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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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NASA NTRS2014

Near-Earth Asteroid Scout

Near-Earth Asteroids (NEAs) are an easily accessible object in Earth's vicinity. Detections of NEAs are expected to grow in the near future, offering increasing target opportunities. As NASA continues to refine its plans to possibly explore these small worlds with human explorers, initial reconnaissance with comparatively inexpensive robotic precursors is necessary. Obtaining and analyzing relevant data about these bodies via robotic precursors before committing a crew to visit a NEA will significantly minimize crew and mission risk, as well as maximize exploration return potential. The Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) and Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) are jointly examining a mission concept, tentatively called 'NEA Scout,' utilizing a low-cost CubeSats platform in response to the current needs for affordable missions with exploration science value. The NEA Scout mission concept would be a secondary payload on the Space Launch System (SLS) Exploration Mission 1 (EM-1), the first planned flight of the SLS and the second un-crewed test flight of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle (MPCV).

McNutt, Leslie↗
NASA NTRS2014

Comparing On-Orbit and Ground Performance for an S-Band Software-Defined Radio

NASA's Space Communications and Navigation Testbed was installed on an external truss of the International Space Station in 2012. The testbed contains several software-defined radios (SDRs), including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) SDR, which underwent performance testing throughout 2013 with NASAs Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). On-orbit testing of the JPL SDR was conducted at S-band with the Glenn Goddard TDRSS waveform and compared against an extensive dataset collected on the ground prior to launch. This paper will focus on the development of a waveform power estimator on the ground post-launch and discuss the performance challenges associated with operating the power estimator in space.

International Space Station↗
NASA NTRS2014

Comparing On-Orbit and Ground Performance for an S-Band Software-Defined Radio

NASA's Space Communications and Navigation Testbed was installed on an external truss of the International Space Station in 2012. The testbed contains several software-defined radios (SDRs), including the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) SDR, which underwent performance testing throughout 2013 with NASA's Tracking and Data Relay Satellite System (TDRSS). On-orbit testing of the JPL SDR was conducted at S-band with the Glenn Goddard TDRSS waveform and compared against an extensive dataset collected on the ground prior to launch. This paper will focus on the development of a waveform power estimator on the ground post-launch and discuss the performance challenges associated with operating the power estimator in space.

waveforms↗
NASA NTRS2014

Passive Thermal Design Approach for the Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Testbed Experiment on the International Space Station (ISS)

The Space Communications and Navigation (SCaN) Program Office at NASA Headquarters oversees all of NASAs space communications activities. SCaN manages and directs the ground-based facilities and services provided by the Deep Space Network (DSN), Near Earth Network (NEN), and the Space Network (SN). Through the SCaN Program Office, NASA GRC developed a Software Defined Radio (SDR) testbed experiment (SCaN testbed experiment) for use on the International Space Station (ISS). It is comprised of three different SDR radios, the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) radio, Harris Corporation radio, and the General Dynamics Corporation radio. The SCaN testbed experiment provides an on-orbit, adaptable, SDR Space Telecommunications Radio System (STRS) - based facility to conduct a suite of experiments to advance the Software Defined Radio, Space Telecommunications Radio Systems (STRS) standards, reduce risk (Technology Readiness Level (TRL) advancement) for candidate Constellation future space flight hardware software, and demonstrate space communication links critical to future NASA exploration missions. The SCaN testbed project provides NASA, industry, other Government agencies, and academic partners the opportunity to develop and field communications, navigation, and networking technologies in the laboratory and space environment based on reconfigurable, software defined radio platforms and the STRS Architecture.The SCaN testbed is resident on the P3 Express Logistics Carrier (ELC) on the exterior truss of the International Space Station (ISS). The SCaN testbed payload launched on the Japanese Aerospace Exploration Agency (JAXA) H-II Transfer Vehicle (HTV) and was installed on the ISS P3 ELC located on the inboard RAM P3 site. The daily operations and testing are managed out of NASA GRC in the Telescience Support Center (TSC).

Passive Thermal Design↗
NASA NTRS2012

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) Analysis Of Optical Payload For Lasercomm Science (OPALS) sealed enclosure module

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD) using the commercial CFD package CFDesign has been performed at NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) California Institute of Technology (Caltech) in support of the Phaeton Early Career Hire Program's Optical Payload for Lasercomm Science (OPALS) mission. The OPALS project is one which involves an International Space Station payload that will be using forced convection cooling in a hermetically sealed enclosure at 1 atm of air to cool "off-the-shelf" vendor electronics. The CFD analysis was used to characterize the thermal and fluid flow environment within a complicated labyrinth of electronics boards, fans, instrumentation, harnessing, ductwork and heat exchanger fins. The paradigm of iteratively using CAD/CAE tools and CFD was followed in order to determine the optimum flow geometry and heat sink configuration to yield operational convective film coefficients and temperature survivability limits for the electronics payload. Results from this current CFD analysis and correlation of the CFD model against thermal test data will be presented. Lessons learned and coupled thermal / flow modeling strategies will be shared in this paper.

Computational Fluid Dynamics (CFD)↗
NASA NTRS2012

Model-Based Systems Engineering Approach to Managing Mass Margin

When designing a flight system from concept through implementation, one of the fundamental systems engineering tasks ismanaging the mass margin and a mass equipment list (MEL) of the flight system. While generating a MEL and computing a mass margin is conceptually a trivial task, maintaining consistent and correct MELs and mass margins can be challenging due to the current practices of maintaining duplicate information in various forms, such as diagrams and tables, and in various media, such as files and emails. We have overcome this challenge through a model-based systems engineering (MBSE) approach within which we allow only a single-source-of-truth. In this paper we describe the modeling patternsused to capture the single-source-of-truth and the views that have been developed for the Europa Habitability Mission (EHM) project, a mission concept study, at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL).

cloud comu↗
NASA NTRS2012

SMAP Verification and Validation Project - Final Report

In 2007, the National Research Council (NRC) released the Decadal Survey of Earth science. In the future decade, the survey identified 15 new space missions of significant scientific and application value for the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) to undertake. One of these missions was the Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP) mission that NASA assigned to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in 2008. The goal of SMAP1 is to provide global, high resolution mapping of soil moisture and its freeze/thaw states. The SMAP project recently passed its Critical Design Review and is proceeding with its fabrication and testing phase.Verification and Validation (V&V) is widely recognized as a critical component in system engineering and is vital to the success of any space mission. V&V is a process that is used to check that a system meets its design requirements and specifications in order to fulfill its intended purpose. Verification often refers to the question "Have we built the system right?" whereas Validation asks "Have we built the right system?" Currently the SMAP V&V team is verifying design requirements through inspection, demonstration, analysis, or testing. An example of the SMAP V&V process is the verification of the antenna pointing accuracy with mathematical models since it is not possible to provide the appropriate micro-gravity environment for testing the antenna on Earth before launch.

Soil Moisture Active Passive (SMAP)↗
NASA NTRS2012

Magnetic Testing, and Modeling, Simulation and Analysis for Space Applications

The Aerospace Corporation (Aerospace) and Lockheed Martin Space Systems (LMSS) participated with Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the implementation of a magnetic cleanliness program of the NASA/JPL JUNO mission. The magnetic cleanliness program was applied from early flight system development up through system level environmental testing. The JUNO magnetic cleanliness program required setting-up a specialized magnetic test facility at Lockheed Martin Space Systems for testing the flight system and a testing program with facility for testing system parts and subsystems at JPL. The magnetic modeling, simulation and analysis capability was set up and performed by Aerospace to provide qualitative and quantitative magnetic assessments of the magnetic parts, components, and subsystems prior to or in lieu of magnetic tests. Because of the sensitive nature of the fields and particles scientific measurements being conducted by the JUNO space mission to Jupiter, the imposition of stringent magnetic control specifications required a magnetic control program to ensure that the spacecraft's science magnetometers and plasma wave search coil were not magnetically contaminated by flight system magnetic interferences. With Aerospace's magnetic modeling, simulation and analysis and JPL's system modeling and testing approach, and LMSS's test support, the project achieved a cost effective approach to achieving a magnetically clean spacecraft. This paper presents lessons learned from the JUNO magnetic testing approach and Aerospace's modeling, simulation and analysis activities used to solve problems such as remnant magnetization, performance of hard and soft magnetic materials within the targeted space system in applied external magnetic fields.

magnetics↗
NASA NTRS2012

Real-time Accurate Surface Reconstruction Pipeline for Vision Guided Planetary Exploration Using Unmanned Ground and Aerial Vehicles

This report discusses work completed over the summer at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), California Institute of Technology. A system is presented to guide ground or aerial unmanned robots using computer vision. The system performs accurate camera calibration, camera pose refinement and surface extraction from images collected by a camera mounted on the vehicle. The application motivating the research is planetary exploration and the vehicles are typically rovers or unmanned aerial vehicles. The information extracted from imagery is used primarily for navigation, as robot location is the same as the camera location and the surfaces represent the terrain that rovers traverse. The processed information must be very accurate and acquired very fast in order to be useful in practice. The main challenge being addressed by this project is to achieve high estimation accuracy and high computation speed simultaneously, a difficult task due to many technical reasons.

computer vision↗
NASA NTRS2012

Next Generation Simulation Framework for Robotic and Human Space Missions

The Dartslab team at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) has a long history of developing physics-based simulations based on the Darts/Dshell simulation framework that have been used to simulate many planetary robotic missions, such as the Cassini spacecraft and the rovers that are currently driving on Mars. Recent collaboration efforts between the Dartslab team at JPL and the Mission Operations Directorate (MOD) at NASA Johnson Space Center (JSC) have led to significant enhancements to the Dartslab DSENDS (Dynamics Simulator for Entry, Descent and Surface landing) software framework. The new version of DSENDS is now being used for new planetary mission simulations at JPL. JSC is using DSENDS as the foundation for a suite of software known as COMPASS (Core Operations, Mission Planning, and Analysis Spacecraft Simulation) that is the basis for their new human space mission simulations and analysis. In this paper, we will describe the collaborative process with the JPL Dartslab and the JSC MOD team that resulted in the redesign and enhancement of the DSENDS software. We will outline the improvements in DSENDS that simplify creation of new high-fidelity robotic/spacecraft simulations. We will illustrate how DSENDS simulations are assembled and show results from several mission simulations.

Dartslab↗
NASA NTRS2015

Fault Management Architectures and the Challenges of Providing Software Assurance

Fault Management (FM) is focused on safety, the preservation of assets, and maintaining the desired functionality of the system. How FM is implemented varies among missions. Common to most missions is system complexity due to a need to establish a multi-dimensional structure across hardware, software and spacecraft operations. FM is necessary to identify and respond to system faults, mitigate technical risks and ensure operational continuity. Generally, FM architecture, implementation, and software assurance efforts increase with mission complexity. Because FM is a systems engineering discipline with a distributed implementation, providing efficient and effective verification and validation (V&V) is challenging. A breakout session at the 2012 NASA Independent Verification & Validation (IV&V) Annual Workshop titled "V&V of Fault Management: Challenges and Successes" exposed this issue in terms of V&V for a representative set of architectures. NASA's Software Assurance Research Program (SARP) has provided funds to NASA IV&V to extend the work performed at the Workshop session in partnership with NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). NASA IV&V will extract FM architectures across the IV&V portfolio and evaluate the data set, assess visibility for validation and test, and define software assurance methods that could be applied to the various architectures and designs. This SARP initiative focuses efforts on FM architectures from critical and complex projects within NASA. The identification of particular FM architectures and associated V&V/IV&V techniques provides a data set that can enable improved assurance that a system will adequately detect and respond to adverse conditions. Ultimately, results from this activity will be incorporated into the NASA Fault Management Handbook providing dissemination across NASA, other agencies and the space community. This paper discusses the approach taken to perform the evaluations and preliminary findings from the research.

Fault Management↗
NASA NTRS2011

Implementation of Motion Simulation Software and Visual-Auditory Electronics for Use in a Low Gravity Robotic Testbed

The Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is developing the All-Terrain Hex-Limbed Extra-Terrestrial Explorer (ATHLETE) to assist in manned space missions. One of the proposed targets for this robotic vehicle is a near-Earth asteroid (NEA), which typically exhibit a surface gravity of only a few micro-g. In order to properly test ATHLETE in such an environment, the development team has constructed an inverted Stewart platform testbed that acts as a robotic motion simulator. This project focused on creating physical simulation software that is able to predict how ATHLETE will function on and around a NEA. The corresponding platform configurations are calculated and then passed to the testbed to control ATHLETE's motion. In addition, imitation attitude, imitation attitude control thrusters were designed and fabricated for use on ATHLETE. These utilize a combination of high power LEDs and audio amplifiers to provide visual and auditory cues that correspond to the physics simulation.

gravity↗
NASA NTRS2011

Project Report: Automatic Sequence Processor Software Analysis

The Mission Planning and Sequencing (MPS) element of Multi-Mission Ground System and Services (MGSS) provides space missions with multi-purpose software to plan spacecraft activities, sequence spacecraft commands, and then integrate these products and execute them on spacecraft. Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is currently is flying many missions. The processes for building, integrating, and testing the multi-mission uplink software need to be improved to meet the needs of the missions and the operations teams that command the spacecraft. The Multi-Mission Sequencing Team is responsible for collecting and processing the observations, experiments and engineering activities that are to be performed on a selected spacecraft. The collection of these activities is called a sequence and ultimately a sequence becomes a sequence of spacecraft commands. The operations teams check the sequence to make sure that no constraints are violated. The workflow process involves sending a program start command, which activates the Automatic Sequence Processor (ASP). The ASP is currently a file-based system that is comprised of scripts written in perl, c-shell and awk. Once this start process is complete, the system checks for errors and aborts if there are any; otherwise the system converts the commands to binary, and then sends the resultant information to be radiated to the spacecraft.

sequencing↗
NASA NTRS2011

Data Interconnection Exploration

This project involves innovating the way the Quality Assurance organization at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) tracks the receiving inspection of JPL Critical Items (JCI) procured from suppliers. The Quality Assurance organization uses a Microsoft Access based front-end to enter items into an inspection queue. The current design has grown to be much more than was expected when the inspection queue system was created in 2007. The goal is to migrate to a web based solution that will allow the handling of more data, multiple input interfaces, and customizable display options. This has been achieved by implementing a divided tables scheme, the use of ColdFusion programming language, and the usage of Web 2.0 technologies such as AJAX and jQuery. These updates will allow for future expansion as well as the standardization of inspection queues for the Quality Assurance organization. When engineers and scientists order flight hardware, they cannot use it straight away. After a spacecraft or a satellite has been launched, it will be impossible to repair; therefore, the parts used must be inspected to make sure they are operating correctly and within the required specifications. The task of inspecting these JPL Critical Items (JCI) falls on the Quality Assurance organization. One of the tools the receiving inspection group uses is a database to maintain a queue of inspections that need to be done and of inspections that have been completed. The current Access interface has worked well but increased amounts of data, multiple input interfaces, and changes to how data is handled have made it necessary to seek a new way of organizing items for inspection. In addition, the different inspection groups have recently been merged and each has different ways of keeping track of inspection information. The ultimate goal is for the new group to have one shared inspection queue and website. To achieve this goal, I have been working with Ian Luczon of Procurement Quality Assurance and 3 Myers Hawkins, another intern, to not only create the new queue for receiving inspection but also a central web portal for the newly combined inspection group.

flight hardware↗
NASA NTRS2011

An Set-Free, All Digital Controlled Point-of-Load Regulator for Next Generation Power Systems: ADC-POL

This paper presents a digitally controlled programmable point-of-load regulator for next-generation power systems. A novel digital control scheme was designed to minimize single-event effect (SEE)-induced transient effects. By effectively programming the loop transmission, the POL can trade off transient response time with SET robustness. The IC works with 1 to 5.5 V input voltage, 1-4.5V regulated output voltage, high efficiency (peak efficiency at 94%) and power of up to 5 W. The design was fabricated in the AMI i2t100 0.7 mu m complimentary, metal-oxide semiconductor (CMOS) process and characterized with the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) pulsed laser system.

Digital Signal Processing (DP)↗
NASA NTRS2011

Wake Cycle Robustness of the Mars Science Laboratory Flight Software

The Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) is a spacecraft being developed by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) for the purpose of in-situ exploration on the surface of Mars. The objective of MSL is to explore and quantitatively assess a local region on the Martian surface as a habitat for microbial life, past or present. This objective will be accomplished through the assessment of the biological potential of at least one target environment, the characterization of the geology and geochemistry of the landing region, an investigation of the planetary process relevant to past habitability, and a characterization of surface radiation. For this purpose, MSL incorporates a total of ten scientific instruments for which functions are to include, among others, atmospheric and descent imaging, chemical composition analysis, and radiation measurement. The Flight Software (FSW) system is responsible for all mission phases, including launch, cruise, entry-descent-landing, and surface operation of the rover. Because of the essential nature of flight software to project success, each of the software modules is undergoing extensive testing to identify and correct errors.

Whitehill, Robert↗
NASA NTRS2011

Numerical Simulations of a 20-kW Class Hall Thruster Using the Magnetic-Field-Aligned-Mesh Code Hall2De

This paper reports on numerical simulations of the NASA-300M, a 20-kW class Hall thruster developed at the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC). The numerical simulations have been performed with a 2-D axisymmetric, magnetic field-aligned-mesh (MFAM) plasma solver developed at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL). The main objective of the collaborative effort is to combine physics-based simulation, plasma diagnostics and recent findings on erosion physics to design and demonstrate a high-power, high-performance Hall thruster that exceeds the life of state-of-the-art Hall thrusters by more than one order of magnitude. The thruster simulations have been carried out at a discharge voltage of 500 V and discharge current of 40 A. The results indicate that although the impact energy of ions may attain values that are comparable to the discharge voltage along the downstream portions of the channel, a withdrawn ionization region and significant ion focusing combine to sustain erosion rates below 1 mm/kh. A more extensive evaluation of the baseline NASA-300M configuration and re-design of this thruster with magnetically shielded walls constitute the main focus of our work in the coming months.

plasma simulations↗
NASA NTRS2011

Clonal Selection Based Artificial Immune System for Generalized Pattern Recognition

The last two decades has seen a rapid increase in the application of AIS (Artificial Immune Systems) modeled after the human immune system to a wide range of areas including network intrusion detection, job shop scheduling, classification, pattern recognition, and robot control. JPL (Jet Propulsion Laboratory) has developed an integrated pattern recognition/classification system called AISLE (Artificial Immune System for Learning and Exploration) based on biologically inspired models of B-cell dynamics in the immune system. When used for unsupervised or supervised classification, the method scales linearly with the number of dimensions, has performance that is relatively independent of the total size of the dataset, and has been shown to perform as well as traditional clustering methods. When used for pattern recognition, the method efficiently isolates the appropriate matches in the data set. The paper presents the underlying structure of AISLE and the results from a number of experimental studies.

pattern recognition↗