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NASA NTRS2024

Measurements of Silicosis Factors in Lunar and Martian Simulants

Simulants are geologically complex materials that are developed to represent the physical and/or compositional characteristics of a planetary surface (e.g., a naturally occurring soil or regolith). There are dozens of commercially available simulants that have been developed over the years; each simulant exhibits unique physical, chemical, and mineralogical characteristics. Simulants are derived from either natural or synthetic sources (i.e., “feedstocks”) of glass, minerals, and rocks. These feedstock components are processed by crushing, pulverizing, melting, etc., and then combined in the appropriate proportions to represent a particular site, surface, or region (e.g., Lunar Highlands Regolith). The process of creating simulants therefore requires the mechanical breakdown and reincorporation of feedstock components which may contain crystalline silica minerals such as quartz, cristobalite, and tridymite. Certain crystalline silica particles of the respirable fraction (<10 μm in diameter) are of great concern; chronic and acute exposure to these respirable crystalline silica (RCS) can lead to permanent damage and scarring of lung tissue, incurable lung diseases (i.e., silicosis), lung cancer, COPD (chronic obstructive pulmonary disease), and kidney disease. Planetary simulants are used extensively as test materials in the in scientific and engineering communities (e.g., testing of dust mitigation technologies, in-situ resource utilization, rover mobility, hardware, soft goods etc.). As such, this assessment was developed to serve as a guide for simulant users, local Safety and Occupational Health professionals, and Industrial Hygienists to evaluate the risk of silicosis across a wide variety of Lunar and Martian simulants. The goal of these works is to ensure that those working with simulant can do so safely and with an informed understanding of potential health risks.

Lunar↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Show Me the Money! Evaluating A Graduated Incentive Structure to Keep Respondents Engaged Through 101 Surveys in 28 Days

We report the results of a survey test conducted in advance of a series of community response tests (CRTs) to evaluate response to noise from NASA’s X-59 aircraft. The CRTs will require a substantial number of observations to generate a dose response curve for noise exposure and related annoyance levels and the timeframe is limited due to resource and scheduling constraints with an experimental aircraft. Within each CRT area, we will recruit a sample of residents in advance and ask them to fill out a brief survey each time the aircraft passes over. Respondents will be asked to fill out the survey either on the web or as part of an application they are able to download onto their mobile phones. Respondents will be notified each time the plane flies over, asking for their reactions. On many days, respondents will be asked to fill out the survey for multiple flights. Typical incentives are used during the recruitment phase (pre-incentive for a household screener and post-paid for a background survey completed by the selected respondent) and post-paid for an end of study survey. To improve response rates over such a demanding survey schedule (101 surveys in 28 days) we will implement a weekly incentive based upon participation rates, with higher incentives for greater participation and increasing rates each week. The survey test will follow the proposed methodology of the CRTs. We will report on the participation rates by incentive amount and the effectiveness of the incentive structure in obtaining and maintaining response rates over the 4 weeks. We will examine how quickly participation fades over the 4-week period and consider whether the incentive schedule could be improved by altering the distribution of payments. Finally, we will compare how these rates varied across web and app respondents. We will use the results of this work to confirm or improve the design of the CRTs, ensuring the collection of data needed by NASA to evaluate the impact of this innovative technology.

incentives↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

101 Surveys in 28 Days - Evaluating Response Rates to a Demanding Request

We report the results of a survey test conducted in advance of a series of community response tests (CRTs) to evaluate response to noise from NASA’s X-59 aircraft. The CRTs will require a substantial number of observations to generate a dose response curve and the timeframe is limited due to resource and scheduling constraints with an experimental aircraft. Within each CRT area, we will recruit a sample of residents in advance and ask them to fill out a brief survey each time the aircraft passes over. Respondents will be asked to fill out the survey either on the web or as part of an application they are able to download onto their mobile phones. On many days, respondents will be asked to fill out the survey for multiple passes. The survey test followed the proposed methodology of the CRTs, albeit gauging reactions to normal in-situ aircraft events. To demonstrate initial interest, we will present response rates to the recruitment portion of the survey test which used an ABS frame. We will then evaluate the ongoing response rates among the recruited population to a demanding survey schedule involving 101 surveys over a 28-day period. The response rate evaluation will focus on demographics, mode (app vs. web) and whether and how these change over time. We will use the results of this work to confirm or improve the design of the CRTs, ensuring the collection of data needed by NASA to evaluate the impact of this innovative technology.

response rates↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Marco… Polo, Collecting location data 78 times in 28 days

We report the results of a survey test conducted in advance of a series of community response tests (CRTs) to evaluate response to noise from NASA’s X-59 aircraft. The CRTs will require a substantial number of observations to generate a dose response curve for noise exposure and related annoyance levels and the timeframe is limited due to resource and scheduling constraints with an experimental aircraft. Respondents will be asked to fill out the surveys either on the web or as part of an application they are able to download onto their mobile phones. Respondents will be asked to fill out a survey each time the plane flies over the targeted area. The sample will be drawn targeting households within a specific ‘fly-over’ area. However, respondents may travel during the day, sometimes outside the targeted area. For the observations to be useful respondents need to be within a target area during flights. To collect the location data, respondents will be asked to identify where they were at the time of the flyover. The survey test followed the proposed methodology of the CRTs. We will describe how location data was collected using Google Maps API and evaluate reported rates of location at home, work or other places and whether these were inside or outside the target area. We will also compare how these rates varied across web and app respondents. We will use the results of this work to confirm or improve the design of the CRTs, ensuring the collection of data needed by NASA to evaluate the impact of this innovative technology.

Google Maps↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Measurements of Silicosis Factors in Lunar and Martian Simulants

Lunar↗

NASA NTRS2000

The Effect of Radiation on Selected Photographic Film

We conducted this film test to evaluate several manufacturers' photographic films for their ability to acquire imagery on the International Space Station. We selected 25 motion picture, photographic slide, and negative films from three different film manufacturers. We based this selection on the fact that their films ranked highest in other similar film tests, and on their general acceptance by the international community. This test differed from previous tests because the entire evaluation process leading up to the final selection was based on information derived after the original flight film was scanned to a digital file. Previously conducted tests were evaluated entirely based on 8 x 10s that were produced from the film either directly or through the internegative process. This new evaluation procedure provided accurate quantitative data on granularity and contrast from the digital data. This test did not try to define which film was best visually. This is too often based on personal preference. However, the test results did group the films by good, marginal, and unacceptable. We developed, and included in this report, a template containing quantitative, graphical, and visual information for each film. These templates should be sufficient for comparing the different films tested and subsequently selecting a film or films to be used for experiments and general documentation on the International Space Station.

Slater, Richard↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

An Overview of NASA's Low Boom Flight Demonstration

NASA will soon begin a series of tests that will collect nationally representative data on how people perceive low noise supersonic overflights. For half a century, civilian aircraft have been required to fly slower than the speed of sound over land to prevent “creating an unacceptable situation” on the ground due to sonic booms. However, new aircraft shaping techniques have led to dramatic changes in how shockwaves from supersonic flight merge together as they travel to the ground. What used to sound like a boom on the ground will be transformed into a thump. NASA is now building a full-scale, piloted demonstration aircraft called the X-59 to demonstrate low noise supersonic flight. In 2024, the X-59 aircraft will commence a national series of community overflight tests to collect data on how people perceive “sonic thumps.” The community response data will be provided to national and international noise regulators as they consider creating new standards that allow supersonic flight over land at acceptably low noise levels.

Sonic Boom↗

NASA NTRS2014

Towards Test Driven Development for Computational Science with pFUnit

Developers working in Computational Science & Engineering (CSE)/High Performance Computing (HPC) must contend with constant change due to advances in computing technology and science. Test Driven Development (TDD) is a methodology that mitigates software development risks due to change at the cost of adding comprehensive and continuous testing to the development process. Testing frameworks tailored for CSE/HPC, like pFUnit, can lower the barriers to such testing, yet CSE software faces unique constraints foreign to the broader software engineering community. Effective testing of numerical software requires a comprehensive suite of oracles, i.e., use cases with known answers, as well as robust estimates for the unavoidable numerical errors associated with implementation with finite-precision arithmetic. At first glance these concerns often seem exceedingly challenging or even insurmountable for real-world scientific applications. However, we argue that this common perception is incorrect and driven by (1) a conflation between model validation and software verification and (2) the general tendency in the scientific community to develop relatively coarse-grained, large procedures that compound numerous algorithmic steps.We believe TDD can be applied routinely to numerical software if developers pursue fine-grained implementations that permit testing, neatly side-stepping concerns about needing nontrivial oracles as well as the accumulation of errors. We present an example of a successful, complex legacy CSE/HPC code whose development process shares some aspects with TDD, which we contrast with current and potential capabilities. A mix of our proposed methodology and framework support should enable everyday use of TDD by CSE-expert developers.

pFUnit↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Overview of A Survey Methods Test for the NASA Quesst Community Survey Campaign

In its mission to expand knowledge and improve aviation, NASA conducts research to address sonic boom noise, the prime barrier to overland supersonic flight. NASA is currently preparing for a community survey campaign to assess response to noise from the new X-59 aircraft. During each community survey, a substantial number of observations must be collected over a limited timeframe to generate a dose response relationship. A sample of residents will be recruited in advance to fill out a brief survey each time X-59 flies over, approximately 80 times throughout a month. In preparation NASA conducted a month-long test of survey methods in 2023. A sample of 800 residents was recruited from a simulated fly-over area. Because there were no actual X-59 fly-overs, respondents were asked about their reactions to noise from normal aircraft operations. The respondents chose whether to fill out the survey on the web or via a smartphone application. Evaluating response rates and how they evolved over time was a specific focus of the test. Also, a graduated incentive structure was implemented to keep respondents engaged. Finally, location data was collected from respondents since it will be needed to estimate individual noise exposure from X-59. The results of this survey test will help determine the design of the community survey campaign.

Sonic boom↗

DOE OSTI2019

New Approach and Test Facility for High Field Accelerator Magnets R&D

This paper presents a new approach for developing and demonstrating high field magnet technology based on a magnet and test facility developed specifically for it. The traditional approach for carrying out high field magnet R&D has been building a new magnet to demonstrate a new design, new material or new technology. However, building a high field magnet is time consuming and expensive. To overcome this limitation, Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL) built and successfully tested a 10 T Nb 3 Sn dipole DCC017 with large enough open or clear space (31 mm wide and 338 mm high) so that a pair of racetrack coils could be inserted into this opening without disassembling the magnet. The motivation be-hind this design was to facilitate a magnet R&D program where the new coils (with a large range in width and height accommodated) would reside in a high field region in direct contact with the existing coils (just as other magnet coils) and thus become an integral part of the magnet. We summarize the approach, the magnet, the test facility, past experiences, current and future test plans and planned up-grade. Here, the magnet facility is now available to service the needs of the wider community for testing cable and insert coils in a back-ground field of up to 10 T.

43 PARTICLE ACCELERATORS↗

DOE OSTI2023

Community Geothermal: Final Thermal Conductivity Test Report and Data Logs - Carbondale, CO

Provided here are a final thermal conductivity test report, a drilling log, and a heat rejection log from Carbondale, CO. Also attached is a report made before drilling, which contains predictions on the hydrogeologic conditions of the drill site. The forty-eight (48.9) hour in-situ thermal conductivity test was performed on the 28th through the 30th, of November 2023. The test was performed at the borehole drilled on November 16th through the 20th, at the 3rd Street Center at 520 S. 3rd, Street in Carbondale, Colorado. Testing was done with a certified Ewbank portable test unit.

15 GEOTHERMAL ENERGY↗

DOE OSTI2024

Evaluating community solar as a measure to promote equitable clean energy access

Rooftop and community solar are alternative product classes for residential solar in the United States. Community solar, where multiple households buy solar from shared systems, could make solar more accessible by reducing initial costs and removing adoption barriers for renters and multifamily building occupants. Here we test whether community solar has expanded solar access in the United States. On the basis of a sample of 11 states, we find that community solar adopters are about 6.1 times more likely to live in multifamily buildings than rooftop solar adopters, 4.4 times more likely to rent and earn 23% less annual income. In this study, we do not find that community solar expands access in terms of race. These differences are driven, roughly evenly, by inherent differences between the two solar products and by policies to promote low-income community solar adoption. The results suggest that alternative solar products can expand solar access and that policy could augment such benefits.

14 SOLAR ENERGY↗

NASA NTRS2019

UAS Integration in the NAS Detect and Avoid Subproject: Kitty Hawk - NASA Collaboration Discussion

NASA is conducting research under the UAS Integration in the NAS Project to develop standards that will enable mid-size and large unmanned aircraft to fly unrestricted in the National Airspace System. As these efforts move into its second phase, NASA is planning a series of flight tests and demonstrations, integrating industry partners' technologies. These events will not only provide valuable data to inform the RTCA Special Committee 228 DAA and C2 MOPS, but also provide an opportunity for the UAS community to test their technologies in a realistic environment. An overview of NASA UAS-NAS research will be presented touching on human systems integration, modeling and simulation and guidance and control. Plans for Flight Test 6 and Systems Integration Operationalization (SIO) will also be presented. The purpose of this meeting is to share with Kitty Hawk, at a high level, UAS-NAS research and discuss potential future collaboration between NASA and Kitty Hawk.

Shively, Jay↗

NASA NTRS2022

Unifying the Validation of Ambient Solar Wind Models

Progress in space weather research and awareness needs community-wide strategies and procedures to evaluate our modeling assets. Here we present the activities of the Ambient Solar Wind Validation Team embedded in the COSPAR ISWAT initiative. We aim to bridge the gap between model developers and end-users to provide the community with an assessment of the state-of-the-art in solar wind forecasting. To this end, we develop an open online platform for validating solar wind models by comparing their solutions with in situ spacecraft measurements. The online platform will allow the space weather community to test the quality of state-of-the-art solar wind models with unified metrics providing an unbiased assessment of progress over time. In this study, we propose a metadata architecture and recommend community-wide forecasting goals and validation metrics. We conclude with a status update of the online platform and outline future perspectives.

Space weather↗

DOE OSTI2022

Biodiversity and disease risk in an algal biofuel system: An experimental test in outdoor ponds using a before-after-control-impact (BACI) design

For outdoor cultivation of algal feedstocks to become a commercially viable and sustainable option for biofuel production, algal cultivation must maintain high yields and temporal stability in environmentally variable outdoor ponds. One of the main challenges is mitigating disease outbreaks that leads to culture crashes. Drawing on predictions from the ‘dilution effect’ hypothesis, in which increased biodiversity is thought to reduce disease risk in a community, a teste of whether algal polycultures would reduce disease risk and improve feedstock production efficiencies compared to monocultures was performed. While the positive benefits of biodiversity on disease risk have been demonstrated in various systems, to the best of our knowledge this is the first test in an algal biofuel system. Here, the results a before-after-control-impact (BACI) experimental design to compare mean monoculture (control) and polyculture (impact) yield, stability, and productivity before and after fungal infection when grown in 400-L outdoor raceway ponds are presented. It has been found that polycultures did not experience a reduction in disease risk compared to monocultures or differ in production efficiencies throughout the course of the 43-day experiment. These results show that polyculture feedstocks can maintain similar levels of productivity, stability, and disease resistance to that of a monoculture. Determining whether these results are generalizable or represent one case study requires additional outdoor experiments using a larger variety of host and pathogen species.

09 BIOMASS FUELS↗

DOE OSTI2020

Investigating effects of soil chemicals on density of small mammal bioindicators using spatial capture-recapture models

Monitoring the ecological impacts of environmental pollution and the effectiveness of remediation efforts requires identifying relationships between contaminants and the disruption of biological processes in populations, communities, or ecosystems. Wildlife are useful bioindicators, but traditional comparative experimental approaches rely on a staunch and typically unverifiable assumption that, in the absence of contaminants, reference and contaminated sites would support the same densities of bioindicators, thereby inferring direct causation from indirect data. We demonstrate the utility of spatial capture-recapture (SCR) models for overcoming these issues, testing if community density of common small mammal bioindicators was directly influenced by soil chemical concentrations. By modeling density as an inhomogeneous Poisson point process, we found evidence for an inverse spatial relationship between Peromyscus density and soil mercury concentrations, but not other chemicals, such as polychlorinated biphenyls, at a site formerly occupied by a nuclear reactor. Although the coefficient point estimate supported Peromyscus density being lower where mercury concentrations were higher (β = –0.44), the 95% confidence interval overlapped zero, suggesting no effect was also compatible with our data. Estimated density from the most parsimonious model (2.88 mice/ha; 95% CI = 1.63–5.08), which did not support a density-chemical relationship, was within the range of reported densities for Peromyscus that did not inhabit contaminated sites elsewhere. Environmental pollution remains a global threat to biodiversity and ecosystem and human health, and our study provides an illustrative example of the utility of SCR models for investigating the effects that chemicals may have on wildlife bioindicator populations and communities.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Updated Noise Dose Range of NASA’s X-59 Aircraft Estimated from Propagation Simulations

A follow-on study to Doebler and Loubeau, “The noise dose range of the X-59 estimated from propagation simulations,” JASA 150(4), A208 (2021); doi:10.1121/10.0008134 is described. In the previous work, propagation simulations of NASA’s X-59 sonic thump were conducted using two near-field pressure solutions from NASA’s Cart3D computational fluid dynamics (CFD) code. The near-fields were propagated through realistic atmospheric profiles from the Climate Forecast System Version 2 database across the USA, and Perceived Level statistics of the thumps were presented. The current work repeats the previous analyses, instead using near-field CFD solutions from NASA’s Fully Unstructured Navier-Stokes (FUN3D) code for the same aircraft conditions (Mach 1.4 at 53,200 feet and Mach 1.3 at 43,000 feet), which achieve the minimum and maximum cruise loudness. NASA and contractors in the X-59 development and community noise testing project mutually agreed upon using FUN3D for generating near-field pressures. Sonic thump loudness statistics using the FUN3D near-fields are similar to those of Cart3D. The min loudness condition is about 1 dB (PL) greater when using the FUN3D solution, and the max loudness condition results are nearly identical. Understanding the X-59’s dose range for various flight and atmospheric conditions is important for planning X-59 community noise surveys.

X-59↗

DOE OSTI2026

A New Shutdown Dose Rate Benchmark Problem for Representative Fusion Applications

Here, this work introduces a new benchmark problem for calculating shutdown dose rates (SDDRs) aimed at fusion reactor applications. The model is designed to represent a simplified version of a typical ITER port plug. The responses of interest include neutron flux, gamma flux, and gamma SDDR at 12 different locations scattered throughout the port. This article outlines the geometry specifications of the problem, provides material definitions for the components, specifies the required responses to be calculated, and presents the source definition information. The need for this benchmark arises from the limited availability of publicly accessible references, with only one benchmark representing the typical dimensions and materials found in fusion systems. This existing benchmark has been cited extensively, reflecting the demand within the scientific community to test both established and novel workflows for SDDR calculations. However, since its presentation at a conference in 2011, the results have become increasingly well known. Moreover, the absence of formal publication and peer review has led to the details of this benchmark being extracted from secondary sources, such as subsequent studies that reference it. As a result, analysts are left with significant flexibility in interpreting the key parameters, which can be adjusted to account for unknown systematic errors, ultimately reproducing the already well-known responses. This new benchmark serves as an updated version of that earlier work, with the aim of providing a more reliable description of the materials and their impurities, which is crucial for assessing activation and subsequent gamma emission. Additionally, it seeks to provide a geometry that more closely represents an ITER port plug. The improvements in the problem definition will lead to a more reproducible benchmark problem, while also presenting the radiation transport community with a completely new challenge. The results will be published in a future article to allow analysts adequate time to analyze this problem independently.

Benchmark↗