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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 451 records · Page 25
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2023

High-throughput terahertz imaging: progress and challenges

Abstract Many exciting terahertz imaging applications, such as non-destructive evaluation, biomedical diagnosis, and security screening, have been historically limited in practical usage due to the raster-scanning requirement of imaging systems, which impose very low imaging speeds. However, recent advancements in terahertz imaging systems have greatly increased the imaging throughput and brought the promising potential of terahertz radiation from research laboratories closer to real-world applications. Here, we review the development of terahertz imaging technologies from both hardware and computational imaging perspectives. We introduce and compare different types of hardware enabling frequency-domain and time-domain imaging using various thermal, photon, and field image sensor arrays. We discuss how different imaging hardware and computational imaging algorithms provide opportunities for capturing time-of-flight, spectroscopic, phase, and intensity image data at high throughputs. Furthermore, the new prospects and challenges for the development of future high-throughput terahertz imaging systems are briefly introduced.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
NASA NTRS1984

Resident research associateships. Postdoctoral and senior research awards

Opportunities for research at Marshall Space Flight Center's Materials and Processes Laboratory, Space Sciences Laboratory, and Systems Dynamics Laboratory are described. Information is provided for applicants desiring designation as a research associate and a list of laboratory directors and research advisors is provided.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1989

Ka-band study: 1988

The Ka-band study team was chartered in late 1987 to bring together all the planning elements for establishing 32 GHz (Ka-band) as the primary downlink frequency for deep-space operation, and to provide a stable baseline from which to pursue that development. This article summarizes the results of that study at its conclusion in mid-1988, and corresponds to material presented to NASA's Office of Space Operations on July 14, 1988. For a variety of reasons, Ka-band is the right next major step in deep-space communications. It offers improved radio metric accuracy through reduced plasma sensitivity and increased bandwidth. Because of these improvements, it offers the opportunity to reduce costs in the flight radio system or in the DSN by allocating part of the overall benefits of Ka-band to this cost reduction. A mission scenario is being planned that can drive at least two and possibly all three of the DSN subnets to provide a Ka-band downlink capability by the turn of the century. The implementation scenario devised by the study team is believed to be feasible within reasonable resource expectations, and capable of providing the needed upgrade as a natural follow-on to the technology development which is already underway.

Layland, J. W.↗
NASA NTRS1997

Automation Bias: Decision Making and Performance in High-Tech Cockpits

Automated aids and decision support tools are rapidly becoming indispensible tools in high-technology cockpits, and are assuming increasing control of "cognitive" flight tasks, such as calculating fuel-efficient routes, navigating, or detecting and diagnosing system malfunctions and abnormalities. This study was designed to investigate "automation bias," a recently documented factor in the use of automated aids and decision support systems. The term refers to omission and commission errors resulting from the use of automated cues as a heuristic replacement for vigilant information seeking and processing. Glass-cockpit pilots flew flight scenarios involving automation "events," or opportunities for automation-related omission and commission errors. Pilots who perceived themselves as "accountable" for their performance and strategies of interaction with the automation were more likely to double-check automated functioning against other cues, and less likely to commit errors. Pilots were also likely to erroneously "remember" the presence of expected cues when describing their decision-making processes.

Mosier, Kathleen L.↗
NASA NTRS2003

The Enterprise Project

Let us look at this thing with two agendas in mind. Agenda number one was to give the class a problem, which was challenging and stimulating. Agenda number two was to see if a bright group of people might come up with some notions about how to bridge these worlds of technology development and flight system development. Here is an opportunity to get some bright folks who bring a lot of capability to the table. Explain the problem to them and see if they can offer some fresh insights and ideas. It s a very powerful process and one that already put to use in MSL in a number of different areas: getting people who haven't been in the middle of the forest, but are still very strong technically, to step in and think about the problem for a while and offer their observations.

Dolci, Wendy↗
NASA NTRS2008

Integrating Space Flight Resource Management Skills into Technical Lessons for International Space Station Flight Controller Training

The Johnson Space Center s (JSC) International Space Station (ISS) Space Flight Resource Management (SFRM) training program is designed to teach the team skills required to be an effective flight controller. It was adapted from the SFRM training given to Shuttle flight controllers to fit the needs of a "24 hours a day/365 days a year" flight controller. More recently, the length reduction of technical training flows for ISS flight controllers impacted the number of opportunities for fully integrated team scenario based training, where most SFRM training occurred. Thus, the ISS SFRM training program is evolving yet again, using a new approach of teaching and evaluating SFRM alongside of technical materials. Because there are very few models in other industries that have successfully tied team and technical skills together, challenges are arising. Despite this, the Mission Operations Directorate of NASA s JSC is committed to implementing this integrated training approach because of the anticipated benefits.

Baldwin, Evelyn↗
NASA NTRS2004

Earth Science Education Plan: Inspire the Next Generation of Earth Explorers

The Education Enterprise Strategy, the expanding knowledge of how people learn, and the community-wide interest in revolutionizing Earth and space science education have guided us in developing this plan for Earth science education. This document builds on the success of the first plan for Earth science education published in 1996; it aligns with the new framework set forth in the NASA Education Enterprise Strategy; it recognizes the new educational opportunities resulting from research programs and flight missions; and it builds on the accomplishments th'at the Earth Science Enterprise has made over the last decade in studying Earth as a system. This document embodies comprehensive, practicable plans for inspiring our children; providing educators with the tools they need to teach science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM); and improving our citizens' scientific literacy. This plan describes an approach to systematically sharing knowledge; developing the most effective mechanisms to achieve tangible, lasting results; and working collaboratively to catalyze action at a scale great enough to ensure impact nationally and internationally. This document will evolve and be periodically reviewed in partnership with the Earth science education community.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS2009

An Operational Assessment of the MODIS False Color Composite with the Great Falls, Montana National Weather Service

The close and productive collaborations between the NWS Warning and Forecast Office (WFO) in Great Falls, MT and the Short Term Prediction and Research Transition (SPORT) Center at NASA/Marshall Space Flight Center have provided a unique opportunity for science sharing and technology transfer. In particular, SPoRT has provided a false color composite product derived from MODIS data, which is part of NASA's Earth Observing System. This product is designed to delineate snow and ice covered ground, bare ground and clouds. The Great Falls WFO has been a test bed of the MODIS false color composite as a tool in operations to monitor the development and dissipation of snow cover In particular, preliminary applications have shown that the product can be used to monitor snow cover in remote locations as well as ice in rivers. This information can lead to improved assessments of flooding potential during post event conditions where rapid melting and runoff are anticipated. The potential of this product on future geostationary satellites may substantially contribute to the NWS mission by providing enhanced situational awareness. The operational use of this product has been transitioned at WFO Great Falls through a process of product implementation, discussions with the service hydrologist and forecasters, and post event analysis. A concentrated assessment period from January to March, 2008 was initiated to investigate the impact of the MODIS false color product on WFO Great Falls' operations. This presentation will emphasize the impact the MODIS false color product had in the WFO's situational awareness and how best this information can be used to influence operational decisions.

Loss, GIna↗
NASA NTRS2011

O-6 Optical Property Degradation of the Hubble Space Telescope's Wide Field Camera-2 Pick Off Mirror

Degradation in the performance of optical components can be greatly affected by exposure to the space environment. Many factors can contribute to such degradation including surface contaminants; outgassing; vacuum, UV, and atomic oxygen exposure; temperature cycling; or combinations of parameters. In-situ observations give important clues to degradation processes, but there are relatively few opportunities to correlate those observations with post-flight ground analyses. The return of instruments from the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) after its final servicing mission in May 2009 provided such an opportunity. Among the instruments returned from HST was the Wide-Field Planetary Camera-2 (WFPC-2), which had been exposed to the space environment for 16 years. This work focuses on the identifying the sources of degradation in the performance of the Pick-off mirror (POM) from WFPC-2. Techniques including surface reflectivity measurements, spectroscopic ellipsometry, FTIR (and ATR-FTIR) analyses, SEM/EDS, X-ray photoelectron spectroscopy (XPS) with and without ion milling, and wet and dry physical surface sampling were performed. Destructive and contact analyses took place only after completion of the non-destructive measurements. Spectroscopic ellipsometry was then repeated to determine the extent of contaminant removal by the destructive techniques, providing insight into the nature and extent of polymerization of the contaminant layer.

McNamara, Karen M.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Cross-Polar Aircraft Trajectory Optimization and the Potential Climate Impact

Cross-Polar routes offer new opportunities for air travel markets. Transpolar flights reduce travel times, fuel burns, and associated environmental emissions by flying direct paths between many North American and Asian cities. This study evaluates the potential benefits of flying wind-optimal polar routes and assessed their potential impact on climate change. An optimization algorithm is developed for transpolar flights to generate wind-optimal trajectories that minimize climate impact of aircraft, in terms of global warming potentials (relative to warming by one kg of CO2) of several types of emissions, while avoiding regions of airspace that facilitate persistent contrail formation. Estimations of global warming potential are incorporated into the objective function of the optimization algorithm to assess the climate impact of aircraft emissions discharged at a given location and altitude. The regions of airspace with very low ambient temperature and areas favorable to persistent contrail formation are modeled as undesirable regions that aircraft should avoid and are formulated as soft state constraints. The fuel burn and climate impact of cross-polar air traffic flying various types of trajectory including flight plan, great circle, wind-optimal, and contrail-avoidance are computed for 15 origin-destination pairs between major international airports in the U.S. and Asia. Wind-optimal routes reduce average fuel burn of flight plan routes by 4.4% on December 4, 2010 and 8.0% on August 7, 2010, respectively. The tradeoff between persistent contrail formation and additional global warming potential of aircraft emissions is investigated with and without altitude optimization. Without altitude optimization, the reduction in contrail travel times is gradual with increase in total fuel consumption. When altitude is optimized, a one percent increase in additional global warming potential, a climate impact equivalent to that of 4070kg and 4220kg CO2 emission, reduces 135 and 105 minutes persistent contrail formation per flight during a day with medium and high contrail formation, respectively.

Ng, Hok K.↗
NASA NTRS2012

Qualification of Engineering Camera for Long-Duration Deep Space Missions

Qualification and verification of advanced electronic packaging and interconnect technologies, and various other types of hardware elements for the Mars Exploration Rover s Spirit and Opportunity (MER)/Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) flight projects, has been performed to enhance the mission assurance. The qualification of hardware (engineering camera) under extreme cold temperatures has been performed with reference to various Mars-related project requirements. The flight-like packages, sensors, and subassemblies have been selected for the study to survive three times the total number of expected diurnal temperature cycles resulting from all environmental and operational exposures occurring over the life of the flight hardware, including all relevant manufacturing, ground operations, and mission phases. Qualification has been performed by subjecting above flight-like hardware to the environmental temperature extremes, and assessing any structural failures or degradation in electrical performance due to either overstress or thermal cycle fatigue. Engineering camera packaging designs, charge-coupled devices (CCDs), and temperature sensors were successfully qualified for MER and MSL per JPL design principles. Package failures were observed during qualification processes and the package redesigns were then made to enhance the reliability and subsequent mission assurance. These results show the technology certainly is promising for MSL, and especially for longterm extreme temperature missions to the extreme temperature conditions. The engineering camera has been completely qualified for the MSL project, with the proven ability to survive on Mars for 2010 sols, or 670 sols times three. Finally, the camera continued to be functional, even after 2010 thermal cycles.

Ramesham, Rajeshuni↗
NASA NTRS2011

Cross-Polar Aircraft Trajectory Optimization and Potential Climate Impact

Cross-Polar routes offer new opportunities for air travel markets. Transpolar flights reduce travel times, fuel burns, and associated environmental emissions by flying direct paths between many North American and Asian cities. This study evaluates the potential benefits of flying wind-optimal polar routes and assessed their potential impact on climate change. An optimization algorithm is developed for transpolar flights to generate wind-optimal trajectories that minimize climate impact of aircraft, in terms of global warming potentials (relative to warming by one kg of CO2) of several types of emissions, while avoiding regions of airspace that facilitate persistent contrail formation. Estimations of global warming potential are incorporated into the objective function of the optimization algorithm to assess the climate impact of aircraft emissions discharged at a given location and altitude. The regions of airspace with very low ambient temperature and areas favorable to persistent contrail formation are modeled as undesirable regions that aircraft should avoid and are formulated as soft state constraints. The fuel burn and climate impact of cross-polar air traffic flying various types of trajectory including flightplan, great circle, wind-optimal, and contrail-avoidance are computed for 15 origin-destination pairs between major international airports in the U.S. and Asia. Wind-optimal routes reduce average fuel burn of flight plan routes by 4.4% on December 4, 2010 and 8.0% on August 7, 2010, respectively. The tradeoff between persistent contrail formation and additional global warming potential of aircraft emissions is investigated with and without altitude optimization. Without altitude optimization, the reduction in contrail travel times is gradual with increase in total fuel consumption. When altitude is optimized, a one percent increase in additional global warming potential, a climate impact equivalent to that of 4070kg and 4220kg CO2 emission, reduces 135 and 105 minutes persistent contrail formation per flight during a day with medium and high contrail formation, respectively.

Sridhar, Banavar↗
NASA NTRS2010

The WISE Satellite Development: Managing the Risks and the Opportunities

NASA's Wide-field Infrared Survey Explorer (WISE) MIDEX mission is surveying the entire sky in four infrared bands from 3.4 to 22 micrometers. The WISE instrument consists of a 40 cm telescope, a solid hydrogen cryostat, a scan mirror mechanism, and four 1K x1K infrared detectors. The WISE spacecraft bus provides communication, data handling, and avionics including instrument pointing. A Delta 7920 successfully launched WISE into a Sun-synchronous polar orbit on December 14, 2009. WISE was competitively selected by NASA as a Medium cost Explorer mission (MIDEX) in 2002. MIDEX missions are led by the Principal Investigator who delegates day-to-day management to the Project Manager. Given the tight cost cap and relatively short development schedule, NASA chose to extend the development period one year with an option to cancel the mission if certain criteria were not met. To meet this and other challenges, the WISE management team had to learn to work seamlessly across institutional lines and to recognize risks and opportunities in order to develop the flight hardware within the project resources. In spite of significant technical issues, the WISE satellite was delivered on budget and on schedule. This paper describes our management approach and risk posture, technical issues, and critical decisions made.

Risk Management↗
NASA NTRS2019

Schedule Factors Associated with the Use of Controlled Rest in a Long-Haul Airline

Controlled Rest (CR) refers to a short, voluntary nap opportunity taken by pilots on the flight deck as a countermeasure to unanticipated sleepiness in flight. This study explores the profile of CR use in a long-haul commercial airline. Forty-four pilots wore actiwatches and filled in an application-based sleep/work diary for approximately 2 weeks. After merging sleep diary, actigraphy, and schedule data, complete records were analyzed from 240 flights. Sleep was estimated during CR intervals using the Philips Actiware 6.0.9 (Bend, OR) software with wake threshold set to medium. Timing of sleep periods and flight schedules were analyzed relative to home-base time. A mixed-effects binary logistics regression was used to analyze the impact of schedule factors on CR. Preliminary analyses revealed that CR was taken on 45% (n=107) of flights. Average sleep duration within these rest periods was estimated as 24.8 ± 16.1 minutes. CR was more frequent on return flights (arriving at home-base; 58%, n=69) vs. outbound flights (departing from home-base, 31%, n=38; p<0.001). There was no difference for direction of travel (eastbound: 49%, n= 56; westbound: 40%, n= 44; northbound/southbound: 50%, n=7; p=0.272). CR was more frequent on 2-pilot flights (62%, n=81) compared to augmented crew flights (24%, n=26; p<0.001). Of note, 21% (n=23) of augmented flights contained both CR and Bunk Rest. CR was more frequent on flights <10h duration (<10h: 59%, n=78; >10h: 27%, n=29; p<0.001). Flights departing between 12:00h-19:59h (25%, n=23; p<0.026) had the lowest frequency of CR. Data from this airline show that CR is most commonly used as a countermeasure to sleepiness on return, unaugmented, <10h duration, and nighttime flights. The direction of travel did not influence the use of CR. Future studies are required to determine generalizability of these results to other airlines.

Hilditch, Cassie↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Wind Tunnel Testing of Next-Generation High-Speed Engines

This talk will introduce students to supersonic and hypersonic flows as well as cover why these high-speed flow regimes are important to us today. The main focus is on the different propulsion systems used in Mach 3+ flight and how they are tested in wind tunnel facilities. Different wind tunnels at NASA Langley will used to demonstrate how ground tests facilitate the development of new engines from a proof-of-concept to a mature flight qualified design. There are many opportunities in field of high-speed aeronautics. I'll discuss my path to NASA Langley then give advice for internship and job opportunities at NASA.

Robin Hunt↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Some Aeronautical Communications Experiments

Classically there has existed an asymmetry between the computing and communicating sides of aerospace systems. Over the past few decades, this asymmetry has shifted to favoring communication link technologies, meaning that advancements in available central processing units (CPUs), storage devices, and internal data buses have stagnated. Indeed, the increased emphasis placed on refining subsystem performance such as with antenna bandwidth in phased arrays, amplifier power efficiency, software defined radio (SDR) flexibility and encoding for data compression and error correction has given rise to successful debuts of multi-gigabit-per-second data return from long space-link distances. These accomplishments are easily quantifiable through link budgets and illustrate what is possible, but also reveal the deficiencies in overall communications capabilities. In particular, the ever-accelerating presence of aerospace vehicles gives rise to newer and larger classes of challenges to address the needs of 21st century systems. Furthermore remote sensing and imaging capabilities have far outpaced our ability to transmit their products to the ground, so we are increasingly dependent on pre-processing and downselection to contend with the communications bottleneck. No longer may we depend upon the constrained logistics in delivering end-to-end data delivery through manual reconfigurations, static event scheduling and execution on a per-vehicle basis, for these methods do not scale and therefore must give way to dynamic, networked approaches with an overall systems view in mind. Emerging mission requirements exhibit a trend toward multiple smaller-scale vehicles working together to perform dissimilar observations. Such operations necessitate sensor fusion across a constellation, and where data processing may be distributed throughout a fairly disconnected network whose topology changes over time in non-deterministic manners. Individual communications link performance is still very relevant to deploying an effective communications system, but now must be embedded within a greater architecture of capability to optimally utilize the bandwidth available from each link to generate an ultimate end-to-end quality of service. The deleterious effects of timing uncertainty across the arrangement presents a challenge to measurement synchronization and delivery, so a successful deployed system needs to be tolerant to the delays inherent in time-of-light between elements and digital processing latencies existing at each node. In this presentation we share the flight test results from a high performance Gbps laser communications terminal evaluated with a suite of store and forward capabilities called High-rate Delay Tolerant Networking (HDTN). The communications payload is operated over Lake Erie across a range of configurations including several convergence layers, and is evaluated to determine recovery time after link disruptions, information loss, efficiency and speed. The effectiveness of utilizing a flying laboratory to increase the Technology Readiness Level (TRL) of an integrated system in relevant environments is discussed, as well as the value of conducting aeronautics experiments to retire risk for technology infusion into space missions. Upcoming flight campaigns will be presented, including opportunities to demonstrate secure command and control, data intensive hyperspectral imaging, quantum link characterization, 4k High Definition (HD) video streaming and internetworked space-ground-aero relay operations. These experiments will pave the way for future missions which will depend upon interoperability across disparate government and privately owned networks, involve contention with uncertain and dynamic timing, and require agility to autonomously configure optimal parameters across networks of ever-increasing size and complexity to ensure data delivery. https://www1.grc.nasa.gov/space/scan/acs/tech-studies/dtn/

Daniel Raible↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Where and How Well Do Cabin Crew Sleep During Long-Haul Flights?

INTRODUCTION: Sleep loss and circadian disruption pose a significant risk in aviation. Many studies have shown that inflight rest locations influence alertness and performance among pilots, but few studies have evaluated cabin crew. The aim of this research was to assess sleep outcomes among cabin crewmembers sleeping in a bunk during both outbound and inbound compared to alternating sleep in a bunk or a jump seat during one long-haul route. METHODS: Twenty-nine (5 male) cabin crewmembers (Mage = 30.61, SD = 2.91) flew the same long-haul route (outbound and inbound) with a flight duration of 10:41 (± 0:14) hours. Participants were randomly assigned to fly on an aircraft with a bunk in both directions or to fly an aircraft with a bunk in one direction and with a high comfort jump seat (HCJS) in the other direction for their sleep opportunity. They wore an Actiwatch throughout the entire study and completed a sleep diary at bedtime and upon waking for each sleep opportunity. Seventy-seven percent of the flights had a bunk and 23% had a HCJS. A series of mixed-effects models were performed to assess the differences in several sleep parameters when crewmembers slept in the bunk during both directions of the flight (bunk-only) compared to sleep obtained in the HCJS during one direction and bunk in the other (bunk+HCJS). RESULTS: Fifty-seven flights were included in the analyses. There were significant differences between sleep time (b = 22.56, SE = 9.07, p = .02, Hedges’ g = -0.65) and sleep efficiency (b = 16.75, SE = 4.49, p = .001, Hedges’ g = -1.07) obtained in bunk-only vs. bunk+HCJS. Crewmembers obtained more sleep and had better sleep efficiency when they slept only in the bunk compared to bunk+HCJS. DISCUSSION: Our results showed that cabin crewmembers slept longer and had better sleep efficiency when they used the bunk. Further research is needed to understand how subjective sleepiness and subsequent performance are influenced by sleep opportunity in a bunk-only compared to bunk+HCJS.

long-haul↗