SEARCH · Search NASA
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.
Quote a phrase for an exact phrase match. Source license links do not imply unrestricted reuse.
A brief overview of space flight activities is presented. West German contributions to satellite mapping, communication satellites, navigation, Spacelab, diffusion under weightlessness, crystal growth in space, metal bonding, and biochemistry are described. The future of the research in the space station is analyzed.
Space-based and space-related research in the life sciences is presented in reviews and reports. Topics examined include the long-term effects of weightlessness, cosmic chemistry and chemical and biological evolution, life-support systems for space travel, planetary protection, and the g-scale factor in gravitational biology. Consideration is given to the role of Ca ions in cytological effects of hypogravity, the organic aerosols of Titan, the role of meteorite impacts in the formation of organic molecules, prebiotic synthesis of purines and pyrimidines, atmosphere behavior of gas-closed mouse-algal systems, air and water regeneration in advanced regenerative environmental-control and life-support systems, and the influence of gravity on the development of animal systems.
Government and industrial engineers role in space projects such as apollo
Studies in space on various physiological systems have and will continue to provide valuable information on how they adapt to reduced gravitational conditions, and how living in a 1 g (gravity) environment has guided their development. Muscle and bone are the most notable tissues that respond to unweighting caused by lack of gravity. The function of specific muscles and bones relates directly to mechanical loading, so that removal of 'normal forces' in space, or in bedridden patients, causes dramatic loss of tissue mass. The cardiovascular system is also markedly affected by reduced gravity. Adaptation includes decreased blood flow to the lower extremities, thus decreasing the heart output requirement. Return to 1 g is associated with a period of reconditioning due to the deconditioning that occurs in space. Changes in the cardiovascular system are also related to responses of the kidney and certain endocrine (hormone-producing) organs. Changes in respiratory function may also occur, suggesting an effect on the lungs, though this adaptation is poorly understood. The neurovestibular system, including the brain and organs of the inner ear, must adapt to the disorientation caused by lack of gravity. Preliminary findings have been reported for liver. Additionally, endocrine organs responsible for release of hormones such as insulin, growth hormone, glucocorticoids, and thyroid hormone may respond to spaceflight.
With the International Space Station Program approaching core complete, our NASA Headquarters sponsor, the new Code U Enterprise, Biological and Physical Research, is shifting its research emphasis from purely fundamental microgravity and biological sciences to strategic research aimed at enabling human missions beyond Earth orbit. Although we anticipate supporting microgravity research on the ISS for some time to come, our laboratory has been vigorously engaged in developing these new strategic research areas.This Technical Memorandum documents the internal science research at our laboratory as presented in a review to Dr. Ann Whitaker, MSFC Science Director, in July 2002. These presentations have been revised and updated as appropriate for this report. It provides a snapshot of the internal science capability of our laboratory as an aid to other NASA organizations and the external scientific community.
Five Orbiter Experiments in which NASA's Langley Research Center has had significant involvement are described. These experiments are the Shuttle Infrared Leeside Temperature Sensing experiment, the Shuttle Upper Atmosphere Mass Spectrometer experiment, the High Resolution Accelerometer Package experiment, the Orbital Acceleration Research experiment, and the Space Station structural characterization experiment. The Shuttle Entry Air Data System is also described.
NASA conference on space technology applications to industrial process development - welding, turbopumps, human waste as fuel, plastics, neurophysiology and computers
Research completed and in progress is described, related publications and reports are listed, and abstracts of papers and talks on results of the research are given. The charged particle research centered on OGO-5 and OGO-6 electron spectrometer data, and theoretical radiation belt studies. Work on the ATS-1 magnetometer project included development of production data reduction programs, development of spectral analysis procedures, and scientific studies of ULF waves at synchronous orbit. The magnetic fields research also included work on the Mariner project and theoretical studies on the solar wind.
The use of space technology to develop techniques and devices to help support the American dollar and determine the origin of the moon and solar system is discussed.
One of the responsibilities of the NASA Glenn Principal Investigator Microgravity Services is to support NASA sponsored investigators in the area of reduced-gravity acceleration data analysis, interpretation and the monitoring of the reduced-gravity environment on-board various carriers. With the International Space Station currently operational, a significant amount of acceleration data is being down-linked and processed on ground for both the space station onboard environment characterization (and verification) and scientific experiments. Therefore, to help principal investigator teams monitor the acceleration level on-board the International Space Station to avoid undesirable impact on their experiment, when possible, the NASA Glenn Principal Investigator Microgravity Services developed an artificial intelligence monitoring system, which detects in near real time any change in the environment susceptible to affect onboard experiments. The main objective of the monitoring system is to help research teams identify the vibratory disturbances that are active at any instant of time onboard the International Space Station that might impact the environment in which their experiment is being conducted. The monitoring system allows any space research scientist, at any location and at any time, to see the current acceleration level on-board the Space Station via the World Wide Web. From the NASA Glenn s Exploration Systems Division web site, research scientists can see in near real time the active disturbances, such as pumps, fans, compressor, crew exercise, re-boost, extra-vehicular activity, etc., and decide whether or not to continue operating or stopping (or making note of such activity for later correlation with science results) their experiments based on the g-level associated with that specific event. A dynamic graphical display accessible via the World Wide Web shows the status of all the vibratory disturbance activities with their degree of confidence as well as their g-level contribution to the environment. The system can detect both known and unknown vibratory disturbance activities. It can also perform trend analysis and prediction by analyzing past data over many Increments of the space station for selected disturbance activities. This feature can be used to monitor the health of onboard mechanical systems to detect and prevent potential system failure as well as for use by research scientists during their science results analysis. Examples of both real time on-line vibratory disturbance detection and off-line trend analysis are presented in this paper. Several soft computing techniques such as Kohonen s Self-Organizing Feature Map, Learning Vector Quantization, Back-Propagation Neural Networks, and Fuzzy Logic were used to design the system.
The objective of a newly emerging element of NASA's university engineering programs is to provide a more autonomous element that will enhance and broaden the capabilities in academia, enabling them to participate more effectively in the U.S. civil space program. The programs utilize technical monitors at NASA centers to foster collaborative arrangements, exchange of personnel, and the sharing of facilities between NASA and the universities. The elements include: the university advanced space design program, which funds advanced systems study courses at the senior and graduate levels; the university space engineering research program that supports cross-disciplinary research centers; the outreach flight experiments program that offers engineering research opportunities to universities; and the planned university investigator's research program to provide grants to individuals with outstanding credentials.
NASA-sponsored medical R & D programs for space applications are reviewed with particular attention to the benefits of these programs to earthbound medical services and to the general public. Notable among the results of these NASA programs is an integrated medical laboratory equipped with numerous advanced systems such as digital biotelemetry and automatic visual field mapping systems, sponge electrode caps for electroencephalograms, and sophisticated respiratory analysis equipment.
The selection of preferred frequency bands for deep space telecommunications in the 20 to 120 GHz range is discussed. The performance of links between Earth stations and stations in deep space is affected by the atmosphere of the Earth. Attenuation and emission by the atmosphere generally limits deep space telecommunications to frequencies below 20 GHz. There are, however, certain frequency bands in the 20 to 120 GHz range where atmospheric attenuation is low enough to permit links between Earth stations and deep space stations. Additionally there are certain other bands in the 20 to 120 GHz range that would be particularly suitable for links between an Earth orbiting relay station and deep space stations.
The spaceflight environment is known to influence biological processes ranging from stimulation of cellular metabolism to possible impacts on cellular damage repair, suppression of immune functions, and bone loss in astronauts. Microgravity is one of the most significant stress factors experienced by living organisms during spaceflight, and therefore, understanding cellular responses to altered gravity at the physiological and molecular level is critical for expanding our knowledge of life in space. Since opportunities to conduct experiments in space are scarce, various microgravity simulators and analogues have been widely used in space biology ground studies. Even though simulated microgravity conditions have produced some, but not all of the biological effects observed in the true microgravity environment, they provide test beds that are effective, affordable, and readily available to facilitate microgravity research. Kennedy Space Center (KSC) provides ground microgravity simulator support to offer a variety of microgravity simulators and platforms for Space Biology investigators. Assistance will be provided by both KSC and external experts in molecular biology, microgravity simulation, and engineering. Comparisons between the physical differences in microgravity simulators, examples of experiments using the simulators, and scientific questions regarding the use of microgravity simulators will be discussed.
While President Obama's news that NASA would encourage private companies to develop vehicles to take NASA into space may have come as a surprise to some, NASA has always encouraged private companies to invest in space. More than two decades ago, NASA established Commercial Space Centers across the United States to encourage industry to use space as a place to conduct research and to apply NASA technology to Earth applications. Although the centers are no longer funded by NASA, the advances enabled by that previous funding are still impacting us all today. For example, the Space Vacuum Epitaxy Center (SVEC) at the University of Houston, one of the 17 Commercial Space Centers, had a mission to create advanced thin film semiconductor materials and devices through the use of vacuum growth technologies both on Earth and in space. Making thin film materials in a vacuum (low-pressure environment) is advantageous over making them in normal atmospheric pressures, because contamination floating in the air is lessened in a vacuum. To grow semiconductor crystals, researchers at SVEC utilized epitaxy the process of depositing a thin layer of material on top of another thin layer of material. On Earth, this process took place in a vacuum chamber in a clean room lab. For space, the researchers developed something called the Wake Shield Facility (WSF), a 12-foot-diameter disk-shaped platform designed to grow thin film materials using the low-pressure environment in the wake of the space shuttle. Behind an orbiting space shuttle, the vacuum levels are thousands of times better than in the best vacuum chambers on Earth. Throughout the 1990s, the WSF flew on three space shuttle missions as a series of proof-of-concept missions. These experiments are a lasting testament to the success of the shuttle program and resulted in the development of the first thin film materials made in the vacuum of space, helping to pave the way for better thin film development on Earth.
Scientific objectives of space probes
General relativistic implication testing within solar system using artificial satellites and space probes
Off-line CRT motion picture display generation in three dimensional space using VISTA /Visual Information for Satellite Telemetry Analysis/