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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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Early space station accommodation, build-up of space station manipulator capability, on-orbit spacecraft assembly test and launch, large antenna structure deployment, service/refurbish satellite, and servicing of free-flying materials processing platform are discussed.
The addition of raw data and derived geophysical parameters from several Earth observing satellites over the last decade to the data held by NASA data centers has created a data rich environment for the Earth science research and applications communities. The data products are being distributed to a large and diverse community of users. Due to advances in computational hardware, networks and communications, information management and software technologies, significant progress has been made in the last decade in archiving and providing data to users. However, to realize the full potential of the growing data archives, further progress is necessary in the transformation of data into information, and information into knowledge that can be used in particular applications. Sponsored by NASA s Intelligent Systems Project within the Computing, Information and Communication Technology (CICT) Program, a conceptual architecture study has been conducted to examine ideas to improve data utilization through the addition of intelligence into the archives in the context of an overall knowledge building system (KBS). Potential Intelligent Archive concepts include: 1) Mining archived data holdings to improve metadata to facilitate data access and usability; 2) Building intelligence about transformations on data, information, knowledge, and accompanying services; 3) Recognizing the value of results, indexing and formatting them for easy access; 4) Interacting as a cooperative node in a web of distributed systems to perform knowledge building; and 5) Being aware of other nodes in the KBS, participating in open systems interfaces and protocols for virtualization, and achieving collaborative interoperability.
The Federal Government is committed to following sustainable principles. At its heart, sustainability integrates environmental, societal and economic solutions for present needs without compromising the ability of future generations to meet their needs. Building upon its pledge towards environmental stewardship, the Administration generated a vision of sustainability spanning ten goals mandated within Executive Order (EO) 13693, Planning for Federal Sustainability in the Next Decade. In November 2015, the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) responded to this EO by incorporating it into a new release of the NASA Strategic Sustainability Performance Plan (SSPP). The SSPP recognizes the importance of aligning environmental practices in a manner that preserves, enhances and strengthens NASA's ability to perform its mission indefinitely. The Kennedy Space Center (KSC) is following suit with KSC's Sustainability Plan (SP) by promoting, maintaining and pioneering green practices in all aspects of our mission. KSC's SP recognizes that the best sustainable solutions use an interdisciplinary, collaborative approach spanning civil servant and contractor personnel from across the Center. This approach relies on the participation of all employees to develop and implement sustainability endeavors connected with the following ten goals: Reduce greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions. Design, build and maintain sustainable buildings, facilities and infrastructure. Leverage clean and renewable energy. Increase water conservation. Improve fleet and vehicle efficiency and management. Purchase sustainable products and services. Minimize waste and prevent pollution. Implement performance contracts for Federal buildings. Manage electronic equipment and data centers responsibly. Pursue climate change resilience. The KSC SP details the strategies and actions that address the following objectives: Reduce Center costs. center dot Increase energy and water efficiencies. Promote smart buying practices. Increase reuse and recycling while decreasing waste. Benefit the community. Meet or exceed the EO and NASA SSPP sustainability goals.
The LPA Group, consisting of 17 offices located throughout the eastern and central United States is an architectural, engineering and planning firm specializing in the development of Airports, Roads and Bridges. The primary focus of this ARC project is concerned with assisting their aviation specialists who work in the areas of Airport Planning, Airfield Design, Landside Design, Terminal Building Planning and design, and various other construction services. The LPA Group wanted to test the utility of high-resolution commercial satellite imagery for the purpose of extracting airport elevation features in the glide path areas surrounding the Columbia Metropolitan Airport. By incorporating remote sensing techniques into their airport planning process, LPA wanted to investigate whether or not it is possible to save time and money while achieving the equivalent accuracy as traditional planning methods. The Affiliate Research Center (ARC) at the University of South Carolina investigated the use of remotely sensed imagery for the extraction of feature elevations in the glide path zone. A stereo pair of IKONOS panchromatic satellite images, which has a spatial resolution of 1 x 1 m, was used to determine elevations of aviation obstructions such as buildings, trees, towers and fence-lines. A validation dataset was provided by the LPA Group to assess the accuracy of the measurements derived from the IKONOS imagery. The initial goal of this project was to test the utility of IKONOS imagery in feature extraction using ERDAS Stereo Analyst. This goal was never achieved due to problems with ERDAS software support of the IKONOS sensor model and the unavailability of imperative sensor model information from Space Imaging. The obstacles encountered in this project pertaining to ERDAS Stereo Analyst and IKONOS imagery will be reviewed in more detail later in this report. As a result of the technical difficulties with Stereo Analyst, ERDAS OrthoBASE was used to derive aviation obstruction measurements for this project. After collecting ancillary data such as GPS locations, South Carolina Geodetic Survey and Aero Dynamics ground survey points to set up the OrthoBASE Block File, measurements were taken of the various glide path obstructions and compared to the validation dataset. This process yielded the following conclusions: The IKONOS stereo model in conjunction with Imagine OrthoBASE can provide The LPA Group with a fast and cost efficient method for assessing aviation obstructions. Also, by creating our own stereo model we achieved any accuracy better currently available commercial products.
The solar energy system installed in the building has 2,978 sq ft of single axis tracking, concentrating collectors and provides solar energy for space heating, space cooling and domestic hot water. A 1,200,000 Btu/hour water tube gas boiler provides hot water for space heating. Space cooling is provided by a 100 ton hot water fired absorption chiller. Domestic hot water heating is provided by a 50 gallon natural gas domestic storage water heater. Extracts from the site files, specification references, drawings, installation, operation and maintenance instructions are included.
User cost for three satellite services were assessed. The three missions are: advanced X-ray astrophysics facility (AXAF) revisit; upper atmosphere research satellite (UARS) revisit: and solar maximum mission (SMM) Earth return. Service scenarios for the missions to identify service equipment needs and on orbit usage were developed. The AXAF revisit is a service mission involving a contamination sensitive satellite. Following servicing and checkout, the spacecraft is redeployed from the orbiter. The total user charges for revisit missions is from 5 to 10% less than the cost to build and relaunch a replacement satellite. It is indicated that satellite servicing from the Orbiter is cost effective.
A new, intelligent planning and scheduling system has been delivered to NASA-Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC) to provide support for the up-coming Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Servicing Missions. This new system is the Servicing Mission Planning and Replanning Tool (SM/PART). SM/PART is written in C and runs on a UNlX-based workstation (IBM RS/6000) under Motif. SM/PART effectively automates the complex task of building or rebuilding integrated timelines and command plans which are required by HST Servicing Mission personnel at their consoles during the missions. SM/PART is able to quickly build or rebuild timelines based on information stored in a Knowledge Base (KB) by using an Artificial Intelligence (AI) tool called the Planning And Resource Reasoning (PARR) shell. After a timeline has been built in the batch mode, it can be displayed and edited in an interactive mode with help from the PARR shell. Finally a detailed command plan is generated. The capability to quickly build or rebuild timelines and command plans provides an additional safety factor for the HST, Shuttle and Crew.
An overview is presented of the Hubble Space Telescope (HST) Service Mission Planning and Replanning Tool (SM/PART) and the approach that was employed to develop the system. SM/PART is an AI expert system utilized by NASA to rapidly build complex timelines and command plans to control HST activities. HST servicing missions are Space Shuttle/Orbiter missions expected to occur every three to five years to rendezvous with the HST in orbit and replace, upgrade, or repair HST components. SM/PART runs on a UNIX-based workstation and is implemented in the C language with a Motif-based graphical user interface.
The solar energy system installed in a two story office building at a utilities company, which provides utility service to Walt Disney World, is described. The solar energy system application is 100 percent heating, 80 percent cooling, and 100 percent hot water. The storage medium is water with a capacity of 10,000 gallons hot and 10,000 gallons chilled water. Performance to date has equaled or exceeded design criteria.
The Space Operations Center (SOC) orbital space station program operations are described. A work breakdown structure for the general purpose support equipment, construction and transportation support, and resupply and logistics support systems is given. The basis for the design of each element is presented, and a mass estimate for each element supplied. The SOC build-up operation, construction, flight support, and satellite servicing operations are described. Detailed programmatics and cost analysis are presented.
With the launch of several Earth observing satellites over the last decade, we are now in a data rich environment. From NASA's Earth Observing System (EOS) satellites alone, we are accumulating more than 3 TB per day of raw data and derived geophysical parameters. The data products are being distributed to a large user community comprising scientific researchers, educators and operational government agencies. Notable progress has been made in the last decade in facilitating access to data. However, to realize the full potential of the growing archives of valuable scientific data, further progress is necessary in the transformation of data into information, and information into knowledge that can be used in particular applications. Sponsored by NASA s Intelligent Systems Project within the Computing, Information and Communication Technology (CICT) Program, a conceptual architecture study has been conducted to examine ideas to improve data utilization through the addition of intelligence into the archives in the context of an overall knowledge building system. Potential Intelligent Archive concepts include: 1) Mining archived data holdings using Intelligent Data Understanding algorithms to improve metadata to facilitate data access and usability; 2) Building intelligence about transformations on data, information, knowledge, and accompanying services involved in a scientific enterprise; 3) Recognizing the value of results, indexing and formatting them for easy access, and delivering them to concerned individuals; 4) Interacting as a cooperative node in a web of distributed systems to perform knowledge building (i.e., the transformations from data to information to knowledge) instead of just data pipelining; and 5) Being aware of other nodes in the knowledge building system, participating in open systems interfaces and protocols for virtualization, and collaborative interoperability. This paper presents some of these concepts and identifies issues to be addressed by research in future intelligent systems technology.
The Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter (LRO) project had a rapid development schedule starting with project conception in spring of 2004, instrument and launch vehicle selection late in 2005 and then launch in early 2009. The lunar thermal environment is one of the harshest in our solar system with the heavy infrared loading of the moon due to low albedo, lack of lunar atmosphere, and low effective regolith conduction. This set of constraints required a thermal design which maximized performance (minimized radiator area and cold control heater power) and minimized thermal hardware build at the orbiter level (blanketing, and heater service). The orbiter design located most of the avionics on an isothermalized heat pipe panel called the IsoThermal Panel (ITP). The ITP was coupled by dual bore heat pipes to an Optical Solar Reflector (OSR) covered heat pipe radiator. By coupling all of the avionics to one system, the hardware was simplified. The seven instruments were mainly heritage instruments which resulted in their desired radiators being located by their heritage design. This minimized instrument redesigns and therefore allowed them to be delivered earlier, though it resulted in a more complex orbiter level blanket and heater service design. Three of the instruments were mounted on a tight pointing M55J optical bench that needed to be covered in heaters to maintain pointing. Two were mounted to spacecraft controlled radiators. One was mounted to the ITP Dual Bores. The last was mounted directly to the bus structure on the moon facing panel. The propulsion system utilized four-20 pound insertion thrusters and eight-5 pound attitude control thrusters (ACS) in addition to 1000 kg of fuel in two large tanks. The propulsion system had a heater cylinder and a heated mounting deck for the insertion thrusters which coupled most of the propulsion design together simplifying the heater design. The High Gain Antenna System (HGAS) and Solar Array System (SAS) used dual axis actuator gimbal systems. HGAS required additional boom heaters to cool the approximately 10 W of RF losses thru the rotary joints and wave guides from the 40 W Ka system. By design this module needed a fair amount of heater, blanketing, and radiator complexity. The SAS system required a separate cable wrap radiator to help cool the Solar Array harness which dissipated 30 W thru the actuators and cable wraps. This module also was complex.
Consideration effort has been devoted over the past 30 years to developing methods and means of assessing the value of information. Two approaches - value in exchange and value in use - dominate; however, neither approach enjoys much practical application because validation schema for decision-making is missing. The approaches fail to measure objectively the real costs of acquiring information and the real benefits that information will yield. Moreover, these approaches collectively fail to provide economic justification to build and/or continue to support an information product or service. In addition, the impact of Cyberspace adds a new dimension to the problem. A new paradigm is required to make economic sense in this revolutionary information environment. In previous work, the authors explored the various approaches to measuring the value of information and concluded that, in large measure, these methods were unworkable concepts and constructs. Instead, they proposed several axioms for valuing information. Most particularly they concluded that the 'value of information cannot be measured in the absence of a specific task, objective, or goal.' This paper builds on those axioms and describes under which circumstances information can be measured in objective and actionable terms. This paper also proposes a methodology for undertaking such measures and validating the results.
With its unique and trusted earth observations, NASA is a critical source in informing decisions that will help achieve the U.S. goal of Net-Zero Greenhouse Gas (GHG) Emissions by 2050. NASA’s Prediction of Worldwide Energy Resource (POWER) project facilitates the use of NASA Earth Science data holdings within the energy, agricultural, and building heating/cooling design industries. POWER packages solar and meteorological data from several NASA projects in a user friendly GIS-enabled web services system (https://power.larc.nasa.gov). As part of the development of new data products to support the energy and building heating/cooling design communities, we estimate the changes in energy required to heat and cool buildings in the future climate at 14 different NASA site locations spread throughout the continental United States, as projected by CMIP6 climate models under different emissions scenarios. Bias-corrected downscaled time series of meteorological variables are taken from NASA Earth Exchange (NEX) Global Daily Downscaled Projections (GDDP-CMIP6) downscaled climate model data. The spread between the different model projections is accounted for by analyzing both the ensemble average of 22 CMIP6 models and 6 representative models with different climate sensitivities and different interannual variability. Changes in energy use are estimated in two ways. First, changes in the total annual heating and cooling degree days (HDD and CDD, respectively) are calculated relative to the current climate. This is done at all 14 sites. Second, the downscaled time series are used as inputs into RETScreen(R), a clean energy management decision tool, to give an estimate of heating/cooling energy use for a typical office building. We use this estimation method with model data at Langley Research Center. In the next 50 years, the annual total of HDD (CDD) is projected to decrease by 8-38% (increase by 5-28%) at all sites, with the increase in CDD typically a larger magnitude the decrease in HDD. For a typical small office building at Langley Research Center, the amount of energy needed to cool increases by 33-54% and the amount of energy to heat decreases by 29-40%. POWER is working to develop long term climate data services based on these results to include in future data products to provide to users.
The American Mobile Satellite Corporation (AMSC) is going to construct, launch, and operate a satellite system in order to provide mobile satellite services to the United States. AMSC is going to build, own, and operate a Network Control System (NCS) for managing the communications usage of the satellites, and to control circuit switched access between mobile earth terminals and feeder-link earth stations. An overview of the major NCS functional and performance requirements, the control system physical architecture, and the logical architecture is provided.
One of NASA's key goals is to increase the safety and reduce the cost of space transportation. Thus, a key element of NASA's new Integrated Space Transportation Plan is to develop new propulsion, structures, and operations for future generations of reusable launch vehicles (RLVs). As part of this effort to develop the next RLV, the ClCT Program's Computing, Networking, and Information Systems (CNIS) Project is developing and demonstrating collaborative software technologies that use the collective power of the NASA Grid to accelerate spacecraft design. One of these technologies, called AeroDB, automates the execution and monitoring of computational fluid dynamics (CFD) parameter studies on the NASA Grid. About the NASA Grid The NASA Grid, or Information Power Grid,. is being developed to leverage the distributed resources of NASA's many computers. instruments, simulators, and data storage systems. The goal is to use these combined resources to sdve difficult NASA challenges, such as iimulating the entire flight of a space vehicle from ascent to descent.To realize the vision of the NASA Grid, the CNIS Project is developing the software framework and protocols for building domain-specific environments and interfaces, new Grid services based on emerging industry standards, and advanced networking and computing testbeds to support new Grid-based applications such as AeroDB.
For NASA and the general community today Grid middleware: a) provides tools to access/use data sources (databases, instruments, ...); b) provides tools to access computing (unique and generic); c) Is an enabler of large scale collaboration. Dynamically responding to needs is a key selling point of a grid. Independent resources can be joined as appropriate to solve a problem. Provide tools to enable the building of a frameworks for application. Provide value added service to the NASA user base for utilizing resources on the grid in new and more efficient ways. Provides tools for development of Frameworks.
Project Overview Tech Challenge 2 - In-Time Safety Management for Emerging Operations - (2018-19) Initial Architecture and Information Req'ts - UTM-like ecosystem; ASIAS/SWIM-like info sharing - Ref: NASA TM-2020-220440 - (2020-2021) Phase 1 - Architecture and SFCs tailored to domain risks - Build collaborations on key topics - (2021-2022) Phase 2 - Services with infrastructure for urban ops - Broader in-time risk assessment span - (2023-2024) Phase 3 - With and by partners - Urban sUAS and AAM/UAM domains