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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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Geophysical and geotechnical methods for lunar landing site soil property studies
The package design and assembly techniques for the IMP-F and IMP-G space-physics experiments, provided for the NASA Interplanetary Monitoring Platform Program are described. Thin-film, hybrid, integrated circuits used in these instruments to increase component density and reliability, and special procedures and precautions for the fabrication of space hardware are described.
This is a continuation of the Alouette-Isis Program Summary of 1986. Not only included is a description of the objectives, spacecraft, experiments, and flight performance, but also a complete experiment related bibliography along with a comprehensive assessment of the technological and scientific accomplishments. The scientific results are presented from the first four of the six spacecraft of the Alouette-Isis program.
NASA has taken a stepwise approach to giving high-accuracy, autonomous navigation to TDRSS utilizers. With implementation of the TONS experiment on EP complete, flight demonstration of onboard Doppler extraction and onboard signal acquisition is progressing. Preflight and preliminary inflight analyses show that the flight components are operating within their specifications.
Detectors that will be used for planetary missions must have their responses calibrated in a reproducible manner. A calibration facility is being constructed at Schlumberger-Doll Research for gamma and x ray detectors. With this facility the detector response can be determined in an invariant and reproducible fashion. Initial use of the facility is expected for the MARS94 detectors. Work is continuing to better understand the rare earth oxyorthosilicates and to define their characteristics. This will allow a better use of these scintillators for planetary missions. In a survey of scintillating materials two scintillators were identified as promising candidates besides GSO, LSO, and YSO. These are CdWO4 and CsI(Tl). It will be investigated if a detector with a better overall performance can be assembled with various photon converters. Considerable progress was achieved in photomultiplier design. The length of an 1 inch diameter PMT could be reduced from 4.2 to 2.5 inches without performance degradation. This technology is being employed in the gamma ray detector for the NEAR project. A further weight and size reduction of the detector package can be achieved with miniaturized integrated power supplies.
A selection of key documents in the history of the U.S. civil space program is presented. This volume deals with organizational developments of the space program. More than 200 documents are printed. Each is introduced by a headnote providing context, bibliographical information, and background information necessary to understanding the document. These are organized into four major sections, each beginning with an introductory essay that keys the documents to major events in the history of the space program.
In contemplating space travel beyond earth orbits, we humans face significant barriers and major challenges. Although researchers involved in several scientific subdisciplines, including space medicine and space life sciences, may provide insights to help overcome those barriers, their efforts are at an early stage of development, leaving open many questions of potentially major consequence.
We assess the availability of nutrient elements, energy and liquid water on the plains surrounding Columbia Memorial Station by evaluating data from Spirit in the context of previous Mars missions, Earth-based studies of martian meteorites and studies of microbial communities on Earth that represent potential analogs of martian biota. The compositions of Gusev basalts resemble those of olivine basalts beneath the seabed on Earth that deep drilling has shown to support life. Of particular relevance to biology, phosphate abundances are much greater in Gusev basalts (0.84 +/- 0.07 wt. % P2O5) than in oceanic basalts (typically 0.06 wt. %).
During the next decade, numerous in-situ sampling missions are planned to a variety of planets, moons, asteroids, and comets.
Present results of a recent study of a mission utilizing lightweight and compact instrumentation for solar polar observations, which uses a Jupiter gravity assist to achieve a Ulysses-like orbit passing over the poles of the Sun.
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The Integrated Medical Model (IMM) captures organizational knowledge across the space medicine, training, operations, engineering, and research domains. IMM uses this knowledge in the context of a mission and crew profile to forecast risks to crew health and mission success. The IMM establishes a quantified, statistical relationship among medical conditions, risk factors, available medical resources, and crew health and mission outcomes. These relationships may provide an appropriate foundation for developing an in-flight medical decision support tool that helps optimize the use of medical resources and assists in overall crew health management by an autonomous crew with extremely limited interactions with ground support personnel and no chance of resupply.
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The Advanced Concepts Office (ACO) at NASA, Marshall Space Flight Center is expanding its current technology assessment methodologies. ACO is developing a framework called TAPP that uses a variety of methods, such as association mining and rule learning from data mining, structure development using a Technological Innovation System (TIS), and social network modeling to measure structural relationships. The role of ACO is to 1) produce a broad spectrum of ideas and alternatives for a variety of NASA's missions, 2) determine mission architecture feasibility and appropriateness to NASA's strategic plans, and 3) define a project in enough detail to establish an initial baseline capable of meeting mission objectives ACO's role supports the decision-making process associated with the maturation of concepts for traveling through, living in, and understanding space. ACO performs concept studies and technology assessments to determine the degree of alignment between mission objectives and new technologies. The first step in technology assessment is to identify the current technology maturity in terms of a technology readiness level (TRL). The second step is to determine the difficulty associated with advancing a technology from one state to the next state. NASA has used TRLs since 1970 and ACO formalized them in 1995. The DoD, ESA, Oil & Gas, and DoE have adopted TRLs as a means to assess technology maturity. However, "with the emergence of more complex systems and system of systems, it has been increasingly recognized that TRL assessments have limitations, especially when considering [the] integration of complex systems." When performing the second step in a technology assessment, NASA requires that an Advancement Degree of Difficulty (AD2) method be utilized. NASA has used and developed or used a variety of methods to perform this step: Expert Opinion or Delphi Approach, Value Engineering or Value Stream, Analytical Hierarchy Process (AHP), Technique for the Order of Prioritization by Similarity to Ideal Solution (TOPSIS), and other multi‐criteria decision-making methods. These methods can be labor-intensive, often contain cognitive or parochial bias, and do not consider the competing prioritization between mission architectures. Strategic Decision-Making (SDM) processes cannot be properly understood unless the context of the technology is understood. This makes assessing technological change particularly challenging due to the relationships "between incumbent technology and the incumbent (innovation) system in relation to the emerging technology and the emerging innovation system." The central idea in technology dynamics is to consider all activities that contribute to the development, diffusion, and use of innovations as system functions. Bergek defines system functions within a TIS to address what is actually happening and has a direct influence on the ultimate performance of the system and technology development. ACO uses similar metrics and is expanding these metrics to account for the structure and context of the technology. At NASA technology and strategy is strongly interrelated. NASA's Strategic Space Technology Investment Plan (SSTIP) prioritizes those technologies essential to the pursuit of NASA's missions and national interests. The SSTIP is strongly coupled with NASA's Technology Roadmaps to provide investment guidance during the next four years, within a twenty-year horizon. This paper discusses the methods ACO is currently developing to better perform technology assessments while taking into consideration Strategic Alignment, Technology Forecasting, and Long Term Planning.
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