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DOE OSTI2022

Advancing Theory and Modeling Efforts in Heliophysics

Heliophysics theory and modeling build understanding from fundamental principles to motivate, interpret, and predict observations. Together with observational analysis, they constitute a comprehensive scientific program in heliophysics. As observations and data analysis become increasingly detailed, it is critical that theory and modeling develop more quantitative predictions and iterate with observations. Advanced theory and modeling can inspire and greatly improve the design of new instruments and increase their chance of success. In addition, in order to build physicsbased space weather forecast models, it is important to keep developing and testing new theories, and maintaining constant communications with theory and modeling. Maintaining a sustainable effort in theory and modeling is critically important to heliophysics. We recommend that all funding agencies join forces and consider expanding current and creating new theory and modeling programs–especially, 1. NASA should restore the HTMS program to its original support level to meet the critical needs of heliophysics science; 2. a Strategic Research Model program needs to be created to support model development for next-generation basic research codes; 3. new programs must be created for addressing mission-critical theory and modeling needs; and 4. enhanced programs are urgently required for training the next generation of theorists and modelers.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2023

Design and Characterization of the Engineering Model of the Spectrometer Onboard LuSEE-Night

The Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Explorer - Night, LuSEE-Night, is a low-frequency radio astronomy experiment that will explore the cosmic Dark Ages signal on the radio quiet farside of the Moon. The LuSEE-Night carries a radio frequency spectrometer consisting of a set of antennas, analog and digital processing electronics, and will be launched by NASA's Commercial Lunar Payload Services in 2025. The spectrometer is designed to observe the spectrum of the radio sky in the 0.5−50MHz band. The engineering model (EM) of the four-channel spectrometer has been developed. The EM has been characterized for linearity, gain, noise, and their temperature dependence, confirming that the EM meets all the requirements for LuSEE-Night. Three mitigation techniques have been implemented and verified to suppress self-induced electromagnetic interference (EMI). The flight model of the spectrometer is currently being developed and is scheduled to be shipped to the integration site in early 2024

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

DOE OSTI2023

Enabling Dark Energy Measurements from DESI and LSST (Final Technical Report)

This grant enabled efforts to lead the Survey Validation of the Luminous Red Galaxy (LRG) sample for DESI, entailing intensive work to prepare target samples, test their performance with DESI data, and validate that the requirements of the survey for this key sample are met. Luminous Red Galaxies represent the gold standard target class for Baryon Acoustic Observation experiments to study Dark Energy. It also funded work to co-leading the Follow-up Task Force within the LSST Dark Energy Science Collaboration (LSST DESC), which is intended to help develop collaborations with external groups and to produce cross-working group proposals for telescope time, policy proposals and white papers as needed in order to help the collaboration obtain and make use of complementary data which will strengthen LSST Dark Energy constraints. The PI has been particularly engaged in efforts to obtain access to spectroscopic training sets for LSST photometric redshifts in the first years of the survey, which requires developing relationships with groups that are obtaining such data for other purposes. This group has evolved into an External Synergies working group within DESC, also co-led by the PI. These groups have developed white papers for Astro2020, letters of intent and white papers for Snowmass2021, and a response to a DOE-NASA RFI. It also has enabled smaller contributions to improving LSST DESC pipeline infrastructure for photometric redshifts.

72 PHYSICS OF ELEMENTARY PARTICLES AND FIELDS↗

DOE OSTI2026

General-Purpose Heat Source Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator Flight Unit 5 Refurbished (GPHS-RTG F5R) Power Prediction

INL has evaluated and refurbished General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator (RTG) Flight Unit 5 (GPHS-RTG F5R or F5R) that was defueled in 2005. The generator has passed all the INL internal reviews, an end item data package has been delivered to NASA and is ready fueling for a mission. NASA requested a user’s guide for F5R with enough detail for a prospective mission proposal. This report documents the development of the power prediction model used in the user’s guide. The prediction evaluated the thermoelectric “burn-in” and the graceful degradation modes of the missions and developed a thermal inventory dependent equation that predicts the power that matches Galileo, Cassini, and PNH within a three-standard deviation of ±1%. This prediction is only valid for the 30 VDC load voltage of these missions.

30 - DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗

DOE OSTI2026

General-Purpose Heat Source Radioisotope Thermoelectric Generator Flight Unit 5 Refurbished (GPHS-RTG F5R) Power Prediction

30 - DIRECT ENERGY CONVERSION↗

DOE OSTI2025

Evaluation of cloud height, optical thickness, and phase retrievals from the CHROMA algorithm applied to Sentinel-3 OLCI data

We previously developed the Cloud Height Retrieval from O 2 Molecular Absorption (CHROMA) algorithm for the Ocean Color Instrument (OCI) on the new NASA Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE) mission. Here, we apply CHROMA to observations from the Ocean Land Colour Instrument (OLCI) to guide expectations for PACE, as it will take some time to obtain large-scale validation data for OCI. We use cloud top height (CTH), phase, and (for liquid clouds) cloud optical thickness (COT) data from the ground-based Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) network to evaluate the OLCI retrievals. We found that OLCI and Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) CTH compare similarly well to the ARM reference. OLCI has a tendency to underestimate CTH as CTH increases, and algorithm assumptions about cloud geometric thickness may contribute to this. ARM COT from multifilter shadowband radiometers (MFRSR) and Sun photometers are well-correlated with one another, albeit with a roughly 30 % offset on average; OLCI and MODIS COT agree more closely with the MFRSR data. OLCI retrieval uncertainty estimates show skill at telling low-uncertainty cases from high-uncertainty ones, although CTH uncertainties are underestimated. Additionally, we compare the OLCI data to satellite retrievals based on thermal infrared measurements from MODIS and Sea and Land Surface Temperature Radiometer (SLSTR) data. Differences are broadly consistent with physical expectations based on the A-band vs. thermal techniques, although one key challenge in such aggregated comparisons is different cloud masking sensitivities and algorithm failure rates meaning additional sampling differences are introduced. We conclude by discussing the transition to and possible enhancements for PACE OCI.

Sayer, Andrew M. [Univ. of Maryland Baltimore Coun↗

DOE OSTI2024

Development and characterization of the flight model spectrometer onboard LuSEE-Night

The Lunar Surface Electromagnetics Experiment - Night, LuSEE-Night, is a low-frequency radio astronomy experiment that will explore the cosmic Dark Ages signal on the radio-quiet far side of the Moon. Here, the LuSEE-Night carries a radio frequency spectrometer consisting of a set of antennas, analog and digital processing electronics, and will be launched by NASA’s Commercial Lunar Payload Services in 2025. The spectrometer is designed to observe the spectrum of the radio sky in the 0.5-50MHz band. The flight model (FM) of the four-channel spectrometer has been developed. The FM has been characterized for linearity, gain, noise, and their temperature dependence, confirming that the FM meets all the requirements for LuSEE-Night.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

DOE OSTI2026

Measuring X-Ray Emission Line Shapes in Neutral Species for XRISM Calibration

Space X-ray spectrometers such as the Resolve instrument on XRISM require precise calibration in order to interpret the spectra of astrophysical objects. Key components of the calibration are the energy scale and the core line spread function, both of which vary with photon energy. A major issue in the calibration of high-resolution spectrometers is locating good calibrators with well-known and stable intrinsic line shapes. Neutral fluorescence is widely used, but inner-shell transitions in neutral atoms often exhibit complex, poorly documented line shapes that vary with excitation conditions. Here, in this study, we present empirical measurements of K-shell transitions in neutral O and F below 1 keV using an engineering model XRISM calorimeter array, an electron bombardment modulated X-ray source, and an electron beam ion trap (EBIT) to provide a precise energy reference. In addition, we report measurements of the Mo Lα complex with the transition-edge microcalorimeter spectrometer (TEMS), which reveal strong satellite structure and sensitivity of the line shape to the incident exciting spectrum. Together, these results demonstrate the need for empirical line-shape models, highlight the nonstationary nature of neutral fluorescence features, and define a path toward developing transfer standards for XRISM and future precision instruments such as Athena/X-IFU.

Astronomy and AstroPhysics↗

DOE OSTI2025

Resonant Slow Extraction Simulation using Bmad

Simulations of slow extraction and transport of charged particle beams from synchrotrons requires careful modeling and experimentation. In this paper, we outline how the Bmad modeling software was adapted and developed to run third-integer resonant extraction simulations of beams at Brookhaven National Laboratory’s Booster synchrotron. Further, we show experimental comparisons of the slowly extracted beams transferred to the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) transport line. In this process, beam passes through a stripping foil element at the extraction point, which, along with stripping remaining electrons from the beam ions, acts as a scatterer to modify the phase space, moving to a more Gaussian-like distribution. This modification to the beam helps generate a uniform beam at the beam line’s target location; which is necessary for the variety of experiments performed at the facility. During this work, beam energy loss and multiple scattering by foil routines were built in conjunction with the Bmad code developers and are now integrated into the software.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

DOE OSTI2025

Model America - 2022 Arizona Building Energy Simulation Results from ORNL's AutoBEM

This dataset contains energy simulation outputs using ORNL's AutoBEM, covering the summer months (June 1st to August 31st) (named by "county_name.csv") and full-year periods (in output_all_year.zip) for each county in Arizona, USA. The data package includes simulation results such as basic energy metrics and anthropogenic emissions estimates. Files are provided in .csv. These data were generated to analyze the impact of weather conditions on energy use and emissions across urban and rural environments in Arizona, aiming to support research on urban heat islands, energy efficiency, and building retrofitting strategies. The source data for this work include NASA POWER weather datasets and computational models run using AutoBEM (i.e., an automated, large-scale energy simulation tool leveraging OpenStudio/EnergyPlus). This dataset can assist researchers, urban planners, and policymakers in developing climate-resilient energy systems and understanding anthropogenic contributions to local environments.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2025

Effects of a refractory metal protective barrier on uranium carbonitride ceramic–metallic composites exposed to a high temperature hydrogen environment

Uranium nitride has been under consideration at NASA and the Department of Energy for nuclear thermal propulsion applications intended for deep space exploration vehicles. It is critical to the success of the technology development that the behavior of the fuel system is properly characterized in operational environments. This body of work fabricated ceramic metal composites consisting of uranium ceramic fuel in a molybdenum and molybdenum–tungsten metal matrix, both with and without an exterior molybdenum barrier. Specimens were introduced to a high temperature hydrogen environment and characterized through x-ray diffraction, scanning electron microscopy, and energy dispersive spectroscopy to identify characteristic changes. A portion of the specimens was fabricated with a 1.27 mm thick molybdenum barrier in order to isolate the material from the hydrogen environment. Instability of the uranium nitride occurred as low as 2073 K, leading to aggressive instability approaching 2658 K. Carbon reactions with the metal matrix were observed as well as alloying between the uranium and metal matrix constituents. The liquid uranium resulting from the instability of the uranium nitride was observed to attack the grain boundaries of the refractory metal, resulting in the formation of a liquid uranium molybdenum eutectic melt. Specimens encased in a barrier experienced similar results. The authors conclude this is a significant challenge to applications of this cermet at these temperatures. Alternate configurations with resilient hermetic seals or lower temperature applications such as power reactors may have more success.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

DOE OSTI2020

Quantifying long-term seasonal and regional impacts of North American fire activity on continental boundary layer aerosols and cloud condensation nuclei

An intimate knowledge of aerosol transport is essential in reducing the uncertainty of the impacts of aerosols on cloud development. Datasets from the U. S. Department of Energy (DOE) Atmospheric Radiation Measurement platform in the Southern Great Plains region (ARM-SGP) and the NASA Modern-Era Retrospective Analysis for Research and Applications, version 2 (MERRA-2) showed seasonal increases in aerosol loading and total carbon concentration during the spring and summer months (2008-2016) which was attributed to fire activity and smoke transport within North America. The monthly mean MERRA-2 surface carbonaceous aerosol mass concentration and ARM-SGP total carbon products were strongly correlated (R=0.82, p<0.01) along with a moderate correlation with the ARM-SGP cloud condensation nuclei (N CCN ) product (0.5, p~0.1). The monthly mean ARM-SGP total carbon and N CCN products were strongly correlated (0.7, p~0.01). An additional product denoting fire number and coverage taken from the National Interagency Fire Center (NIFC) showed a moderate correlation with the MERRA-2 carbonaceous product (0.45, p<0.01) during the 1981-2016 warm season months (March-September). With respect to meteorological conditions, the correlation between the NIFC fire product and MERRA-2 850 hPa isobaric height anomalies was lower (0.26, p~0.13) due to the variability in the frequency, intensity, and number of fires in North America. An observed increase in the isobaric height anomaly during the past decade may lead to frequent synoptic ridging and drier conditions with more fires, thereby potentially impacting cloud/precipitation processes and decreasing air quality.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2023

Science & Technology Review (April/May 2023)

NASA’s Double Asteroid Redirection Test (DART), featured beginning on p.4, has been a testament to Lawrence Livermore’s multidisciplinary expertise. For DART, the Laboratory developed planetary defense strategies, modeled materials and impacts, and utilized advanced machine learning to create and evaluate multitudes of impact scenarios—informing prediction and analysis of the intercept of a small spacecraft with a much larger asteroid of unknown properties. The success of the project heralds a bright future for space science and security work at the Laboratory.

37 INORGANIC, ORGANIC, PHYSICAL, AND ANALYTICAL CH↗

DOE OSTI2021

Evaluating use of the NASA Nowcast of Atmospheric Ionizing Radiation for Aviation Safety (NAIRAS) system for verifying/validating AMS cosmic background radiation measurements RSLA-006-20, Year 2 of 2

Presentation to be presented during the Site-Directed Research and Development (SDRD) program FY 2021 review meeting (Webex), September 22–23, 2021.

McGee, benjamin↗

DOE OSTI2023

Systematic Validation of Ensemble Cloud-Process Simulations using Polarimetric Radar Observations and Simulator over the NASA Wallops Flight Facility

The BiLateral Operational Storm-Scale Observation and Modeling (BLOSSOM) project was initiated to establish a long-term supersite to improve understanding of cloud physical states and processes as well as to support satellite and climate model programs over the WFF site via a bilateral approach of storm-scale observations and process modeling. This study highlights a noble systematic validation framework of the BLOSSOM ensemble cloud-process simulations through mixed-phase, light-rain, and deep-convective precipitation cases. The framework consists of creating a domain-shifted ensemble of large-scale forcing datasets, and configuring and performing cloud-process simulations with three different bulk microphysics schemes. Validation uses NASA S-band dual-POLarimetric radar (NPOL) observations in the form of statistical composites and skill scores via a polarimetric radar simulator and newly developed CfRad Data tool (CfRAD). While the simulations capture the overall structures of the reflectivity composites, polarimetric signals are still poorly simulated, mainly due to a lack of representation of ice microphysics diversity in shapes, orientation distributions, and their complex mixtures. Despite the limitation, this new ensemble-based validation framework demonstrates that 1) no particular forcing or microphysics scheme outperforms the rest and 2) the skill scores of coarse- and fine-resolution ensemble simulations with different domain-shifted forcing and microphysics schemes are highly correlated with each other with no clear improvement. On the other hand, this suggests that coarse-resolution ensemble simulations are relevant for selecting the best meteorological forcing and microphysics scheme before conducting computationally demanding large eddy simulations (LESs) in support of aircraft and satellite instrument development as well as cloud-precipitation-convection parameterizations.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

DOE OSTI2024

PreMevE‐MEO: Predicting Ultra‐Relativistic Electrons Using Observations From GPS Satellites

Abstract Ultra‐relativistic electrons with energies greater than or equal to two megaelectron‐volt (MeV) pose a major radiation threat to spaceborne electronics, and thus specifying those highly energetic electrons has a significant meaning to space weather communities. Here we report the latest progress in developing our predictive model for MeV electrons in the outer radiation belt. The new version, primarily driven by electron measurements made along medium‐Earth‐orbits (MEO), is called PREdictive MEV Electron (PreMevE)‐MEO model that nowcasts ultra‐relativistic electron flux distributions across the whole outer belt. Model inputs include >2 MeV electron fluxes observed in MEOs by a fleet of GPS satellites as well as electrons measured by one Los Alamos satellite in the geosynchronous orbit. We developed an innovative Sparse Multi‐Inputs Latent Ensemble NETwork (SmileNet) which combines convolutional neural networks with transformers, and we used long‐term in situ electron data from NASA's Van Allen Probes mission to train, validate, optimize, and test the model. It is shown that PreMevE‐MEO can provide hourly nowcasts with high model performance efficiency and high correlation with observations. This prototype PreMevE‐MEO model demonstrates the feasibility of making high‐fidelity predictions driven by observations from longstanding space infrastructure in MEO, thus has great potential of growing into an invaluable space weather operational warning tool.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

DOE OSTI2021

Detecting Arsenic Contamination Using Satellite Imagery and Machine Learning

Arsenic, a potent carcinogen and neurotoxin, affects over 200 million people globally. Current detection methods are laborious, expensive, and unscalable, being difficult to implement in developing regions and during crises such as COVID-19. This study attempts to determine if a relationship exists between soil’s hyperspectral data and arsenic concentration using NASA’s Hyperion satellite. It is the first arsenic study to use satellite-based hyperspectral data and apply a classification approach. Four regression machine learning models are tested to determine this correlation in soil with bare land cover. Raw data are converted to reflectance, problematic atmospheric influences are removed, characteristic wavelengths are selected, and four noise reduction algorithms are tested. The combination of data augmentation, Genetic Algorithm, Second Derivative Transformation, and Random Forest regression (R 2 =0.840 and normalized root mean squared error (re-scaled to [0,1]) = 0.122) shows strong correlation, performing better than past models despite using noisier satellite data (versus lab-processed samples). Three binary classification machine learning models are then applied to identify high-risk shrub-covered regions in ten U.S. states, achieving strong accuracy (=0.693) and F1-score (=0.728). Overall, these results suggest that such a methodology is practical and can provide a sustainable alternative to arsenic contamination detection.

63 RADIATION, THERMAL, AND OTHER ENVIRON. POLLUTAN↗

DOE OSTI2020

Roadmap on cosmic EUV and x-ray spectroscopy

Cosmic EUV/x-ray spectroscopists, including both solar and astrophysical analysts, have a wide range of high-resolution and high-sensitivity tools in use and a number of new facilities in development for launch. As this bandpass requires placing the spectrometer beyond the Earth’s atmosphere, each mission represents a major investment by a national space agency such as NASA, ESA, or JAXA, and more typically a collaboration between two or three. In general justifying new mission requires an improvement in capabilities of at least an order of magnitude, but the sensitivity of these existing missions are already taxing existing atomic data quantity and accuracy. This roadmap reviews the existing missions, showing how in a number of areas atomic data limits the science that can be performed. The missions that will be launched in the coming Decade will without doubt require both more and improved measurements of wavelengths and rates, along with theoretical calculations of collisional and radiative cross sections for a wide range of processes.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗