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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Mars Sample Receiving Facility Research and Development to Enable Preservation, Safe Containment, and Scientific Research of Martian Samples on Earth

NASA and ESA are working together to plan a joint campaign to potentially bring back the first Martian samples to Earth in the early 2030s. On the surface of Mars, the Mars 2020Perseverance Rover is selecting and packaging samples that could be returned to Earth for careful examination by an international team of scientists. In preparation for this historic sample return, advance planning is underway to design and build a Mars Sample Receiving Facility (SRF) in the mid-2020s. In 2022, a Mars Sample Receiving Facility Assessment Study(MSAS) will be conducted to further define construction modality and capability options for a facility in the conterminous United States. Since Mars Sample Return (MSR) is currently categorized as a planetary protection restricted Earth return, this new facility would feature biosafety level 4 (BSL-4)-like high containment to protect Earth’s biosphere from any potential hazard. In addition, the facility also requires integration of cleanroom technologies to mitigate against terrestrial contamination and preserve sample integrity for science investigations. The integration of both clean handling and high containment requires significant technology research and development (R&D) by the mid-2020s to support the definition and planning of a SRF before commencing the site specific design phase. The SRF project will need to solidify the inorganic, organic, and biological contamination control (CC) requirements for the facility. This could entail a translation of Mars 2020 mission CC requirements for geologic material to engineering requirements for surfaces and airborne molecular contamination inside isolators and cleanrooms. In tandem, the project will need to determine precision cleaning and sterilization approaches for cleanrooms, isolators, equipment, and tools. Initial material selections for the facility construction materials, cleanrooms, isolators, and BSL-4 suits/garments are an important activity. The recent construction of the OSIRIS-REx and Hayabusa2 curation cleanroom laboratories greatly benefited from early materials testing, before the design phase, to reduced organic outgassing and particulate shedding inside the laboratory. While the early biohazard investigations in the SRF may deem the samples safe to release to laboratories throughout the world, sterilization methods need to be defined to safely release Martian samples. One key aspect of enabling simultaneous sample containment and cleanliness is the concept of a Double-Walled Isolator (DWI) that ESA has been pursuing. Further R&D is needed about DWIs, sample handling, and instrumentation interfaces before beginning the SRF site specific design phase. A working isolator/DWI engineering model should be developed and fabricated. Isolator sizes, connections, pass-through antechambers, and configurations and basic interfaces with instruments and tools as well as the use of robotic, mechanical, and/or human manipulation need to be considered. Inert high purity gas supply (one-pass or recirculation) and other isolator utilities must be determined. Special accommodations for large instruments (e.g., XCT,SEM, etc.) need to be developed. Techniques for opening the sample tubes packaged by M2020and extracting the headspace gas while keeping samples pristine will be challenging, requiring additional R&D, and engagement of the M2020 project. In addition, careful micromanipulation for subdivision and packaging of samples will also need to be included. These combined R&D activities are important before commencing the SRF design phase to ensure safe biohazard containment, sample preservation, and science integrity for the samples that would be studied in the SRF and in laboratories around the world.

mars sample return↗
NASA NTRS1979

System noise analysis of the dumbbell tethered satellite for gravity-gradient measurements

An analysis of the dumbbell gravity gradiometer concept for measuring short wavelength variations in the earth's gravity gradient is presented. Variations in the gradient are recorded by measuring tension variations in a vertically stabilized satellite consisting of heavy masses connected by a long wire or rod. Tension noise arises from the excitation of various mechanical oscillations of the system. The principal noise sources that were identified are fluctuations in atmospheric drag heating and drag force resulting from density variations and winds. Approximate analytical expressions are presented for the tension noise as a function of the system design parameters for various possible configurations. Computer simulations using numerical integration were performed to study the tension noise for several sample cases. Three designs consistent with Shuttle launch capabilities are discussed.

Colombo, G.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

The ANGSA Program: A Low-cost Lunar "Sample Return Mission". An Overview and Progress over the Last 18 Months

The Apollo Program returned 381 kg of samples. Analyses of these samples have provided fundamental insights into the origin and history of the Earth-Moon system and how planets and even solar systems work. These samples have provided ground truth for every post-Apollo mission to the Moon for the interpretation of remotely sensed data. After 50 years of analysis and study, our sophistication for handling and examining samples has greatly increased. Some special samples that were collected or preserved in unique containers or environments remain unexamined by standard or advanced analytical approaches. The Apollo Next Generation Sample Analysis (ANGSA) Program was designed to examine a subset of these special samples. The ANGSA consortium consists of 9 original teams funded by NASA that have combined into a single science team referred to as the ANGSA Science Team. The program was designed to function as the sample analysis portion of a sample return mission with processing, preliminary examination, and analyses utilizing new and improved technologies and recent mission observations. The ANGSA Program links the first generation of lunar explorers (Apollo) with future explorers of the Moon (Artemis). The purpose of this abstract is to highlight the ANGSA samples, science and engineering goals, and progress made so far. Related abstracts and talks will focus on the links between Apollo and Artemis, geologic context, and initial examination, processing, and results.

F M McCubbin↗
DOE OSTI2020

Design and Characterization of an Extremely-Sensitive, Large-Volume Gamma-Ray Spectrometer for Environmental Samples

A large volume gamma spectrometer was designed and constructed to analyze foodstuffs and environmental samples having low radionuclide concentrations. This system uses eight 11-cm × 42.5-cm × 5.5-cm NaI(Tl) detectors, chosen due to their relatively high sensitivity and availability and arranged in an octagonal configuration. The sensitive volume of the system is ~28 cm in diameter and ~42 cm deep. Shielding consists of an 86-cm × 86-cm square, 64-cm-tall lead brick enclosure with 18-cm-thick lead walls lined by 0.3-cm-thick copper plates. An aluminum top was machined to suspend the detectors within this shield. The shielding reduces background counts by 72% at 100 keV and 42% at 1,000 keV. The positional variability in sensitivity of the well was determined by both simulation and experiment. A 2.1-L volume of nearly uniform sensitivity, varying less than 10%, exists in the well's center. Energy resolutions of 14.6% and 7.8% were measured for 241 Am and 137 Cs, respectively. Energy resolution shows a 0.2% variation for both 241 Am and 137 Cs as a function of position within all regions of the well’s central sensitive volume. Dead time was also determined to be less than 35% for all sources measured in the system, the largest of which had an activity of 1,760 kBq. Simulated results for various source geometries show higher counts for smaller samples, especially at lower energies due to less attenuation of low energy photons. In conclusion, minimum detectable activities were determined for all source energies used, less than 5.1 Bq kg -1 for reasonable background and sample counting times.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2021

Inverse design of two-dimensional materials with invertible neural networks

The ability to readily design novel materials with chosen functional properties on-demand represents a next frontier in materials discovery. However, thoroughly and efficiently sampling the entire design space in a computationally tractable manner remains a highly challenging task. To tackle this problem, we propose an inverse design framework (MatDesINNe) utilizing invertible neural networks which can map both forward and reverse processes between the design space and target property. This approach can be used to generate materials candidates for a designated property, thereby satisfying the highly sought-after goal of inverse design. We then apply this framework to the task of band gap engineering in two-dimensional materials, starting with MoS 2 . Within the design space encompassing six degrees of freedom in applied tensile, compressive and shear strain plus an external electric field, we show the framework can generate novel, high fidelity, and diverse candidates with near-chemical accuracy. We extend this generative capability further to provide insights regarding metal-insulator transition in MoS 2 which are important for memristive neuromorphic applications, among others. This approach is general and can be directly extended to other materials and their corresponding design spaces and target properties.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2022

Sensitivity Analyses for Monte Carlo Sampling-Based Particle Simulations

Computational design-based optimization is a well-used tool in science and engineering. Our report documents the successful use of a particle sensitivity analysis for design-based optimization within Monte Carlo sampling-based particle simulation—a currently unavailable capability. Such a capability enables the particle simulation communities to go beyond forward simulation and promises to reduce the burden on overworked analysts by getting more done with less computation.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗
NASA NTRS1979

The Addition of EI/CI Capability to the Mattauch-herzog Spectrograph with EOID

A modification was made to the Mattauch-Herzog Spectrograph with an electro-optical ion detector (EOID) previously designed and constructed, so that it would be capable of operating not only in the electron-impact (EI) mode of ionization, but also in the chemical ionization (CI) mode. This modification necessitated an effort in three specific design areas: (1) sample inlet; (2) ion source and analyzer regions; and (3) the pumping system. In addition, an appropriate electronics package had to be designed to control and operate the combined EI/CI source.

Fergusson, G. J.↗
NASA NTRS1984

Visible and shortwave infrared focal planes for remote sensing instruments

The development of solid-state sensor technology for multispectral linear array (MLA) instruments is described. A buttable four-spectral-band linear-format CCD and a buttable two-spectral band linear-format short-wave IR CCD have been designed, and first samples have been demonstrated. In addition, first-sample four-band interference filters have been fabricated, and hybrid packaging technology is being developed. Based on this development work, the design and construction of focal planes for a Shuttle sortie MLA instrument have begun. This work involves a visible and near-IR focal plane with 2048 pixels x 4 spectral bands and a short-wave IR focal plane with 1024 pixels x 2 spectral bands.

Tower, J. R.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Advanced Curation of Current and Future Extraterrestrial Samples

Curation of extraterrestrial samples is the critical interface between sample return missions and the international research community. Curation includes documentation, preservation, preparation, and distribution of samples. The current collections of extraterrestrial samples include: Lunar rocks / soils collected by the Apollo astronauts Meteorites, including samples of asteroids, the Moon, and Mars "Cosmic dust" (asteroid and comet particles) collected by high-altitude aircraft Solar wind atoms collected by the Genesis spacecraft Comet particles collected by the Stardust spacecraft Interstellar dust collected by the Stardust spacecraft Asteroid particles collected by the Hayabusa spacecraft These samples were formed in environments strikingly different from that on Earth. Terrestrial contamination can destroy much of the scientific significance of many extraterrestrial materials. In order to preserve the research value of these precious samples, contamination must be minimized, understood, and documented. In addition the samples must be preserved - as far as possible - from physical and chemical alteration. In 2011 NASA selected the OSIRIS-REx mission, designed to return samples from the primitive asteroid 1999 RQ36 (Bennu). JAXA will sample C-class asteroid 1999 JU3 with the Hayabusa-2 mission. ESA is considering the near-Earth asteroid sample return mission Marco Polo-R. The Decadal Survey listed the first lander in a Mars sample return campaign as its highest priority flagship-class mission, with sample return from the South Pole-Aitken basin and the surface of a comet among additional top priorities. The latest NASA budget proposal includes a mission to capture a 5-10 m asteroid and return it to the vicinity of the Moon as a target for future sampling. Samples, tools, containers, and contamination witness materials from any of these missions carry unique requirements for acquisition and curation. Some of these requirements represent significant advances over methods currently used. New analytical and screening techniques will increase the value of current sample collections. Improved web-based tools will make information on all samples more accessible to researchers and the public. Advanced curation of current and future extraterrestrial samples includes: Contamination Control - inorganic / organic Temperature of preservation - subfreezing / cryogenic Non-destructive preliminary examination - X-ray tomography / XRF mapping / Raman mapping Microscopic samples - handling / sectioning / transport Special samples - unopened lunar cores Informatics - online catalogs / community-based characterization.

Allen, Carlton C.↗
NASA NTRS2020

Advanced Curation of Astromaterials for Planetary Science Over the Next Decade

Advanced curation is a cross-disciplinary field of research and development aiming to improve curation and sample acquisition practices in existing astromaterials collections and to enable future sample return activities.The primary result of advanced curation is to both reduce and quantify contamination to astromaterials and preserve the scientific integrity of all samples from mission inception to scientific analysis. Over the next decade, NASA should support advanced curation research and monitoring efforts as they pertain to improving our current collections and preparing for samples from current and future astromaterials acquisition activities.We highlight here five advanced curation activities of critical importance for the success of sample science supported by NASA over the coming decade, including: 1) supporting efforts to build contamination knowledge collections as part of sample return missions, which requires curation involvement from the earliest stages of sample return mission planning;2) supporting Earth-based astromaterials collection campaigns of meteorites and cosmic dust as they represent relatively inexpensive sample acquisition activities that continue to grow NASA’s astromaterials collections and enable new discoveries;3) preparing to curate and process samples under “cold” conditions to enable return of samples from volatile-rich Solar System targets like permanently shadowed regions on the lunar surface orcomets;4) determining how best to combine clean room technology and biosafety technology into one infrastructure to support curation of samples from bodies designated as Category V:Restricted Earth Return; and 5) supporting real-time monitoring and testing of curation labs to verify that sample processing environments remain clean from the standpoint of inorganic, organic, and biological contamination

Francis M. McCubbin↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Probabilistic Modeling of a Three-Stage Human Landing System Architecture

Unmitigated uncertainties are known to have previously led to failed development programs; in order to combat these uncertainties, risks and their impacts must be understood and handled to ensure program success. In this paper, a probabilistic methodology to handle uncertainties is demonstrated on a three-element Human Landing System (HLS) concept, which allows tracking of current best estimates of the vehicle’s performance and assessment of its robustness against uncertainties. This methodology has two key parts: first, the creation of a dynamic architecture model of a three-element HLS concept; and second, its use with surrogate modeling and range estimating techniques to capture and propagate uncertainties. The DYnamic Rocket EQuation Tool (DYREQT), a space systems synthesis and sizing framework used by NASA, was used as to model the HLS architecture. For the probabilistic analysis, uncertainties of interest within the HLS concept were enumerated and represented as parameters within the DYREQT model as inputs for vehicle stages or mission profile events. Range estimating — a probabilistic method that combines Monte Carlo sampling, focus on critical parameters, and heuristics to assess risk and opportunities — is then adapted with operational parameters as well as vehicle parameters in the DYREQT model to capture mission uncertainty alongside vehicle uncertainty. To perform the range estimation portion of this methodology, the DYREQT model was sampled using a Design of Experiments (DoE) to efficiently explore the architecture design space with respect to the set of uncertainty parameters. Then, the results were used to create surrogate models, multivariate regressions that can visualize hypercube trends in the design space, of the architecture with respect to the uncertainty parameters. Using a correlation matrix constructed for the uncertainty parameters, previously independent samples were transformed to perform a Correlated Monte Carlo on the surrogate models. This probabilistic methodology was proved to provide insight into the underlying uncertainties of the three-element HLS architecture.

Stephanie Y Zhu↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Probabilistic Modeling of a Three-Stage Human Landing System Architecture

Unmitigated uncertainties are known to have previously led to failed development programs; in order to combat these uncertainties, risks and their impacts must be understood and handled to ensure program success. In this paper, a probabilistic methodology to handle uncertainties is demonstrated on a three-element Human Landing System (HLS) concept, which allows tracking of current best estimates of the vehicle’s performance and assessment of its robustness against uncertainties. This methodology has two key parts: first, the creation of a dynamic architecture model of a three-element HLS concept; and second, its use with surrogate modeling and range estimating techniques to capture and propagate uncertainties. The DYnamic Rocket EQuation Tool (DYREQT), a space systems synthesis and sizing framework used by NASA, was used as to model the HLS architecture. For the probabilistic analysis, uncertainties of interest within the HLS concept were enumerated and represented as parameters within the DYREQT model as inputs for vehicle stages or mission profile events. Range estimating — a probabilistic method that combines Monte Carlo sampling, focus on critical parameters, and heuristics to assess risk and opportunities — is then adapted with operational parameters as well as vehicle parameters in the DYREQT model to capture mission uncertainty alongside vehicle uncertainty. To perform the range estimation portion of this methodology, the DYREQT model was sampled using a Design of Experiments (DoE) to efficiently explore the architecture design space with respect to the set of uncertainty parameters. Then, the results were used to create surrogate models, multivariate regressions that can visualize hypercube trends in the design space, of the architecture with respect to the uncertainty parameters. Using a correlation matrix constructed for the uncertainty parameters, previously independent samples were transformed to perform a Correlated Monte Carlo on the surrogate models. This probabilistic methodology was proved to provide insight into the underlying uncertainties of the three-element HLS architecture.

Stephanie Y. Zhu↗
NASA NTRS1988

Mars rover sample return: An exobiology science scenario

A mission designed to collect and return samples from Mars will provide information regarding its composition, history, and evolution. At the same time, a sample return mission generates a technical challenge. Sophisticated, semi-autonomous, robotic spacecraft systems must be developed in order to carry out complex operations at the surface of a very distant planet. An interdisciplinary effort was conducted to consider how much a Mars mission can be realistically structured to maximize the planetary science return. The focus was to concentrate on a particular set of scientific objectives (exobiology), to determine the instrumentation and analyses required to search for biological signatures, and to evaluate what analyses and decision making can be effectively performed by the rover in order to minimize the overhead of constant communication between Mars and the Earth. Investigations were also begun in the area of machine vision to determine whether layered sedimentary structures can be recognized autonomously, and preliminary results are encouraging.

Rosenthal, D. A.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Concepts for collection of aerosols in Titan's atmosphere

This paper considers design of instruments for collection of aerosols during entry in Titan's atmosphere. Major constraints on designs are small sample collection time, low aerosol column density, and the need to collect 1-10 micrograms of aerosol for gas chromatographic analysis. Thus, it is important to maximize aerosol collection through collector design, which includes consideration of various types of collectors, and maximizing the collection efficiency of a given type of collector. Sampling systems discussed include inertial impactors, filters, electrostatic devices, and multistage instruments. Aerosol sampling is reviewed in the context of high-altitude (200-70 km) and low-altitude (60-30 km) regions of Titan's atmosphere.

Oberbeck, Verne R.↗
NASA NTRS2004

Evidence for Terrestrial Organic Contamination of the Tagish Lake Meteorite

The Tagish Lake meteorite is a rare discovery in the meteorite world. Tentatively classified as an ungrouped type 2 carbonaceous chondrite, it is the first known CI2 meteorite [1, 2, 3]. Tagish Lake is the first meteorite to exhibit a reflectance spectrum showing the red color characteristic of the D- and P-type asteroids that populate the outer main-belt [2], although many interplanetary dust particles collected from the Earth s stratosphere exhibit a similar spectrum [4]. Several large pieces of the Tagish Lake meteorite were recovered on Jan. 18, 2000. We obtained two samples of the Tagish Lake meteorite, both collected on April 24, 2000, designated MG02 and MG03, from A. Hildebrand (Univ. of Calgary) and P. Brown (Univ. of Western Ontario). Smaller fragments collected in May 2000 were purchased from the The Meteorite Market (samples designated "MM"). We have reported preliminary results from infrared and X-ray Absorption Near-edge Structure (XANES) spectroscopy on the MM samples [5]. We report evidence to suggest that there was terrestrial contamination of the meteorite, even in fragments in contact with the lake ice for only a few months .

Wirick, S.↗
DOE OSTI2021

Machine learning framework for quantum sampling of highly constrained, continuous optimization problems

In recent years, there is growing interest in using quantum computers for solving combinatorial optimization problems. In this work, we developed a generic, machine learning-based framework for mapping continuous-space inverse design problems into surrogate quadratic unconstrained binary optimization (QUBO) problems by employing a binary variational autoencoder and a factorization machine. The factorization machine is trained as a low-dimensional, binary surrogate model for the continuous design space and sampled using various QUBO samplers. Using the D-Wave Advantage hybrid sampler and simulated annealing, we demonstrate that by repeated resampling and retraining of the factorization machine, our framework finds designs that exhibit figures of merit exceeding those of its training set. We showcase the framework’s performance on two inverse design problems by optimizing (i) thermal emitter topologies for thermophotovoltaic applications and (ii) diffractive meta-gratings for highly efficient beam steering. This technique can be further scaled to leverage future developments in quantum optimization to solve advanced inverse design problems for science and engineering applications.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗
NASA NTRS1972

A depth profile of C-14 in the lunar rock 12002.

The procedure involved separating the rock sample into depth fractions, designated OPI-OP6, grinding and dissolving each sample in a teflon still. The results obtained for the C-14 depth profile are shown in a table. The value for OP4 is unusually high. This phenomenon can be explained by leakage of atmospheric C-14 during the test. The profile shows a definite decrease in C-14 activity with increasing depth in the rock.

Boeckl, R. S.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Optical Integrating Sphere for Vacuum Ultraviolet

Optical integrating sphere with integral sliding sample holder saves time by allowing radiometric measurements made on each of four samples without breaking vacuum. Designed to operate with interior evacuated so dye samples illuminated with short-wavelength ultraviolet strongly absorbed by air; need not be evacuated when using longer wavelengths. Device mounts on monochromator and evacuated through port that admits light from monochromator.

Butner, C. L.↗