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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 NTRS2023

Evaluation of Ultrasonic Battery Inspection Techniques

Lithium metal batteries are prone to subtle defects such as internal dendrites, which can cause internal short circuits and lead to catastrophic ignition. These defects are often undetectable by battery management systems, prompting the need to advance nondestructive evaluation (NDE) techniques for battery applications. In this work, two ultrasonic approaches were compared to establish their relative merits for this application: local ultrasonic resonance spectroscopy, and guided wave ultrasound. Benchtop experiments on batteries seeded with lithium chips emulating plating were used to demonstrate the two techniques. The results show the ability to identify and map local changes in cell structure.

Ultrasound↗

NASA NTRS1994

The Solid Surface Combustion Experiment Aboard the USML-1 Mission

AA Experimental results from the five experiments indicate that flame spread rate increases with increasing ambient oxygen content and pressure. An experiment was conducted aboard STS-50/USML-1 in the solid Surface Combustion Experiment (SSCE) hardware for flame spread over a thin cellulosic fuel in a quiescent oxidizer of 35% oxygen/65% nitrogen at 1.0 atm. pressure in microgravity. The USML-1 test was the fourth of five planned experiments for thin fuels, one performed during each of five Space Shuttle Orbiter flights. Data that were gathered include gas- and solid-phase temperatures and motion picture flame images. Observations of the flame are described and compared to theoretical predictions from steady and unsteady models that include flame radiation from CO2 and H2O. Experimental results from the five esperiments indicate that flame spread rate increases with increasing ambient oxygen content and pressure. The brightness of the flame and the visible soot radiation also increase with increasing spread rate. Steady-state numerical predictions of temperature and spread rate and flame structure trends compare well with experimental results near the flame's leading edge while gradual flame evolution is captured through the unsteady model.

Robert A Altenkirch↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Atmospheric, Non-Combusting Droplet Sizing and Spray Imaging Results From a Non-Proprietary Aero Gas Turbine Engine Pressure Swirl Atomizer using Shadowgraphy and Planar Laser Scatter

Members from industry and federal agencies of the United States have developed a collaborating group focused on improving the understanding of the atomization processes common to gas turbine engines. The group is aimed on providing high quality data using x-ray diagnostics in the internal geometry and the near-field dense spray as well as optical diagnostics in the visible spectrum, downstream of the nozzle. This paper reports results from one of the two non-proprietary injectors designs from the group: the primary-secondary injector. In particular, we characterize the spray from only the primary, pressure-swirl atomizing circuit using water through the nozzle. We observed Sauter mean diameter decreased with increased water pressure drop across the nozzle. SMD was also collected at three axial distances and showed decreased size with distance from the nozzle. Planar laser sheet droplet scattering provided qualitative assessment of the spray. Higher water pressure drops provided better atomization than lower pressure drops. The addition of swirling air flow through the injector alleviates and improves the atomization quality, particularly at the lower water pressure drops.

optical diagnostics↗

NASA NTRS2023

Evaluation of Ultrasonic Battery Inspection Techniques

Ultrasound↗

NASA NTRS1995

Extensional Flow Convecting a Reactant Undergoing a First Order Homogeneous Reaction and Diffusional Mass Transfer From a Sphere at Low to Intermediate Peclet and Damkohler Numbers

Forced convective diffusion-reaction is considered for viscous axisymmetric extensional convecting velocity in the neighborhood of a sphere. For Peclet numbers in the range 0.1 ≤ Pe ≤ 500 and for Damkohler numbers increasing with increasing Pe but in the overall range 0.02 ≤ Da ≤ 10, average and local Sherwood numbers have been computed. By introducing the eigenfunction expansion c(r,Θ) = Σ c n (r)P n (cosΘ) into the forced convective diffusion equation for the concentration of a chemical species undergoing a first order homogeneous reaction and by using properties of the Legendre functions P n (cosΘ), the variable coefficient PDE can be reduced to a system of N+1 second order ODEs for the radial functions C n (r), n=0,1,2, ... ,N. The adaptive grid algorithm of Pereyra and Lentini can be used to solve the corresponding 2(N+ 1) first order differential equations as a two-point boundary value problem on 1 ≤ r ≤ r •• . Convergence of the expansion for a specific value of N can thus be established and provides "spectral" behavior as well as the full concentration field c(r,Θ).

N Y Shah↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

NASA Small Spacecraft and Distributed Systems: Recent and Upcoming Technology Demonstrations and Development Efforts

NASA’s Small Spacecraft & Distributed Systems (SSDS) program strengthens U.S. ability to conduct unique missions by rapidly developing and demonstrating capabilities for SmallSat exploration, science, and commercial space. In collaboration with NASA Centers, other government agencies, commercial industry, and academia, SSDS advances next generation SmallSat technologies like power, processing, propulsion, communications, autonomous navigation, architectures (swarms), and applications (AI/ML/Edge Computing)—to extend missions beyond LEO into cislunar and planetary space. Various investment mechanisms exist for SSDS to select and fund projects that will ultimately advance NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture. Presented here are the latest achievements and findings from recently completed SSDS projects, along with updates from ongoing efforts and planned future work. Successful missions like Starling and CAPSTONE continue to demonstrate their capability after several years on-orbit. Advancements in next generation swarm configurations are being implemented by Starling for space traffic monitoring and management applications. Findings from recent SSDS flight projects are discussed: DiskSat, a unique SmallSat platform alternative to canisterized nanosatellites, launched December 2025 and is gathering data; the PTD series of missions concluded in December 2025. Current SSDS efforts are focused on addressing NASA Shortfalls relating to rendezvous and proximity operations, neuromorphic computing, and space situational awareness.

Roger Hunter↗

NASA NTRS2003

An Overview of the NASA Aerospace Flight Battery Systems Program

The NASA Aerospace Flight Battery Systems Program is an agency-wide effort aimed at ensuring the quality, safety, reliability and performance of flight battery systems for NASA applications. The program provides for the validation of primary and secondary cell and battery level technology advances to ensure their availability and readiness for use in NASA missions. It serves to bridge the gap between the development of technology advances and the realization and incorporation of these advances into mission applications. The program is led by the Glenn Research Center and involves funded task activities at each of the NASA mission centers and JPL. The overall products are safe, reliable, high quality batteries for mission applications. The products are defined along three product lines: 1. Battery Systems Technology - Elements of this task area cover the systems aspects of battery operation and generally apply across chemistries. This includes the development of guidelines documents, the establishment and maintenance of a central battery database that serves a central repository for battery characterization and verification test data from tests performed under the support of this program, the NASA Battery Workshop, and general test facility support. 2. Secondary Battery Technology - l h s task area focuses on the validation of battery technology for nickel-cadmium, nickel-hydrogen, nickel-metal-hydride and lithium-ion secondary battery systems. Standardized test regimes are used to validate the quality of a cell lot or cell design for flight applications. In this area, efforts are now concentrated on the validation and verification of lithium-ion battery technology for aerospace applications. 3. Primary Battery Technology - The safety and reliability aspects for primary lithium battery systems that are used in manned operations on the Shuttle and International Space Station are addressed in the primary battery technology task area. An overview of the task areas supported under this program will be presented.

Manzo, Michelle A.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Cryogenic Fuel Aviation – Challenges and Opportunities

NASA aeronautics goals include pioneering new technology to increase efficiency and reduce emissions from air travel. The feasibility of using of on-board cryogenic fuels systems in combination with fuel cells, high efficiency engines, and electric motors for high efficiency commercial transport aircraft is being examined at NASA in collaborations with external partners. Growing emphasis on next generation air transportation resulted in the development of strategic investigations into cryogenic fuels aviation, including roadmaps for maturing new technologies, needs to improve testing and manufacturing capabilities, and the requirements for establishing regulatory and certification standards. A NASA cross-organizational multidisciplinary project team is exploring new aircraft architectures, enabling materials, and the engineering challenges associated with cryogenic fuels for aircraft. The engineering challenges include high performance cryogenic, thermal management, and power/propulsion components and subsystems to tackle the challenging problem of development of commercially viable aircraft that would radically transform air transportation.

liquid natural gas↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Improvements to RANS Modeling for Aeroheating Predictions on Blunt Bodies

Accurate predictions of aeroheating are critical for designing thermal protection systems for planetary entry vehicles. For larger vehicles, turbulence in the boundary layer can substantially increase convective heating. This turbulence must be accurately modeled to ensure the thermal protection system is sufficient. The majority of hypersonic turbulence model development and validation focuses on boundary layers developing over flat-plates or sharp cones; these cases are substantially different than the boundary layer that develops over the heatshield of a blunt body traveling at hypersonic speeds. Planetary missions often use blunt body geometries, such as the 70-degree sphere-cone favored by Mars missions or the 45-degree sphere-cone planned for the upcoming DAVINCI mission. Due to smaller vehicle size and the lower velocities in the stagnation region, planetary entry vehicles have relatively low Reynolds numbers. Surface curvature and high enthalpy gradients create additional challenges. These difficulties must be addressed to obtain high accuracy needed for the ambitious planetary missions in the upcoming decade. This work focuses on both assessing and improving Reynolds-averaged Navier-Stokes (RANS) turbulence models for blunt-body geometries typical of planetary entry vehicles, with a focus on one-equation and two-equation formulations.

Mars2020↗

NASA NTRS1963

Propulsion and Power Generation

This document comprises material presented during one session of the Manned Planetary Mission Technology Conference, Lewis Research Center, May 21, 22, and 23, 1963. In order to expedite release to the conferees, the papers are being published with minimum editing and retyping of the original manuscripts. Thus the usual NASA format and style have been compromised. The purpose of the conference was to explore the possibilities and problems of manned planetary space flight. The results and contemplations of the individual papers should in no sense be regarded as a part of NASA plans and programs.

F L Williams↗

NASA NTRS1991

The Real-Time Control of Planetary Rovers Through Behavior Modification

It is not yet clear of what type, and how much, intelligence is needed for a planetary rover to function semi-autonomously on a planetary surface. Current designs assume an advanced AI system that maintains a detailed map of its journeys and the surroundings, and that carefully calculates and tests every move in advance. To achieve these abilities, and because of the limitations of space-qualified electronics, the supporting rover is quite sizable, massing a large fraction of a ton, and requiring technology advances in everything from power to ground operations. An alternative approach is to use a behavior driven control scheme. Recent research has shown that many complex tasks may be achieved by programming a robot with a set of behaviors and activation or deactivating a subset of those behaviors as required by the specific situation in which the robot finds itself. Behavior control requires much less computation than is required by tradition AI planning techniques. The reduced computation requirements allows the entire rover to be scaled down as appropriate (only down-link communications and payload do not scale under these circumstances). The missions that can be handled by the real-time control and operation of a set of small, semi-autonomous, interacting, behavior-controlled planetary rovers are discussed.

David P Miller↗

NASA NTRS2022

Test Data Analysis of the Thermodynamic Vent System-Augmented Top Spray Injector Liquid Nitrogen Transfer Experiments

Traditionally, a cryogenic tank must be pre-chilled to some “target” temperature before the main vent valve can be closed to attempt a non-vented fill (NVF) of cryogenic liquid propellant. This methodology is particularly attractive for performing in-space transfer of cryogens due to the unknown location of the liquid/vapor interface in microgravity and the high likelihood of venting liquid if the vent valve is opened during transfer. This paper presents in-depth test data analysis of a Thermodynamic Vent System (TVS) augmented injector used for cryogenic tank chilldown and fill experiments of a thin-walled Titanium tank. Eight tests were conducted using liquid nitrogen across a range of inlet conditions and boundary conditions, and three different chilldown/fill methods. For four of the tests, the injector sprays liquid into the tank as normal, but also uses a TVS heat exchanger to cool the metallic injector itself as well as the main incoming liquid stream. Results show that using the TVS augmented injector simplifies transfer operation via enhanced condensation at the injector surface at the cost of sacrificing only a small amount of propellant.

Thermodynamic Vent System↗

NASA NTRS2026

Coma Physics of an Interstellar Object: JWST Spatial-Spectral Mapping of 3I/ATLAS

We report a survey of molecular emission from cometary volatiles using the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) toward interstellar object 3I/ATLAS carried out on UT 2025 December 22 and 23 at a heliocentric distance (\rh{}) of $2.37-2.41$ au. These measurements of CO, \ce{CO2}, \ce{H2O}, \ce{CH3OH}, and \ce{CH4} sampled molecular chemistry in 3I/ATLAS as it receded from its encounter with our Sun and entered the vicinity of the \ce{H2O} ice line --- the region between \rh{} = $2-3$ au where the temperature becomes too low for H$_2$O to vigorously sublime and CO and \ce{CO2} begin to control the overall activity. CO was the most abundant molecule, followed by \ce{H2O} and \ce{CO2}, whose molecular abundances with respect to CO were $(40.5\pm3.1)\%$ and ($41.6\pm0.3)\%$, respectively. This work presents spatial-spectral maps of column density and rotational temperature as a function of distance from the nucleus for all detected species. The spatial distributions of both quantities were highly anisotropic for the apolar species in the coma of 3I/ATLAS, yet were more nearly symmetric for the polar molecules. These results demonstrate how volatiles were segregated in the nucleus ices of 3I/ATLAS and reveal heating and cooling mechanisms in its coma. Derived maps of the ortho-to-para ratio (OPR) for \ce{H2O} were flat with increasing distance from the nucleus and consistent with a coma-averaged value $\mathrm{OPR}=2.7\pm0.2$, slightly less than the expected equilibrium value of three.

Nathan X Roth↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Qualification Progress and Mission-Enabling Capabilities of the 12-kW Hall-Effect, Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) Thruster

An update of the 12 kW Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) qualification and flight thruster status is provided. Three flight thrusters completed acceptance testing in 2025 and have been delivered to NASA. Environmental qualification is complete and preparations are under way for long-duration life-demonstration testing. Programmatic lessons learned associated with risk management, contract oversight, and requirement definition during the fabrication and assembly are discussed. In addition, the extensibility of the AEPS thruster to enable a variety of NASA missions is presented.

Electric Propulsion↗

NASA NTRS1991

Augmentation of the Space Station Module Power Management and Distribution Breadboard

The space station module power management and distribution (SSM/PMAD) breadboard models power distribution and management, including scheduling, load prioritization, and a fault detection, identification, and recovery (FDIR) system within a Space Station Freedom habitation or laboratory module. This 120 VDC system is capable of distributing up to 30 kW of power among more than 25 loads. In addition to the power distribution hardware, the system includes computer control through a hierarchy of processes. The lowest level consists of fast, simple (from a computing standpoint) switchgear that is capable of quickly safing the system. At the next level are local load center processors, (LLP's) which execute load scheduling, perform redundant switching, and shed loads which use more than scheduled power. Above the LLP's are three cooperating artificial intelligence (AI) systems which manage load prioritizations, load scheduling, load shedding, and fault recovery and management. Recent upgrades to hardware and modifications to software at both the LLP and AI system levels promise a drastic increase in speed, a significant increase in functionality and reliability, and potential for further examination of advanced automation techniques. The background, SSM/PMAD, interface to the Lewis Research Center test bed, the large autonomous spacecraft electrical power system, and future plans are discussed.

Bryan Walls↗

NASA NTRS1971

Fifth Aerospace Mechanisms Symposium

Conference of structural design principles and mechanical engineering methods for aerospace mechanisms used in orbital and space flights

Bowden W Ward↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Qualification Progress and Mission-Enabling Capabilities of the 12-kW Hall-Effect, Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) Thruster

An update of the 12 kW Advanced Electric Propulsion System (AEPS) qualification and flight thruster status is provided. Three flight thrusters completed acceptance testing in 2025 and have been delivered to NASA. Environmental qualification is complete and preparations are under way for long-duration life-demonstration testing. A brief overview of three of SEP’s programmatic lessons learned are discussed: risk management, contract oversight, and requirement definition. In addition, the extensibility of the AEPS thruster to enable a variety of NASA missions is presented.

Mars Exploration↗

NASA NTRS1999

System Identification for Integrated Aircraft Development and Flight Testing [l'Identification Des Systemes Pour le Developpement Integre des Aeronefs et les Essais en Vol]

Over the last decades flight vehicles such as aircraft and helicopters entering service and requiring increased operational effectiveness have with few exceptions experienced prolonged flight test development to achieve full certification. In many cases the original requirements had later to be reduced to enable release to service. The impact on the customer, and manufacturer has been considerable leading to increased costs and or reduced operational capabilities. These costly experiences are largely a result of the flight vehicle not behaving as modelled and designed. The evaluation of flight test data can be used as a tool for validating windtunnel results and mathematical models describing the flight dynamical behaviour. In this sense the uncertainty of important aerodynamic stability and control parameters can be reduced and the confidence of aircraft mathematical models improved. An additional important factor comes from the implementation of active control systems offering the promise of significantly increased flight vehicle performance and operational capability. This approach extends the traditional trade-offs between aerodynamics, structures and propulsion systems to include full- time, full-authority fly-by-wire/light systems. It is imperative that the aerodynamic stability and control parameters of such integrated flight and propulsion control systems have to turn out inflight as predicted, since inherent stability margins will be lower and the flight control system must correct these deficiencies to provide flight critical redundancy and safety. With the methodology of system identification from flight tests it is possible to sense the control inputs and the flight vehicle reactions Such as accelerations, rates and attitudes. The mathematical model, e.g. the model structure and parameters, has to be determined from the relationship of the measured control inputs and the system's responses. The aim of this symposium was to review the present state of the art of flight vehicle system and parameter identification techniques, and to provide a critical appraisal of current methods developed and applied to flight test data in a number of NATO nations. Particular emphasis was placed on practical aspects and lessons learned in order to generate information useful to the flight test community in industry and government agencies. The technical papers share invaluable experience and emphasize the advances of flight vehicle system identification over the last years to the point where confidence and robustness level is now reasonably high. The symposium covered overviews of identification methodologies, flight test techniques, recent aircraft and helicopter application programs, and a session of short papers covering up-to-the-minute flight test results. A final discussion included prepared comments from experts and concluded with key issues learned in the application of system identification and future research needs. The essential benefits to NATO nations can be condensed as follows: More accurate mathematical models for high bandwidth flight control systems, Improved assessment and evaluation of flying qualities, High fidelity mathematical models for flight vehicle development and mission training simulators, and generally, Reduced flight test time and costs.

Advisory Group for Aerospace Research and Developm↗