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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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All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2017

Mars 2020 Site-Specific Mission Performance Analysis: 1. Science exploration and sol type modeling

We developed a scenario-based mission performance model for the Mars 2020 Rover to help identify project-wide productivity and operability challenges and opportunities. We have modeled science exploration combining high-fidelity resource modeling, science strategies, and modular science activity scenarios. This is proving to be an effective way of incorporating science activities into an engineering-based performance model.

Ono, Masahiro↗
NASA NTRS2005

Science operations interfaces for Mars surface exploration

The Science Activity Planner (SAP) is the science planning tool used for the Mars Exploration Rover (MER) mission. This paper begins with an overview of the software developed for MER and how it was used for science downlink analysis and activity planning.

distributed operations↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Early Assessments of Crew Timelines for the Lunar Surface Habitat

As NASA progresses towards sustained crewed space missions, crew timelines will become increasingly important to achieving mission goals. While it is desirable to spend as much time as possible during crewed space missions on science activities and experiments, there are a large number of activities that crew members must perform each day in order to maintain both crew and vehicle health and safety. The time available for science activities in space is highly dependent on mandatory tasks required for crew and vehicle health and safety. The different crewed activities need to be planned accordingly long before the start of a mission in order to optimize crew time for science. To begin assessing the potential crew time for available for science, an understanding of the requirements to maintain crew and vehicle health and safety is needed. These additional activities may include sleep, exercise, vehicle maintenance, logistics handling, crew personal time, as well as many other tasks. The remaining time outside of these required tasks, within a reasonable crew work schedule, can be dedicated to science operations. This paper will detail a collaborative effort to analyzing crew times for sustained spaceflight missions and how the results of that analysis are applied to the crew timeline for the proposed Lunar Surface Habitat (SH).To determine the crew time for all of these required activities, an analysis was conducted utilizing defined agency requirements and historical crewed mission data. Predicted crew activity times were integrated into a daily schedule in order to optimize the crew’s time during the mission. This methodology was utilized to produce expected crew timelines for NASA’s proposed Artemis Base Camp (ABC) missions. The current plans for the ABC contain two different sustained habitats, the Pressurized Rover (PR) and the Surface Habitat (SH). While the crew are separated between the two habitats, the timelines for each element are dependent on the other element’s operations, so the two element timelines are formed in conjunction with one another. The results described in this paper, however, will focus solely on the crew timeline in the SH. This paper will explain the methodology behind predicting the required crew time spent in the SH for each activity, and the process of incorporating these predicted crew times into a coherent schedule.

Crew Time↗
NASA NTRS2022

Balancing Predictive and Reactive Science Planning for Mars 2020 Perseverance

The design of the science planning process for a space science mission needs to find a balance between operational and resource constraints and scientific decision-making. Science planning has previously been characterized as either predictive or reactive. Predictive science planning is needed when constraints drive science activities to be planned far in advance. For example, a combination of long one-way light time plus high-stakes science decisions drove the Cassini-Huygens mission to Saturn to have an extremely predictive planning process. On the other extreme, reactive science planning is needed when constraints drive science activities to be planned based on the results of the previous plan. For example, the Mars Exploration Rover mission interacted with the surface of Mars, and so the planning team needed to know the state of the rover at the end of each planning cycle before starting the next cycle. Operational and resource constraints that require management on intermediate timescales has led to the development of a science planning process between these two extremes. For example, the Mars Science Laboratory is a technically complex rover and has a parallel predictive process that allows the operations team to manage engineering constraints several days in advance while maintaining the reactive tactical planning process similar to that of MER. The Mars 2020 Perseverance rover is a technically complex rover in the MSL style, but has an added layer of science complexity: it is tasked with collecting a returnable cache of scientifically valuable samples of Mars within prime mission. Thus, the science planning process also needs to accommodate high-stakes longer-term science decisions in the style of Cassini. In order to balance the push-pull of these constraints, we have developed a science campaign-focused operational paradigm for Mars 2020 Perseverance that allows for both predictive planning to accommodate technological complexity and high-stakes science decisions as well as reactive planning to accommodate the realities of interacting with the martian surface. This paradigm influenced the design of operational processes and operational tools.

Spanovich, Nicole↗
DOE OSTI2026

Multireference Methods for Chemistry and Materials Science: Automated Active Spaces, Efficient Dynamic Correlation, and Extended Systems

While multiconfigurational approaches have long been relegated to expert practitioners working on a case-by-case basis, recent developments have increasingly made these methods more routine and applicable to broader sets of systems. This article outlines the state-of-the-art in multiconfigurational approaches, with an emphasis on moving from delicate hand-selected pathways through configuration space toward more robust and efficient approaches to treating a host of challenging chemical systems accurately. First, we overview recent work in automated active-space selection, which has enabled increasingly large-scale applications of multireference methods to modeling vertical excitations and reactivity. Second, we highlight the increasingly efficient methods for recovering correlation energy beyond the active space, as headlined by extensions of pair-density functional theory and its role in accurate and efficient treatment of excited-state dynamics and its utilization to train machine-learned potentials. Finally, we highlight recent efforts to treat extended systems that until recently have lied beyond the traditional limits of active-space methods, giving center stage to product-form wave functions of the localized active space family of methods that allow for the computation of multiconfigurational band structures. These recent advancements point to a broader use of multireference approaches for high-impact chemical and materials science applications.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗
NASA NTRS1998

Aeronautics. An Educator's Guide with Activities in Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education: What Pilot, Astronaut, or Aeronautical Engineer didn't Start out with a Toy Glider?

Welcome to the exciting world of aeronautics. The term aeronautics originated in France, and was derived from the Greek words for "air" and "to sail." It is the study of flight and the operation of aircraft. This educator guide explains basic aeronautical concepts, provides a background in the history of aviation, and sets them within the context of the flight environment (atmosphere, airports, and navigation). The activities in this guide are designed to be uncomplicated and fun. They have been developed by NASA Aerospace Education Services Program specialists, who have successfully used them in countless workshops and student programs around the United States. The activities encourage students to explore the nature of flight, and experience some real-life applications of mathematics, science, and technology. The subject of flight has a wonderful power to inspire learning.

Biggs, Pat↗
NASA NTRS2001

Space-Based Astronomy: An Educator Guide with Activities for Science, Mathematics, and Technology Education

If you go to the country, far from city lights, you can see about 3,000 stars on a clear night. If your eyes were bigger, you could see many more stars. With a pair of binoculars, an optical device that effectively enlarges the pupil of your eye by about 30 times, the number of stars you can see increases to the tens of thousands. With a medium-sized telescope with a light-collecting mirror 30 centimeters in diameter, you can see hundreds of thousands of stars. With a large observatory telescope, millions of stars become visible. This curriculum guide uses hands-on activities to help students and teachers understand the significance of space-based astronomy--astronomical observations made from outer space. It is not intended to serve as a curriculum. Instead, teachers should select activities from this guide that support and extend existing study. The guide contains few of the traditional activities found in many astronomy guides such as constellation studies, lunar phases, and planetary orbits. It tells, rather, the story of why it is important to observe celestial objects from outer space and how to study the entire electromagnetic spectrum. Teachers are encouraged to adapt these activities for the particular needs of their students. When selected activities from this guide are used in conjunction with traditional astronomy curricula, students benefit from a more complete experience.

Vogt, Gregory L.↗
NASA NTRS2011

Properties of Subsurface Soil Cores from Four Geologic Provinces Surrounding Mars Desert Research Station, Utah: Characterizing Analog Martian Soil in a Human Exploration Scenario

The DOMEX program is a NASA-MMAMA funded project featuring simulations of human crews on Mars focused on science activities that involve collecting samples from the subsurface using both manual and robotic equipment methods and analyzing them in the field and post mission. A crew simulating a human mission to Mars performed activities focused on subsurface science for 2 weeks in November 2009 at Mars Desert Research Station near Hanksville, Utah --an important chemical and morphological Mars analog site. Activities performed included 1) survey of the area to identify geologic provinces, 2) obtaining soil and rock samples from each province and characterizing their mineralogy, chemistry, and biology; 3) site selection and reconnaissance for a future drilling mission; 4) deployment and testing of Mars Underground Mole, a percussive robotic soil sampling device; and 5) recording and analyzing how crew time was used to accomplish these tasks. This paper summarizes results from analysis of soil cores

Stoker, C. R.↗
NASA NTRS2010

Drilling on the Moon and Mars: Developing the Science Approach for Subsurface Exploration with Human Crews

DOMEX (Drilling on the Moon and Mars in Human Exploration) is using analog missions to develop the approach for using human crews to perform science activities on the Moon and Mars involving exploration and sampling of the subsurface. Subsurface science is an important activity that may be uniquely enabled by human crews. DOMEX provides an opportunity to plan and execute planetary mission science activities without the expense and overhead of a planetary mission. Objectives: The objective of this first in a series of DOMEX missions were to 1) explore the regional area to understand the geologic context and determine stratigraphy and geologic history of various geologic units in the area. 2) Explore for and characterize sites for deploying a deep (10 m depth) drilling system in a subsequent field season. 3) Perform GPR on candidate drill sites. 4) Select sites that represent different geological units deposited in different epochs and collect soil cores using sterile procedures for mineralogical, organic and biological analysis. 5) Operate the MUM in 3 different sites representing different geological units and soil characteristics. 6) Collect rock and soil samples of sites visited and analyze them at the habitat. Results: At mission start the crew performed a regional survey to identify major geologic units that were correlated to recognized stratigraphy and regional geologic maps. Several candidate drill sites were identified. During the rest of the mission, successful GPR surveys were conducted in four locations. Soil cores were collected in 5 locations representing soils from 4 different geologic units, to depths up to 1m. Soil cores from two locations were analyzed with PCR in the laboratory. The remainder were reserved for subsequent analysis. XRD analysis was performed in the habitat and in the field on 39 samples, to assist with sample characterization, conservation, and archiving. MUM was deployed at 3 field locations and 1 test location (outside the habitat) where it operated autonomously for 2-4 hours at each site. Depths achieved ranged from 15 to 70 cm depending on the soil compressive strength and the presence and depth of subsurface indurated layers. Subsurface samples weighing 0.5 to 1 g were collected at the deepest depth encountered at each of the sites using the MUM automated sample collection system, and subsequently analyzed with XRD. Downhole inspection of holes produced by MUM with the Raman spectrometer was acquired on two of the holes and spectral features associated with selenite were identified in specific soil layers. Previously unreported fossilized remains of vertebrate fauna from the Jurassic era were discovered during our mission. Analysis of mineral biomarkers associated with this discovery are underway.

Stoker, C. R.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Space Weather Monitoring for ISS Geomagnetic Storm Studies

The International Space Station (ISS) space environments community utilizes near real time space weather data to support a variety of ISS engineering and science activities. The team has operated the Floating Potential Measurement Unit (FPMU) suite of plasma instruments (two Langmuir probes, a floating potential probe, and a plasma impedance probe) on ISS since 2006 to obtain in-situ measurements of plasma density and temperature along the ISS orbit and variations in ISS frame potential due to electrostatic current collection from the plasma environment (spacecraft charging) and inductive (vxB) effects from the vehicle motion across the Earth s magnetic field. An ongoing effort is to use FPMU for measuring the ionospheric response to geomagnetic storms at ISS altitudes and investigate auroral charging of the vehicle as it passes through regions of precipitating auroral electrons. This work is challenged by restrictions on FPMU operations that limit observation time to less than about a third of a year. As a result, FPMU campaigns ranging in length from a few days to a few weeks are typically scheduled weeks in advance for ISS engineering and payload science activities. In order to capture geomagnetic storm data under these terms, we monitor near real time space weather data from NASA, NOAA, and ESA sources to determine solar wind disturbance arrival times at Earth likely to be geoeffective (including coronal mass ejections and high speed streams associated with coronal holes) and activate the FPMU ahead of the storm onset. Using this technique we have successfully captured FPMU data during a number of geomagnetic storm periods including periods with ISS auroral charging. This presentation will describe the strategies and challenges in capturing FPMU data during geomagnetic storms, the near real time space weather resources utilized for monitoring the space weather environment, and provide examples of auroral charging data obtained during storm operations.

Minow, Joseph I.↗
NASA NTRS2013

Space Weather Monitoring for ISS Geomagnetic Storm Studies

The International Space Station (ISS) space environments community utilizes near real time space weather data to support a variety of ISS engineering and science activities. The team has operated the Floating Potential Measurement Unit (FPMU) suite of plasma instruments (two Langmuir probes, a floating potential probe, and a plasma impedance probe) on ISS since 2006 to obtain in-situ measurements of plasma density and temperature along the ISS orbit and variations in ISS frame potential due to electrostatic current collection from the plasma environment (spacecraft charging) and inductive (vxB) effects from the vehicle motion across the Earth s magnetic field. An ongoing effort is to use FPMU for measuring the ionospheric response to geomagnetic storms at ISS altitudes and investigate auroral charging of the vehicle as it passes through regions of precipitating auroral electrons. This work is challenged by restrictions on FPMU operations that limit observation time to less than about a third of a year. As a result, FPMU campaigns ranging in length from a few days to a few weeks are typically scheduled weeks in advance for ISS engineering and payload science activities. In order to capture geomagnetic storm data under these terms, we monitor near real time space weather data from NASA, NOAA, and ESA sources to determine solar wind disturbance arrival times at Earth likely to be geoeffective (including coronal mass ejections and high speed streams associated with coronal holes) and activate the FPMU ahead of the storm onset. Using this technique we have successfully captured FPMU data during a number of geomagnetic storm periods including periods with ISS auroral charging. This presentation will describe the strategies and challenges in capturing FPMU data during geomagnetic storms, the near real time space weather resources utilized for monitoring the space weather environment, and provide examples of auroral charging data obtained during storm operations.

Minow, Joseph I.↗
NASA NTRS1978

Deep Space Network to Viking Orbiter telecommunications performance during the Viking extended mission, November 1976 - February 1978

The telecommunications performance during the Viking extended mission, starting with the completion of the first superior conjunction in November 1976 and ending with the jettison of the VO-2 aft bioshield early in March 1978 is discussed. Viking Orbiter activities and problems, the ground system activities and problems, radio science activities, and communication link performance are included. The substantial involvement of the Deep Space Network and the coordination of their telecommunication planners with Viking Project telecommunications analysts in the planning and execution of complex Viking Orbiter sequences are discussed.

Taylor, F. H. J.↗
NASA NTRS1986

Point of view of the U.S. science community

A special task force was formed by the National Academy of Sciences to examine the applications of Manned Space Station (MSS) platforms, communications and information systems, MSS operations and satellite assembly and repair capabilities on seven areas of space research. The task force reached several conclusions, including comprehensive space science planning by NASA with the MSS being one element of the plan. The STS is to provide a test bed for space research technologies and its basic design should be studied for conversion to an extended duration flight vehicle. The MSS could be categorized as a national facility, and payloads should be developed which specifically take advantage of its capabilities. The repair and maintenance capabilities which the MSS will furnish are concluded to be a significant asset to any future space science activities, and participation in those activities by the international science community is to be encouraged.

Black, D. C.↗
NASA NTRS1987

Venus - Summary and review of science research activities 1983-87

The geology, geomorphology, and atmosphere of Venus are characterized on the basis of observations obtained with the Soviet Venera 15 and 16 spacecraft (including two international Vega balloon experiments), the Pioneer Venus Orbiter, and the Arecibo radio telescope during the period 1983-1986. Features discussed include impact craters, evidence of tectonic and volcanic activity, the high average age of the Venusian surface (apparently over 1 Gyr, indicating resurfacing rates much lower than on earth), and atmospheric temperature differences across the equator.

Saunders, R. S.↗
NASA NTRS1997

Microgravity: A Teacher's Guide With Activities in Science, Mathematics, and Technology

The purpose of this curriculum supplement guide is to define and explain microgravity and show how microgravity can help us learn about the phenomena of our world. The front section of the guide is designed to provide teachers of science, mathematics, and technology at many levels with a foundation in microgravity science and applications. It begins with background information for the teacher on what microgravity is and how it is created. This is followed with information on the domains of microgravity science research; biotechnology, combustion science, fluid physics, fundamental physics, materials science, and microgravity research geared toward exploration. The background section concludes with a history of microgravity research and the expectations microgravity scientists have for research on the International Space Station. Finally, the guide concludes with a suggested reading list, NASA educational resources including electronic resources, and an evaluation questionnaire.

Rogers, Melissa J. B.↗
NASA NTRS1997

Microgravity: A Teacher's Guide with Activities in Science, Mathematics, and Technology

Microgravity is the subject of this teacher's guide. This publication identifies the underlying mathematics, physics, and technology principles that apply to microgravity. The topics included in this publication are: 1) Microgravity Science Primer; 2) The Microgravity Environment of Orbiting Spacecraft; 3) Biotechnology; 4) Combustion Science; 5) Fluid Physics; 6) Fundamental Physics; and 7) Materials Science; 8) Microgravity Research and Exploration; and 9) Microgravity Science Space Flights. This publication also contains a glossary of selected terms.

Rogers, Melissa J.B.↗