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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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Energy technologies to meet the power requirements of future space missions are reviewed. Photovoltaic, solar dynamic, and solar thermal technologies are discussed along with techniques for energy storage and power management and distribution.
A computer simulation of a flywheel energy storage single axis attitude control system is described. The simulation models hardware which will be experimentally tested in the future. This hardware consists of two counter rotating flywheels mounted to an air table. The air table allows one axis of rotational motion. An inertia DC bus coordinator is set forth that allows the two control problems, bus regulation and attitude control, to be separated. Simulation results are presented with a previously derived flywheel bus regulator and a simple PID attitude controller.
Earth science applications of the future will stress the capabilities of even the highest performance supercomputers in the areas of raw compute power, mass storage management, and software environments. These NASA mission critical problems demand usable multi-petaflops and exabyte-scale systems to fully realize their science goals. With an exciting vision of the technologies needed, NASA has established a comprehensive program of advanced research in computer architecture, software tools, and device technology to ensure that, in partnership with US industry, it can meet these demanding requirements with reliable, cost effective, and usable ultra-scale systems. NASA will exploit, explore, and influence emerging high end computing architectures and technologies to accelerate the next generation of engineering, operations, and discovery processes for NASA Enterprises. This article captures this vision and describes the concepts, accomplishments, and the potential payoff of the key thrusts that will help meet the computational challenges in Earth science applications.
We assess climate impacts of global warming using ongoing observations and paleoclimate data. We use Earth's measured energy imbalance, paleoclimate data, and simple representations of the global carbon cycle and temperature to define emission reductions needed to stabilize climate and avoid potentially disastrous impacts on today's young people, future generations, and nature. A cumulative industrial-era limit of approx.500 GtC fossil fuel emissions and 100 GtC storage in the biosphere and soil would keep climate close to the Holocene range to which humanity and other species are adapted. Cumulative emissions of approx.1000 GtC, sometimes associated with 2 C global warming, would spur "slow" feedbacks and eventual warming of 3-4 C with disastrous consequences. Rapid emissions reduction is required to restore Earth's energy balance and avoid ocean heat uptake that would practically guarantee irreversible effects. Continuation of high fossil fuel emissions, given current knowledge of the consequences, would be an act of extraordinary witting intergenerational injustice. Responsible policymaking requires a rising price on carbon emissions that would preclude emissions from most remaining coal and unconventional fossil fuels and phase down emissions from conventional fossil fuels.
Cryogenic propellants such as liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LO2) are a part of NASA's future space exploration plans due to their high specific impulse for rocket motors of upper stages. However, the low storage temperatures of LH2 and LO2 cause substantial boil-off losses for long duration missions. These losses can be eliminated by incorporating high performance cryocooler technology to intercept heat load to the propellant tanks and modulating the cryocooler temperature to control tank pressure. The technology being developed by NASA is the reverse turbo-Brayton cycle cryocooler and its integration to the propellant tank through a distributed cooling tubing network coupled to the tank wall. This configuration was recently tested at NASA Glenn Research Center in a vacuum chamber and cryoshroud that simulated the essential thermal aspects of low Earth orbit, its vacuum and temperature. This test series established that the active cooling system integrated with the propellant tank eliminated boil-off and robustly controlled tank pressure.
Present an overview of the Nanotechnology Project at NASA's Game Changing Technology Industry Day. Mature and demonstrate flight readiness of CNT reinforced composites for future NASA mission applicationsSounding rocket test in a multiexperiment payloadIntegrate into cold gas thruster system as propellant storageThe technology would provide the means for reduced COPV mass and improved damage tolerance and flight qualify CNT reinforced composites. PROBLEM/NEED BEING ADDRESSED:Reduce weight and enhance the performance and damage tolerance of aerospace structuresGAME-CHANGING SOLUTION:Improve mechanical properties of CNTs to eventually replace CFRP –lighter and strongerFirst flight-testing of a CNT reinforced composite structural component as part of an operational flight systemUNIQUENESS:CNT manufacturing methods developedFlight qualify CNT reinforced composites
Construction of the world’s largest liquid hydrogen (LH 2 ) storage tank is almost complete at launch pad 39B at NASA Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in Florida. With a usable capacity of 4732 m 3 (1.25 Mgal), this new vessel is roughly 50% larger than its sister tank, which is located 170 m (550 ft) to the southeast. Once the new sphere is fully commissioned these two tanks will provide a combined LH 2 storage capacity of 7950 m 3 (2.1 Mgal) to fuel the new Space Launch System rocket in support of future Artemis exploration missions to the Moon and Mars.
High spatial and temporal resolution air quality estimation and forecasting can be enhanced by combining global data sources, like chemical transport models and satellite remote sensing, with local information from regulatory and low-cost air quality monitors. Successful integration of data from these diverse sources is complicated by many factors, however, including differences in spatial and temporal resolution, data availability and latency issues, varying data quality, and large computational and data storage requirements. This presentation will provide an overview of a NASA-funded effort to develop the foundation for future operationalization of air quality forecasting for world-wide end-users and integration into their air quality management decision processes, which will be achieved in future phases of this multi-year project. We will summarize our progress in developing a data fusion system using the Google Earth Engine platform which can integrate model, satellite, and surface-level monitoring datasets to enhance estimation and forecasting of air-quality-relevant pollutants at sub-daily and sub-city scales. The tool is being developed in close cooperation with several city- and regional-level air quality managers in the USA and around the world. Our end-goal is to provide these air quality managers with the information they need to assess and anticipate the impacts of poor air quality, track changes in air quality due to ongoing mitigation efforts and land use changes, and identify ways to improve their air quality monitoring strategies. This presentation will focus on recent advances achieved through the project, including integration of multiple air quality datasets in a prototype data fusion system in Google Earth Engine, the quantification of uncertainties associated with our data fusion approach, and the development of user interfaces and visualization tools to convey air quality information in a way which best meets end-user needs.
High spatial and temporal resolution air quality estimation and forecasting can be enhanced by combining global data sources, like chemical transport models and satellite remote sensing, with local information from regulatory and low-cost air quality monitors. Successful integration of data from these diverse sources is complicated by many factors, however, including differences in spatial and temporal resolution, data availability and latency issues, varying data quality, and large computational and data storage requirements. This presentation will provide an overview of a NASA-funded effort to develop the foundation for future operationalization of air quality forecasting for world-wide end-users and integration into their air quality management decision processes, which will be achieved in future phases of this multi-year project. We will summarize our progress in developing a data fusion system using the Google Earth Engine platform which can integrate model, satellite, and surface-level monitoring datasets to enhance estimation and forecasting of air-quality-relevant pollutants at sub-daily and sub-city scales. The tool is being developed in close cooperation with several city- and regional-level air quality managers in the USA and around the world. Our end-goal is to provide these air quality managers with the information they need to assess and anticipate the impacts of poor air quality, track changes in air quality due to ongoing mitigation efforts and land use changes, and identify ways to improve their air quality monitoring strategies. This presentation will focus on recent advances achieved through the project, including integration of multiple air quality datasets in a prototype data fusion system in Google Earth Engine, the quantification of uncertainties associated with our data fusion approach, and the development of user interfaces and visualization tools to convey air quality information in a way which best meets end-user needs.
Pollen and seeds share a developmental sequence characterized by intense metabolic activity during reserve deposition before drying to a cryptobiotic form. Neither pollen nor seed development has been well studied in the absence of gravity, despite the importance of these structures in supporting future long-duration manned habitation away from Earth. Using immature seeds (3-15 d postpollination) of Brassica rapa L. cv. Astroplants produced on the STS-87 flight of the space shuttle Columbia, we compared the progress of storage reserve deposition in cotyledon cells during early stages of seed development. Brassica pollen development was studied in flowers produced on plants grown entirely in microgravity on the Mir space station and fixed while on orbit. Cytochemical localization of storage reserves showed differences in starch accumulation between spaceflight and ground control plants in interior layers of the developing seed coat as early as 9 d after pollination. At this age, the embryo is in the cotyledon elongation stage, and there are numerous starch grains in the cotyledon cells in both flight and ground control seeds. In the spaceflight seeds, starch was retained after this stage, while starch grains decreased in size in the ground control seeds. Large and well-developed protein bodies were observed in cotyledon cells of ground control seeds at 15 d postpollination, but their development was delayed in the seeds produced during spaceflight. Like the developing cotyledonary tissues, cells of the anther wall and filaments from the spaceflight plants contained numerous large starch grains, while these were rarely seen in the ground controls. The tapetum remained swollen and persisted to a later developmental stage in the spaceflight plants than in the ground controls, even though most pollen grains appeared normal. These developmental markers indicate that Brassica seeds and pollen produced in microgravity were physiologically younger than those produced in 1 g. We hypothesize that microgravity limits mixing of the gaseous microenvironments inside the closed tissues and that the resulting gas composition surrounding the seeds and pollen retards their development.
In early 2014, an executive memo was released directing the improvement of the management of and access to scientific collections funded by government resources. In the spirit of this memo, NASA’s Human Research Program (HRP) funded a project to review existing residual samples in long-term storage for viability, identification, and scientific significance. These samples were to be collected in a centralized location and a detailed inventory was to be conducted to create the Human Sample Repository (HSR). HSR would work to review data from over 27,000 samples, from flight research projects dating back to 1998. The samples themselves would be reviewed, re-labeled, and organized into easy to retrieve, long-term storage. In addition to the older residual samples, HSR would expand to include pristine samples from all consenting crew who have flown on International Space Station (ISS) missions. All samples inventoried and managed by HSR are intended for the same purpose; to support future research projects which will utilize advanced technologies or techniques, by providing one-of-a-kind sample collections that can not be replicated. With this mission in mind, HSR will continue to collect residual samples from HRP funded projects and pristine samples from consenting crew, to further build this unique collection and increase the diversity of flight samples available to the scientific community.
The value of improving information for forecasting future crop harvests was investigated. Emphasis was placed upon establishing practical evaluation procedures firmly based in economic theory. The analysis was applied to the case of U.S. domestic wheat consumption. Estimates for a cost of storage function and a demand function for wheat were calculated. A model of market determinations of wheat inventories was developed for inventory adjustment. The carry-over horizon is computed by the solution of a nonlinear programming problem, and related variables such as spot and future price at each stage are determined. The model is adaptable to other markets. Results are shown to depend critically on the accuracy of current and proposed measurement techniques. The quantitative results are presented parametrically, in terms of various possible values of current and future accuracies.
Appropriate directions for the applied research and technology programs that will develop space power systems for U.S. future space missions beyond 1995 are explored. Spacecraft power supplies; space stations, space power reactors, solar arrays, thermoelectric generators, energy storage, and communication satellites are among the topics discussed.
A comprehensive overview of the different types of optical storage technology is presented. Research efforts to integrate this technology into the VAX/VMS environment are discussed. In addition, plans for future applications of optical disk technology are described. The applications should prove to be beneficial to the NSSDC user community as a whole. Of particular interest is the concentration on the collaboration with the Dynamics Explorer project.
In the future, NASA expects to gather over a tera-byte per day of data requiring space for levels of archival storage. Data compression will be a key component in systems that store this data (e.g., optical disk and tape) as well as in communications systems (both between space and Earth and between scientific locations on Earth). We propose to develop algorithms that can be a basis for software and hardware systems that compress a wide variety of scientific data with different criteria for fidelity/bandwidth tradeoffs. The algorithmic approaches we consider are specially targeted for parallel computation where data rates of over 1 billion bits per second are achievable with current technology.
In the future, NASA expects to gather over a tera-byte per day of data requiring space for levels of archival storage. Data compression will be a key component in systems that store this data (e.g., optical disk and tape) as well as in communications systems (both between space and Earth and between scientific locations on Earth). We propose to develop algorithms that can be a basis for software and hardware systems that compress a wide variety of scientific data with different criteria for fidelity/bandwidth tradeoffs. The algorithmic approaches we consider are specially targeted for parallel computation where data rates of over 1 billion bits per second are achievable with current technology.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) are cooperating under a space act agreement to sponsor the research and development of aerospace flywheel technologies to address mutual future mission needs. Flywheel technology offers significantly enhanced capability or is an enabling technology. Generally these missions are for energy storage and/or integrated power and attitude control systems (IPACS) for mid-to-large satellites in low earth orbit. These missions require significant energy storage as well as a CMG or reaction wheel function for attitude control. A summary description of the NASA and AFRL flywheel technology development programs is provided, followed by specific descriptions of the development plans for integrated flywheel system tests for IPACS applications utilizing both fixed and actuated flywheel units. These flywheel system development tests will be conducted at facilities at AFRL and NASA Glenn Research Center and include participation by industry participants Honeywell and Lockheed Martin.
Carbon nanotube materials promise to be the basis for a variety of emerging technologies with aerospace applications. Potential applications to human space flight include spacecraft shielding, hydrogen storage, structures and fixtures and nano-electronics. Appropriate risk analysis on the properties of nanotube materials is essential for future mission safety. Along with other environmental hazards, materials used in space flight encounter a hostile radiation environment for all mission profiles, from low earth orbit to interplanetary space.