Search NASA⌕ Search

SEARCH · Search NASA

Results for “Space Instrument”

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.

Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.

At least 55 records · Page 3
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
DOE OSTI2024

SpecFIDLER User Manual (Software V.2.6.0)

The Spectroscopic Field Instrument for Detection of Low Energy Radiation (SpecFIDLER) allows response teams to detect and quantify plutonium contamination on the ground. Notional scenarios include dispersion from a weapon accident, or the launch failure of a space probe containing a radioisotope thermoelectric generator. Unlike other instruments, the thin-window sodium iodide detector is sensitive to the low-energy gamma rays emitted by plutonium isotopes. The system supports both mobile survey as well as stationary sampling. This manual provides information about installing, maintaining, and troubleshooting the SpecFIDLER. The scope of this document includes the physical hardware, software for data acquisition, and algorithms for data analysis. Recent changes to the software and algorithms aim to streamline the operation of the system.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2024

General guide concepts for compact, high-brilliance neutron moderators

The trend in neutron sciences is toward integrating compact, high-brightness moderators into new or upgraded facilities. Transporting neutrons from the source to the sample position with a phase-space distribution tailored to specific requirements is crucial to leverage high source brilliance. Here we have investigated four guide concepts using Monte Carlo ray tracing simulations: Montel beamline with nested Kirkpatrick–Baez mirrors, curved-tapered beamline with a bender and straight sections, straight-elliptical beamline, and curved-elliptical beamline. The straight-elliptical (curved-elliptical) beamline features two half-ellipse guides connected by a straight (non-straight) guide section. The neutron transport efficiency and phase space homogeneity have been quantitatively compared. Our results show that the straight-elliptical beamline performs best because of few neutron bounces on the guide surface with small reflection angles, minimizing flux loss. The Montel beamline provides the best spatial confinement of neutrons within the desired region; however, there is a high thermal-neutron loss due to large reflection angles. The curved-tapered beamline suffers from significant flux loss due to high bounces, and it shows a non-uniform angular distribution related to broad ranges of bounces and reflection angles. The non-straight guide section of the curved-elliptical beamline increases the phase space inhomogeneity, leading to a spatially non-uniform beam profile. The results apply to general neutron instruments that require transporting thermal and cold neutrons from a compact, high-brilliance moderator to the sample location with a moderate phase-space volume.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2024

Production of microchannel plates using nano-scale additive manufacturing

Microchannel plate (MCP) detectors have been the workhorse detector for many applications, including space borne ultra-violet imaging and spectrographic instruments. Recent advances in additive manufacturing (AM) have enabled fabrication of complex structures with nano-scale resolution facilitating the production of highly customizable MCPs. Using AM to produce MCPs potentially has many advantages over traditional fused glass substrates, including better material control (e.g., more robust glasses or ceramics), better control of microscopic features (e.g., unique pore geometries to improve performance), and better control of macroscopic features (e.g., printing precision curved surfaces for focal plane matching). Through a collaboration with industry, national laboratory, and university partners, small format microcapillary array substrates were produced using a standard polymer photoresin. In conclusion, these substrates were functionalized using atomic layer deposition and their performance was compared to current state-of-the-art Pb-glass and borosilicate-glass MCPs.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI2024

A science-driven approach to optimize the design for a biological small-angle neutron scattering instrument

Biological small-angle neutron scattering (SANS) instruments facilitate critical analysis of the structure and dynamics of complex biological systems. However, with the growth of experimental demands and the advances in optical systems design, a new neutron optical concept is necessary to overcome the limitations of current instruments. This work presents an approach to include experimental objectives ( i.e. the science to be supported by a specific neutron scattering instrument) in the optimization of the neutron optical concept. The approach for a proposed SANS instrument at the Second Target Station of the Spallation Neutron Source at Oak Ridge National Laboratory, USA, is presented here. Further, the instrument is simulated with the McStas software package. The optimization process is driven by an evolutionary algorithm using McStas output data, which are processed to calculate an objective function designed to quantify the expected performance of the simulated neutron optical configuration for the intended purpose. Each McStas simulation covers the complete instrument, from source to detector, including realistic sample scattering functions. This approach effectively navigates a high-dimensional parameter space that is otherwise intractable; it allows the design of next-generation SANS instruments to address specific scientific cases and has the potential to increase instrument performance compared with traditional design approaches.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗
DOE OSTI2025

The GammaTPC Gamma-Ray Telescope Concept

We present GammaTPC, a transformative 0.1-10 MeV $\gamma$-ray instrument concept featuring a tracker using a liquid argon time projection chamber (LAr TPC) technology with the novel GAMPix high spatial resolution and ultra low power charge readout. These enable an economical instrument with unprecedented effective area and sensitivity. We discuss the design and technology in some detail, including how a LAr TPC can be staged in space. Finally, we present a first study of the sensitivity of the instrument in the Compton regime using a new framework for analyzing Compton telescope data.

46 INSTRUMENTATION RELATED TO NUCLEAR SCIENCE AND ↗
DOE OSTI2025

X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission

The X-Ray Imaging and Spectroscopy Mission (XRISM) is a joint mission between the Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) and the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in collaboration with the European Space Agency (ESA). In addition to the three space agencies, universities and research institutes from Japan, North America, and Europe have joined to contribute to developing satellite and onboard instruments, data-processing software, and the scientific observation program. XRISM is the successor to the ASTRO-H (Hitomi) mission, which ended prematurely in 2016. Its primary science goal is to examine astrophysical problems with precise, high-resolution X-ray spectroscopy. XRISM promises to discover new horizons in X-ray astronomy. It carries a 6 × 6 pixelized X-ray microcalorimeter on the focal plane of an X-ray mirror assembly (Resolve) and a co-aligned X-ray CCD camera (Xtend) that covers the same energy band over a large field of view. XRISM utilizes the Hitomi heritage, but all designs were reviewed. The attitude and orbit control system was improved in hardware and software. The spacecraft was launched from the JAXA Tanegashima Space Center on 2023 September 6 (UTC). During the in-orbit commissioning phase, the onboard components were activated. Although the gate valve protecting the Resolve sensor with a thin beryllium X-ray entrance window was not yet opened, scientific observation started in 2024 February with the planned performance verification observation program. The nominal observation program commenced with the following guest observation program beginning in 2024 September.

Astronomy and AstroPhysics↗
DOE OSTI2026

Precision Kinematic Sunyaev--Zel'dovich Measurements Across Halo Mass and Redshift with DESI DR2 and ACT DR6: Part I. Luminous Red Galaxies

We present the most precise measurements of the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel'dovich (kSZ) effect around luminous red galaxies to date, detecting the signal at $18σ$ significance in both harmonic and configuration space. Our analysis cross-correlates 2.4 million spectroscopic LRGs from the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) DR2 sample with Data Release 6 (DR6) of the Atacama Cosmology Telescope (ACT). We develop a novel harmonic-space cross-correlation approach using momentum-weighted kSZ templates, yielding nearly uncorrelated bandpowers within a framework consistent with other large-scale structure analyses. By incorporating the LRG halo occupation distribution (HOD) and its uncertainty, we convert measured galaxy gas profiles into halo gas profiles and provide generalized Navarro-Frenk-White (GNFW) fitting profiles, providing empirical targets for tuning feedback efficiency in hydrodynamical simulations and for baryonic modeling in large-scale structure analyses. We find strong evidence that gas profiles do not trace dark matter, providing direct evidence for gas redistribution beyond gravitational collapse. Comparing to hydrodynamical simulations, our measurements favor feedback efficiencies exceeding those in the Battaglia profile, suggesting more efficient gas ejection in group-scale halos than previously predicted. Splitting by redshift, we detect the kSZ signal at SNR $\approx 5$--$10$ in each of four bins and find amplitude evolution consistent with the expected decline in mean halo mass at fixed comoving number density. Splitting by stellar mass, we study the scaling of kSZ amplitude with galaxy properties. Together with BGS and ELG measurements in Paper II, these results span $0.1 \lesssim z \lesssim 1.6$ across three galaxy populations, demonstrating the potential of spectroscopic kSZ to map circumgalactic gas and constrain baryonic feedback.

Qu, F. J. [KIPAC, Menlo Park; Stanford U., HEPL; S↗
DOE OSTI2024

Velocity reconstruction in the era of DESI and Rubin/LSST. II. Realistic samples on the light cone

Reconstructing the galaxy peculiar velocity field from the distribution of large-scale structure plays an important role in cosmology. On one hand, it gives us an insight into structure formation and gravity; on the other, it allows us to selectively extract the kinetic Sunyaev-Zel’dovich (kSZ) effect from cosmic microwave background maps. In this work, we employ high-accuracy synthetic galaxy catalogs on the light cone to investigate how well we can recover the velocity field when utilizing the three-dimensional spatial distribution of the galaxies in a modern large-scale structure experiment such as the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument (DESI) and the Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time. In particular, we adopt the standard technique used in baryon acoustic oscillation analysis for reconstructing the Zel’dovich displacements of galaxies through the continuity equation, which yields a first-order approximation to their large-scale velocities. We investigate variations in the number density, bias, mask, area, redshift noise, and survey depth, as well as modifications to the settings of the standard reconstruction algorithm. Since our main goal is to provide guidance for planned kSZ analysis between DESI and the Atacama Cosmology Telescope, we apply velocity reconstruction to a faithful representation of DESI spectroscopic and photometric targets. We report the cross-correlation coefficient between the reconstructed and the true velocities along the line of sight. For the DESI Y1 spectroscopic survey, we expect the correlation coefficient to be r ≈ 0.64, while for a photometric survey with δ z /(1+z) = 0.02, as is approximately the case for the Legacy Survey used in the target selection of DESI galaxies, r shrinks by half to r ≈ 0.31. Here, we hope the results in this paper can be used to inform future kSZ stacking studies and other velocity reconstruction analyses planned with the next generation of cosmology experiments.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Proof-of-Concept for Sensor Modeling in MOOSE for the Design of Autonomous Nuclear Reactor Control

Autonomous operation is essential for the deployment of microreactors and fission batteries, both in terrestrial and space applications. However, prototypes of microreactors and fission batteries do not exist yet, and even the design space has not been narrowed down conclusively, making the instrumentation and control system design difficult. For this reason, there is a need for flexible computational capabilities to create a numerical stand-in of potential microreactor and fission battery designs. The latter can be used to design and test control strategies to support autonomous operations. In this paper, we describe the initial implementation of a pluggable sensor system for the easy implementation of realistic sensor models in the multiphysics object-oriented simulation environment (MOOSE) framework. This new capability will enable MOOSE users to create a numerical stand-in of microreactors and fission batteries, ultimately allowing them to easily test new control algorithms, and instrumentation strategies for advanced systems in the design phase

22 - GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2024

Proof-of-Concept for Sensor Modeling in MOOSE for the Design of Autonomous Nuclear Reactor Control

Autonomous operation is essential for the deployment of microreactors and fission batteries, both in terrestrial and space applications. For this reason, recent studies have investigated autonomous control by using adaptive model predictive control and multi-objective optimization for heat pipe–cooled microreactors under normal and heat pipe failure conditions. However, prototypes of microreactors and fission batteries do not exist yet, and even the design space has not been narrowed down conclusively, making the instrumentation and control system design difficult. For this reason, there is a need for flexible computational capabilities to create a numerical stand-in of potential microreactor and fission battery designs. The latter can be used to design and test control strategies to support autonomous operations. In this poster, we describe the initial implementation of a pluggable sensor system for the easy implementation of realistic sensor models in the multiphysics object-oriented simulation environment (MOOSE) framework. This new capability will enable MOOSE users to create a numerical stand-in of microreactors and fission batteries, ultimately allowing them to easily test new control algorithms, and instrumentation strategies for advanced systems in the design phase.

22 - GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Position-Dependent Neutron Time-of-Flight Deviation at VULCAN Diffractometer

In neutron diffraction, it is critical to precisely measure the lattice spacing, as it is an indicator of a material’s physical characteristics, such as lattice strain, thermal expansion, and phase structures. In time-of-flight (TOF) measurements, the lattice spacing is determined by the recorded TOF from a well-calibrated instrument. However, changes in neutron time-of-flight are sensitive to many factors, such as the alignment of instrument optics, temperature, sample positions, sample dimensions, internal strains, and chemical or physical heterogeneities at the grain level. At VULCAN (SNS, ORNL), which is a high-flux engineering neutron diffractometer, we used a 1-mm-diameter diamond powder sample to scan for changes in TOF by measuring d-spacing values at different sample positions under several configurations. The 2D map of the TOF deviation or d-spacing deviation, in terms of lattice shift/lattice strain, is reported. The change in TOF is dependent on the scanned location in the beam as well as on detector locations. The results are informative for experimental planning, data interpretation, and future instrument design.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
DOE OSTI1991

Nuclear Safety [Vol. 32, No. 4, October-December 1991]

Nuclear Safety is a review journal that covers significant developments in the field of nuclear safety. Its scope includes the analysis and control of hazards associated with nuclear energy, operations involving fissionable materials, and the products of nuclear fission and their effects on the environment. Primary emphasis is on safety in reactor design, construction, and operation; however, the safety aspects of the entire fuel cycle, including fuel fabrication, spent-fuel processing, nuclear waste disposal, handling of radioisotopes, and environmental effects of these operations, are also treated. Table of Contents for this issue follows. GENERAL SAFETY CONSIDERATIONS: 477 Report on the International Symposium on the Use of Probabilistic Safety Assessment for Operational Safety—PSA '91, S. Chakraborty and M. Khatib-Rahbar; 488 Good Relationships Are Pivotal in Nuclear Data Bases, A. S. Heger and B. V. Koen; 494 Technical Note: The Interagency Nuclear Safety Review Panel's Evaluation of the Ulysses Space Mission, J. A. Sholtis, Jr., D. A. Huff, L. B. Gray, N. P. Klug, and R. O. Winchester; ACCIDENT ANALYSIS: 502 The Severe Accident Analysis Program for the Savannah River Nuclear Production Reactors, M. L. Hyder; CONTROL AND INSTRUMENTATION: 511 A Framework for Selecting Suitable Control Technologies for Nuclear Power Plant Systems, R. A. Kisner; DESIGN FEATURES: 521 Containments for Gas-Cooled Power Reactors History and Status, P.W. Williams; ENVIRONMENTAL EFFECTS: 537 Indoor Radon: A Natural Risk, N. H. Harley and J.H. Harley; On the Importance of the Atmospheric Parameters in the Fission Products Distribution of a Severe Reactor Accident, M. C. Barla and A. R. Bayulken; Book Review: Health Effects of Exposure to Low Levels of Ionizing Radiation BEIR V, C. R. Richmond; WASTE AND SPENT FUEL MANAGEMENT: 555 Activities Related to Waste and Spent Fuel Management, M. D. Muhlheim and E. G. Silver OPERATING EXPERIENCES: 567 Effects of Component Aging on the Westhinghouse Control Rod Drive System, K. Sullivan and W. Gunther; 577 Reactor Shutdown Experience, Compiled by J. W. Cletcher, 580 Selected Safety-Related Events, Compiled by G. A. Murphy; 582 Operating U 8 Power Reactors, Compiled by M. D. Muhlheim and E. G. Silver, RECENT DEVELOPMENTS: 596 General Administrative Activities, Compiled by M. D. Muhlheim and E. G. Silver; 610 Reports, Standards, and Safety Guides, D. S. Queener; 614 Proposed Rule Changes as of June 30, 1991; ANNOUNCEMENTS: 520 Workshop on PC PRAISE: A Probabilistic Fracture Mechanics Personal Computer Code for Nuclear Power Plant Piping Reliability Assessment; 536 Fifth Workshop on Nuclear Power Plant Containment Integrity; 624 New OECD "International Information System on Occupational Exposure (ISOE)"; 625 Harvard School of Public Health Announces Short Courses; 625 Eighth Power Plant Dynamics, Control and Testing Symposium; 626 Second Training Course on Off-Site Emergency Planning and Response for Nuclear Accidents; 618 The Authors; 622 Reviewers of Nuclear Safety, Vol 32.

11 NUCLEAR FUEL CYCLE AND FUEL MATERIALS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Transmission electron microscopy with in-situ ion irradiation: Facilities and community

Whilst there is a clear scientific and technological need for the technical capabilities of transmission electron microscopes with in-situ ion irradiation, it also requires a collaborative community of international researchers to support such facilities in successfully meeting this demand. Instruments of this type serve to provide fundamental understanding of the mechanisms which drive changes in materials important to nuclear fission and fusion energy, the semiconductor industry, quantum information systems, space travel, astronomy, geology and many more applications. As these areas continue to evolve and the instrumentation possibilities expand, the capacity of in-situ ion irradiation facilities must also develop hand-in-hand with the user community to deliver an ever-greater diversity of high-fidelity extreme-environment experimentation. Future directions for the field, such as miniaturization from MEMS/microfluidic devices and advanced controls with ML-based analysis, continuously emerge to advance both the hardware and software which support the coupling of TEMs with ion beams. This review sets out to provide up-to-date insights into the community and advancement of current, and development of future, facilities which have the potential to further unlock access to the nanoscale exploration of coupled extreme environments crucial to many of the important science and engineering challenges we face today.

In-situ irradiation↗
DOE OSTI2026

RTN-117: Image Calibration and Instrument Signal Removal for the First Year of the LSST

The NSF-DOE Vera C. Rubin Observatory Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST) requires calibration products that provide uniform, stable, and accurate photometric and astrometric performance across the 3.2 gigapixel focal plane and throughout the 10-year survey. This paper details the algorithms and workflows used to produce instrument calibrations and remove instrumental artifacts for Data Preview 2 (DP2)---the first end-to-end processing demonstration using on-sky data with the LSST Camera (LSSTCam). We describe the verification, acceptance, and certification framework used to assess calibration quality and quantify residual systematics. We show baseline metrics on calibrated science images to evaluate the robustness of the calibration and instrument signature removal (ISR) data processing pipelines for DP2. Finally, we summarize the known limitations observed in DP2 production and outline expected algorithmic improvements for the first public LSST data release (Data Release~1, DR1).

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗
DOE OSTI2025

Joint cosmological fits to DESI-DR1 full-shape clustering and weak gravitational lensing in configuration space

We present a joint $3\times2$-pt cosmological analysis of auto- and cross-correlations between the Dark Energy Spectroscopic Instrument Data Release 1 (DESI-DR1) Bright Galaxy Survey (BGS) and Luminous Red Galaxy (LRG) samples and overlapping shear measurements from the KiDS-1000, DES-Y3 and HSC-Y3 weak lensing surveys. We perform our analysis in configuration space and, in addition to the cosmic shear correlation functions for each weak lensing dataset, we fit the tangential shear of the weak lensing source galaxies around DESI lens galaxies. Finally, we make use of the anisotropic BGS and LRG clustering information by fitting the full shape of the two-point correlation function multipoles measured over the full DESI-DR1 footprint, presenting the first full-shape analysis of DESI measurements in configuration space. We find that the addition of weak lensing information serves to improve, with respect to the clustering-only case, the measurements of the power spectrum amplitude parameters $\ln(10^{10}A_{\rm{s}})$ and $σ_{12}$ by $15\%$ and $36\%$, respectively. It also improves measurements of the linear bias of the lens galaxies by $15-20\%$, depending on the tracer. Our results show excellent consistency, regardless of the weak lensing survey considered, and are furthermore consistent with a companion analysis that fits $3\times2$-pt correlations including DESI projected clustering measurements, as well as the results published by the weak lensing collaborations themselves. Our measured values for weak lensing amplitude are $S_{8}^{\mathrm{DESI\times HSC}}=0.787\pm0.020$, $S_{8}^{\mathrm{DESI\times DES}}=0.791\pm0.016$, $S_{8}^{\mathrm{DESI\times KiDS}}=0.771\pm0.017$, which are $1.9σ-2.9σ$ below the $S_8$ value preferred by Planck. Finally, our clustering-only results are in good agreement with the Fourier space full-shape analysis of all DESI tracers.

Semenaite, A. [Swinburne U., Ctr. Astrophys. Super↗
DOE OSTI2024

MITgcm-AD v2: Open source tangent linear and adjoint modeling framework for the oceans and atmosphere enabled by the Automatic Differentiation tool Tapenade

The Massachusetts Institute of Technology General Circulation Model (MITgcm) is widely used by the climate science community to simulate planetary atmosphere and ocean circulations. A defining feature of the MITgcm is that it has been developed to be compatible with an algorithmic differentiation (AD) tool, TAF, enabling the generation of tangent-linear and adjoint models. These provide gradient information which enables dynamics-based sensitivity and attribution studies, state and parameter estimation, and rigorous uncertainty quantification. Importantly, gradient information is essential for computing comprehensive sensitivities and performing efficient large-scale data assimilation, ensuring that observations collected from satellites and in-situ measuring instruments can be effectively used to optimize a large uncertain control space. As a result, the MITgcm forms the dynamical core of a key data assimilation product employed by the physical oceanography research community: Estimating the Circulation and Climate of the Ocean (ECCO) state estimate. Although MITgcm and ECCO are used extensively within the research community, the AD tool TAF is proprietary and hence inaccessible to a large proportion of these users. The new version 2 (MITgcm-AD v2) framework introduced here is based on the source-to-source AD tool Tapenade, which has recently been open-sourced. Another feature of Tapenade is that it stores required variables by default (instead of recomputing them) which simplifies the implementation of efficient, AD-compatible code. The framework has been integrated with the MITgcm model’s main branch and is now freely available.

Adjoints↗
DOE OSTI2024

ATAT: Astronomical Transformer for time series and Tabular data

Context. The advent of next-generation survey instruments, such as theVera C. RubinObservatory and its Legacy Survey of Space and Time (LSST), is opening a window for new research in time-domain astronomy. The Extended LSST Astronomical Time-Series Classification Challenge (ELAsTiCC) was created to test the capacity of brokers to deal with a simulated LSST stream. Aims. Our aim is to develop a next-generation model for the classification of variable astronomical objects. We describe ATAT, the Astronomical Transformer for time series And Tabular data, a classification model conceived by the ALeRCE alert broker to classify light curves from next-generation alert streams. ATAT was tested in production during the first round of the ELAsTiCC campaigns. Methods. ATAT consists of two transformer models that encode light curves and features using novel time modulation and quantile feature tokenizer mechanisms, respectively. ATAT was trained on different combinations of light curves, metadata, and features calculated over the light curves. We compare ATAT against the current ALeRCE classifier, a balanced hierarchical random forest (BHRF) trained on human-engineered features derived from light curves and metadata. Results. When trained on light curves and metadata, ATAT achieves a macro F1 score of 82.9 ± 0.4 in 20 classes, outperforming the BHRF model trained on 429 features, which achieves a macro F1 score of 79.4 ± 0.1. Conclusions. The use of transformer multimodal architectures, combining light curves and tabular data, opens new possibilities for classifying alerts from a new generation of large etendue telescopes, such as theVera C. RubinObservatory, in real-world brokering scenarios.

Astronomy & Astrophysics↗
DOE OSTI2026

WINDPROF: Merged Best-Estimate Wind Profile Data – Block Island (WFIP3 Campaign)

WINDPROF provides 10-minute wind and turbulence profiles, integrating Doppler lidars, wind profiling radars, and sonic anemometers across Northeast U.S. coastal/offshore sites during the WFIP3 campaign. Key data include wind speed, direction, vertical velocity, and turbulence parameters, with standardized quality control (e.g., instrument-specific thresholds and inter-instrument validation). Profiles are interpolated to a height grid (20 m spacing below 100 m; 30 m above) and include comprehensive uncertainty estimates. The Block Island dataset covers February 2024–September 2025, offering reproducible methods for atmospheric research, model validation, and wind energy studies.

17 WIND ENERGY↗