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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 55 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2020

Seven Centuries of Reconstructed Brahmaputra River Discharge Demonstrate Underestimated High Discharge and Flood Hazard Frequency

The lower Brahmaputra River in Bangladesh and Northeast India often floods during the monsoon season, with catastrophic consequences for people throughout the region. While most climate models predict an intensified monsoon and increase in flood risk with warming, robust baseline estimates of natural climate variability in the basin are limited by the short observational record. Here we use a new seven-century (1309–2004 C.E) tree-ring reconstruction of monsoon season Brahmaputra discharge to demonstrate that the early instrumental period (1956–1986 C.E.) ranks amongst the driest of the past seven centuries (13th percentile). Further, flood hazard inferred from the recurrence frequency of high discharge years is severely underestimated by 24–38% in the instrumental record compared to previous centuries and climate model projections. A focus on only recent observations will therefore be insufficient to accurately characterise flood hazard risk in the region, both in the context of natural variability and climate change.

tree-ring reconstruction↗
NASA NTRS2012

Design Through Integration of On-Board Calibration Device with Imaging Spectroscopy Instruments

The main purpose of the Airborne Visible and Infrared Imaging Spectroscopy (AVIRIS) project is to "identify, measure, and monitor constituents of the Earth's surface and atmosphere based on molecular absorption and particle scattering signatures." The project designs, builds, and tests various imaging spectroscopy instruments that use On-Board Calibration devices (OBC) to check the accuracy of the data collected by the spectrometers. The imaging instrument records the spectral signatures of light collected during flight. To verify the data is correct, the OBC shines light which is collected by the imaging spectrometer and compared against previous calibration data to track spectral response changes in the instrument. The spectral data has the calibration applied to it based on the readings from the OBC data in order to ensure accuracy.

imaging spectroscopy↗
NASA NTRS1982

Event Recorder Scans 2,048 Channels

Up to 16 input signals feed each of up to 128 input circuit cards. Single input circuit card contains optical isolators with input-diode lamping, RC filters, Schmitt-trigger input buffers, and 16-to-1 multiplexer. Input circuit cards feed logic, memory, and input/output circuits, which are standard, off-the-shelf devices. Instrument records sequence and time of events and could be useful in monitoring operation of manufacturing machinery and furnishing information useful in diagnosis of machinery malfunctions.

Slusser, K. J.↗
NASA NTRS2016

Field Test: Results of Tandem Walk Performance Following Long-Duration Spaceflight

BACKGROUND: Coordinated locomotion has proven to be challenging for many astronauts following long duration spaceflight. As NASA's vision for spaceflight points toward interplanetary travel, we must prepare for unassisted landings, where crewmembers may need to perform mission critical tasks within minutes of landing. Thus, it is vital to develop a knowledge base from which operational guidelines can be written that define when astronauts can be expected to safely perform certain tasks. Data obtained during the Field Test experiment (FT) will add important insight to this knowledge base. Specifically, we aim to develop a recovery timeline of functional sensorimotor performance during the first 24 hours and several days after landing. METHODS: FT is an ongoing study of 30 long-duration ISS crewmembers. Thus far, 9 have completed the full FT (5 U.S. Orbital Segment [USOS] astronauts and 4 Russian cosmonauts) and 4 more consented and launching within the next year. This is in addition to the eighteen crewmembers that participated in the pilot FT (11 USOS and 7 Russian crewmembers). The FT is conducted three times preflight and three times during the first 24 hours after landing. All crewmembers were tested in Kazakhstan in either the medical tent at the Soyuz landing site (~one hour post-landing), or at the airport (~four hours post-landing). The USOS crewmembers were also tested at the refueling stop (~12 hours post-landing) and at the NASA Johnson Space Center (~24 hours post-landing) and a final session 7 days post-landing. Crewmembers are instrumented with 9 inertial measurement unit sensors that measure acceleration and angular displacement (APDM's Emerald Sensors) and foot pressure-sensing insoles that measure force, acceleration, and center of pressure (Moticon GmbH, Munich, Germany) along with heart rate and blood pressure recording instrumentation. The FT consists of 12 tasks, but here we will focus on the most challenging task, the Tandem Walk, which was also performed as part of pilot FT. To perform the Tandem Walk, subjects begin with their feet together, their arms crossed at their chest and eyes closed. When ready, they brought one foot forward and touched the heel of their foot to their toe, repeating with the other foot, and continuing for about 10 steps. Three trials were collected with the eyes closed and a fourth trial was collected with eyes open. There are four metrics which are used to determine the performance level of the Tandem Walk. The first is percent correct steps. For a step to be counted as correct, the foot could not touch the ground while bringing it forward (no side stepping), eyes must stay closed during the eyes closed trials, the heel and toe should be touching, or almost touching (no large gaps) and there shouldn't be more than a three second pause between steps. Three judges score each step and the median of the three scores is kept. The second metric is the average step speed, or the number of steps/time to complete them. Thirdly, the root mean squared (RMS) error in the resultant trunk acceleration is used to determine the amount of upper body instability observed during the task. Finally, the RMS error of the mediolateral center of pressure as measured by the Moticon insoles is used to determine the mediolateral instability at the foot level. These four parameters are combined into a new overall Tandem Walk Parameter. RESULTS: Preliminary results show that crewmembers perform the Tandem Walk significantly worse the first 24 hours after landing as compared to their baseline performance. We find that each of the four performance metrics is significantly worse immediately after landing. We will present the results of tandem walk performance during the FT thus far. We will also combine these with the 18 crewmembers that participated in the pilot FT, concentrating on the level of performance and recovery rate. CONCLUSION: The Tandem Walk data collected as part of the FT experiment will provide invaluable information on the performance capabilities of astronauts during the first 24 hours after returning from long-duration spaceflight that can be used in planning future Mars, or other deep-space missions with unassisted landings. FT will determine the average sensorimotor recovery timeline and inform return-to-duty guidelines for unassisted landings.

Rosenberg, M. J. F.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Characteristic recovery times of Forbush-type decreases in the cosmic radiation. I - Observations at earth at different energies

Data on 30 asymmetric Forbush decreases recorded by the IMP spacecraft at 1 AU and the Mt. Washington neutron monitor over the period 1972-84 are examined to characterize the recovery characteristics of cosmic rays after the events. The spacecraft data are concentrated at energies of 1.7 GV, while the terrestrial instruments recorded events at 5 GV. Attention is paid to the relative amplitudes of the recorded transient decreases, the characteristic recovery times, and the energy dependence of the amplitudes and recovery time. The recovery times were found to be equal at both energy levels, supporting a concept of energy independence for the recoveries. Also, no correlations were found between the recovery times and the occurrences of a solar magnetic field reversal or with phase in the solar modulation cycle. A time-dependent, two-dimensional model is defined, which expresses the cosmic ray particle distributions as a function of the decay of the disturbance, with a small dependence on the transport parameters of the cosmic rays.

Lockwood, J. A.↗
NASA NTRS2021

Drought Relief and Reversal Over North America from 1500 to 2016

Season-to-season persistence of soil moisture drought varies across North America. Such inter-seasonal autocorrelation can have modest skill in forecasting future conditions several months in advance. Because robust instrumental observations of precipitation span less than 100 years, the temporal stability of the relationship between seasonal moisture anomalies is uncertain. The North American Seasonal Precipitation Atlas (NASPA) is a gridded network of separately reconstructed cool (December-April) and warm (May-July) season precipitation series and offers new insights on the intra-annual changes in drought for up to 2,000 years. Here, the NASPA precipitation reconstructions are rescaled to represent the long-term soil moisture balance during the cool season and three-month long atmospheric moisture during the warm season. These rescaled seasonal reconstructions are then used to quantify the frequency, magnitude, and spatial extent of cool season drought that was relieved or reversed during the following summer months. The adjusted seasonal reconstructions reproduce the general patterns of large-scale drought amelioration and termination in the instrumental record during the 20th century and are used to estimate relief and reversals for the most skillfully reconstructed past 500-years. Sub-continental to continental scale reversals of cool season drought in the following warm season have been rare, but the reconstructions display periods prior to the instrumental data of increased reversal probabilities for the Mid-Atlantic region and the US Southwest. Drought relief at the continental scale may arise in part from macroscale ocean-atmosphere processes, while the smaller scale regional reversals may reflect land-surface feedbacks and stochastic variability.

Drought↗
NASA NTRS1993

A sharp-focusing schlieren optical deflectometer

A new instrument capable of localized, nonintrusive turbulence measurements is developed by combining a focusing schlieren system with an optical deflectometer. This instrument records the fluctuating light intensity at a point in the focused schlieren image. Its capability is verified by making benchmark measurements of Kelvin-Helmholtz vortices produced in a low-speed axisymmetric mixing layer. The sharp-focusing effect is demonstrated both visually and quantitatively. The results show that the instrument is capable of optical turbulence measurements within a 4 mm depth-of-field.

Alvi, F. S.↗
NASA NTRS1932

A New Principle of Sound Frequency Analysis

In connection with the study of aircraft and propeller noises, the National Advisory Committee for Aeronautics has developed an instrument for sound-frequency analysis which differs fundamentally from previous types, and which, owing to its simplicity of principle, construction, and operation, has proved to be of value in this investigation. The method is based on the well-known fact that the Ohmic loss in an electrical resistance is equal to the sum of the losses of the harmonic components of a complex wave, except for the case in which any two components approach or attain vectorial identity, in which case the Ohmic loss is increased by a definite amount. The principle of frequency analysis has been presented mathematically and a number of distinct advantages relative to previous methods have been pointed out. An automatic recording instrument embodying this principle is described in detail. It employs a beat-frequency oscillator as a source of variable frequency. A large number of experiments have verified the predicted superiority of the method. A number of representative records are presented.

Theodorsen, Theodore↗
NASA NTRS2016

The Mexican Drought Atlas: Tree-Ring Reconstructions of the Soil Moisture Balance During the Late Pre-Hispanic, Colonial, and Modern Eras

Mexico has suffered a long history and prehistory of severe sustained drought. Drought over Mexico is modulated by ocean-atmospheric variability in the Atlantic and Pacific, raising the possibility for long-range seasonal climate forecasting, which could help mediate the economic and social impacts of future dry spells. The instrumental record of Mexican climate is very limited before 1920, but tree-ring chronologies developed from old-growth forests in Mexico can provide an excellent proxy representation of the spatial pattern and intensity of past moisture regimes useful for the analysis of climate dynamics and climate impacts. The Mexican Drought Atlas (MXDA) has been developed from an extensive network of 252 climate sensitive tree-ring chronologies in and near Mexico. The MXDA reconstructions extend from 1400 CE-2012 and were calibrated with the instrumental summer (JJA) self-calibrating Palmer Drought Severity Index (scPDSI) on a 0.5deg latitude/longitude grid extending over land areas from 14 to 34degN and 75-120degW using Ensemble Point-by-Point Regression (EPPR) for the 1944-1984 period. The grid point reconstructions were validated for the period 1920-1943 against instrumental gridded scPDSI values based on the fewer weather station observations available during that interval. The MXDA provides a new spatial perspective on the historical impacts of moisture extremes over Mexico during the past 600-years, including the Aztec Drought of One Rabbit in 1454, the drought of El Ano de Hambre in 1785-1786, and the drought that preceded the Mexican Revolution of 1909-1910. The El Nino/Southern Oscillation (ENSO) is the most important ocean-atmospheric forcing of moisture variability detected with the MXDA. In fact, the reconstructions suggest that the strongest central equatorial Pacific sea surface temperature (SST) teleconnection to the soil moisture balance over North America may reside in northern Mexico. This ENSO signal has stronger and more time-stable correlations than computed for either the Atlantic Multidecadal Oscillation or Pacific Decadal Oscillation. The extended Multivariate ENSO Index is most highly correlated with reconstructed scPDSI over northern Mexico, where warm events favor moist conditions during the winter, spring, and early summer. This ENSO teleconnection to northern Mexico has been strong over the past 150 years, but it has been comparatively weak and non-stationary in the MXDA over central and southern Mexico where eastern tropical Pacific and Caribbean/tropical Atlantic SSTs seem to be more important. The ENSO teleconnection to northern Mexico is weaker in the available instrumental PDSI, but analyses based on the millennium climate simulations with the Community Earth System Model suggest that the moisture balance during the winter, spring, and early summer over northern Mexico may indeed be particularly sensitive to ENSO forcing. Nationwide drought is predicted to become more common with anthropogenic climate change, but the MXDA reconstructions indicate that intense "All Mexico" droughts have been rare over the past 600 years and their frequency does not appear to have increased substantially in recent decades.

El Nino↗
NASA NTRS1986

CID-720 aircraft high-environment flight instrumentation system

The high-environment flight instrumentation system was designed to acquire Langley's structural response data during the full scale transport-controlled impact demonstration test. There was only one opportunity for data acquisition. Thus, a high reliability and crashworthy design approach was implemented. The approach featured multi-level redundancy and a vigorous quality assurance testing program. Complying with an accelerated schedule, the instrumentation system was developed, tested and shipped within 18 months to Dryden Flight Research Facility. The flight instrumentation system consists of two autonomous data systems, DAS #1 and #2, and an excellent checkout subsystem. Each data system is partitioned into four pallets. The system was designed to operate on manned and unmanned flights. There are 176 data channels per data system. These channels are sequentially sampled and encoded into 1 megabit/sec pulse code modulation (PCM) data signal. To increase the probability of success, a special PCM distribution subsystem was developed. This subsystem distributes the PCM signal to two transmitters, one delay memory, and eight recorder tracks. The data on four of these trackes was digitally delayed approximately 300 msec to maximize data acquisition during impact. Therefore each data system's data is redundantly recorded onboard and on the ground. There are two time code generators. Parallel time from each is encoded into both data systems. Serial time from each is redundantly recorded on both onboard recorders. Instrumentation power is independent of aircraft power and self-contained.

Calloway, R. S.↗
NASA NTRS2003

High Resolution Spectroscopy to Support Atmospheric Measurements

Spectroscopic parameters (such as line position, intensity, broadening and shifting coefficients and their temperature dependences, line mixing coefficients etc.) for various molecular species of atmospheric interest are determined. In order to achieve these results, infrared spectra of several molecular bands are obtained using high-resolution recording instruments such as tunable diode laser spectrometer and Fourier transform spectrometers. Using sophisticated analysis routines (Multispectrum nonlinear least squares technique) these high-resolution infrared spectra are processed to determine the various spectral line parameters that are cited above. Spectra were taken using the McMath-Pierce Fourier transform spectrometer (FTS) at the National Solar Observatory on Kitt Peak, Arizona as well as the Bruker FTS at the Pacific Northwest National Laboratory (PNNL) at Richland, Washington. Most of the spectra are acquired not only at room temperature, but also at several different cold temperatures. This procedure is necessary to study the variation of the spectral line parameters as a function of temperature in order to simulate the Earth's and other planetary atmospheric environments. Depending upon the strength or weakness of the various bands recorded and analyzed, the length(s) of the absorption cells in which the gas samples under study are kept varied from a few centimeters up to several meters and the sample temperatures varied from approximately +30 C to -63 C. Research on several infrared bands of various molecular species and their isotopomers are undertaken. Those studies are briefly described.

Venkataraman, Malathy Devi↗
NASA NTRS1971

Skylab earth resources experiment package

Skylab earth resources experimental equipment, describing sensing and recording instrumentation for electromagnetic spectral pattern recognition studies

Armitage, P. J.↗
NASA NTRS1973

Astronomical observatory for shuttle. Phase A study

The design, development, and configuration of the astronomical observatory for shuttle are discussed. The characteristics of the one meter telescope in the spaceborne observatory are described. A variety of basic spectroscopic and image recording instruments and detectors which will permit a large variety of astronomical observations are reported. The stDC 37485elines which defined the components of the observatory are outlined.

Guthals, D. L.↗