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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 NTRS2019

Requirements Development and Management on the Psyche Project

In January 2017, Psyche was one of two mission concepts selected by NASA for flight as part of the 14th Discovery mission competition. The project has been staffing up and maturing the spacecraft, instrument and mission system baseline designs on the path towards a 2022 launch. During much of 2018, the Project has been executing the lifecycle stage called Phase B, “Preliminary Design and Technology Completion,” one key element of which is the development and management of requirements at various levels. In the case of the Psyche project, this process has been particularly unique for several reasons. The project utilizes a Solar Electric Propulsion (SEP) Chassis from Space Systems Loral (SSL), a high volume manufacturer of commercial geostationary (GEO) telecom spacecraft based on the 1300 satellite bus. While SSL has an extensive, well-vetted set of requirements based on their very successful Earth-orbiting product line, translating that heritage to a deep space science mission required special care. In addition to the differences associated with the deep space environment and longer communication times, new interfaces had to be incorporated. While a substantial portion of the Flight System consists of the SEP Chassis, there were several new interfaces within various subsystems between SSL components and those provided by JPL and other contractors. Managing these interfaces through requirements at a relatively higher level than normally seen on internal or external builds proved challenging. Finally, the Psyche spacecraft plans to host the flight terminal of the Deep Space Optical Communications (DSOC) technology demonstration, which is itself a separate project with its own requirements that must be flowed down and managed. This paper will present an overview of the requirement development and management process for the Psyche project. It will discuss in detail the various challenges summarized above, the methods and decisions chosen to address them, and evaluate their overall effectiveness at this stage in the project.

Elkins-Tanton, Linda T.↗
NASA NTRS2018

The Large UV/Optical/Infrared Surveyor (LUVOIR): Decadal Mission Study Update

NASA commissioned the study of four large mission concepts, including the Large Ultraviolet / Optical / Infrared (LUVOIR) Surveyor, to be evaluated by the 2020 Decadal Survey in Astrophysics. In response, the Science and Technology Definition Team (STDT) identified a broad range of science objectives for LUVOIR that include the direct imaging and spectral characterization of habitable exoplanets around sun-like stars, the study of galaxy formation and evolution, the exchange of matter between galaxies, star and planet formation, and the remote sensing of Solar System objects. To meet these objectives, the LUVOIR Study Office, located at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC), completed the first design iteration of a 15-m segmented-aperture observatory that would be launched by the Space Launch System (SLS) Block 2 configuration. The observatory includes four serviceable instruments: the Extreme Coronagraph for Living Planetary Systems (ECLIPS), an optical / near-infrared coronagraph capable of delivering 10^-10contrast at inner working angles as small as 2 O/D; the LUVOIR UV Multi-object Spectrograph (LUMOS), which will provide low- and medium-resolution UV (100 – 400 nm) multi-object imaging spectroscopy in addition to far-UV imaging; the High Definition Imager (HDI), a high-resolution wide-field-of-view NUV-Optical-NIR imager; and Pollux, a high-resolution UV spectro-polarimeter being contributed by Centre National d’Etudes Spatiales (CNES).The study team has executed a second design iteration to further improve upon the 15-m concept, while simultaneously studying an 8-m concept. In these proceedings, we provide an update on these two architectures.

space telescopes↗
NASA NTRS2019

Swift-XRT Follow-up of Gravitational-wave Triggers in the Second Advanced LIGO/Virgo Observing Run

The Neil Gehrels Swift Observatory carried out prompt searches for gravitational-wave (GW) events detected by the LIGO/Virgo Collaboration (LVC) during the second observing run ("O2"). Swift performed extensive tiling of eight LVC triggers, two of which had very low false-alarm rates (GW170814 and the epochal GW170817), indicating a high confidence of being astrophysical in origin; the latter was the first GW event to have an electromagnetic counterpart detected. In this paper we describe the follow-up performed during O2 and the results of our searches. No GW electromagnetic counterparts were detected; this result is expected, as GW170817 remained the only astrophysical event containing at least one neutron star after LVC's later retraction of some events. A number of X-ray sources were detected, with the majority of identified sources being active galactic nuclei. We discuss the detection rate of transient X-ray sources and their implications in the O2 tiling searches. Finally, we describe the lessons learned during O2 and how these are being used to improve the Swift follow-up of GW events. In particular, we simulate a population of gamma-ray burst afterglows to evaluate our source ranking system's ability to differentiate them from unrelated and uncataloged X-ray sources. We find that ≈60%–70% of afterglows whose jets are oriented toward Earth will be given high rank (i.e., "interesting" designation) by the completion of our second follow-up phase (assuming that their location in the sky was observed), but that this fraction can be increased to nearly 100% by performing a third follow-up observation of sources exhibiting fading behavior.

N. J. Klingler↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Global Positioning System Constellation Modernization Impact on Sidelobe Capable GPS Receivers in Geostationary Orbit

This paper provides on-orbit insight into Global Positioning System Receiver (GPSR) performance at a geostationary orbit (GEO) and contrasts that performance regarding the modernized and heritage GPS constellation currently operational. The subject matter of this paper falls under the following topics a) heritage and modern GPS transmit pattern comparison, b) GOES-R GPSR acquisition and tracking characterization regarding the first four operational GPS III vehicles, and c)relevant signal requirements as it pertains to GEO GPSR facilitation. The GPSR described herein is onboard the GOES-R series satellites. GOES-R (Geostationary Operational Environmental Satellite-R Series) is the first in a 4-part series of new weather satellites set to replace and upgrade the older GOES constellation. Two GOES-R have been launched to date, GOES-16 and GOES-17, the data presented in this paper are from both vehicles over common time spans. The GPSR on board this geostationary weather satellite is a mission critical, enabling technology which has been both tested on the ground and evaluated on-orbit to verify its effectivity[1]. This is a completely new system design consisting of a unique L1 GEO antenna, low-noise amplifier (LNA) assembly and a 12-channel GPSR capable of tracking the edge of the main beam and the sidelobes of the GPS L1 signal. Any satellite intending to maximize GPS navigation performance at GEO will need to implement a GPSR system that tracks sidelobes. GOES-R is the first civilian operational satellite to utilize GPS sidelobes for navigation at GEO, which is the key factor in the systems highly accurate, robust and continuous navigation solution. However, this also renders a distinct sensitivity to changes in the GPS transmit signal pattern in the sidelobe regime as a result of the new GPS III constellation modernization. This paper presents results showing that the GOES-RGPSR solution, given GPS constellation modernization to GPS III, although impacted slightly in received C/N0 at certain geometries, will continue to meet all performance requirements tracking up to 12 satellites and achieving excellent carrier-to-noise spectral density (C/N0).

GPS↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Coupled Aeropropulsive Design Optimization of a Podded Electric Propulsor

New aircraft concepts are increasingly relying on non-traditional propulsion systems to achieve lower energy consumption. These non-traditional technologies, such as boundary layer ingestion or distributed electric propulsion, require a tight integration of the propulsion sys- tem to the airframe, and therefore, a traditional design approach where the aerodynamics and propulsion disciplines are considered separately is likely to result in sub-optimal designs. As a result, we have to rely on coupled aeropropulsive design optimization, in which fully coupled aeropropulsive models are optimized to maximize the advantages of these tightly integrated propulsion systems. Despite its advantages, aeropropulsive design optimization is a relatively new field, and significant advancements are required for wide adoption of this approach, especially in the context of robustness. In this work, we introduce two fully coupled aeropropulsive design optimization approaches that are compatible with CFD models with body-force terms and boundary conditions to model the effects of the propulsion system in the flow field. To test these new approaches, we developed a podded electric fan model based on the aft-propulsor of NASA’s STARC-ABL concept. This simple design problem enables us to rapidly develop and test different aeropropulsive coupling approaches, while including the challenging physical interactions that arise from coupling CFD and propulsion models. The coupled aeropropulsive model is implemented using the MPhys library, which is built with NASA’s OpenMDAO frame- work. Using this benchmark design problem, we demonstrate the robustness of the approaches and our aeropropulsive design optimization framework by performing a sweep of optimizations for a total of 50 CFD-based aeropropulsive design optimizations. Furthermore, the new aero- propulsive coupling approaches enable multi-point design optimizations. We demonstrate this capability in a multi-point design optimization problem where we optimize cruise performance subject to a fan-face distortion constraint at rolling take-off conditions. The aeropropulsive modeling approaches we present in this work represent a significant milestone in the field of aeropropulsive design optimization. The framework we developed is extremely robust and flexible, and these developments will be crucial for future aeropropulsive design optimizations of complete turbofan engines.

Optimization propulsion aerodynamics↗
NASA NTRS2020

Europa Clipper Mission: Onward to Implementation!

Europa, the fourth largest moon of Jupiter, is believed to be one of the best places in the solar system to look for extant life beyond Earth, and the Europa Clipper Mission is preparing to investigate. Now entering the fifth year of life as a formal project, the Europa Clipper Mission has completed its major design phase and is preparing for implementation. The mission envisions sending a flight system, consisting of a spacecraft equipped with a payload of NASA-selected scientific instruments, to execute numerous flybys of Europa while in Jupiter orbit. The mission is being formulated and implemented by a joint Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Project team. At the Project Preliminary Design Review (PDR) in August 2018, it was determined that the unique integration of the REASON instrument’s antennas with the spacecraft’s solar arrays required additional time for maturity and review. The required maturity was demonstrated, and in June 2019 the Clipper Mission passed its Delta Preliminary Design Review, and formal confirmation for entry into Phase C was announced by NASA in August 2019. The earliest launch opportunity is now in July 2023, one year later than originally planned. The Project is now working toward its Critical Design Review in May 2020. This paper will describe the progress of the Europa Clipper Mission since January 2019, including maturation of the spacecraft, subsystem and instrument designs, the beginning of fabrication of engineering models and the first flight models, planning for the verification & validation phase, and planning for operations.

Jackson, Maddalena↗
NASA NTRS2024

Establishing Standards for Lunar In Situ Resource Utilization Structural Materials

Lunar structures will be exposed to one of the most extreme environments that have ever been considered for human settlements. In situ, regolith-based materials are being proposed for construction on the moon, offering the benefit of reducing the cost of transporting large amounts of materials or prefabricated elements, and relying on the ability to transport mainly the equipment needed to construct landing pads, shelters, blast shields, habitats, roadways, etc. However, the properties of materials that are made, all or in part, from indigenous lunar resources are likely to change based on the make-up of the material, the location where it was taken from, the production processes, and time. No standards or building codes exist for the design and construction of infrastructure on the moon. Engineers will need dependable information about these materials before any design can be completed. Hard-won lessons from centuries of using similar resources on Earth need to be leveraged to develop the best procedures that will be critical for testing such materials for structural applications. Here we discuss the technical challenges of establishing such standards. Using the timely example of a landing pad on the moon, we identify the gaps in both knowledge and testing capabilities that exist today.

Shirley J. Dyke↗
DOE OSTI2019

Feasibility of Development of Geothermal Deep Direct-Use District Heating and Cooling system at West Virginia University Campus-Morgantown, WV

The Morgantown campus of West Virginia University (WVU) is uniquely positioned to host the first geothermal deep direct-use district heating and cooling (GDHC) system in the eastern United States. While much of the eastern United States does not have elevated heat flow, the Morgantown region of West Virginia is unique in exhibiting sufficient temperatures at the depth of a formation, the Tuscarora, which is expected to support a desirable flow rate of geofluid. Temperature and flow rate were identified in the 2006 MIT Future of Geothermal Energy Report to be the two most critical factors in minimizing the cost of geothermal energy. The WVU campus site offers surface demand coupled with the potential subsurface viability. Specifically, the existing district heating and cooling system that is in use year round will be leveraged. Absorption chilling systems are used to cool the campus in the summer and provide hot water circulating heat in the winter. Our overall project objectives are to 1) collect local information on these critical factors to understand the uncertainty and reduce the risk associated with developing the geothermal resource for use in a WVU campus GDHC system, and 2) complete an optimized design for the GDHC system by minimizing the delivered Levelized Cost of Heat (LCOH). A Tuscarora geological model was built based on core analysis and permeability measurements using data from nearby wells. This geological model is then translated into a reservoir model. iTOUGH2/EOS1 is used to simulate the subsurface portion of a GDHC system using two well configurations: 1) a pair of vertical wells, and 2) a pair of horizontal wells. The performance of both configurations is evaluated based on achievable flow rates and production fluid temperatures; the recommended well configuration is selected based on the expected GDHC system performance. The thermal breakthrough and reservoir productivity increased for horizontal well configuration however, the well-head LCOH for vertical well horizontal well configuration is higher than vertical wells due to the additional cost of horizontal drilling. To minimize the delivered LCOH, we perform an integrated surface-to-subsurface optimization of the full GDHC system. The economic and performance analysis of the GDHC system is evaluated for two cases: 1) using existing district heating and cooling facilities, and 2) by converting the current WVU campus steam infrastructure to a hot water system. The optimized GDHC system will be selected by minimizing the LCOH over these two possible configurations.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗
DOE OSTI2019

A Tool for Evaluating Youth Engagement in an Informal STEM Setting: The WGG Observation Protocol

This paper discusses findings from the use of the Wise Guys and Gals (WGG) Observation of WGG Youth Protocol in a blended learning environment. The protocol was used to assess youth engagement when completing blended engineering design challenges at two Boys and Girls Clubs. WGG is a project funded through a grant from the National Science Foundation and which brings blended learning design challenges to middle school aged learners in informal STEM (science, technology, engineering, and mathematics) settings. This paper explores the feasibility of using the observation protocol to collect data about youth engagement, and the potential use of the protocol in other informal STEM settings.

99 GENERAL AND MISCELLANEOUS↗
DOE OSTI2020

Petrophysical and geomechanical properties of gas hydrate-bearing sediments recovered from Alaska North Slope 2018 Hydrate-01 Stratigraphic Test Well

Knowledge of petrophysical and geomechanical properties of gas hydrate-bearing sediments are essential for predicting reservoir response due to gas production from gas hydrate reservoirs. That information will be critical parameters for designing production well completion such as specification of depressurization pump, water storage tank, and mesh size of sand screen. In December 2018, Stratigraphic Test Well Hydrate-01 was drilled in the western part of the Prudhoe Bay Unit, Alaska North Slope as part of the technical planning effort for a future long-term production test by collaborative team of DOE/NETL, USGS, and MH21-S (Boswell et al., 2020, Collett et al., 2020, Okinaka et al., 2020). Data set of logging-while-drilling (LWD) were acquired (Haines et al., 2020, Suzuki et al., 2019) and core sampling depth was determined on-site.Side-wall pressure coring was conducted to recover gas hydrate-bearing sediments from two reservoir sections named Unit-B and Unit-D. A total of 34 cores were successfully recovered by 5 runs of a wire-line deployed pressure corer (CoreVault® System - Halliburton). Core analysis scheme of this project are shown in Figure 1. All cores were quenched in liquid nitrogen while at high pressure in the laboratory of Stratum Reservoir, LLC. at Anchorage (Figure 1, a)). And the cores were removed from the pressure corer autoclave with temperature support of dry ice and stored under liquid nitrogen at atmospheric pressure. 19 damaged cores were processed to index property measurements directly such as grain size, grain density. 4 of another 17 cores were depressurized and trimmed for making a plug to analyze petrophysical properties of host sediments. Unsteady-state permeability test was conducted to obtain relative water permeability to gas and core scale NMR T2 distribution measurement was performed for evaluating pore size distribution at Houston (Figure 1, b)). Remained high quality 13 cores were preserved with gas hydrate for advanced laboratory analysis. National Institute of Advanced Industrial Science and Technology, as a part of the Japanese National Hydrate Research Program (MH21-S, funded by Ministry of Economy, Trade and Industry), received the samples at Sapporo, Japan for advanced core analysis. High-resolution X-ray CT was used to analyze the quality of the samples, which showed undisturbed lithological layers. Cores were lathed into cylindrical shape and distributed for multi property measurements (Figure 1, c)).<p>As a result, sediment from Unit-D is categorized as silty sand at ~37% porosity with ~80% gas hydrate saturation. An average hydration number n = 6.16 was measured by Raman spectroscopy. An average intrinsic permeability of ~400 mD and in situ effective permeability (with hydrate) on the order of ~10 mD. The Unit B recovered cores consisted of well sorted sand at ~40% porosity with ~95% gas hydrate saturation. An average intrinsic permeability of ~1 Darcy and in situ effective permeability on the order of ~30 mD was measured for the Unit B cores. There was a small permeability reduction due to porosity loss with increasing effective stress that simulated consolidation behavior along with depressurization in the highly permeable sandy sediment. The apparent minimum change in porosity and permeability may be caused by the low compressibility of quartz sand grains in the recovered cores. XRD and thermal conductivity analysis also suggested high quartz content. Triaxial compression tests established internal friction angles based on the Mohr-Coulomb's failure criterion, which are 40° for hydrate-bearing sediment and 29.8° for hydrate free sediment.</p>

Yoneda, Jun↗
DOE OSTI2018

Systems and Tools to Facilitate Aging Management Inspections of Used Nuclear Fuel Dry Storage Systems - 18382

The Used Nuclear Fuel (UNF) dry storage systems (DSSs) are currently used at almost all the nuclear plants in the USA for the storage of their UNF as the spent fuel pools are running out of capacity to store any additional discharged fuel. Even though these DSSs are supposed to be at the reactor site for a short amount of time, they are expected to be at the reactor sites for an extended duration due to the unavailability of Interim Storage Facilities (ISF) or a permanent disposal sites like Yucca Mountain. Maintaining the integrity of the DSS canisters and storage overpacks so they can safely protect the fuel and maintain the integrity of UNF is of utmost importance during storage at reactor site ISFSI or at the ISF. Comprehensive and robust Aging Management Program (AMP) is an important aspect for DSSs to satisfy these requirements. In order to address this industry need, TN Americas have developed an enhanced NUHOMS{sup R} DSS licensed by NRC under 10 CFR Part 72 regulations and a comprehensive AMP development which includes prevention, inspection, monitoring and mitigation of any corrosion or degradation of DSS components. For DSC and HSM inspection, two remotely operating delivery systems have been developed using non-destructive examination (NDE) methods including robotic crawler and inspection ring system. This paper describes details of these developments and status of their deployment for implementation at various utility ISFSI sites. TN Americas completed the detailed design of the DSC inspection system and conducted functional tests of the inspection system on a DSC mockup and the system is ready for deployment at any NUHOMS{sup R} ISFSI site. TN Americas is committed to offer the most robust and comprehensive AMP systems, tools and services to the industry to assure the safety of the deployed DSS at the utility sites. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
DOE OSTI2025

Integrated Molten Salt Reactor Modeling Capabilities in NEAMS Thermal Hydraulics Tools

The DOE neams program supports a full range of computational thermal fluids analysis capabilities and code developments for a broad range of advanced reactor concepts. The research and development approach under the thermal fluids technical area synergistically combines three length and time scales in a hierarchical multi-scale approach. To enable multi-scale thermal fluids capability using these codes, a key joint effort has been underway to develop an integrated system- and engineering-scale thermal fluids analysis capability, through integration of SAM and Pronghorn codes, both based on the MOOSE framework. This report summarizes recent advances in developing an integrated system- and engineering-scale modeling capability for the msr concept, which has gained significant interest in recent years. A consistent framework was established by coupling Pronghorn and SAM through the Saline interface, with thermophysical properties provided by the Molten Salt Thermal Property Database (MSTDB-TP). Further improvements were made to the coupling schemes and domain-overlapping strategies, enhancing the stability and robustness of multi-code simulations. Verification and validation efforts demonstrate the accuracy of this integration across a range of benchmark problems, including one-dimensional heated pipe flows, three-dimensional natural convection loops with evolving isotopic compositions, and \gls{msre} demonstration cases. Within Pronghorn, new capabilities were introduced to model corrosion and noble-metal plating phenomena, supported by an extended thermal-hydraulics framework and refined turbulence treatments. To capture two-phase flow behavior, a multiphase Euler–Euler model was implemented in Pronghorn, including advanced closure relations, high-resolution advection techniques, and capillary force reconstruction. Preliminary verification cases confirm the fidelity of the approach, while planned validation efforts target canonical multiphase benchmarks and application to msr components such as the msre pump bowl. Finally, updates to SAM’s msr mass transfer modeling were extended to consider noble gas migration into porous structures like graphite. The point kinetics model was updated to include reactivity feedback contributions from any defined species, such as xenon. The gas transport model was expanded for applicability to gas mixtures, bubble efflux phenomena, and species transport between liquid and gas phases. A selection of multi-scale Sherwood number correlations from MOSCATO/NekRS and multi-phase correlations from literature have been added for improved accuracy in calculating mass transfer coefficients. A companion effort on developing system-level redox corrosion has also been incorporated into SAM. Collectively, these enhancements strengthen the predictive capability of SAM and Pronghorn for simulating MSR thermal-hydraulics, corrosion, multiphase behavior, and fission-product transport, providing a more complete toolset for design, safety analysis, and licensing support of next-generation \gls{msr}s.

42 - ENGINEERING↗
DOE OSTI2025

Fermilab PIP-II CDS and CM Cryogenic Controls System

Details on Final design for Cryogenic Electrical & Controls System for Fermilab' s next-gen particle accelerator PIP-II. Electrical Controls System includes instrumentation and controls of Cryogenics Distribution System and Cryomodules. Design includes Siemens PCS7 Controls System with 26 Remote IO Rittal Cabinets and 48 Relay Racks for Temperature Readouts, Valve Positioners, Level, Heater Controls etc. Electrical Drawings and Design have been completed with focus now on fabrication of the 26 Rittal Cabinets and 48 Relay Racks. All materials have been procured. EPICS will be used as a SCADA system communicating to S7 Controllers via OPC UA.

Patel, Pratik [Fermilab]↗
DOE OSTI2020

Pre-Commercial Scale-Up of a Gas-Fired Absorption Heat Pump

The project sought to advance the maturity of SMTI’s 80 kBTU/hr residential space and water heating GAHP from the engineering prototype stage (TRL-7) to pre-production readiness by addressing manufacturing, balance of system design and installation, cost, reliability, and field application questions. As part of this project, the project team has: (1) Matured the design package for a commercially ready product (2) Demonstrated compliance with relevant ANSI standards (3) Completed manufacturing and assembly process specifications (4) Completed total production cost estimates and capital equipment requirements (5) Initiated component and system level reliability assessments (6) Completed a small field demonstration including measured performance, installation requirements and expected costs, and customer/key stakeholder feedback. (7) Completed a Techno-economic analysis for representative applications and climate zones, including justification for utility incentive programs. (8) Completed a market intelligence report. Scope of Work: A multi-faceted project was completed that included: (a) design for manufacturing tasks for both the sealed system and balance of system, (b) development and trial of key manufacturing processes and techniques, (c) evaluation of component and system level reliability, (d) exploration of make/buy decisions including impact on cost and required capital. Additionally, (e) installation and monitoring of a small number of field test units was completed to demonstrate energy savings and collect customer/installer feedback, and (f) a focused market research task was completed to explore potential barriers and improve market introduction plans. These tasks addressed many of the remaining technical risks regarding long-term reliability, verification of manufacturing cost estimates and identification of cost concerns, identify installation and balance of system design criteria necessary to achieve energy savings and installed cost goals, and identify market barriers and strategies prior to product market introduction.

03 NATURAL GAS↗
NASA NTRS2012

Benchmarking Evaluation Results for Prototype Extravehicular Activity Gloves

The Space Suit Assembly (SSA) Development Team at NASA Johnson Space Center has invested heavily in the advancement of rear-entry planetary exploration suit design but largely deferred development of extravehicular activity (EVA) glove designs, and accepted the risk of using the current flight gloves, Phase VI, for unique mission scenarios outside the Space Shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) Program realm of experience. However, as design reference missions mature, the risks of using heritage hardware have highlighted the need for developing robust new glove technologies. To address the technology gap, the NASA Game-Changing Technology group provided start-up funding for the High Performance EVA Glove (HPEG) Project in the spring of 2012. The overarching goal of the HPEG Project is to develop a robust glove design that increases human performance during EVA and creates pathway for future implementation of emergent technologies, with specific aims of increasing pressurized mobility to 60% of barehanded capability, increasing the durability by 100%, and decreasing the potential of gloves to cause injury during use. The HPEG Project focused initial efforts on identifying potential new technologies and benchmarking the performance of current state of the art gloves to identify trends in design and fit leading to establish standards and metrics against which emerging technologies can be assessed at both the component and assembly levels. The first of the benchmarking tests evaluated the quantitative mobility performance and subjective fit of four prototype gloves developed by Flagsuit LLC, Final Frontier Designs, LLC Dover, and David Clark Company as compared to the Phase VI. All of the companies were asked to design and fabricate gloves to the same set of NASA provided hand measurements (which corresponded to a single size of Phase Vi glove) and focus their efforts on improving mobility in the metacarpal phalangeal and carpometacarpal joints. Four test subjects representing the design ]to hand anthropometry completed range of motion, grip/pinch strength, dexterity, and fit evaluations for each glove design in both the unpressurized and pressurized conditions. This paper provides a comparison of the test results along with a detailed description of hardware and test methodologies used.

Aitchison, Lindsay↗
NASA NTRS2014

An Approach for Performance Assessments of Extravehicular Activity Gloves

The Space Suit Assembly (SSA) Development Team at NASA Johnson Space Center has invested heavily in the advancement of rear‐entry planetary exploration suit design but largely deferred development of extravehicular activity (EVA) glove designs, and accepted the risk of using the current flight gloves, Phase VI, for unique mission scenarios outside the Space Shuttle and International Space Station (ISS) Program realm of experience. However, as design reference missions mature, the risks of using heritage hardware have highlighted the need for developing robust new glove technologies. To address the technology gap, the NASA Game‐Changing Technology group provided start‐up funding for the High Performance EVA Glove (HPEG) Project in the spring of 2012. The overarching goal of the HPEG Project is to develop a robust glove design that increases human performance during EVA and creates pathway for future implementation of emergent technologies, with specific aims of increasing pressurized mobility to 60% of barehanded capability, increasing the durability by 100%, and decreasing the potential of gloves to cause injury during use. The HPEG Project focused initial efforts on identifying potential new technologies and benchmarking the performance of current state of the art gloves to identify trends in design and fit leading to establish standards and metrics against which emerging technologies can be assessed at both the component and assembly levels. The first of the benchmarking tests evaluated the quantitative mobility performance and subjective fit of two sets of prototype EVA gloves developed ILC Dover and David Clark Company as compared to the Phase VI. Both companies were asked to design and fabricate gloves to the same set of NASA provided hand measurements (which corresponded to a single size of Phase Vi glove) and focus their efforts on improving mobility in the metacarpal phalangeal and carpometacarpal joints. Four test subjects representing the design‐to hand anthropometry completed range of motion, grip/pinch strength, dexterity, and fit evaluations for each glove design in pressurized conditions, with and without thermal micrometeoroid garments (TMG) installed. This paper provides a detailed description of hardware and test methodologies used and lessons learned.

Aitchison, Lindsay↗
NASA NTRS1992

Near Earth asteroid rendezvous

The Spacecraft Design Course is the capstone design class for the M.S. in astronautics at the Naval Postgraduate School. The Fall 92 class designed a spacecraft for the Near Earth Asteroid Rendezvous Mission (NEAR). The NEAR mission uses a robotic spacecraft to conduct up-close reconnaissance of a near-earth asteroid. Such a mission will provide information on Solar System formation and possible space resources. The spacecraft is intended to complete a NEAR mission as a relatively low-budget program while striving to gather as much information about the target asteroid as possible. A complete mission analysis and detailed spacecraft design were completed. Mission analysis includes orbit comparison and selection, payload and telemetry requirements, spacecraft configuration, and launch vehicle selection. Spacecraft design includes all major subsystems: structure, electrical power, attitude control, propulsion, payload integration, and thermal control. The resulting spacecraft demonstrates the possibility to meet the NEAR mission requirements using existing technology, 'off-the-shelf' components, and a relatively low-cost launch vehicle.

Source record↗
NASA NTRS1992

Ultra-dense magnetoresistive mass memory

This report details the progress and accomplishments of Nonvolatile Electronics (NVE), Inc., on the design of the wafer scale MRAM mass memory system during the fifth quarter of the project. NVE has made significant progress this quarter on the one megabit design in several different areas. A test chip, which will verify a working GMR bit with the dimensions required by the 1 Meg chip, has been designed, laid out, and is currently being processed in the NVE labs. This test chip will allow electrical specifications, tolerances, and processing issues to be finalized before construction of the actual chip, thus providing a greater assurance of success of the final 1 Meg design. A model has been developed to accurately simulate the parasitic effects of unselected sense lines. This model gives NVE the ability to perform accurate simulations of the array electronic and test different design concepts. Much of the circuit design for the 1 Meg chip has been completed and simulated and these designs are included. Progress has been made in the wafer scale design area to verify the reliable operation of the 16 K macrocell. This is currently being accomplished with the design and construction of two stand alone test systems which will perform life tests and gather data on reliabiliy and wearout mechanisms for analysis.

Daughton, J. M.↗