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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 577 records · Page 32

Transitioning a Flexible and Scalable Satellite Ground Station Observation Network (GSON) Framework to an Operational Environment

Obtaining accurate and timely satellite observations is of paramount importance in fields like disaster management, weather diagnoses/forecasting, and Earth Sciences remote sensing. Stored mission data (SMD), from low Earth orbiting (LEO) satellite sensors, provides important observations for these fields and applications, however data access to SMD can be delayed from one and half hours to three hours from the time the observations were made. This data latency poses a significant impact on data product optimal use. We developed a Ground Station Observation Network (GSON) that utilizes commercial ground station as a service (GSaaS) providers to acquire low latency direct broadcast (DB) data from AQUA, SNPP, and JPSS-1 satellites using antennas located in strategic locations around the world. We will discuss techniques to improve the deployment efficiency and code reliability and quality of the GSON framework. Topics include right-sizing and containerization of the code to facilitate integration and adaptation with continuous delivery (CD) pipeline, locating non-code assets in referenceable repositories separated from code, adaptation of pipelines as code and simplification of CD, intersecting with code quality tests and checks as part of the pipeline execution and deployment, and establishing distributed repositories, registries, and system identities in a way that mitigates compromise to the CD pipeline. These techniques enable deployment of processing systems that are both highly specific but also dynamically modifiable. This new class of system allows for a flexible and scalable deployment while avoiding the “black box” issues that can plague large system deployments.

cluster↗

EXOPLANETS FROM THE ARCTIC: THE FIRST WIDE-FIELD SURVEY AT 80 Degree-Sign N

Located within 10 Degree-Sign of the North Pole, northern Ellesmere Island offers continuous darkness in the winter months. This capability can greatly enhance the detection efficiency of planetary transit surveys and other time domain astronomy programs. We deployed two wide-field cameras at 80 Degree-Sign N, near Eureka, Nunavut, for a 152 hr observing campaign in 2012 February. The 16 megapixel camera systems were based on commercial f/1.2 lenses with 70 mm and 42 mm apertures, and they continuously imaged 504 and 1295 deg{sup 2}, respectively. In total, the cameras took over 44,000 images and produced better than 1% precision light curves for approximately 10,000 stars. We describe a new high-speed astrometric and photometric data reduction pipeline designed for the systems, test several methods for the precision flat fielding of images from very-wide-angle cameras, and evaluate the cameras' image qualities. We achieved a scintillation-limited photometric precision of 1%-2% in each 10 s exposure. Binning the short exposures into 10 minute chunks provided a photometric stability of 2-3 mmag, sufficient for the detection of transiting exoplanets around the bright stars targeted by our survey. We estimate that the cameras, when operated over the full Arctic winter, will be capable of discovering several transiting exoplanets around bright (m{sub V} < 9.5) stars.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Methods for Assessing Opportunities for Ring Dam Pumped Storage Hydropower

There is growing interest in new pumped storage hydropower (PSH) deployment to provide a range of grid flexibility, reliability, and resiliency services under an evolving and uncertain future power sector. The National Laboratory of the Rockies develops open PSH resource assessment and cost modeling tools to help evaluate PSH deployment opportunities, and this report describes expansions to those tools to consider an additional PSH system configuration - ring-dam reservoirs built on flat topographical features that are constructed from roller-compacted concrete material. This reservoir type is common among current PSH proposals and requires new methods to identify sites with this reservoir geometry throughout the United States and characterize the associated dam cost. Cost characterization for ring dam reservoirs required collecting historical dam cost data for earthen, rockfill, and roller-compacted concrete dams and regressing equations that relate costs between alternative materials. The ring dam site identification algorithm follows a 5-step procedure to identify circular geometry reservoirs. Once ring dam reservoirs are identified, they are then paired with potential dry-gully reservoirs, and the full set of potential paired reservoirs is cost-optimized to produce a least-cost set of potential PSH sites with no overlapping reservoirs. The resulting analysis found 1,663 ring-dam to dry-gully systems in the contiguous United States that are lower cost than any overlapping dry-gully to dry-gully systems, 29 in Alaska, and none in Hawaii or Puerto Rico. These systems constitute 1.5 TW of capacity in the contiguous United States and nearly 29 GW in Alaska, demonstrating that under suitable topography and head, ring-dam systems can provide cost-effective PSH opportunities. The greatest density of these opportunities are found in the intermountain west where there are mesas and flat land at bases of mountain ranges, but continued work could incorporate additional site characteristics or consider more complex reservoir shapes to find additional PSH deployment opportunities.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

Feasibility of using crystal channeling for the beam loss mitigation in slow extraction at 8GeV

In the accelerator applications of slow extraction for High Energy Physics (HEP), one of the prime challenges is the mitigation of beam losses, which is becoming increasingly critical with the continuous rise in beam power. A significant breakthrough was achieved earlier at CERN through the successful deployment of proton beam channeling in a crystal at 400GeV, effectively diverting the beam away from extraction septa and offering new avenues for improving slow extraction efficiency. However, a crucial question remains whether this approach is still effective at lower and medium proton beam energies. In this paper, we present the promising results of the computer simulation studies of the septum shadowing at 8GeV for the Mu2e project slow extraction at Fermilab. In conclusion, across the wide range of beam parameters, the beam loss reduction is shown to range between 40% and factor of three.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

Model Calibration of Exciter and PSS Using Extended Kalman Filter

Power system modeling and controls continue to become more complex with the advent of smart grid technologies and large-scale deployment of renewable energy resources. As demonstrated in recent studies, inaccurate system models could lead to large-scale blackouts, thereby motivating the need for model calibration. Current methods of model calibration rely on manual tuning based on engineering experience, are time consuming and could yield inaccurate parameter estimates. In this paper, the Extended Kalman Filter (EKF) is used as a tool to calibrate exciter and Power System Stabilizer (PSS) models of a particular type of machine in the Western Electricity Coordinating Council (WECC). The EKF-based parameter estimation is a recursive prediction-correction process which uses the mismatch between simulation and measurement to adjust the model parameters at every time step. Numerical simulations using actual field test data demonstrate the effectiveness of the proposed approach in calibrating the parameters.

Kalsi, Karanjit↗

Annual Report on Institutional Computing Resources: Multi-scale Modeling of Green House Gas Emissions Performed on Institutional Computing Project HIGRADchem

Agreements to limit greenhouse gas emissions require scientifically valid methods for monitoring and validating anthropogenic emissions. The task of monitoring CO 2 emissions is difficult because relatively small increases need to be detected against CO 2 's variable and large background concentrations. To ensure fair compliance everywhere on the globe, remotely sensed measurements and an understanding of the atmospheric transport of CO 2 from its sources are required. The climate treaty verification LDRD project addresses these challenges. The Remote Sensing Verification Project (RSVP) test2bed located in the Four Corners region of Arizona, Utah, Colorado, and New Mexico offers a unique opportunity to develop new approaches for estimating emissions of CO 2 . Two major power plants located in this area produce very large signals of co-emitted CO 2 and NO 2 in this rural region. In addition to the Environmental Protection Agency (EPA) maintaining Continuous Emissions Monitoring Systems (CEMS) on each of the power plant stacks, the RSVP program has deployed an array of in-situ and remote sensing instruments, which provide both point and integrated measurements.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Integrated Multiple Effects Software for Nuclear Physics Applications

The technical progress made during this project has been very substantial, and in most ways has exceeded the expectations of what was intended. In particular, the ability to treat CAD-based complex geometry, using the cut-cell finite-difference methodology, has been evolved to a very advanced state. Figure 1 illustrates the progress made, comparing what the modeling was capable of at the end of the Phase I project, to what it is capable of at the end of the Phase II project. This project had a strong component of collaborative research with activities at the TJNAF (JLab), including scientific assessment of specific nuclear physics hardware, and this collaboration was a main focus during the much of the Phase II project. During the final year of this project, and subsequent months since its completion, the Department of Energy has strongly shifted emphasis for SBIR projects towards commercialization. During this same time frame the software used for the modeling, Vorpal, underwent a similarly dramatic shift from a single product with any-and-all-phyiscs-in-one, to a suite of products, under the name Vsim, with each product individually targeted at one of the areas of: Electromagnetics, Microwave Devices, Plasma Devices, and Accelerator Physics. The focus area of this project, thermal analysis, was a new but important type of multi-physics application for the software involved, and the manner in which it has been implemented is of sufficient generality, that it continues life as a fifth target area, Thermal Transport. Thus, while a somewhat more subtle commercial deployment of this project’s developments was the original intention (e.g., more-physics-in-the-one), the result is in fact more in line with the newer emphasis, e.g., a direct and obvious one-to-one commercial product deployment of project capabilities.

Smithe, David↗

Integrated Multiple Effects Software for Nuclear Physics Applications, Final Report, Phase II SBIR

The technical progress made during this project has been very substantial, and in most ways has exceeded the expectations of what was intended. In particular, the ability to treat CAD-based complex geometry, using the cut-cell finite-difference methodology, has been evolved to a very advanced state. Figure 1 illustrates the progress made, comparing what the modeling was capable of at the end of the Phase I project, to what it is capable of at the end of the Phase II project. This project had a strong component of collaborative research with activities at the TJNAF (JLab), including scientific assessment of specific nuclear physics hardware, and this collaboration was a main focus during the much of the Phase II project. During the final year of this project, and subsequent months since its completion, the Department of Energy has strongly shifted emphasis for SBIR projects towards commercialization. During this same time frame the software used for the modeling, Vorpal, underwent a similarly dramatic shift from a single product with any-and-all-phyiscs-in-one, to a suite of products, under the name Vsim, with each product individually targeted at one of the areas of: Electromagnetics, Microwave Devices, Plasma Devices, and Accelerator Physics. The focus area of this project, thermal analysis, was a new but important type of multi-physics application for the software involved, and the manner in which it has been implemented is of sufficient generality, that it continues life as a fifth target area, Thermal Transport. Thus, while a somewhat more subtle commercial deployment of this project’s developments was the original intention (e.g., more-physics-in-the-one), the result is in fact more in line with the newer emphasis, e.g., a direct and obvious one-to-one commercial product deployment of project capabilities.

73 NUCLEAR PHYSICS AND RADIATION PHYSICS↗

Clean Grid Vision: A U.S. Perspective - Chapter 2. Distribution Issues and Tools

The continued growth in distributed energy resources is fundamentally changing the way the distribution system is operated and planned. Additionally, an increasing number of grid issues are being regularly experienced by distribution engineers within an increasing number of utilities. Fortunately, these fundamental changes and increasingly regular issues are being addressed via continual improvements in existing distribution system modeling tools—for both tools used by industry and researchers—and via novel modeling methods, which are combining transmission and distribution system modeling to investigate new, often complex, system interactions at the transmission/distribution power system interface. As DERs continue to increase more and more utilities, regulators, and developers are finding usable solutions in the deployment of smart inverters with ever more capable functionalities. This increase in functionality is welcome but comes at the cost of more complex analysis when determining what specific settings should be used for an individual interconnection. With more time, experience, and likely the further development of advanced analysis tools, even higher levels of DER integration will result in a reliable, resilient, low-cost, and safely operating grid.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

Moving Beyond 4-Hour Li-Ion Batteries: Challenges and Opportunities for Long(er)-Duration Energy Storage

This report is a continuation of the Storage Futures Study and explores the factors driving the transition from recent storage deployments with four or fewer hours to deployments of storage with greater than four hours. The report specifically builds on the first publication in the Storage Futures Study series, The Four Phases of Storage Deployment: A Framework for the Expanding Role of Storage in the U.S. Power System, that established a conceptual framework of roles and opportunities for new, cost-competitive stationary energy storage over the course of four phases of current and potential future storage deployment. This latest publication delves into Phases 2 and 3 when solar photovoltaics and storage increase the value of each other, and lower costs and technology improvements enable storage to be cost-competitive while serving longer-duration applications.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

Adaptive Cyber-Physical Resilience for Building Control Systems

The main goal of the project is to develop an AI-based process layer cybersecurity suite for detection, isolation and mitigation of cyber-attack effects on operation of building energy management systems (BEMS). The following constituent key technologies were developed under the program towards fulfilling the program objectives: (1) developed a high fidelity BEMS testbed for generation of training data and validation of developed technologies; (2) developed a physics informed ML based attack detection and localization module (ADL) capable of detecting high impact stealthy attacks (HISA - attacks causing 30% energy utilization but no immediate visible impact otherwise) with 98% accuracy; (3) developed a methodology to determine ’representative days’ to limit the data required for training; (4) developed a virtual sensing system that can reconstruct affected sensors with 10% error for the same HISA set; (5) developed a resilient model predictive control system that can continue operation of the BEMS without jeopardizing stability for the HISA set; and (6) integrated and deployed all the constituent modules and demonstrated the efficacy of the technology in real-time in a hardware in loop simulation.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Vibrational Signatures of Electronic Properties in Renewable-Energy Catalysis

The objective of this research program is to discover and develop new approaches for ab initio computational simulations of molecular motion. Specifically, this program aims to decipher the connection between the underlying electronic structure and the accordant molecular vibrations in reactive ions and radicals for renewable-energy purposes. Recent experimental progress in ion sources and optical spectroscopies has unearthed considerable new inner-sphere detail for these complexes, but the connection between these spectral signatures and mechanistic information often remains elusive, to the continued frustration of experimentalists. For this purpose, new anharmonic vibrational frequency methods, along with a publicly deployed software package, will be developed. Working closely with committed experimental collaborators, this conceptual and computational framework will be used to explain the results of new spectroscopy experiments, focusing specifically on the inner-shell mechanisms of renewable-energy catalysis. The oxidation half of catalytic water-splitting chemistry will be a central focus, along with fundamental studies of the manner in which strong ions and radicals activate solvent as a chemical species. The resulting products of the research program will include openly available software and algorithms for the ab initio simulation of challenging vibrational spectra, as well as critical mechanistic insight into energy-focused catalytic processes that are opaque to other existing analytical techniques.

42 ENGINEERING↗

Life-Cycle and Techno-Economic Assessment of Early-Stage Carbon Capture and Utilization Technologies—A Discussion of Current Challenges and Best Practices

The mitigation of climate change requires research, development, and deployment of new technologies that are not only economically viable but also environmentally benign. Systematic and continuous technology assessment from early technology maturity onwards allows assessment practitioners to identify economic and environmental characteristics. With this information, decision-makers can focus time and resources on the most promising technologies. A broad toolset for technology assessment exists—stretching from the well-established life cycle assessment (LCA) methodology to more loosely defined techno-economic analysis (TEA) methods and the increasingly popular principles of technology maturity assessment such as the concept of technology readiness levels (TRL). However, current technology assessment practice faces various challenges at early stages, resulting in a potential mismatch of study results and stakeholders' needs and an escalation of assessment effort. In this practice review, we outline current challenges in the interplay of LCA, TEA, and TRL and present best practices for assessing early-stage climate change mitigation technologies in the field of carbon capture and utilization (CCU). The findings help practitioners systematically identify the TRL of a technology and adapt technology assessment methodologies accordingly. We highlight the methodological challenges for practitioners when adapting the goal and scope, identifying benchmark technologies, creating a comprehensive inventory, comparing early stage to commercial stage, ensuring clarity of recommendations for decision-making under high uncertainty, and streamlining conventional LCA and TEA assessment approaches and provide actionable recommendations. Overall, this work contributes to identifying promising technologies faster and more systematically, accelerating the development of new technologies for climate change mitigation and beyond.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

Climsat rationale

We summarize reasons for the Climsat proposition; we also stress the need for certain climate monitoring other than that supplied by Climsat, especially solar irradiance, and we stress the complementarity of Climsat monitoring to plans for detailed EOS measurements. Existing and planned observations will not provide measurements of most climate forcing and feedback parameters with the accuracy needed to measure plausible decadal changes. Stratospheric water vapor and aerosol requirements are not met, for example, even though the present SAGE II instrument on the ERBS spacecraft measures those two parameters accurately, because ERBS is not expected to last more than a few years and it does not provide global coverage. We stress the imminence of a potential data gap even of those parameters, such as solar irradiance and stratospheric aerosols, for which monitoring capability has been proven and currently is in place. We find that most of the missing global climate forcings and feedbacks can be measured by three small instruments, which would need to be deployed on two spacecraft to obtain adequate sampling and global coverage. The monitoring must be maintained continuously for at least two decades. Such continuity can be attained by replacing a satellite after it fails, the functioning satellite providing calibration transfer to the new satellite. Certain complementary monitoring data are also needed, including solar monitoring from space, in order to fully meet requirements for monitoring all the climate forcings and feedbacks. The complementary data needs are discussed toward the end of this section. We summarize the proposed Climsat measurements and compare the expected accuracies to those which are needed to analyze changes of the global thermal energy cycle on decadal time scales. We stress the need to get broader participation of the scientific community in the monitoring and analysis activity. Finally, we discuss related climate process and diagnostic measurements.

Hansen, James↗

Computing, Information and Communications Technology (CICT) Website

The Computing, Information and Communications Technology Program (CICT) was established in 2001 to ensure NASA's Continuing leadership in emerging technologies. It is a coordinated, Agency-wide effort to develop and deploy key enabling technologies for a broad range of mission-critical tasks. The NASA CICT program is designed to address Agency-specific computing, information, and communications technology requirements beyond the projected capabilities of commercially available solutions. The areas of technical focus have been chosen for their impact on NASA's missions, their national importance, and the technical challenge they provide to the Program. In order to meet its objectives, the CICT Program is organized into the following four technology focused projects: 1) Computing, Networking and Information Systems (CNIS); 2) Intelligent Systems (IS); 3) Space Communications (SC); 4) Information Technology Strategic Research (ITSR).

Hardman, John↗

Approach-Phase Precision Landing with Hazard Relative Navigation: Terrestrial Test Campaign Results of the Morpheus/ALHAT Project

The Morpheus Project began in late 2009 as an ambitious e ort code-named Project M to integrate three ongoing multi-center NASA technology developments: humanoid robotics, liquid oxygen/liquid methane (LOX/LCH4) propulsion and Autonomous Precision Landing and Hazard Avoidance Technology (ALHAT) into a single engineering demonstration mission to be own to the Moon by 2013. The humanoid robot e ort was redirected to a deploy- ment of Robonaut 2 on the International Space Station in February of 2011 while Morpheus continued as a terrestrial eld test project integrating the existing ALHAT Project's tech- nologies into a sub-orbital ight system using the world's rst LOX/LCH4 main propulsion and reaction control system fed from the same blowdown tanks. A series of 33 tethered tests with the Morpheus 1.0 vehicle and Morpheus 1.5 vehicle were conducted from April 2011 - December 2013 before successful, sustained free ights with the primary Vertical Testbed (VTB) navigation con guration began with Free Flight 3 on December 10, 2013. Over the course of the following 12 free ights and 3 tethered ights, components of the ALHAT navigation system were integrated into the Morpheus vehicle, operations, and ight control loop. The ALHAT navigation system was integrated and run concurrently with the VTB navigation system as a reference and fail-safe option in ight (see touchdown position esti- mate comparisons in Fig. 1). Flight testing completed with Free Flight 15 on December 15, 2014 with a completely autonomous Hazard Detection and Avoidance (HDA), integration of surface relative and Hazard Relative Navigation (HRN) measurements into the onboard dual-state inertial estimator Kalman lter software, and landing within 2 meters of the VTB GPS-based navigation solution at the safe landing site target. This paper describes the Mor- pheus joint VTB/ALHAT navigation architecture, the sensors utilized during the terrestrial ight campaign, issues resolved during testing, and the navigation results from the ight tests.

Crain, Timothy P.↗