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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 415 records · Page 23

The Morphology of the X-ray Emission above 2 keV from Jupiter's Aurorae

The discovery in XMM-Newton X-ray data of X-ray emission above 2 keY from Jupiter's aurorae has led us to reexamine the Chandra ACIS-S observations taken in Feb 2003. Chandra's superior spatial resolution has revealed that the auroral X-rays with E > 2 keV are emitted from the periphery of the region emitting those with E < 1 keV. We are presently exploring the relationship of this morphology to that of the FUV emission from the main auroral oval and the polar cap. The low energy emission has previously been established as due to charge exchange between energetic precipitating ions of oxygen and either sulfur or carbon. It seems likely to us that the higher energy emission is due to precipitation of energetic electrons, possibly the same population of electrons responsible for the FUV emission. We discuss our analysis and interpretation.

Elsner, R.↗

Semi-Supervised Eigenbasis Novelty Detection

Recent discoveries in high-time-resolution radio astronomy data have focused attention on a new class of events. Fast transients are rare pulses of radio frequency energy lasting from microseconds to seconds that might be produced by a variety of exotic astrophysical phenomena. For example, X-ray bursts, neutron stars, and active galactic nuclei are all possible sources of short-duration, transient radio signals. It is difficult to anticipate where such signals might appear, and they are most commonly discovered through analysis of high-time- resolution data that had been collected for other purposes. Transients are often faint and difficult to detect, so improved detection algorithms can directly benefit the science yield of all such commensal monitoring. A new detection algorithm learns a low-dimensional linear manifold for describing the normal data. High reconstruction error indicates a novel signal that does not match the patterns of normal data. One unsupervised portion of the manifold model adapts its representation in response to recent data. A second supervised portion of the model is made of a basis trained in advance using labeled examples of RFI; this prevents false positives due to these events. For a linear model, an orthonormalization operation is used to combine these bases prior to the anomaly detection decision. Another novel aspect of the approach lies in combining basis vectors learned in an unsupervised, online fashion from the data stream with supervised basis vectors learned in advance from known examples of false alarms. Adaptive, data-driven detection is achieved that is also informed by existing domain knowledge about signals that may be statistically anomalous, but are not interesting and should therefore be ignored. The method was evaluated using data from the Parkes Multibeam Survey. This data set was originally collected to search for pulsars, which are astronomical sources that emit radio pulses at regular periods. However, several non-pulsar anomalies have recently been discovered in this dataset, making it a compelling test case. By explicitly filtering known false alarm patterns, the approach yields significantly better performance than current transient detection methods.

Wagstaff, Kiri L.↗

The Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network (AMON)

We summarize the science opportunity, design elements, current and projected partner observatories, and anticipated science returns of the Astrophysical Multimessenger Observatory Network (AMON). AMON will link multiple current and future high-energy, multimessenger, and follow-up observatories together into a single network, enabling near real-time coincidence searches for multimessenger astrophysical transients and their electromagnetic counterparts. Candidate and high-confidence multimessenger transient events will be identified, characterized, and distributed as AMON alerts within the network and to interested external observers, leading to follow-up observations across the electromagnetic spectrum. In this way, AMON aims to evoke the discovery of multimessenger transients from within observatory subthreshold data streams and facilitate the exploitation of these transients for purposes of astronomy and fundamental physics. As a central hub of global multimessenger science, AMON will also enable cross-collaboration analyses of archival datasets in search of rare or exotic astrophysical phenomena.

comparison↗

Low Cost Entry, Descent, and Landing (EDL) Instrumentation for Planetary Missions

Missions that involve traversing through a planetary atmosphere are unique opportunities that require elements of entry, descent, and landing (EDL). Many aspects of the EDL sequence are qualified using analysis and simulation due to the inability to conduct appropriate ground tests, however validating flight data are often lacking, especially for missions not involving Earth re-entry. NASA has made strategic decisions to collect EDL flight data in order to improve future mission designs. For example, MEDLI1 and EFT-1 gathered hypersonic pressure and in-depth temperature data in the thermal protection system (TPS). However, the ability to collect EDL flight data from the smaller competed missions, such as Discovery and New Frontiers, has been limited in part due to the Principal Investigator-managed cost-caps (PIMCC). The recent NASA decision to consider EDL instrumentation earlier in the mission design cycle led to the inclusion of a requirement in the Discovery 2014 Announcement of Opportunity which requires all missions that involve EDL to include an Engineering Science Investigation (ESI).2 The ESI would involve sensors for aerothermal environment and TPS; atmosphere, aerodynamics, and flight dynamics; atmospheric decelerator; and/or vehicle structure.3 The ESI activity would be funded outside of the PIMCC.

and Landing↗

Active Learning with Rationales for Identifying Operationally Significant Anomalies in Aviation

A major focus of the commercial aviation community is discovery of unknown safety events in flight operations data. Data-driven unsupervised anomaly detection methods are better at capturing unknown safety events compared to rule-based methods which only look for known violations. However, not all statistical anomalies that are discovered by these unsupervised anomaly detection methods are operationally significant (e.g., represent a safety concern). Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) have to spend significant time reviewing these statistical anomalies individually to identify a few operationally significant ones. In this paper we propose an active learning algorithm that incorporates SME feedback in the form of rationales to build a classifier that can distinguish between uninteresting and operationally significant anomalies. Experimental evaluation on real aviation data shows that our approach improves detection of operationally significant events by as much as 75% compared to the state-of-the-art. The learnt classifier also generalizes well to additional validation data sets.

anomaly detection↗

System and Method for Providing a Climate Data Persistence Service

A system, method and computer-readable storage devices for providing a climate data persistence service. A system configured to provide the service can include a climate data server that performs data and metadata storage and management functions for climate data objects, a compute-storage platform that provides the resources needed to support a climate data server, provisioning software that allows climate data server instances to be deployed as virtual climate data servers in a cloud computing environment, and a service interface, wherein persistence service capabilities are invoked by software applications running on a client device. The climate data objects can be in various formats, such as International Organization for Standards (ISO) Open Archival Information System (OAIS) Reference Model Submission Information Packages, Archive Information Packages, and Dissemination Information Packages. The climate data server can enable scalable, federated storage, management, discovery, and access, and can be tailored for particular use cases.

Schnase, John L.↗

Smart Hand Offs and Earthdata Search

Often a science user will discover data of interest in a general-purpose discovery tool like Earthdata Search. At that point it might be beneficial for the science user to switch to a more specialized tool. Smart handoffs allow the user to switch from one tool to another with their context (collection, spatial and temporal constraints) intact. This provides an efficient means of traversing tools and services. The idea of smart handoffs could be expanded to commercial search engines such as Google, visualization tools like State of the Ocean and Giovanni and domain-specific search tools like Earthdata Search.

Giovanni↗

Spaceflight Environmental-Telemetry Data for Biological Science

There is a critical need for better access and visualization of spaceflight environmental telemetry and mission hardware data from sensors including relative humidity, carbon dioxide, oxygen, radiation, airflow, temperature, acceleration, and acoustics. Under the stewardship of the Ames Life Sciences Data Archive (ALSDA) and GeneLab, an effort is underway to consolidate, normalize and provide accessibility of archived mission environmental data and hardware information, with the purpose of providing important context to biological data. This effort is necessary to provide scientific context of its impact upon biological and biomedical data from spaceflight missions and experiments (genomic, metagenomic, gene expression, proteomic, metabolomic, physiological, phenomics, behavioral; tabular, imaging, video). Environmental spaceflight data is derived from dozens of sources, with various formats, and in the past year a pipeline is in development to collect, curate and present this data efficiently. In the upcoming year, a new Data Visualization Portal will utilize the standardized pipeline data to provide easy user access to compare parameters and environmental conditions between missions, locations, subjects, and durations. Environmental and hardware data enables broad accessibility and analytics, without the need for advanced data informatic expertise. Familiarity with the capabilities and limitations of a variety of existing hardware/tools is a strength that could be applied to creation of improved hardware for future ecosystems on the Moon and Mars. The intention is to make biological and environmental telemetry data maximally open-access and FAIR (findable, accessible, interoperable, reusable) for data mining-informatic approaches to support knowledge discovery necessary for low Earth orbit, cis-Lunar, Mars transit, and Mars surface missions.

Danielle K. Lopez↗

Large Scale Transcriptional Analysis of Legacy Spaceflight Tissues From the Nasa Biological Institutional Science Collection

The NASA Biological Institutional Science Collection (NBISC) has amassed a collection of valuable space biology samples spanning from early Space Shuttle missions to recent missions on the International Space Station (ISS). However, the full potential of this archive has not been realized, with many samples having been stored for decades without being re-accessed. Given the pace of analytical advancement since NBISC began accumulating samples, we initiated a pilot study to reveal additional patterns that may have been missed during the original investigations and provide technical robustness and scientific value for a cost-effective sequencing approach. We selected 84 mouse and rat samples spanning four separate Space Shuttle, ISS and ground-analogue studies with a focus on muscle, spleen and thymus tissues to allow identification of important changes related to musculoskeletal unloading and immune function. High quality RNA from these tissues was extracted and used to generate transcriptional profiling data using a cost-effective Tag-seq approach and immediately released it on GeneLab. The released datasets included gastrocnemius tissues from rats during the 1991 Space Shuttle mission (GLDS-422) and a ground analogue study in 2019 (GLDS-418), and mice from the 2014 ISS mission (GLDS-419). Also released were two thymus datasets, one from rats flown on the 1993 Space Shuttle (GLDS-423) and another from mice flown on the 2017 ISS (GLDS-421) missions, along with one mouse spleen dataset from a 2017 ISS mission (GLDS-420). These data will serve as a pilot of a much larger and comprehensive study which would generate similar data from thousands of NBISC samples, enabling the discovery and validation of molecular networks influenced by space conditions.

Lovorka Degoricija↗

Elevating the Quality of Space Omics Sequencing Data: Innovations and Methodologies from NASA GeneLab Sample Processing Laboratory

NASA’s GeneLab, part of the NASA Open Science Data Repository, is a space-related database that hosts a diverse range of transcriptomics, proteomics, epigenomics and genomics data. The NASA GeneLab Sample Processing Laboratory (SPL) generates omics data from biological experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station, Space Shuttle and space related ground experiments, this omics data then hosted on the GeneLab repository. Samples generated such experiments pose numerous technical challenges such as small experimental sample size, variance in dissection times, limited tissue preservation methods, prolonged storage time, and more. GeneLab SPL team had developed specialized expertise in nucleic acid extraction, library preparation and sequencing of such biological samples via extensive training and years of experience. In order to ensure data accuracy and consistency across experiments, SPL has developed standardized protocols for each species and tissue type. These protocols in conjunction with quality control metrics and data standards are crucial in generating of high-quality data. SPL protocols and standards have been developed in collaboration with the scientific community and had been made publicly available on the GeneLab portal, guaranteeing comparability of datasets across spaceflight experiments. To ensure reliability of data generation, SPL leverages cutting-edge innovations in laboratory automation for sample processing. By leveraging these state-of-the-art platforms, SPL achieves high levels of data reproducibility while significantly minimizing sources of bias and variability, especially across experiments with large numbers of samples. Over the past few years, the space biology investigator community has accessed SPL-generated data from the Open Science Data Repository for a myriad of data re-analysis and re-use studies. We observe a trend that in-house SPL-generated data consistently outperforms outsourced sequencing data in terms of technical standards, quality control metrics, timeliness of data delivery, and sequencing and reagent efficiency. Superior data generation has and will continue to enable discoveries in disease, diagnostic tools, and the biological effects of long duration spaceflight.

GeneLab↗

Elevating the Quality of Space Omics Sequencing Data: Innovations and Methodologies from NASA GeneLab Sample Processing Laboratory

NASA’s GeneLab, part of the NASA Open Science Data Repository, is a space-related database that hosts a diverse range of transcriptomics, proteomics, epigenomics and genomics data. The NASA GeneLab Sample Processing Laboratory (SPL) generates omics data from biological experiments conducted aboard the International Space Station, Space Shuttle and space related ground experiments, this omics data then hosted on the GeneLab repository. Samples generated such experiments pose numerous technical challenges such as small experimental sample size, variance in dissection times, limited tissue preservation methods, prolonged storage time, and more. GeneLab SPL team had developed specialized expertise in nucleic acid extraction, library preparation and sequencing of such biological samples via extensive training and years of experience. In order to ensure data accuracy and consistency across experiments, SPL has developed standardized protocols for each species and tissue type. These protocols in conjunction with quality control metrics and data standards are crucial in generating of high-quality data. SPL protocols and standards have been developed in collaboration with the scientific community and had been made publicly available on the GeneLab portal, guaranteeing comparability of datasets across spaceflight experiments. To ensure reliability of data generation, SPL leverages cutting-edge innovations in laboratory automation for sample processing. By leveraging these state-of-the-art platforms, SPL achieves high levels of data reproducibility while significantly minimizing sources of bias and variability, especially across experiments with large numbers of samples. Over the past few years, the space biology investigator community has accessed SPL-generated data from the Open Science Data Repository for a myriad of data re-analysis and re-use studies. We observe a trend that in-house SPL-generated data consistently outperforms outsourced sequencing data in terms of technical standards, quality control metrics, timeliness of data delivery, and sequencing and reagent efficiency. Superior data generation has and will continue to enable discoveries in disease, diagnostic tools, and the biological effects of long duration spaceflight.

GeneLab↗

Physics of Boundaries and their Interactions in Space Plasmas

This final report describes a brief summary of our accomplishments during the complete contract period. Traditionally, due to computational limitations, it has been impossible to obtain a global view of the magnetosphere on ion time and spatial scales. As a result, kinetic-simulations have concentrated on the local structure of different magnetospheric discontinuities and boundaries. However, due to the emergence of low cost supercomputers, as well as by taking full advantage of latest advances in data mining and visualization technology, we were able to bypass our planned (proposed) regional simulations and proceed to large-scale 3-D and 2-D global hybrid simulations of the magnetosphere. As a result, although we are only finishing the second year of the proposed activity, much of the original scientific objectives have been surpassed and new avenues of investigation have been opened. Such simulations have led us to possible explanations of some long-standing issues in magnetospheric physics. They have also enables us to make a number of important discoveries predictions, which need to be looked for in satellite data. Examples include the finding that the bow shock can become unstable to the Kelvin-Helmholtz (KH), (2) the discovery of a mechanism for intermittent reconnection due to ion physics which may be relevant to the explanation of the recurrence rate of flux transfer events (FTEs), and (3) this finding that the current sheet in the near-Earth magnetotail region can become unstable to KH with detectable, unique ionospheric signatures. Further, we demonstrated a viable mechanism for the onset of reconnection at the magnetopause, examined the detailed structure of the boundary layer incorporating curvature effects, and provided an explanation for the large core fields observed within FTEs as well as flux ropes in the magnetotail.

Omidi, Nojan↗

From EXOSAT to the High Energy Astrophysics Science Archive (HEASARC): X-ray Astronomy Comes of Age

In May 1983 the European Space Agency launched EXOSAT, its first X-ray astronomy observatory. Even though it lasted only 3 short years, this mission brought not only new capabilities that resulted in unexpected discoveries, but also a pioneering approach to operations and archiving that changed X-ray astronomy from observations led by small instrument teams, to an observatory approach open to the entire community through a guest observer program. The community use of the observatory was supported by a small dedicated team of scientists, the precursor to the data center activities created to support e.g. Chandra and XMM-Newton. The new science capabilities of EX OS AT included a 90 hr highly eccentric high earth orbit that allow unprecedented continuous coverage of sources as well as direct communication with the satellite that allowed real time decisions to respond to unexpected events through targets of opportunity. The advantages of this orbit demonstrated by EXOSAT resulted in Chandra and XMM-Newton selecting similar orbits. The three instruments on board the EXOSAT observatory were complementary, designed to give complete coverage over a wide energy band pass of 0.05-50 keY. An onboard processor could be programmed to give multiple data modes that could be optimized in response to science discoveries: These new capabilities resulted in many new discoveries including the first comprehensive study of AGN variability, new orbital periods in X-ray binaries and cataclysmic variables, new black holes, quasi-periodic oscillations from neutron stars and black holes and broad band X-ray spectroscopy. The EXOSAT team generated a well-organized database accessible worldwide over the nascent internet, allowing remote selection of data products, making samples and undertaking surveys from the data. The HEASARC was established by NASA at Goddard Space Flight Center in 1990 as the repository of NASA X-ray and Gamma-ray data. The proven EXOSAT database system became the core of the HEASARC infrastructure. The HEASARC pioneered many concepts now taken for granted including standardized formats using FITS files, restoring data from earlier missions, multi-mission analysis tools and a searchable archive over the world wide web.

White, Nicholas E.↗

Ask-The-Expert: Minimizing Human Review for Big Data Analytics Through Active Learning

In this CIF project, we worked toward semi-automating knowledge discovery from anomaly detection algorithms through the use of active learning. Active learning is an area of research within machine learning that uses an "expert in the loop" to learn from large data sets that have very few annotations or labels available, and where providing such labels is expensive. In our case, the task can be defined as the identification of safety events from flight operational data. Since traditional anomaly detection algorithms cannot differentiate between operationally relevant and irrelevant statistical anomalies, Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) have a lengthy and expensive burden of investigating every example identified by the detection algorithm, classifying and labeling them as relevant or irrelevant. Active learningidentifies the unlabeled example for which a label would most improve the classifier, asks the domain expert for a label, and repeats this process until there are no more resources (time, budget) available for labeling or a minimum required performance is reached. A positive label indicates an operationally significant safety event whereas a negative label indicates otherwise. Based on these few labels we propose to build an active learning system that utilizes the SME's time in the most effective manner by iteratively asking for labels for as few informative instances as possible. Our work was proposed to be a stepping stone toward implementation and deployment of the system with user interface to be pursued by the Aviation Operations and Safety Program (AOSP) given its interest in safety monitoring and discovery of safety incidents.

aviation safety↗

Data Albums: An Event Driven Search, Aggregation and Curation Tool for Earth Science

One of the largest continuing challenges in any Earth science investigation is the discovery and access of useful science content from the increasingly large volumes of Earth science data and related information available. Approaches used in Earth science research such as case study analysis and climatology studies involve gathering discovering and gathering diverse data sets and information to support the research goals. Research based on case studies involves a detailed description of specific weather events using data from different sources, to characterize physical processes in play for a specific event. Climatology-based research tends to focus on the representativeness of a given event, by studying the characteristics and distribution of a large number of events. This allows researchers to generalize characteristics such as spatio-temporal distribution, intensity, annual cycle, duration, etc. To gather relevant data and information for case studies and climatology analysis is both tedious and time consuming. Current Earth science data systems are designed with the assumption that researchers access data primarily by instrument or geophysical parameter. Those who know exactly the datasets of interest can obtain the specific files they need using these systems. However, in cases where researchers are interested in studying a significant event, they have to manually assemble a variety of datasets relevant to it by searching the different distributed data systems. In these cases, a search process needs to be organized around the event rather than observing instruments. In addition, the existing data systems assume users have sufficient knowledge regarding the domain vocabulary to be able to effectively utilize their catalogs. These systems do not support new or interdisciplinary researchers who may be unfamiliar with the domain terminology. This paper presents a specialized search, aggregation and curation tool for Earth science to address these existing challenges. The search tool automatically creates curated "Data Albums", aggregated collections of information related to a specific science topic or event, containing links to relevant data files (granules) from different instruments; tools and services for visualization and analysis; and information about the event contained in news reports, images or videos to supplement research analysis. Curation in the tool is driven via an ontology based relevancy ranking algorithm to filter out non-relevant information and data.

Ramachandran, Rahul↗

The Real Time Display Builder (RTDB)

The Real Time Display Builder (RTDB) is a prototype interactive graphics tool that builds logic-driven displays. These displays reflect current system status, implement fault detection algorithms in real time, and incorporate the operational knowledge of experienced flight controllers. RTDB utilizes an object-oriented approach that integrates the display symbols with the underlying operational logic. This approach allows the user to specify the screen layout and the driving logic as the display is being built. RTDB is being developed under UNIX in C utilizing the MASSCOMP graphics environment with appropriate functional separation to ease portability to other graphics environments. RTDB grew from the need to develop customized real-time data-driven Space Shuttle systems displays. One display, using initial functionality of the tool, was operational during the orbit phase of STS-26 Discovery. RTDB is being used to produce subsequent displays for the Real Time Data System project currently under development within the Mission Operations Directorate at NASA/JSC. The features of the tool, its current state of development, and its applications are discussed.

Kindred, Erick D.↗

The discovery of an O subdwarf in the globular cluster NGC 6712

Spectral data for C49 in the globular cluster NGC 6712 are examined with reference to evolutionary models for low-mass stars that are contracting into white dwarfs. The spectrum of this star is found to be almost identical to that of the first sdO star found in a globular cluster, star A in NGC 6397. Analysis of the spectral data using nonlocal thermodynamic equilibrium models gives surface parameters T not less than 50,000 K, log g = 5.5 plus or minus 0.5, and N(He)/N(H) approximately equal to 0.1. The results are consistent with the models considered.

Remillard, R. A.↗

The discovery of dust trails in the orbits of periodic comets

Analysis of data from the Infrared Astronomical Satellite has yielded evidence for narrow trails of dust coincident with the orbits of periodic comets Tempel 2, Encke, and Gunn. Dust was found both ahead of and behind the orbital positions of these comets. This dust was produced by the low-velocity ejection of large particles during perihelion passage. More than 100 additional dust trails are suggested by the data, almost all near the detection limits of the satellite. Many of these dust trails may be derived from previously unobserved comets.

Sykes, M. V.↗