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At least 1,189 records · Page 66

Promoting a Culture of Tailoring for Systems Engineering Policy Expectations

NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) has developed an integrated systems engineering approach to promote a culture of tailoring for program and project policy requirements. MSFC's culture encourages and supports tailoring, with an emphasis on risk-based decision making, for enhanced affordability and efficiency. MSFC's policy structure integrates the various Agency requirements into a single, streamlined implementation approach which serves as a "one-stop-shop" for our programs and projects to follow. The engineers gain an enhanced understanding of policy and technical expectations, as well as lesson's learned from MSFC's history of spaceflight and science missions, to enable them to make appropriate, risk-based tailoring recommendations. The tailoring approach utilizes a standard methodology to classify projects into predefined levels using selected mission and programmatic scaling factors related to risk tolerance. Policy requirements are then selectively applied and tailored, with appropriate rationale, and approved by the governing authorities, to support risk-informed decisions to achieve the desired cost and schedule efficiencies. The policy is further augmented by implementation tools and lifecycle planning aids which help promote and support the cultural shift toward more tailoring. The MSFC Customization Tool is an integrated spreadsheet that ties together everything that projects need to understand, navigate, and tailor the policy. It helps them classify their project, understand the intent of the requirements, determine their tailoring approach, and document the necessary governance approvals. It also helps them plan for and conduct technical reviews throughout the lifecycle. Policy tailoring is thus established as a normal part of project execution, with the tools provided to facilitate and enable the tailoring process. MSFC's approach to changing the culture emphasizes risk-based tailoring of policy to achieve increased flexibility, efficiency, and effectiveness in project execution, while maintaining appropriate rigor to ensure mission success.

Blankenship, Van A.↗

ARCSTONE: Calibration of Lunar Spectral Reflectance from Space

Detecting and improving the scientific understanding of global trends in complex Earth systems, such as climate, increasingly depends on assimilating datasets from multiple instruments and platforms over decadal timescales. Calibration accuracy, stability, and inter-consistency among different instruments are key to developing reliable composite data records from sensors in low Earth and geostationary orbits, but achieving sufficiently low uncertainties for these performance metrics poses a significant challenge. Space-borne instruments commonly carry on-board references for calibration at various wavelengths, but these increase mass and mission complexity, and are subject to degradation in the space environment. The Moon can be considered a natural solar diffuser which can be observed as a calibration target by most spaceborne Earth-observing instruments. Since the lunar surface reflectance is effectively time-invariant, establishing the Moon as a high-accuracy calibration reference enables broad inter-calibration opportunities even between temporally non-overlapping instruments and provides an exo-atmospheric absolute radiometric standard. The ARCSTONE mission goal is to establish the Moon as a reliable reference for high-accuracy on-orbit calibration in the visible and near-infrared spectral region. The ARCSTONE instrument is a compact spectrometer, which will be packaged on a CubeSat intended for low Earth orbit. It will measure the lunar spectral reflectance with accuracy < 0.5% (k=1), sufficient to establish an SI-traceable absolute lunar calibration standard when referenced to the spectral solar irradiance across the 350 to 2300 nm spectral range. This lunar reference will help to enable high-accuracy absolute calibration and inter-calibration of past, current, and future Earth-observing sensors, meteorological imagers, and long-term climate monitoring satellite systems. The ARCSTONE team will present the development status of a full-spectral-range (FSR) instrument, the intended approach to calibration and characterization, and the planned path toward mission implementation.

calibration↗

ARCSTONE: Calibration of Lunar Spectral Reflectance from Space

Detecting and improving the scientific understanding of global trends in complex Earth systems, such as climate, increasingly depends on assimilating datasets from multiple instruments and platforms over decadal timescales. Calibration accuracy, stability, and inter-consistency among different instruments are key to developing reliable composite data records from sensors in low Earth and geostationary orbits, but achieving sufficiently low uncertainties for these performance metrics poses a significant challenge. Space-borne instruments commonly carry on-board references for calibration at various wavelengths, but these increase mass and mission complexity, and are subject to degradation in the space environment. The Moon can be considered a natural solar diffuser which can be observed as a calibration target by most spaceborne Earth-observing instruments. Since the lunar surface reflectance is effectively time-invariant, establishing the Moon as a high-accuracy calibration reference enables broad inter-calibration opportunities even between temporally non-overlapping instruments and provides an exo-atmospheric absolute radiometric standard. The ARCSTONE mission goal is to establish the Moon as a reliable reference for high-accuracy on-orbit calibration in the visible and near-infrared spectral region. The ARCSTONE instrument is a compact spectrometer, which will be packaged on a CubeSat intended for low Earth orbit. It will measure the lunar spectral reflectance with accuracy < 0.5% (k=1), sufficient to establish an SI-traceable absolute lunar calibration standard when referenced to the spectral solar irradiance across the 350 to 2300 nm spectral range. This lunar reference will help to enable high-accuracy absolute calibration and inter-calibration of past, current, and future Earth-observing sensors, meteorological imagers, and long-term climate monitoring satellite systems. The ARCSTONE team will present the development status of a full-spectral-range (FSR) instrument, the intended approach to calibration and characterization, and the planned path toward mission implementation.

Moon↗

Automated Spacecraft Conjunction Assessment at Mars and the Moon - A Five Year Update

It is well known that the Earth has an ongoing problem with orbiting space debris. Some Earth orbiting missions have regular warnings of close approaches with debris or other satellites. At Mars and the Moon, due to the growing number of orbiter missions and the current inability to track orbital debris in these environments, the creation of a hazardous debris field must be avoided because a debris field would greatly complicate both existing and future operations. Work at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory in the area of automated spacecraft conjunction assessment at Mars and the Moon has been conducted over the past six years using a process called "MADCAP" ("Multimission Automated Deepspace Conjunction Assessment Process"). A paper introducing this work was presented at Space Ops in Stockholm, Sweden in 2012. In that inaugural paper, the then current state of operations was presented along with a number of items that were identified for potential future work. The fundamental design concepts of MADCAP have not materially changed in the last five years, however, since 2012 a number of the changes to MADCAP identified in the previous paper have been implemented. Some other previously planned work has not progressed appreciably; several of these items remain on a "parking lot" list. In addition to the items that were listed as prospective future work, JPL's Mars/Moon conjunction assessment efforts have also been extended in a few unplanned but important areas. This follow-up paper will provide a five year update on MADCAP operations at Mars and the Moon.

Wilson, Roby S.↗

Demonstration of Capability to Simulate Particle Irregular Shape and Poly-Disperse Mixtures Within Lunar Lander Plume-Surface Interaction

Plume-Surface Interaction (PSI) between lander engine plumes and regolith soil creates hazards in obscuration and contamination by particle clouds, high-energy ejecta streams, and landing area cratering damage. The MSFC Fluid Dynamics Branch is developing simulation tools to offer a predictive PSI capability to NASA customers such as the Human Lander System (HLS) and Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). The Gas-Granular Flow Solver (GGFS) is the main application tool for coupled gas-particle two-phase flow simulations to predict the range of PSI effects from onset of surface erosion to deep crater formation. GGFS features an Eulerian-Eulerian modeling approach, treating both gas and granular material as interacting continuum phases. Modeling the lunar regolith granular material fluidic characteristics poses special challenges due to complex particle shapes and mixture composition. The lunar regolith is poorly sorted with broad particle size distributions and large fines content. It has significant cohesion, due to interlocking jagged particle shapes. Eulerian granular material flow modeling requires closure formulations for the granular material constitutive models (stress, friction, collisional and kinetic energy dissipation, drag, etc.). While closure models for spherical particles are available from particle kinetic theory, closure models for realistic non-spherical particles must be extracted from unit physics Discrete Element Model (DEM) particle interaction simulations and provided in the form of tabular datasets. The effects of particle irregular shape (non-spherical shape factors, angular particle surface roughness, and interlocking features) are simulated by approximating the particle features in the form of grouped elemental spheres to form composite particles in the DEM simulations. The effects of the wide range of regolith mixture particle sizes and the strong effects of the presence of the small particle sizes results in high cohesion and low porosity of the regolith mixture. The range of particle sizes is simulated by binning the particle sizes into an appropriate finite number of particle-size species and solving the problem as a species mixture. Combining these two modeling approaches enables simulations to capture both, the contributions of the irregular particle shape and the particle size distribution. The integration and maturation of the DEM-based constitutive model database generation process and poly-disperse mixture binning approach into the GGFS simulation framework are proceeding under funding by the NASA Game Changing Development program. The status of current capabilities will be presented in comparisons of crater characteristics resulting for spherical and irregular shape particles, and for mono-, bi-, and tri-disperse mixture simulations of Apollo LM plume-surface interaction. The computational results confirm the significance of including the particle shape and mixture effects. Going forward plans for the full implementation of the general poly-disperse regolith modeling capability and maturation towards NASA project application readiness under the GCD program will be presented.

Peter A Liever↗

Demonstration of Capability to Simulate Particle Irregular Shape and Poly-Disperse Mixtures Within Lunar Lander Plume-Surface Interaction

Plume-Surface Interaction (PSI) between lander engine plumes and regolith soil creates hazards in obscuration and contamination by particle clouds, high-energy ejecta streams, and landing area cratering damage. The MSFC Fluid Dynamics Branch is developing simulation tools to offer a predictive PSI capability to NASA customers such as the Human Lander System (HLS) and Commercial Lunar Payload Services (CLPS). The Gas-Granular Flow Solver (GGFS) is the main application tool for coupled gas-particle two-phase flow simulations to predict the range of PSI effects from onset of surface erosion to deep crater formation. GGFS features an Eulerian-Eulerian modeling approach, treating both gas and granular material as interacting continuum phases. Modeling the lunar regolith granular material fluidic characteristics poses special challenges due to complex particle shapes and mixture composition. The lunar regolith is poorly sorted with broad particle size distributions and large fines content. It has significant cohesion, due to interlocking jagged particle shapes. Eulerian granular material flow modeling requires closure formulations for the granular material constitutive models (stress, friction, collisional and kinetic energy dissipation, drag, etc.). While closure models for spherical particles are available from particle kinetic theory, closure models for realistic non-spherical particles must be extracted from unit physics Discrete Element Model (DEM) particle interaction simulations and provided in the form of tabular datasets. The effects of particle irregular shape (non-spherical shape factors, angular particle surface roughness, and interlocking features) are simulated by approximating the particle features in the form of grouped elemental spheres to form composite particles in the DEM simulations. The effects of the wide range of regolith mixture particle sizes and the strong effects of the presence of the small particle sizes results in high cohesion and low porosity of the regolith mixture. The range of particle sizes is simulated by binning the particle sizes into an appropriate finite number of particle-size species and solving the problem as a species mixture. Combining these two modeling approaches enables simulations to capture both, the contributions of the irregular particle shape and the particle size distribution. The integration and maturation of the DEM-based constitutive model database generation process and poly-disperse mixture binning approach into the GGFS simulation framework are proceeding under funding by the NASA Game Changing Development program. The status of current capabilities will be presented in comparisons of crater characteristics resulting for spherical and irregular shape particles, and for mono-, bi-, and tri-disperse mixture simulations of Apollo LM plume-surface interaction. The computational results confirm the significance of including the particle shape and mixture effects. Going forward plans for the full implementation of the general poly-disperse regolith modeling capability and maturation towards NASA project application readiness under the GCD program will be presented.

Peter A. Liever↗

Phoenix Climate: Employing NASA Earth Observations to Conduct Site Suitability Analyses on Residential Tree Planting Initiatives in Phoenix, AZ

Phoenix, Arizona is the hottest city in the United States, with daytime summer temperatures consistently reaching upwards of 100°F. As these daytime temperatures continue to climb, heat-related illnesses and morbidity also increase. The City of Phoenix hopes to secure funding to implement the American Rescue Plan Act (ARPA) residential tree equity accelerator program. This funding will be used for targeted investments in underserved neighborhoods to increase tree canopy cover, engaging 5,000 households across selected neighborhoods. By partnering with the City of Phoenix, the Arizona Office of Heat Mitigation, and Arizona State University’s Urban Climate Research Center, our team identified residential neighborhoods, block groups within qualified census tracts, and parcels to be prioritized in the ARPA program. We conducted an analysis using NASA Earth observations, movement and heat exposure data, sociodemographic data, and tree canopy data. For Earth observations, we acquired daytime land surface temperature from the Landsat 8 Operational Land Imager (OLI) and Thermal Infrared Sensor (TIRS) and land cover classification from the United States Geological Survey (USGS) National Land Cover Database (NLCD). The project will support the prioritization of city resources and tree plantings based on community vulnerability, as well as help initiate public engagement efforts and literacy with an interactive dashboard and GIS layers that contribute to the city’s property information portal.

Alison Bautista↗

Control room consolidation at Hanford tank farms for improved conduct of operation - 15345

Washington River Protection Solutions (WRPS) manages the underground waste storage tanks at the Hanford site in Washington State on behalf of the DOE Office of River Protection. There are 177 tanks distributed among 18 tank farms spread across an area of desert scrub covering about 20 square miles. A single evaporator facility supports the tanks to provide waste reduction activities. Farms and associated equipment, including exhausters, have been operated locally since installation. Upgrades over time introduced limited automation, but using inconsistent platforms, and providing isolated control locations around the farms. However, as the Tank Farms move from maintenance operations to production operations, with increased numbers of waste transfers and evaporator campaigns, and also prepare for integration with the adjacent Hanford Waste Treatment Plant, then operational improvements were planned and are being implemented. Infrastructure improvement projects included upgrades of control systems to a common platform, and installation of a fiber optic based local area network to the majority of farms, which together provided a distributed control system supporting tank farms. This new infrastructure provided the basis to propose consolidation of control and monitoring operations to a single location. More than a single location, the new Central Control Room was to increase effectiveness of operations by providing full status of all activities being performed across the Tank Farms and the Evaporator. The recent addition of productivity e-tools also would provide capability for management, supervisors and operators to make informed decisions regarding facility operations, through custom online applications designed to provide real time information derived from operational data. For example, tracking turnover activities between shifts, and maintaining compliance with limited conditions for operations. The Central Control Room would also have a single supervisor able to effectively manage the status of all assets and processes. The expected benefits of this arrangement include increased operator utility, increased situational awareness, improved response time for upset conditions, improvement in operator environment, and reductions in operating costs. The projected ROI for the Central Control Room when fully operational was projected to be about two years based on reduced costs from freeing up operations staff to perform other work plus the time and material savings realized by operations being performed with increased situational awareness. So the Central Control Room would become a hub for monitoring and controlling facility operations while responding to real time information affecting productivity and performance, from a centralized location customized to a fresh working environment. Over a 14-month period, WRPS developed the concept and engineering, procured over 500 items, modified and installed in renovated building, and completed transition and testing of this new Central Control Room, turning over the initial phase to Operations for 24/7 use in April 2014. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

Building an AI-native Research Ecosystem for Experimental Particle Physics: A Community Vision

Experimental particle physics seeks to understand the universe by probing its fundamental particles and forces and exploring how they govern the large-scale processes that shape cosmic evolution. This whitepaper presents a vision for how Artificial Intelligence (AI) can accelerate discovery in this field. We outline grand challenges that must be addressed to enable transformative breakthroughs and describe how current and planned experimental facilities can implement this vision to advance our understanding of the vast and complex physical world from the smallest to the largest scales. We show how facilities currently under construction, such as the HL-LHC, DUNE and soon EIC, can both benefit from and serve as proving grounds for this vision, while also enabling a longer-term goal for how future experiments -- like FCC-ee at CERN, IceCube-Gen2, a Muon Collider in the U.S., and smaller to mid-scale projects -- can be fully AI-native. We describe how a truly national-scale collaboration, jointly managed across large funding partners, and involving both DOE laboratories and universities, can make this happen.

Aarrestad, Thea Klaeboe [ETH, Zurich (main)]↗

Approaches for Autonomous Peer to Peer Communication: For Resilient Community Microgrids

The final phase of the Islandable Communications task of the SECURE project consisted of integrating the islandable communications network into a microgrid simulation at NREL. Initially integration was planned for a microgrid implemented as a mix of simulation and physical hardware. As the project evolved, the microgrid became fully simulated. The simulation environment was structured to break out the communication paths that would pass over a communication network in a field demonstration. The Islandable Communication network was integrated into the simulation environment, allowing both a commercial cellular carrier and a Private LTE network to be evaluated. The microgrid simulation showed differences in performance and behavior when operating over the wireless networks (compared to operating over wired Ethernet in the lab). These differences point to further research opportunities to better understand how microgrid communication carried over real-world or impaired networks affects the microgrid system behavior.

24 POWER TRANSMISSION AND DISTRIBUTION↗

City Climate Action Plans Through the Lens of The Food-Energy-Water Nexus

Interdependent resource management concepts originated in the mid-20th century, and the recent use of the term “nexus” highlights interconnected relationships among resources like food, energy, and water. United States and European science foundations have shown a growing interest in the food-energy-water (FEW) nexus, leading to increased research on their joint management. However, one major criticism of the FEW nexus is the limited translation of the research into practical policies and implementation, such as climate action plans. To assess the incorporation of FEW nexus principles into climate planning, we systematically evaluate 100 climate action plans from large U.S. cities. Our findings show that the most discussed FEW links involve energy, particularly the water-for-energy and food-for-energy connections, found in over half of the documents (56%). Our analysis promotes the integration of the FEW nexus into climate action plans while addressing the barriers to its effective implementation.

Mounir, Adil [Air Force Institute of Technology]↗

A Case Study in NREL DERMS Asset Management Implementation

The National Renewable Energy Laboratory (NREL) and Smarter Grid Solutions (SGS) plan to present a case study on their implementation of SGS' Strata Grid Distributed Energy Resource Management System at NREL's Energy Systems Integration Facility (ESIF). The ESIF is one of the nation's premier energy systems integration laboratory facilities focused on development and deployment of clean energy technologies and resilient delivery systems. NREL looked for a DERMS to install at the ESIF that is capable of replicating real world scenarios to control and monitor distributed devices from small residential scale to the grid substation level. The DERMS system demonstrates the use cases of beneficial operation and coordination of modern grid devices, leverage DERs for improved grid planning and operation, demand-side management and customer engagement through bidirectional communication with utilities and energy market operations. The presentation will cover the delivery strategy of NREL and SGS, how the use cases help NREL's research, and NREL and SGS plan to expand the system and use cases.

ARIES↗

SU-F-T-380: Comparing the Effect of Respiration On Dose Distribution Between Conventional Tangent Pair and IMRT Techniques for Adjuvant Radiotherapy in Early Stage Breast Cancer

Purpose: In this project, we compared the conventional tangent pair technique to IMRT technique by analyzing the dose distribution. We also investigated the effect of respiration on planning target volume (PTV) dose coverage in both techniques. Methods: In order to implement IMRT technique a template based planning protocol, dose constrains and treatment process was developed. Two open fields with optimized field weights were combined with two beamlet optimization fields in IMRT plans. We compared the dose distribution between standard tangential pair and IMRT. The improvement in dose distribution was measured by parameters such as conformity index, homogeneity index and coverage index. Another end point was the IMRT technique will reduce the planning time for staff. The effect of patient’s respiration on dose distribution was also estimated. The four dimensional computed tomography (4DCT) for different phase of breathing cycle was used to evaluate the effect of respiration on IMRT planned dose distribution. Results: We have accumulated 10 patients that acquired 4DCT and planned by both techniques. Based on the preliminary analysis, the dose distribution in IMRT technique was better than conventional tangent pair technique. Furthermore, the effect of respiration in IMRT plan was not significant as evident from the 95% isodose line coverage of PTV drawn on all phases of 4DCT. Conclusion: Based on the 4DCT images, the breathing effect on dose distribution was smaller than what we expected. We suspect that there are two reasons. First, the PTV movement due to respiration was not significant. It might be because we used a tilted breast board to setup patients. Second, the open fields with optimized field weights in IMRT technique might reduce the breathing effect on dose distribution. A further investigation is necessary.

60 APPLIED LIFE SCIENCES↗

Big Data Health Physics

This project, in completion of the Illinois Institute of Technology’s Professional Masters of Health Physics program, represents a two part independent study wherein (1) a Statistical Analysis is performed on a new data process implemented at a Los Alamos National Laboratory facility and (2) a Project Management Plan is designed for the successful implementation of this new radiation protection management process.

62 RADIOLOGY AND NUCLEAR MEDICINE↗

DSN research and technology support

The activities of the Venus Station (DSS 13) and the Microwave Test Facility (MTF) during the period October 11, 1976, through February 13, 1977, are discussed. A significant effort on implementation of equipment for the planned conversion of DSS 13 to unattended operation is discussed. The Receiver and Microwave Subsystem are near completion, and the new feedcone and position encoders are implemented onto the 26-m antenna. Support of the 400-kW X-band radar, located at DSS 14, is reported, and the activities of the DSN High Power Transmitter Maintenance Facility (HPTMF), located at DSS 13 and MTF, are discussed. The successful completion of the first series of observations planned for VLBI validation is reported and significant station maintenance activities are covered. Clock synchronization transmissions to DSS 43 and DSS 63 are reported, and an evaluation of any pointing errors in the 26-m antenna position transducer are made.

Jackson, E. B.↗

Implementation of a Water Flow Control System into the ISS'S Planned Fluids & Combustion Facility

The Fluids and Combustion Facility (FCF) will become an ISS facility capable of performing basic combustion and fluids research. The facility consists of two independent payload racks specifically configured to support multiple experiments over the life of the ISS. Both racks will depend upon the ISS's Moderate Temperature Loop (MTL) for removing waste heat generated by the avionics and experiments operating within the racks. By using the MTL, constraints are imposed by the ISS vehicle on how the coolant resource is used. On the other hand, the FCF depends upon effective thermal control for maximizing life of the hardware and for supplying proper boundary conditions for the experiments. In the implementation of a design solution, significant factors in the selection of the hardware included ability to measure and control relatively low flow rates, ability to throttle flow within the time constraints of the ISS MTL, conserve energy usage, observe low mass and small volume requirements. An additional factor in the final design solution selection was considering how the system would respond to a loss of power event. This paper describes the method selected to satisfy the FCF design requirements while maintaining the constraints applied by the ISS vehicle.

Edwards, Daryl A.↗