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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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At least 109 records · Page 6

The Hydropower Game: An Interactive Learning Tool for the Future Hydropower Workforce

This report documents a Seedling project supported by the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) Water Power Technologies Office (WPTO), conducted by Argonne National Laboratory (ANL) and the National Laboratory of the Rockies (NLR). The Seedling and Sapling Program provides small grants over short duration to enable early-stage research at national laboratories. This funding mechanism is intended to cultivate innovative ideas and expand research road maps in hydropower and marine energy technologies. Under this Seedling award, the project team developed an educational outreach tool, or “serious game”, built in Python and powered by the Pygame library, aimed at teaching fundamental hydropower concepts through an engaging, interactive learning experience. The game features multiple lessons covering several hydropower topics while allowing for expansion and customization in the instance of future funding availability: • Hydropower Plant Types: Players explore and compare the mechanics and applications of run-of-river, dam hydropower, and pumped-storage hydropower. • Flow Dynamics and Power Generation: Interactive tasks demonstrate how release rate and hydraulic head combine to determine power output. • Grid Operations and Load Following: Simulations illustrate how hydropower facilities respond to fluctuating electricity demand to balance the grid. • Market Integration: Levels scaffold understanding of how hydropower interfaces with the broader energy market, including operational and economic considerations. The tool was showcased at several science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) outreach events, where it was demoed to students, educators, and the general public. These events provided valuable opportunities to collect feedback on the gameplay, storyline, and educational objectives from a wide audience. The game was presented at STEMapalooza, Introduce a Girl to Engineering Day, STEMCON, and Clean Currents 2025. Insights gathered during these demonstrations informed refinements to the game’s user experience and strengthened its effectiveness as an educational tool for teaching hydropower concepts. This report outlines the game’s design philosophy, educational objectives, technical implementation, user experience insights, and potential for broader deployment within educational and workforce development contexts. It emphasizes how gamified learning can demystify complex hydropower science and inspire interest in water-power technologies. The project’s success demonstrates the value of Seedling funding in fostering creative, lowcost educational tools that support DOE’s mission to advance energy literacy and innovation. The report concludes with recommendations for expanding the tool by adding new levels, integrating assessment metrics, and exploring commercialization or deployment pathways through future Sapling funding. The official webpage of the Hydropower Game, which includes a link to the educational tool, can be accessed at www.anl.gov/hydropower/hydropower-game.

13 HYDRO ENERGY↗

Industry Inputs into Future NASA Project Planning

NASA is currently formulating its plans for follow-on related work that builds upon knowledge gained in ATD related activities and collaborative engagements with the aviation community. The NASA Air Traffic Management - eXploration (ATM-X) project has the desire to continue this engagement with the aviation industry and capture industry inputs to continue development of their plans and is supporting this outreach with the ATD-2 team.

ATD↗

Considerations for the Integration of AAM Technologies in Emergency Response Operations

Since 2016, JAXA and NASA have partnered to investigate the safe and efficient integration of unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) in disaster response operations. Through the collaboration, supporting systems from the respective agencies have been successfully integrated and demonstrated in multiple activities ranging from localized simulations and flight tests to large-scale national disaster drills. As the collaboration has matured and a new NASA project formulated, the next steps in progressing the goals of the partnership activity are the alignment and potential informing of standards related to disaster response operations. This presentation is the first public outreach to the ASTM standards organization to promote awareness of the ongoing work and to identify areas of potential engagement to develop necessary standards.

disaster response↗

Aero Fair Presentation

Diversity and Inclusion Outreach event to promote STEM, NASA, and Aeronautics to underrepresented middle school students in the Bay Area. Connect with the community. Engage with students to showcase NASA Ames Aeronautics and spark interest in a STEM education.

Aero Fair↗

Aero Fair 2022

Diversity and Inclusion Outreach event to promote STEM, NASA, and Aeronautics to underrepresented middle school students in the Bay Area. Connect with the community. Engage with students to showcase NASA Ames Aeronautics and spark interest in a STEM education.

Aero Fair 2022↗

Aero Fair 2022

Diversity and Inclusion Outreach event to promote STEM, NASA, and Aeronautics to underrepresented middle school students in the Bay Area. Connect with the community. Engage with students to showcase NASA Ames Aeronautics and spark interest in a STEM education.

Aero Fair 2022↗

There's Enough Space for Everyone

Only a few fortunate people have the opportunity to go into space and experience the wonders of our universe first-hand. But thanks to social media and virtual worlds, many unique opportunities exist for us to learn, explore and experience what s out there from wherever we are. NASA and Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) are making this even easier to do. From blogs to Twitter messages, from Facebook pages to Flickr Photo sites, NASA is leveraging social media to share never-before-seen footage and inside information on spaceflight, scientific discoveries and other space activities. Over the last year, Marshall has reached more than half-a-million viewers through its high-profile, real-time blogs. Through its Watching a Launch blog, visitors were invited to take the "virtual" rides of their lives as they received a first-hand account of seeing a powerful shuttle launch - up close and personal. Through the Shuttle Ferry Flight blog, they got to experience the Shuttle Atlantis journey home to Kennedy Space Center as it rode "piggyback" on a modified Boeing 747 airplane. This year, Marshall s Flickr photo galleries have been visited over 700,000 times, Ares rocket videos have been viewed on iTunes, YouTube, TeacherTube and NASA Web sites more than 1.2 million times, and Marshall s Facebook Page has over 2,800 "friends" who regularly follow NASA. Social media tools have been a powerful way to reach and inspire the public, but NASA has also used these tools effectively to promote education and outreach. From events such as the Great Moonbuggy Race to the Student Launch Initiative, Marshall has used social networks to interest, excite and engage students. This presentation shares some of NASA s experiences on what has worked . . . and what hasn't . . . and seeks to spread the message that through social media "there's enough space for everyone."

Schumacher, Daniel M.↗

ISSLive!

The ISSLive! project is a JSC innovation award- winning, combined MOD/Education project to publish export control and PAO-approved ISS telemetry, and simplified and scrubbed crew timelines. The publication of this data will be real-time or near real time and will include links to the crew's social media feeds and existing streaming public video/audio feeds, via public-friendly website, mobile devices and tablet applications. Additionally, the project will offer interactive virtual 3D views of an ISS model based on real-time telemetry and a 3D virtual mission control center based on existing Front Room console positions in made for public displays. The ISSLive! project is MOD-managed and includes collaborations with subject-matter expertise from the ISS flight controllers regarding daily operations and planning, education program specialists from the JSC Office of Education, instructional designers, human computer interface experts, and software/hardware experts from MOD facility organization, and senior web designers. In support of the Agency s Strategic Goal #6 with respect to using the ISS National Laboratory for education activities, ISSLive! uses the Station itself as STEM education subject matter and provides data for STEM-based lessons plans using national standards. Specifically, ISSLive! supports and enables the National Laboratory Education (NLE) project to address the Agency s Strategic Goal #6. This goal mandates, sharing NASA with the public, educators, and students to provide opportunities to participate in our Mission, foster innovation .. ISSLive! satisfies the Agency s outcomes of Strategic Goal; that is, engages the public in NASA's missions by providing new pathways for participation (Outcome 6.3) and it informs, engages, and inspires the public by sharing NASA s missions, challenges, and results (Outcome 6.4). Additionally, ISSLive! enables MOD s support of JSC Outreach and NASA's Open Data and Open Government Initiatives. The audience for the ISSLive! website and its application(s) are: teachers, students, citizen scientists, and the general public who will be given new and interactive insights on how the ISS Operates.

Price, Jennifer B.↗

MARVEL Utilization Plan

This report provides a high-level overview of the operational plan for the MARVEL microreactor. The main focus is on discussing testing and application demonstration opportunities that leverage the reactor. With the reactor rapidly progressing towards demonstration, along with the short operational window (2 years), it was deemed critical to start establishing a basis for how stakeholders can engage with the program and leverage the reactor as a testbed. The report discusses potential opportunities for using MARVEL leveraging from data/design access, novel controls testing, novel nuclear-electric applications, to novel nuclear-heat applications. It also provides guidance for interested stakeholders on potential funding opportunities that can be pursued to support tests during the operational lifetime of the reactor. The report also discusses the recommended strategy for outreach and the organization structure to review and down select project. It is important to emphasize that this is intended to be a living document with revisions issued as the MARVEL demonstration timeline evolves. Similarly, the framework for engagement is subject to change as the project nears construction. As such, this first revision to the original test plan highlights the new Microreactor Program-sponsored pathway for engaging with stakeholders via an Expression of Interest and Notice of Opportunity.

22 - GENERAL STUDIES OF NUCLEAR REACTORS↗

Geothermal Collegiate Competition: Evolution and Impact

In 2010, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) announced the launch of its inaugural National Geothermal Student Competition. The competition was open to all colleges, universities, and other post-secondary institutions in the United States, and was labeled as the first-ever to address geothermal education. The GeoVision, published in 2019 by the Geothermal Technologies Office (GTO), stated that improving geothermal energy education and outreach is critical in reducing risks and costs of geothermal technology deployment. The key actions included improving public education and outreach about geothermal energy and providing resources intended to attract and inform a skilled geothermal workforce. Student competitions in particular have the ability to increase awareness of renewable energy fields by engaging multi-disciplinary students in compelling design challenges to prepare them for careers in renewable energy. GTO, in partnership with an administration team at the National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL), currently supports the Geothermal Collegiate Competition (GCC), with the main objective of advancing and cultivating collegiate student knowledge and career interest in geothermal energy. The administrating team works toward growing the number of students and collegiate institutions engaged, as well as diversifying the scope of the student design challenges. The main intentions of this publication are documenting the competition’s evolution, setting a baseline for future GCC impact analysis and serving as a guide to other students’ competition design committees looking for ideas to capture and increase the interest of students in collegiate competitions.

Geothermal Collegiate Competition↗

Achieving Global Consensus on Acceptable Sound Levels for Overland Supersonic Flight

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration has made a commitment to deliver to the International Civil Aviation Organization’s Committee on Aviation Environmental Protection (ICAO CAEP) data defining community response to sounds from supersonic aircraft designed such that their sonic boom is replaced with a soft “thump” sound. The dataset will be a correlation of public perceptions of these sounds to the corresponding acoustic levels. The data will support efforts to develop international standards for permissible noise from supersonic overflight. NASA is planning and preparing for a series of community overflight tests with the X-59, a unique research aircraft capable of generating the “sonic thump”. NASA will begin these tests in 2024. With an eye toward achieving global consensus for noise standards, NASA’s goal is that the community response data be as broadly representative of the response of the international population as possible. As such, NASA is engaging the international regulatory and research communities in both the planning and execution of these tests, through status briefings at ICAO CAEP-sponsored meetings and through workshops with international participation. As part of this outreach NASA held a virtual workshop in December 2021 focused on strategies and considerations for estimating noise exposure levels and conducting surveys to characterize community annoyance levels relative to the “thump” sounds. This paper will present an overview of NASA’s effort, with a focus on the plans and technical goals for the community response tests. In addition, results of the recent workshop will be briefed, including considerations and approaches for ensuring broad representativeness of results and approaches for estimation of the sound levels across the test community. Participant feedback from both the workshop and previous engagements will be discussed, along with how it is being addressed in NASA’s ongoing planning efforts.

Supersonic Flight↗

Accelerating nuclear-integrated data center pursuits in the USA: SWOT analysis, power-thermal management strategies and demonstration plan

Here, this study explores the increasing interest in leveraging nuclear power to meet the escalating energy demands of data centers in the United States (U.S.) by focusing on key factors that contribute to accelerated deployment. The study highlights the importance of N+1/N+2 power supplies (where N is the required number of units), outlines research and innovations in nuclear-integrated data center thermal management and demonstration plan. It also provides updates about status and costing of various reactor system designs. A summarized strengths, weaknesses, opportunities, and threats (SWOT) analysis shows the potential options for grid connectivity, reactors, and site selection. Suitable site discussions consider land and water availability, grid access, and optical fiber connectivity, and the study presents graded prospects for Department of Energy (DOE) sites with a specific example. Community engagement and partnerships are emphasized, particularly the roles of local government, federal agencies, utilities, and data center industry partners, which are crucial for accelerating deployment, business outreach, and approvals. The study provides actionable insights for stakeholders to accelerate the deployment of nuclear-powered data centers.

21 - SPECIFIC NUCLEAR REACTORS AND ASSOCIATED PLAN↗

Expanding Access to Charging at Home (EACH) Technical Report

This report summarizes the implementation, outcomes, and key learnings of Expanding Access to Charging at Homes (EACH), a nationwide multifamily housing charging initiative focused on accelerating deployment of electric vehicle charging infrastructure at multifamily housing properties. The program combined education, outreach, and technical assistance to support property owners, managers, residents, and industry stakeholders in overcoming barriers to EV charging adoption. The report highlights program strategies, stakeholder engagement, resources developed, and recommendations to help scale charging access at multifamily housing nationwide.

29 ENERGY PLANNING, POLICY, AND ECONOMY↗

Women as a force multiplier for bringing nuclear forensic capabilities to the international stage

In 2009, the U.S. Department of Energy / National Nuclear Security Administration’s (DOE/NNSA) Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation (DNN) Program initiated a new nuclear forensics outreach effort under its Confidence Building Measures Program. Little did they know that the timing could not have been better. This article focuses on the early years (2009-2015) of the NNSA’s international nuclear forensics outreach, specifically the efforts and experiences of the women who helped establish this program, building it from a fledgling bilateral effort into an enduring technical capacity provider engaging with dozens of countries and multilateral organizations. At the onset of the program, nuclear forensics was an emerging priority within the U.S. Government and receiving increased focus from international organizations through high-level diplomatic efforts such as the Nuclear Security Summit and Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. Additionally, working-level initiatives were gaining traction through the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Forensics International Technical Working Group. Over the next six years, a small team comprised of a uniquely large number of women NNSA federal, contract, and national laboratory staff served as key leaders engaging with the international community to strengthen global technical nuclear forensics capacity and best practices. The program continues today under the Nuclear Smuggling Detection and Deterrence Program as Investigation Support. The experiences shared here detail a unique time period when the new technical discipline of nuclear forensics was beginning to mature and gain international traction. The authors have made every effort to remember history correctly and be as inclusive as possible. A wealth of training, guidance, and exercises documentation was developed in the 2009-2015 timeframe, much of which still serves as the foundation for today’s even more extensive program and community of dedicated technical and diplomatic practitioners.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗

Women as a Force Multiplier for Bringing Nuclear Forensic Capabilities to the International Stage

In 2009, the US Department of Energy National Nuclear Security Administration’s (NNSA’s) Defense Nuclear Nonproliferation Program initiated a new nuclear forensics outreach effort under its Confidence Building Measures Program. Little did they know that the timing could not have been better. This article focuses on the early years (2009–2015) of the NNSA’s international nuclear forensics outreach, specifically the efforts and experiences of the women who helped establish this program, building it from a fledgling, bilateral effort into an enduring technical capacity provider engaging with dozens of countries and multilateral organizations. At the onset of the program, nuclear forensics was an emerging priority within the US Government and receiving increased focus from international organizations through high-level diplomatic efforts such as the Nuclear Security Summit and Global Initiative to Combat Nuclear Terrorism. Additionally, working-level initiatives were gaining traction through the International Atomic Energy Agency and the Nuclear Forensics International Technical Working Group. Over the next 6 years, a small team comprising a uniquely large number of women NNSA federal, contract, and national laboratory staff served as key leaders engaging with the international community to strengthen global technical nuclear forensics capacity and best practices. The program continues today under the Nuclear Smuggling Detection and Deterrence Program as Investigation Support. The experiences shared here detail a unique time period when the new technical discipline of nuclear forensics was beginning to mature and gain international traction. The authors have made every effort to remember history correctly and be as inclusive as possible. A wealth of training, guidance, and exercise documentation was developed in the 2009–2015 time frame, much of which still serves as the foundation for today’s even more extensive program and community of dedicated technical and diplomatic practitioners.

98 NUCLEAR DISARMAMENT, SAFEGUARDS, AND PHYSICAL P↗

Lunar and Planetary Science XXXV: Engaging K-12 Educators, Students, and the General Public in Space Science Exploration

The session "Engaging K-12 Educators, Students, and the General Public in Space Science Exploration" included the following reports:Training Informal Educators Provides Leverage for Space Science Education and Public Outreach; Teacher Leaders in Research Based Science Education: K-12 Teacher Retention, Renewal, and Involvement in Professional Science; Telling the Tale of Two Deserts: Teacher Training and Utilization of a New Standards-based, Bilingual E/PO Product; Lindstrom M. M. Tobola K. W. Stocco K. Henry M. Allen J. S. McReynolds J. Porter T. T. Veile J. Space Rocks Tell Their Secrets: Space Science Applications of Physics and Chemistry for High School and College Classes -- Update; Utilizing Mars Data in Education: Delivering Standards-based Content by Exposing Educators and Students to Authentic Scientific Opportunities and Curriculum; K. E. Little Elementary School and the Young Astronaut Robotics Program; Integrated Solar System Exploration Education and Public Outreach: Theme, Products and Activities; and Online Access to the NEAR Image Collection: A Resource for Educators and Scientists.

Source record↗