated MPATH high on usability and interface quality, whereas information quality was rated slightly lower. These results were supported by specific feedback. Several generalized GCS design recommendations are proposed based on the results and feedback from these flight activities. Future updates to MPATH will incorporate the proposed recommendations. In practice, these recommendations could be used by any GCS software designer or developer to promote usability and safety.

Advanced Air Mobility↗
DOE OSTI2023

Optimizing metaproteomics database construction: lessons from a study of the vaginal microbiome

Metaproteomics, a method for untargeted, high-throughput identification of proteins in complex samples, provides functional information about microbial communities and can tie functions to specific taxa. Metaproteomics often generates less data than other omics techniques, but analytical workflows can be improved to increase usable data in metaproteomic outputs. Identification of peptides in the metaproteomic analysis is performed by comparing mass spectra of sample peptides to a reference database of protein sequences. Although these protein databases are an integral part of the metaproteomic analysis, few studies have explored how database composition impacts peptide identification. Here, we used cervicovaginal lavage (CVL) samples from a study of bacterial vaginosis (BV) to compare the performance of databases built using six different strategies. We evaluated broad versus sample-matched databases, as well as databases populated with proteins translated from metagenomic sequencing of the same samples versus sequences from public repositories. Smaller sample-matched databases performed significantly better, driven by the statistical constraints on large databases. Additionally, large databases attributed up to 34% of significant bacterial hits to taxa absent from the sample, as determined orthogonally by 16S rRNA gene sequencing. We also tested a set of hybrid databases which included bacterial proteins from NCBI RefSeq and translated bacterial genes from the samples. These hybrid databases had the best overall performance, identifying 1,068 unique human and 1,418 unique bacterial proteins, ~30% more than a database populated with proteins from typical vaginal bacteria and fungi. Our findings can help guide the optimal identification of proteins while maintaining statistical power for reaching biological conclusions.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
DOE OSTI2023

Battery data integrity and usability: Navigating datasets and equipment limitations for efficient and accurate research into battery aging

A tremendous commitment of resources is needed to acquire, understand and apply battery data in terms of performance and aging behavior. There are many state of performance (SOP) and state of health (SOH) metrics that are useful to guide alignment of batteries to end-use, yet how these metrics are measured or extracted can make the difference between usable, valuable datasets versus data that lacks the necessary integrity to meet baseline confidence levels for SOP/SOH quantification. This work will speak to 1) types of data that support SOP and SOH evaluations on mechanistic terms, 2) measurement conditions needed to assure high data integrity, 3) equipment limitations that can compromise data high fidelity, and 4) the impact of cell polarization on data quality. A common goal in battery research and field use is to work from a data platform that supports economical paths of data capture while minimizing down-time for battery diagnostics. An ideal situation would be to utilize data obtained during normal daily use (“pulses or cycles of convenience”) without stopping the daily duty cycles to perform dedicated SOP/SOH diagnostic routines. However, difficulties arise in trying to make use of daily duty cycle data (denoted as cycle-by-cycle, CBC) that underscores the need for standardization of conditions: temperature and duty cycles can vary over the course of a day and throughout a week, month and year; polarization can develop within an immediate cycle and throughout successive cycles as a hysteresis. If CBC data is envisioned as a data source to determine performance and aging trends, it should be recognized that polarization is a frequent consequence of CBC and thus makes it difficult to separate reversible and irreversible components to metrics such as capacity loss and resistance increase over aging. Since CBC conditions can have a major impact on data usability, we will devote part of this paper to CBC data conditioning and management. Differential analyses will also be discussed as a means to detect changing trends in data quality. Our target cell chemistries will be lithium-ion types NMC/graphite and LMO/LTO.

25 ENERGY STORAGE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Guidelines for Publicly Archiving Terrestrial Model Data to Enhance Usability, Intercomparison, and Synthesis

Scientific communities are increasingly publishing data to evaluate, accredit, and build on published research. However, guidelines for curating data for publication are sparse for model-related research, limiting the usability of archived simulation data. In particular, there are no established guidelines for archiving data related to terrestrial models that simulate land processes and their coupled interactions with climate. Terrestrial modelers have a unique set of challenges when publishing data due to the diversity of scientific domains, research questions, and the types and scales of simulations. Researchers in the U.S. Department of Energy’s (DOE) projects use a variety of multiscale models to advance robust predictions of terrestrial and subsurface ecosystem processes. Here, we synthesize archiving needs for data associated with different DOE models, and provide guidelines for publishing terrestrial model data components following FAIR (Findable, Accessible, Interoperable, Reusable) principles. The guidelines recommend archiving model inputs and testing data used in final simulation runs along with associated codes, workflow scripts, and metadata in public repositories. Researchers should consider archiving model outputs if they are within the storage limits of the repository. We also provide considerations for how to bundle files into different data publications with citable digital object identifiers. Finally, we identify repository features and tools that would enable storage and reuse of model data. Given the diversity of DOE terrestrial models, these guidelines are transferable to other model types and will enable efficient reuse of simulation data for purposes such as model intercomparisons, initialization, benchmarking, synthesis, and comparisons with field observations.

58 GEOSCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2018

History and Status of ALSEP and the Apollo Lunar Data Project

A suite of automated scientific instruments (the Apollo Lunar Surface Experiment Package, or ALSEP) was installed at each of the landing sites of Apollo 12, 14, 15, 16, and 17 from 1969 to 1972. They operated from deployment until decommissioning on 30 September 1977. These data were continuously transmitted to Earth and saved on the Range Tapes, which were recorded at the Manned Space Flight Network stations. These data were also broken out by experiment and sent to the experiment Principal Investigators on what were called the P.I. Tapes. Starting in April 1973 the Range Tape data were stored in digital format on 7-track magnetic tapes, the ARCSAV Tapes. In February 1976, the handling of the Range Tapes was transferred to UT Galveston. They produced 9-track tapes referred to as the Work Tapes. Following the Apollo program the Range and ARCSAV tapes, which were never archived, were lost. The Work Tapes were archived at the National Space Science Data Center (NSSDC). Some investigators archived their individual experiment data with NSSDC as well, but much of the data had minimal documentation, were not in digital form, or were stored in difficult to translate formats. Data from many experiments were never delivered to the NSSDC. The Lunar Data Project was started to address the problem of both missing and not readily usable data. Our effort has resulted in recovery of some of the ARCSAV tapes, recovery and digitization of a large volume of Apollo scientific and technical documentation, and restoration of many ALSEP and other Apollo data collections. Restoration involves deciphering formats, assembling necessary ancillary data (metadata), and packaging data in digital format to be archived with the Planetary Data System (PDS). Recovery of the data from the ARCSAV tapes involved having the tapes read on special equipment and extracting the individual experiment data out of the integrated data stream. We will report on the history and status of the various recovery efforts.

Work Tapes↗
DOE OSTI2021

Investigating User Experiences with Data Abstractions on High Performance Computing Systems

Scientific exploration generates expanding volumes of data that commonly require High Performance Computing (HPC) systems to facilitate research. HPC systems are complex ecosystems of hardware and software that frequently are not user friendly. The Usable Data Abstractions (UDA) project set out to build usable software for scientific workflows in HPC environments by undertaking multiple rounds of qualitative user research. Qualitative research investigates how individuals accomplish their work and our interview-based study surfaced a variety of insights about the experiences of working in and with HPC ecosystems. This report examines multiple facets to the experiences of scientists and developers using and supporting HPC systems. We discuss how stakeholders grasp the design and configuration of these systems, the impacts of abstraction layers on their ability to successfully do work, and the varied perceptions of time that shape this work. Examining the adoption of the Cori HPC at NERSC we explore the anticipations and lived experiences of users interacting with this system’s novel storage feature, the Burst Buffer. We present lessons learned from across these insights to illustrate just some of the challenges HPC facilities and their stakeholders need to account for when procuring and supporting these essential scientific resources to ensure their usability and utility to a variety of scientific practices.

97 MATHEMATICS AND COMPUTING↗
NASA NTRS2018

Decadal Seasonal Shifts of Precipitation and Temperature in TRMM and AIRS Data

We present results from an analysis of seasonal phase shifts in the global precipitation and surface temperatures. We use data from the TRMM (Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission) Multi-satellite Precipitation Algorithm (TMPA), and the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS) on Aqua satellite, all hosted at NASA Goddard Earth Science Data and Information Services Center (GES DISC). We explore the information content and data usability by first aggregating daily grids from the entire records of both missions to pentad (5-day) series which are then processed using Singular Value Decomposition approach. A strength of this approach is the normalized principal components that can then be easily converted from real to complex time series. Thus, we can separate the most informative, the seasonal, components and analyze unambiguously for potential seasonal phase drifts. TMPA and AIRS records represent correspondingly 20 and 15 years of data, which allows us to run simple “phase learning†from the first 5 years of records and use it as reference. The most recent 5 years are then phase-compared with the reference. We demonstrate that the seasonal phase of global precipitation and surface temperatures has been stable in the past two decades. However, a small global trend of delayed precipitation, and earlier arrival of surface temperatures seasons, are detectable at 95% confidence level. Larger phase shifts are detectable at regional level, in regions recognizable from the Eigen vectors to having strong seasonal patterns. For instance, in Central North America, including the North American Monsoon region, confident phase shifts of 1-2 days per decade are detected at 95% confidence level. While seemingly symbolic, these shifts are indicative of larger changes in the Earth Climate System. We thus also demonstrate a potential usability scenario of Earth Science Data Records curated at the NASA GES DISC in partnership with Earth Science Missions.

surface temperatures↗
NASA NTRS1992

Differential correction technique for removing common errors in gas filter radiometer measurements

The Measurement of Air Pollution from Satellites (MAPS) gas filter radiometer experiment was designed to measure CO mixing ratios in the earth's atmosphere. MAPS also measures N2O to provide a reference channel for the atmospheric emitting temperature and to detect the presence of clouds. In this paper we formulate equations to correct the radiometric signals based on the spatial and temporal uniformity of the N2O mixing ratio in the atmosphere. Results of an error study demonstrate that these equations reduce the error in inferred CO mixing ratios. Subsequent application of the technique to the MAPS 1984 data set decreases the error in the frequency distribution of mixing ratios and increases the number of usable data points.

Wallio, H. A.↗
NASA NTRS2017

Playbook Data Analysis Tool: Collecting Interaction Data from Extremely Remote Users

Typically, user tests for software tools are conducted in person. At NASA, the users may be located at the bottom of the ocean in a pressurized habitat, above the atmosphere in the International Space Station, or in an isolated capsule on a simulated asteroid mission. The Playbook Data Analysis Tool (P-DAT) is a human-computer interaction (HCI) evaluation tool that the NASA Ames HCI Group has developed to record user interactions with Playbook, the group's existing planning-and-execution software application. Once the remotely collected user interaction data makes its way back to Earth, researchers can use P-DAT for in-depth analysis. Since a critical component of the Playbook project is to understand how to develop more intuitive software tools for astronauts to plan in space, P-DAT helps guide us in the development of additional easy-to-use features for Playbook, informing the design of future crew autonomy tools.P-DAT has demonstrated the capability of discreetly capturing usability data in amanner that is transparent to Playbook’s end-users. In our experience, P-DAT data hasalready shown its utility, revealing potential usability patterns, helping diagnose softwarebugs, and identifying metrics and events that are pertinent to Playbook usage aswell as spaceflight operations. As we continue to develop this analysis tool, P-DATmay yet provide a method for long-duration, unobtrusive human performance collectionand evaluation for mission controllers back on Earth and researchers investigatingthe effects and mitigations related to future human spaceflight performance.

in-flight monitoring↗
NASA NTRS1990

Operationally Efficient Propulsion System Study (OEPSS) data book. Volume 1: Generic ground operations data

This study was initiated to identify operations problems and cost drivers for current propulsion systems and to identify technology and design approaches to increase the operational efficiency and reduce operations costs for future propulsion systems. To provide readily usable data for the Advance Launch System (ALS) program, the results of the Operationally Efficient Propulsion System Study (OEPSS) were organized into a series of OEPSS Data Books as follows: Volume 1, Generic Ground Operations Data; Volume 2, Ground Operations Problems; Volume 3, Operations Technology; Volume 4, OEPSS Design Concepts; and Volume 5, OEPSS Final Review Briefing, which summarizes the activities and results of the study. This volume presents ground processing data for a generic LOX/LH2 booster and core propulsion system based on current STS experience. The data presented includes: top logic diagram, process flow, activities bar-chart, loaded timelines, manpower requirements in terms of duration, headcount and skill mix per operations and maintenance instruction (OMI), and critical path tasks and durations.

Byrd, Raymond J.↗