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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 145 records · Page 8
All sourcesNASA NTRSDOE OSTI
NASA NTRS2009

NASA: Engineering Space Exploration - Launching to the Moon, Mars, and Beyond

This presentation reviews NASA's program of space exploration, including information about NASA's mission, the human urge to explore, the timeline for the development of the exploration, and what NASA plans to explore and prove during the return to the moon. Also include are views of the planned vehicles, and a review of progress to date in the design and construction of the vehicles. Some of the benefits of space exploration are also reviewed.

Malone, Roy↗
NASA NTRS2010

IVS Working Group 4: VLBI Data Structures

In 2007 the IVS Directing Board established IVS Working Group 4 on VLBI Data Structures. This note discusses the current VLBI data format, goals for a new format, the history and formation of the Working Group, and a timeline for the development of a new VLBI data format.

Gipson, John↗
NASA NTRS2016

Pilot Field Test: Results of Tandem Walk Performance Following Long-Duration Spaceflight

Coordinated locomotion has proven to be challenging for many astronauts following long duration spaceflight. As NASA's vision for spaceflight points toward interplanetary travel and missions to distant objects, astronauts will not have assistance once they land. Thus, it is vital to develop a knowledge base from which operational guidelines can be written that define when astronauts can be expected to safely perform certain tasks. Data obtained during the Field Test experiment will add important insight to this knowledge base. Specifically, we aim to develop a recovery timeline of functional sensorimotor performance during the first 24 hours and several days after landing. A forerunner of the full Field Test study, the Pilot Field Test (PFT) comprised a subset of the tasks and measurements to be included in the ultimate set.

Cerisano, J. M.↗
NASA NTRS2016

Field Test: Results of Tandem Walk Performance Following Long-Duration Spaceflight

BACKGROUND: Coordinated locomotion has proven to be challenging for many astronauts following long duration spaceflight. As NASA's vision for spaceflight points toward interplanetary travel, we must prepare for unassisted landings, where crewmembers may need to perform mission critical tasks within minutes of landing. Thus, it is vital to develop a knowledge base from which operational guidelines can be written that define when astronauts can be expected to safely perform certain tasks. Data obtained during the Field Test experiment (FT) will add important insight to this knowledge base. Specifically, we aim to develop a recovery timeline of functional sensorimotor performance during the first 24 hours and several days after landing. METHODS: FT is an ongoing study of 30 long-duration ISS crewmembers. Thus far, 9 have completed the full FT (5 U.S. Orbital Segment [USOS] astronauts and 4 Russian cosmonauts) and 4 more consented and launching within the next year. This is in addition to the eighteen crewmembers that participated in the pilot FT (11 USOS and 7 Russian crewmembers). The FT is conducted three times preflight and three times during the first 24 hours after landing. All crewmembers were tested in Kazakhstan in either the medical tent at the Soyuz landing site (~one hour post-landing), or at the airport (~four hours post-landing). The USOS crewmembers were also tested at the refueling stop (~12 hours post-landing) and at the NASA Johnson Space Center (~24 hours post-landing) and a final session 7 days post-landing. Crewmembers are instrumented with 9 inertial measurement unit sensors that measure acceleration and angular displacement (APDM's Emerald Sensors) and foot pressure-sensing insoles that measure force, acceleration, and center of pressure (Moticon GmbH, Munich, Germany) along with heart rate and blood pressure recording instrumentation. The FT consists of 12 tasks, but here we will focus on the most challenging task, the Tandem Walk, which was also performed as part of pilot FT. To perform the Tandem Walk, subjects begin with their feet together, their arms crossed at their chest and eyes closed. When ready, they brought one foot forward and touched the heel of their foot to their toe, repeating with the other foot, and continuing for about 10 steps. Three trials were collected with the eyes closed and a fourth trial was collected with eyes open. There are four metrics which are used to determine the performance level of the Tandem Walk. The first is percent correct steps. For a step to be counted as correct, the foot could not touch the ground while bringing it forward (no side stepping), eyes must stay closed during the eyes closed trials, the heel and toe should be touching, or almost touching (no large gaps) and there shouldn't be more than a three second pause between steps. Three judges score each step and the median of the three scores is kept. The second metric is the average step speed, or the number of steps/time to complete them. Thirdly, the root mean squared (RMS) error in the resultant trunk acceleration is used to determine the amount of upper body instability observed during the task. Finally, the RMS error of the mediolateral center of pressure as measured by the Moticon insoles is used to determine the mediolateral instability at the foot level. These four parameters are combined into a new overall Tandem Walk Parameter. RESULTS: Preliminary results show that crewmembers perform the Tandem Walk significantly worse the first 24 hours after landing as compared to their baseline performance. We find that each of the four performance metrics is significantly worse immediately after landing. We will present the results of tandem walk performance during the FT thus far. We will also combine these with the 18 crewmembers that participated in the pilot FT, concentrating on the level of performance and recovery rate. CONCLUSION: The Tandem Walk data collected as part of the FT experiment will provide invaluable information on the performance capabilities of astronauts during the first 24 hours after returning from long-duration spaceflight that can be used in planning future Mars, or other deep-space missions with unassisted landings. FT will determine the average sensorimotor recovery timeline and inform return-to-duty guidelines for unassisted landings.

Rosenberg, M. J. F.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

TPSAS-NF1676L-27788-DND

NASA Advanced Composites Project (ACP) - Reduce timeline required for development and certification of advanced composite structures by 30 percent Manufacturing Defects - Detrimentally affect quality of parts - Lead to higher cost and cause significant delay Developed guided wave-based technique for detection of manufacturing defects in carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites Extended guided wave - based technique for in-situcure monitoring of composites using high temperature piezoelectric transducers Incorporated embedded fiber Bragg grating (FBG) sensors for guided wave sensing during cure.

Tyler B Hudson↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Artemis III EVA Mission Capability for de Gerlache-Shackleton Ridge

NASA has committed to sending humans to the Moon no earlier than 2025. The Artemis III mission will include scientific, technology demonstrations, commercial, inspirational, and explorational objectives. Achieving these goals will depend upon balancing priorities and mission constraints. A landing location needs to meet terrain conditions suitable for the lander with acceptable thermal and lighting conditions. This location must also allow access to geological areas of interest within traverse range and capability of walking astronauts. A representative EVA timeline is then developed for an example location on the de Gerlache-Shackleton ridge and used to examine the location’s acceptability as a candidate site for Artemis III. Similar studies are being conducted to NASA’s Science Mission Directorate and Flight Operations.

EVA↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Ultraviolet Astronomy in the XXI Century

The US 2020 Astrophysics Decadal Survey (Astro2020) has recommended NASA develop the first observatory designed to search for signs of life on exoplanets and enable transformative astrophysics. These ambitious goals demand a large and highly capable space telescope with broad wavelength coverage from the far-UV to the near-IR, in the tradition of the Hubble Space Telescope. Realizing this vision will require aggressive technology development — as well as respect for and careful balancing of the needs of many scientific communities. In this talk, I will review the Decadal recommendations, including the development approach and timeline envisioned for the recommended UV/O/IR flagship. The LUVOIR and HabEx pre-Decadal mission concepts that fed into that flagship will also be reviewed. Finally, I’ll highlight some key technical considerations for the future UV/O/IR Great Observatory.

Aki Roberge↗
DOE OSTI2024

Fast Reactor Materials R&D Update

Presentation detailing Major focus: Deployment of A709 for fast reactor structural applications in the area of Design, Fabrication, Supply Chain, and Adx Rx Operation. Also discuss additional work to support A709 development, High level timeline for Irradiation design data, and processing parameters.

36 MATERIALS SCIENCE↗
NASA NTRS1992

SLS-PLAN-IT: A knowledge-based blackboard scheduling system for Spacelab life sciences missions

The primary scheduling tool in use during the Spacelab Life Science (SLS-1) planning phase was the operations research (OR) based, tabular form Experiment Scheduling System (ESS) developed by NASA Marshall. PLAN-IT is an artificial intelligence based interactive graphic timeline editor for ESS developed by JPL. The PLAN-IT software was enhanced for use in the scheduling of Spacelab experiments to support the SLS missions. The enhanced software SLS-PLAN-IT System was used to support the real-time reactive scheduling task during the SLS-1 mission. SLS-PLAN-IT is a frame-based blackboard scheduling shell which, from scheduling input, creates resource-requiring event duration objects and resource-usage duration objects. The blackboard structure is to keep track of the effects of event duration objects on the resource usage objects. Various scheduling heuristics are coded in procedural form and can be invoked any time at the user's request. The system architecture is described along with what has been learned with the SLS-PLAN-IT project.

Kao, Cheng-Yan↗
NASA NTRS1986

Development of the Spartan 101 navigation and pointing timeline

This paper presents the techniques and analyses that were used to construct the Spartan 101 mission pointing timeline for the Space Shuttle Orbiter-detached portion of its flight. This covers the design process that had to transform requirements and constraints originating from the experimenter, the Space Transportation System, and the payload hardware design into a workable set of pointing instructions sequenced to mission events. The paper will discuss the technical approach used for initial attitude acquisition, determining target visibility, observation scheduling, and calculation of vehicle maneuvers.

Lambros, S. D.↗
NASA NTRS1980

Supporting research and technology for automotive Stirling engine development

The technology advancement topics described are a part of the supporting research and technology (SRT) program conducted to support the major Stirling engine development program. This support focuses on developing alternatives or backups to the engine development in critical areas. These areas are materials, seals control, combustors and system analysis. Specific objectives and planned milestone schedules for future activities as now envisioned are described. These planned SRT activities are related to the timeline of the engine development program that they must support.

Tomazic, W. A.↗
DOE OSTI2020

Appendix Q: Recommendations for Developing Molecular Assays for Microbial Pathogen Detection Using Modern In Silico Approaches

We describe the use of in silico approaches to improve the process of molecular assay development and reduce time and cost by utilizing available databases of whole genome pathogen sequences combined with modern bioinformatics and physical modeling tools. Well-characterized assays are needed for accurately detecting pathogens in environmental and patient samples and also for evaluation of the efficacy of a medical countermeasure that may be administered to patients. The polymerase chain reaction (PCR) remains the gold standard for pathogen detection due to the simplicity of its instrumentation, low cost of reagents, and outstanding limit of detection (LOD), sensitivity, and specificity. However, creation of such PCR assays often involves iterations of design, preliminary testing, and thorough validation with clinical isolates and testing in relevant matrices, which can be time consuming, costly, and result in suboptimal assays. Since formal validation (e.g., for Emergency Use Authorization [EUA] or Food and Drug Administration [FDA] licensure) of an infectious disease assay can be very expensive and can require extensive time of development, having a well-designed assay up front is a critical first step. Yet, many assays described in the literature utilized limited design capabilities and many initially promising assays fail the validation process, resulting in increased costs and timelines for successful product development. While the computational approaches outlined in this document by no means obviate the need for wet lab testing, they can reduce the amount of effort wasted on empirical optimization and iterative redesigns and also guide validation studies. The proposed computational approaches also result in higher performing assays with better sensitivity, specificity, and lower LOD and reduce the possibility of assay failure due to signature erosion. To provide clarity, an extensive glossary of defined terms is provided.

59 BASIC BIOLOGICAL SCIENCES↗
NASA NTRS2014

Proximity Operations for the Robotic Boulder Capture Option for the Asteroid Redirect Mission

In September of 2013, the Asteroid Robotic Redirect Mission (ARRM) Option B team was formed to expand on NASA's previous work on the robotic boulder capture option. While the original Option A concept focuses on capturing an entire smaller Near-Earth Asteroid (NEA) using an inflatable bag capture mechanism, this design seeks to land on a larger NEA and retrieve a boulder off of its surface. The Option B team has developed a detailed and feasible mission concept that preserves many aspects of Option A's vehicle design while employing a fundamentally different technique for returning a significant quantity of asteroidal material to the Earth-Moon system. As part of this effort, a point of departure proximity operations concept was developed complete with a detailed timeline, as well as DeltaV and propellant allocations. Special attention was paid to the development of the approach strategy, terminal descent to the surface, controlled ascent with the captured boulder, and control during the Enhanced Gravity Tractor planetary defense demonstration. The concept of retrieving a boulder from the surface of an asteroid and demonstrating the Enhanced Gravity Tractor planetary defense technique is found to be feasible and within the proposed capabilities of the Asteroid Redirect Vehicle (ARV). While this point of departure concept initially focuses on a mission to Itokawa, the proximity operations design is also shown to be extensible to wide range of asteroids.

Reeves, David M.↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Crew Autonomy Through Self-Scheduling: Operational Characterization

NASA’s future long-duration exploration missions (LDEMs) will encounter increasing communication transmission delays as they move farther from Earth-based ground stations. This necessitates a new approach, as crews can no longer rely on real-time support from ground planners and must self-schedule their own operational timelines effectively and efficiently. To enable this transition, our team has developed Playbook, a mission planning and scheduling tool. Our research focuses on quantifying scheduling performance using Playbook to inform the design and development of future features to streamline timeline creation. We also aim to propose standards and guidelines for autonomous crews in LDEMs. In the past year, we have focused on further validating and quantifying the effects of countermeasure aids on self-scheduling performance. There are two software aids in Playbook (self-scheduling platform): Suggested Fixes, which propose an edit to resolve violations within a timeline, and No-Go Zones, which highlight where activities should not be scheduled on a timeline. We have made significant progress in HERA Campaign 7 (C7) data collection, increasing the number of days crew must self-schedule from 4 to 8. As a result, almost 20% of the mission is self-scheduled by the analog astronauts. We have also started data collection on a controlled lab experiment designed to quantify performance effects due to the countermeasures. We expect to present the preliminary results from both efforts. Finally, we have conducted an exploratory analysis of NASA’s HERA Campaign 6 (C6), investigating the mission-level impacts of self-scheduling. We derived basic patterns and descriptive statistics to better characterize crew autonomy through self-scheduling. We also assessed if there are any individual indicators of preference for self-scheduling, such as experience or predilection for autonomy. Preliminary analysis indicates that the HERA C6 crew self-scheduled one out of four flexible activities, indicating unprompted adoption of self-scheduling as a concept of operation for crew autonomy.

analog↗
DOE OSTI2018

Lessons Learned From Decommissioning B411 Decontamination Centre at Whiteshell Laboratories - 18211

Whiteshell Laboratories, located in Manitoba, Canada, provided research facilities for the Canadian nuclear industry since the early 1960's. The facility was centered on the largest organically cooled, heavy water moderated nuclear reactor in the world, the WR-1. It is now operated by Canadian Nuclear Laboratories (CNL) and is the first major decommissioning project of a nuclear research establishment in Canada. One of the major projects to support the closure of Whiteshell Laboratories (WL) is the decommissioning and demolition of the Building 411 (B411) Decontamination Centre, which provided a decontamination service for maintaining research and development of experimental rigs, equipment and tools in a safe usable state. It also provided a laundry service for radioactively contaminated clothing. The team successfully self-performed their first demolition of a nuclear facility, but not without challenges. The baseline decommissioning strategy assumed most of the facility would meet unconditional clearance levels; however when characterization revealed the extent of contamination exceeded initial assumptions projected from process knowledge, in conjunction with resource challenges and a waste disposal pathway not firmly established, active remediation of the facility was undertaken. With an unknown waste acceptance criteria for the future waste disposal facility, sludge that had accumulated in a tank used to collect xylene and organic coolant from contaminated tools and equipment and the selection of appropriate waste packages for waste storage, transportation and disposal forced the project team to adjust their demolition timeline. This, coupled with developing an open air demolition plan and managing an uncertain end state criteria, were just some of the major tasks the team successfully navigated. The impact on both schedule and cost performance caused by the change in strategy, and the lessons learned experienced by the WL Decommissioning Project Team that are being applied as the Whiteshell Laboratories Closure Project (WLCP) moves forward with the next major decommissioning challenge, are highlighted in this paper. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗
NASA NTRS2021

InSight Robotic Arm Testing Activities for HP3 Mole Anomaly Recovery on Mars

The InSight lander’s Heat Flow and Physical Properties Package (HP3 ) was deployed on Mars in February 2019 and began attempting to penetrate to its target depth range of 3-5 meters shortly thereafter. However, the mole’s downward progress stopped after only 35 cm of penetration. In response, the project convened an Anomaly Response Team (ART) and since then has been attempting to diagnose the problem and assist the mole using the tools available on Mars. The key asset used in this effort has been the Instrument Deployment System (IDS), which includes two cameras and a robotic Instrument Deployment Arm (IDA). Since the IDS was originally intended only to deploy InSight’s primary instruments to the Martian surface, new testbed setups, experiments, and operational protocols (e.g., command sequences) were required and had to be developed on a short timeline. The HP3 Mole ART first focused on gathering all observable data on Mars about the state of the mole and Support Structure Assembly (SSA), as well as the physical properties of the Martian regolith. This included using the robotic arm to point the IDC (Instrument Deployment Camera) at the SSA during diagnostic hammering attempts to observe motion of the SSA and science tether. Images taken during these attempts revealed some motion of the SSA, but no apparent change in mole depth. At JPL, the IDS and Testbed teams re-created the hardware configuration on Mars based on limited knowledge of the mole’s state. They devised and tested techniques to use the robotic arm and cameras to accomplish previously untested activities on Mars, including imaging the HP3 , using the IDA to interact with the terrain, and using the IDA to move the SSA away from the partially-embedded mole. The team executed the more promising techniques on Mars. After diagnostic hammering on Mars, the team decided to move the SSA to gain visibility of the mole’s configuration and access to the soil around the mole. After developing the technique and practicing the maneuver in the InSight testbed, the team lifted the SSA on Mars and placed it behind the mole. This revealed a pit surrounding the now exposed mole, observations of which provided essential clues for determining the root cause of the mole’s lack of progress. The IDS and Testbed teams altered the testbed to match the situation on Mars. They devised IDA techniques to determine the Martian soil properties and assist the mole’s descent. They tested these techniques in the testbed and executed the more promising ones on Mars. These include using the robotic arm to alter the regolith near the mole and to push on the mole while it hammers. This paper discusses the anomaly resolution testing in the testbed at JPL, describes how the IDS team prepared for the anomaly recovery activities on Mars, and provides preliminary results of the efforts to assist the HP3 mole on Mars.

Kim, Junggon↗
NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Crew Autonomy Through Self-Scheduling: Guidelines for Crew Scheduling Performance Envelope and Mitigation Strategies

NASA’s future long duration exploration missions (LDEMs) will encounter increasing communication transmission delays as they move farther from Earth-based ground stations. Because crews can no longer rely on real-time support from ground planners, they will have to self-schedule their own operational timelines effectively and efficiently. To enable this, our team develops Playbook, a mission planning and scheduling tool. Our research focuses on quantifying scheduling performance using Playbook to inform the design and development of future features aimed at streamlining timeline creation. We also aim to propose standards and guidelines for autonomous crews in LDEMs. This year, we discuss preliminary results from HERA Campaign 6.

self-scheduling↗