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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 NTRS2008

The Development of the Ares I-X Flight Test

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Constellation Program (CxP) has identified a series of tests to provide insight into the design and development of the Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle (CLV) and the Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). Ares I-X was created as the first suborbital development flight test to help meet CxP objectives. The Ares I-X flight vehicle is an early operational model of Ares, with specific emphasis on Ares I and ground operation characteristics necessary to meet Ares I-X flight test objectives. Ares I-X will encompass the design and construction of an entire system that includes the Flight Test Vehicle (FTV) and associated operations. The FTV will be a test model based on the Ares I design. Select design features will be incorporated in the FTV design to emulate the operation of the CLV in order to meet the flight test objectives. The operations infrastructure and processes will be customized for Ares I-X, while still providing data to inform the developers of the launch processing system for Ares/Orion. The FTV is comprised of multiple elements and components that will be developed at different locations. The components will be delivered to the launch/assembly site, Kennedy Space Center (KSC), for assembly of the elements and components into an integrated, flight-ready, launch vehicle. The FTV will fly a prescribed trajectory in order to obtain the necessary data to meet the objectives. Ares I-X will not be commanded or controlled from the ground during flight, but the FTV will be equipped with telemetry systems, a data recording capability and a flight termination system (FTS). The in-flight part of the test includes a trajectory to simulate maximum dynamic pressure during flight and perform a stage separation representative of the CLV. The in-flight test also includes separation of the Upper Stage Simulator (USS) from the First Stage and recovery of the First Stage. The data retrieved from the flight test will be analyzed and used in the design and development of the Ares I vehicle. This paper will discuss the challenges in developing a new launch vehicle in a very short timeframe. The duration from formal Authority to Proceed to launch is 32 months with launch scheduled for April, 2009. The discussion will include changes to organizational structure, system engineering approaches, and early lessons learned for a fast tracked and highly visible project.

Ess, Robert H.↗
NASA NTRS2009

Investigating Response from Turbulent Boundary Layer Excitations on a Real Launch Vehicle using SEA

Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA) response has been fairly well anchored to test observations for Diffuse Acoustic Field (DAF) loading by others. Meanwhile, not many examples can be found in the literature anchoring the SEA vehicle panel response results to Turbulent Boundary Layer (TBL) fluctuating pressure excitations. This deficiency is especially true for supersonic trajectories such as those required by this nation s launch vehicles. Space Shuttle response and excitation data recorded from vehicle flight measurements during the development flights were used in a trial to assess the capability of the SEA tool to predict similar responses. Various known/measured inputs were used. These were supplemented with a range of assumed values in order to cover unknown parameters of the flight. This comparison is presented as "Part A" of the study. A secondary, but perhaps more important, objective is to provide more clarity concerning the accuracy and conservatism that can be expected from response estimates of TBL-excited vehicle models in SEA (Part B). What range of parameters must be included in such an analysis in order to land on the conservative side in response predictions? What is the sensitivity of changes in these input parameters on the results? The TBL fluid structure loading model used for this study is provided by the SEA module of the commercial code VA One.

Harrison, Phillip↗
NASA NTRS2013

An Application of UAV Attitude Estimation Using a Low-Cost Inertial Navigation System

Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAV) are playing an increasing role in aviation. Various methods exist for the computation of UAV attitude based on low cost microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) and Global Positioning System (GPS) receivers. There has been a recent increase in UAV autonomy as sensors are becoming more compact and onboard processing power has increased significantly. Correct UAV attitude estimation will play a critical role in navigation and separation assurance as UAVs share airspace with civil air traffic. This paper describes attitude estimation derived by post-processing data from a small low cost Inertial Navigation System (INS) recorded during the flight of a subscale commercial off the shelf (COTS) UAV. Two discrete time attitude estimation schemes are presented here in detail. The first is an adaptation of the Kalman Filter to accommodate nonlinear systems, the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF). The EKF returns quaternion estimates of the UAV attitude based on MEMS gyro, magnetometer, accelerometer, and pitot tube inputs. The second scheme is the complementary filter which is a simpler algorithm that splits the sensor frequency spectrum based on noise characteristics. The necessity to correct both filters for gravity measurement errors during turning maneuvers is demonstrated. It is shown that the proposed algorithms may be used to estimate UAV attitude. The effects of vibration on sensor measurements are discussed. Heuristic tuning comments pertaining to sensor filtering and gain selection to achieve acceptable performance during flight are given. Comparisons of attitude estimation performance are made between the EKF and the complementary filter.

Eure, Kenneth W.↗
NASA NTRS2014

The Flux of Large Meteoroids Observed with Lunar Impact Monitoring

The flux of large meteoroids is not well determined due to relatively low number statistics, due mainly to the lack of collecting area available to meteor camera systems (10(2)-10(5) km2). Larger collecting areas are needed to provide reasonable statistics for flux calculations. The Moon, with millions of square kilometers of lunar surface, can be used as a detector for observing the population of large meteoroids in the tens of grams to kilogram mass range. This is accomplished by observing the flash of light produced when a meteoroid impacts the lunar surface, converting a portion of its kinetic energy to visible light detectable from Earth. A routine monitoring program at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center has recorded over 300 impact flashes since early 2006. The program utilizes multiple 0.35 m (14 inch) Schmidt-Cassegrain telescopes, outfitted with video cameras using the 1/2 inch Sony EXview HAD CCDTM chip, to perform simultaneous observations of the earthshine hemisphere of the Moon when the lunar phase is between 0.1 and 0.5. This optical arrangement permits monitoring of approximately 3.8x10(6) km2 of lunar surface. A selection of 126 flashes recorded in 266.88 hours of photometric skies was analyzed, creating the largest and most homogeneous dataset of lunar impact flashes to date. Standard CCD photometric techniques outlined in [1] were applied to the video to determine the luminous energy, kinetic energy, and mass for each impactor, considering a range of luminous efficiencies. The flux to a limiting energy of 2.5x10(-6) kT TNT or 1.05×10(7) J is 1.03×10(-7) km(-2) hr(-1) and the flux to a limiting mass of 30 g is 6.14×10(-10) m(-2) yr(-1). Comparisons made with measurements and models of the meteoroid population indicate that the flux of objects in this size range is slightly lower (but within the error bars) than the power law distribution determined for the near Earth object population by [2].

Cooke, W. J.↗
NASA NTRS2015

Second Annual Transformative Vertical Flight Concepts Workshop: Enabling New Flight Concepts Through Novel Propulsion and Energy Architectures

On August 3rd and 4th, 2015, a workshop was held at the NASA Ames Research Center, located at the Moffett Federal Airfield in California to explore the aviation communities interest in Transformative Vertical Flight (TVF) Concepts. The Workshop was sponsored by the AHS International (AHS), the American Institute of Aeronautics and Astronautics (AIAA), the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), and hosted by the NASA Aeronautics Research Institute (NARI). This second annual workshop built on the success and enthusiasm generated by the first TVF Workshop held in Washington, DC in August of 2014. The previous Workshop identified the existence of a multi-disciplinary community interested in this topic and established a consensus among the participants that opportunities to establish further collaborations in this area are warranted. The desire to conduct a series of annual workshops augmented by online virtual technical seminars to strengthen the TVF community and continue planning for advocacy and collaboration was a direct outcome of the first Workshop. The second Workshop organizers focused on four desired action-oriented outcomes. The first was to establish and document common stakeholder needs and areas of potential collaborations. This includes advocacy strategies to encourage the future success of unconventional vertiport capable flight concept solutions that are enabled by emerging technologies. The second was to assemble a community that can collaborate on new conceptual design and analysis tools to permit novel configuration paths with far greater multi-disciplinary coupling (i.e., aero-propulsive-control) to be investigated. The third was to establish a community to develop and deploy regulatory guidelines. This community would have the potential to initiate formation of an American Society for Testing and Materials (ASTM) F44 Committee Subgroup for the development of consensus-based certification standards for General Aviation scale vertiport capable flight systems. These standards need to accommodate novel fixed wing concepts that do not fit within the existing Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) rotorcraft certification framework (Code of Federal Regulations, Title 14, Chapter I, Subchapter C, Part 27). The fourth desired outcome was to launch an information campaign to ensure key U.S. Government agencies understand the potential benefits and industry interest in establishing new vertiport capable flight markets. This record of the Workshop proceedings documents Workshop activities and products including summaries of the video recorded technical presentations, overviews of three breakout sessions (Missions Operational Concepts, Prioritized Technical Challenges, Regulatory Roadmap), and a preliminary draft roadmap framework for TVF.

V/STOL↗
NASA NTRS2018

Assessment of Utilization of Food Variety on the International Space Station

Long duration missions will require astronauts to subsist on a closed food system for at least three years. Resupply will not be an option, and the food supply will be older at the time of consumption and more static in variety than previous missions. The space food variety requirements that will both supply nutrition and support continued interest in adequate consumption for a mission of this duration is unknown. Limited food variety of past space programs (Gemini, Apollo, International Space Station) as well as in military operations resulted in monotony, food aversion, and weight loss despite relatively short mission durations of a few days up to several months. In this study, food consumption data from 10 crew members on 3-6-month International Space Station missions was assessed to determine what percentage of the existing food variety was used by crew members, if the food choices correlated to the amount of time in orbit, and whether commonalities in food selections existed across crew members. Complete mission diet logs were recorded on ISS flights from 2008 - 2014, a period in which space food menu variety was consistent, but the food system underwent an extensive reformulation to reduce sodium content. Food consumption data was correlated to the Food on Orbit by Week logs, archived Data Usage Charts, and a food list categorization table using TRIFACTA software and queries in a SQL SERVER 2012 database.

Cooper, M. R.↗
NASA NTRS2018

A Recording-Based Method for Auralization of Rotorcraft Flyover Noise

Rotorcraft noise is an active field of study as the sound produced by these vehicles is often found to be annoying. A means to auralize rotorcraft flyover noise is sought to help understand the factors leading to annoyance. Previous work by the authors focused on auralization of rotorcraft fly-in noise, in which a simplification was made that enabled the source noise synthesis to be based on a single emission angle. Here, the goal is to auralize a complete flyover event, so the source noise synthesis must be capable of traversing a range of emission angles. The synthesis uses a source noise definition process that yields periodic and aperiodic (modulation) components at a set of discrete emission angles. In this work, only the periodic components are used for the source noise synthesis for the flyover; the inclusion of modulation components is the subject of ongoing research. Propagation of the synthesized source noise to a ground observer is performed using the NASA Auralization Framework. The method is demonstrated using ground recordings from a flight test of the AS350 helicopter for the source noise definition.

Pera, Nicholas M.↗
NASA NTRS2019

Auralization of Amplitude Modulated Helicopter Flyover Noise

Rotorcraft noise is an active field of study as the sound produced by these vehicles is often found to be annoying. A means to auralize rotorcraft flyover noise is sought to help understand the factors leading to annoyance. Previous work by the authors auralized a complete flyover event in which the source noise synthesis traversed a range of emission angles. The source noise definition process for the synthesis used helicopter flyover recordings. Although this process yielded both periodic and aperiodic (modulation) components at a set of discrete emission angles, only the periodic components were used in the previous work to synthesize the sound of the flyover event. In the current work, aperiodic amplitude modulation is incorporated into the source noise synthesis to improve its fidelity toward assessing rotorcraft noise annoyance. The method is demonstrated using ground recordings from a flight test of the AS350 helicopter for the source noise definition.

Krishnamurthy, Siddhartha↗
NASA NTRS2020

Aircraft Engine Run-To-Failure Data Set Under Real Flight Conditions

The generation of data-driven prognostics models requires the availability of datasets with run-to-failure trajectories. In order to contribute to the development of these methods, the dataset provides a new realistic dataset of run-to-failure trajectories for a small fleet of aircraft engines under realistic flight conditions. The damage propagation modelling used for the generation of this synthetic dataset builds on the modelling strategy from previous work [1] and incorporates two new levels of fidelity. First, it considers real flight conditions as recorded on board of a commercial jet [2]. Secondly, it extends the degradation modelling by relating the degradation process to the operation history. The dataset was generated with the Commercial Modular Aero-Propulsion System Simulation (C-MAPSS) dynamical model [3]. More details about the generation process can be found in [4].

CMAPSS↗
NASA NTRS2021

Aircraft Engine Run-to-Failure Dataset Under Real Flight Conditions for Prognostics and Diagnostics

A key enabler of intelligent maintenance systems is the ability to predict the remaining useful lifetime (RUL) of its components, i.e., prognostics. The development of data-driven prognostics models requires datasets with run-to-failure trajectories. However, large representative run-to-failure datasets are often unavailable in real applications because failures are rare in many safety-critical systems. To foster the development of prognostics methods, we develop a new realistic dataset of run-to-failure trajectories for a fleet of aircraft engines under real flight conditions. The dataset was generated with the Commercial Modular Aero-Propulsion System Simulation (CMAPSS) model developed at NASA. The damage propagation modelling used in this dataset builds on the modelling strategy from previous work and incorporates two new levels of fidelity. First, it considers real flight conditions as recorded on board of a commercial jet. Second, it extends the degradation modelling by relating the degradation process to its operation history. This dataset also provides the health respectively fault class. Therefore, besides its applicability to prognostics problems, the dataset can be used for fault diagnostics.

CMAPPS↗
NASA NTRS2024

A Portable Nitrogen Dioxide Instrument Using Cavity-Enhanced Absorption Spectroscopy

The Portable (2.7 kg) Cavity-enhanced Absorption of Nitrogen Dioxide (PCAND) instrument for measuring in situ nitrogen dioxide (NO2) was developed using incoherent, broadband cavity-enhanced absorption spectroscopy (IBBCEAS). An LED light source centered at 408 nm was coupled to a cavity 15 cm in length, achieving an effective optical pathlength of ~520 m. Our precision was measured as 94 pptv (1 s). To date, we have flown this instrument on 3 balloon and 1 UAV test flights. This instrument records data to an SD card and outputs data (via an RS232 port) to external devices including a commercial radiosonde (iMet) for real-time data downlink.

TROPOMI↗
NASA NTRS1981

Bit error rate performance of Image Processing Facility high density tape recorders

The Image Processing Facility at the NASA/Goddard Space Flight Center uses High Density Tape Recorders (HDTR's) to transfer high volume image data and ancillary information from one system to another. For ancillary information, it is required that very low bit error rates (BER's) accompany the transfers. The facility processes about 10 to the 11th bits of image data per day from many sensors, involving 15 independent processing systems requiring the use of HDTR's. When acquired, the 16 HDTR's offered state-of-the-art performance of 1 x 10 to the -6th BER as specified. The BER requirement was later upgraded in two steps: (1) incorporating data randomizing circuitry to yield a BER of 2 x 10 to the -7th and (2) further modifying to include a bit error correction capability to attain a BER of 2 x 10 to the -9th. The total improvement factor was 500 to 1. Attention is given here to the background, technical approach, and final results of these modifications. Also discussed are the format of the data recorded by the HDTR, the magnetic tape format, the magnetic tape dropout characteristics as experienced in the Image Processing Facility, the head life history, and the reliability of the HDTR's.

Heffner, P.↗
NASA NTRS1990

Long duration exposure facility post-flight thermal analysis: Orbital/thermal environment data package

A post flight mission thermal environment for the Long Duration Exposure Facility was created as part of the thermal analysis data reduction effort. The data included herein is the thermal parameter data used in the calculation of boundary temperatures. This boundary temperature data is to be released in the near future for use by the LDEF principal investigators in the final analysis of their particular experiment temperatures. Also included is the flight temperature data as recorded by the LDEF Thermal Measurements System (THERM) for the first 90 days of flight.

Berrios, William M.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Description of and results from camera systems for recording daytime lightning strikes to an airplane in flight

Photographic still and movie and video camera systems have been developed to reveal more about the characteristics of daytime lightning strikes to airplanes in flight. Equipment selection and design is particularly important with regard to time of event occurrence, time correlation between cameras, rapidity of actuation, ease of photogrammetric analysis, and selection of fields of view. The most recent such camera systems flown in an NASA F-106B research airplane are described and design considerations are discussed. Daytime depictions of lightning strikes are presented as illustrative of some of these considerations.

Brown, P. W.↗
NASA NTRS1977

Interior and exterior fuselage noise measured on NASA's C-8a augmentor wing jet-STOL research aircraft

Interior and exterior fuselage noise levels were measured on NASA's C-8A Augmentor Wing Jet-STOL Research Aircraft in order to provide design information for the Quiet Short-Haul Research Aircraft (QSRA), which will use a modified C-8A fuselage. The noise field was mapped by 11 microphones located internally and externally in three areas: mid-fuselage, aft fuselage, and on the flight deck. Noise levels were recorded at four power settings varying from takeoff to flight idle and were plotted in one-third octave band spectra. The overall sound pressure levels of the external noise field were compared to previous tests and found to correlate well with engine primary thrust levels. Fuselage values were 145 + or - 3 dB over the aircraft's normal STOL operating range.

Shovlin, M. D.↗
NASA NTRS2003

In-Flight Observations of Long-Term Single Event Effect(SEE)Performance on Orbview-2 and Xray Timing Explorer(XTE)Solid State Recorders (SSR)

This paper presents Single Event Effect (SEE) in-flight data on Solid State Recorders (SSR) that have been collected over a long period of time for two NASA spacecraft: Orbview-2 and XTE. SEE flight data on solid-state memories give an opportunity to study the behavior in space of SEE sensitive commercial devices. The actual Single Event Upset (SEU) rates can be compared with the calculated rates based on environment models and ground test data. The SEE mitigation schemes can also be evaluated in actual implementation. A significant amount of data has already been published concerning observed SEE effects on memories in space. However, most of the data presented cover either a short period of time or a small number of devices. The data presented here has been collected on a large number of devices during several years. This allows statistically significant information about the effect of space weather fluctuations on SEU rates, and the effectiveness of SEE countermeasures used to be analyzed. Only Orbview-2 data is presented in this summary. XTE data will be included in the final paper.

Poivey, Christian↗