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At least 1,513 records · Page 84

MODIS Snow and Sea Ice Products

In this chapter, we describe the suite of Earth Observing System (EOS) Moderate-Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) Terra and Aqua snow and sea ice products. Global, daily products, developed at Goddard Space Flight Center, are archived and distributed through the National Snow and Ice Data Center at various resolutions and on different grids useful for different communities Snow products include binary snow cover, snow albedo, and in the near future, fraction of snow in a 5OO-m pixel. Sea ice products include ice extent determined with two different algorithms, and sea ice surface temperature. The algorithms used to develop these products are described. Both the snow and sea ice products, available since February 24,2000, are useful for modelers. Validation of the products is also discussed.

Hall, Dorothy K.↗

Partnership for the Revitalization of National Wind Tunnel Force Measurement Capability

Lack of funding and lack of focus on research over the past several years, coupled with force measurement capabilities being decentralized and distributed across the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) research centers, has resulted in a significant erosion of (1) capability and infrastructure to produce and calibrate force measurement systems; (2) NASA s working knowledge of those systems; and (3) the quantity of high-quality, full-capability force measurement systems available for use in aeronautics testing. Simultaneously, and at proportional rates, the capability of industry to design, manufacture, and calibrate these test instruments has been eroding primarily because of a lack of investment by the aeronautics community. Technical expertise in this technology area is a core competency in aeronautics testing; it is highly specialized and experience-based, and it represents a niche market for only a few small precision instrument shops in the United States. With this backdrop, NASA s Aeronautics Test Program (ATP) chartered a team to examine the issues and risks associated with the problem, focusing specifically on strain- gage balances. The team partnered with the U.S. Air Force s Arnold Engineering Development Center (AEDC) to exploit their combined capabilities and take a national level government view of the problem. This paper describes the team s approach, its findings, and its recommendations, and the current status for revitalizing the government s balance capability with respect to designing, fabricating, calibrating, and using the instruments.

Rhew, Ray D.↗

Video-Game-Like Engine for Depicting Spacecraft Trajectories

GoView is a video-game-like software engine, written in the C and C++ computing languages, that enables real-time, three-dimensional (3D)-appearing visual representation of spacecraft and trajectories (1) from any perspective; (2) at any spatial scale from spacecraft to Solar-system dimensions; (3) in user-selectable time scales; (4) in the past, present, and/or future; (5) with varying speeds; and (6) forward or backward in time. GoView constructs an interactive 3D world by use of spacecraft-mission data from pre-existing engineering software tools. GoView can also be used to produce distributable application programs for depicting NASA orbital missions on personal computers running the Windows XP, Mac OsX, and Linux operating systems. GoView enables seamless rendering of Cartesian coordinate spaces with programmable graphics hardware, whereas prior programs for depicting spacecraft trajectories variously require non-Cartesian coordinates and/or are not compatible with programmable hardware. GoView incorporates an algorithm for nonlinear interpolation between arbitrary reference frames, whereas the prior programs are restricted to special classes of inertial and non-inertial reference frames. Finally, whereas the prior programs present complex user interfaces requiring hours of training, the GoView interface provides guidance, enabling use without any training.

Upchurch, Paul R.↗

Advanced Power Technology Development Activities for Small Satellite Applications

NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) has a long history related to the development of advanced power technology for space applications. This expertise covers the breadth of energy generation (photovoltaics, thermal energy conversion, etc.), energy storage (batteries, fuel cell technology, etc.), power management and distribution, and power systems architecture and analysis. Such advanced technology is now being developed for small satellite and cubesat applications and could have a significant impact on the longevity and capabilities of these missions. A presentation during the Pre-Conference Workshop will focus on various advanced power technologies being developed and demonstrated by NASA, and their possible application within the small satellite community.

small satellite↗

Starling1 - Mission Technologies Overview

The Starling series of demonstration missions will test technologies required to achieve affordable, distributed spacecraft ("swarm") missions that: are scalable to at least 100 spacecraft for applications that include synchronized multipoint measurements; involve closely coordinated ensembles of two or more spacecraft operating as a single unit for interferometric, synthetic aperture, or similar sensor architectures; or use autonomous or semi-autonomous operation of multiple spacecraft functioning as a unit to achieve science or other mission objectives with low-cost small spacecraft.Starling1 will focus on developing technologies that enable scalability and deep space application. The mission goals include the demonstration of a Mobile Ad-hoc NETwork (MANET) through an in-space communication experiment, vision based relative navigation through the Starling Formation-flying Optical eXperiment (StarFOX), and demonstration of autonomous spacecraft reconfiguration using technologies developed by the Distributed System Autonomy (DSA) project.

Cannon, Howard↗

Establishing a Lunar Surface Power Grid

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is seeking to develop a lunar surface power system for its Artemis missions as well as for planned future commercial lunar surface activities. This power system is composed of a number of assets which contain electrical loads and many of these contain energy resources. These assets can be connected to form a grid, which allows power to be shared between the system’s distributed energy resources. This grid can provide backup power to existing assets as well as primary power to future assets. A trade study was conducted for an Artemis scale grid, which has identified 3 kV AC as an ideal transmission voltage. Development work has also begun for a universal modular interface converter (UMIC) which connects assets and microgrids operating at 120 V DC space power to the grid. Products from this grid definition and UMIC development work will enable highly reliable and available power for Artemis and future planetary surface missions, which is key to achieving NASA’s long term vision of space exploration.

Planetary surface power↗

A Contrast in Use of Metrics in Earth Science Data Systems

In recent years there has been a surge in the number of systems for processing, archiving and distributing remotely sensed data. Such systems, working independently as well as in collaboration, have been contributing greatly to the advances in the scientific understanding of the Earth system, as well as utilization of the data for nationally and internationally important applications. Among such systems, we consider those that are developed by or under the sponsorship of NASA to fulfill one of its strategic objectives: "Study Earth from space to advance scientific understanding and meet societal needs." NASA's Earth science data systems are of varying size and complexity depending on the requirements they are intended to meet. Some data systems are regarded as NASA's "Core Capabilities" that provide the basic infrastructure for processing, archiving and distributing a set of data products to a large and diverse user community in a robust and reliable manner. Other data systems constitute "Community Capabilities". These provide specialized and innovative services to data users and/or research products offering new scientific insight. Such data systems are generally supported by NASA through peer reviewed competition. Examples of Core Capabilities are 1. Earth Observing Data and Information System (EOSDIS) with its Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs), Science Investigator-led Processing Systems (SIPSs), and the EOS Clearing House (ECHO); 2. Tropical Rainfall Measurement Mission (TRMM) Science Data and Information System (TSDIS); 3. Ocean Data Processing System (ODPS); and 4. CloudSat Data Processing Center. Examples of Community Capabilities are projects under the Research, Education and Applications Solutions Network (REASON), and Advancing Collaborative Connections for Earth System Science (ACCESS) Programs. In managing these data system capabilities, it is necessary to have well-established goals and to measure progress relative to them. Progress is measured through "metrics", which can be a combination of quantitative as well as qualitative assessments. The specific metrics of interest depend on the user of the metrics as well as the type of data system. The users of metrics can be data system managers, program managers, funding agency or the public. Data system managers need metrics for assessing and improving the performance of the system and for future planning. Program managers need metrics to assess progress and the value of the data systems sponsored by them. Also, there is a difference in the metrics needed for core capabilities that tend to be more complex, larger and longer-term compared to community capabilities and the community capabilities that tend to be simpler, smaller and shorter-term. Even among community capabilities there are differences; hence the same set of metrics does not apply to all. Some provide data products to users, some provide services that enable better utilization of data or interoperability among other systems, and some are a part of a larger project where provision of data or services is only a minor activity. There is also a contrast between metrics used for internal and external purposes. Examples of internal purposes are: ensuring that the system meets its requirements, and planning for evolution and growth. Examples of external purposes are: providing to sponsors indicators of success of the systems, demonstrating the contributions of the system to overall program success, etc. This paper will consider EOSDIS, REASON and ACCESS programs to show the various types of metrics needed and how they need to be tailored to the types of data systems while maintaining the overall management goals of measuring progress and contributions made by the data systems.

Ramapriyan, Hampapuram↗

Restoring Critical Loads In Resilient Distribution Systems using A Curriculum Learned Controller

In this paper, we propose a curriculum learned reinforcement learning (RL) controller to facilitate distribution system critical load restoration (CLR), leveraging RL's fast online response and its outstanding optimal sequential control capability. Like many grid control problems, CLR is complicated due to the large control action space and renewable uncertainty in a heavily constrained non-linear environment with strong intertemporal dependency. The nature of the problem oftentimes causes the RL policy to converge to a poor-performing local optimum if learned directly. To overcome this, we design a two-stage curriculum in which the RL agent will learn generation control and load restoration decision under different scenarios progressively. Via curriculum learning, the trained RL controller is expected to achieve a better control performance, with critical loads restored as rapidly and reliably as possible. Using the IEEE 13-bus test system, we illustrate the performance of the RL controller trained by the proposed curriculum-based method.

curriculum learning↗

The Real Time Interactive Display Environment (RTIDE), a display building tool developed by Space Shuttle flight controllers

NASA's Mission Control Center, located at Johnson Space Center, is incrementally moving from a centralized architecture to a distributed architecture. Starting with STS-29, some host-driven console screens will be replaced with graphics terminals driven by workstations. These workstations will be supplied realtime data first by the Real Time Data System (RTDS), a system developed inhouse, and then months later (in parallel with RTDS) by interim and subsequently operational versions of the Mission Control Center Upgrade (MCCU) software package. The Real Time Interactive Display Environment (RTIDE) was built by Space Shuttle flight controllers to support the rapid development of multiple new displays to support Shuttle flights. RTIDE is a display building tool that allows non-programmers to define object-oriented, event-driven, mouseable displays. Particular emphasis was placed on upward compatibility between RTIDE versions, ability to acquire data from different data sources, realtime performance, ability to modularly upgrade RTIDE, machine portability, and a clean, powerful user interface. The operational and organizational factors that drove RTIDE to its present form, the actual design itself, simulation and flight performance, and lessons learned in the process are discussed.

Kalvelage, Thomas A.↗

Tethered gravity laboratories study

The scope of the study is to investigate ways of controlling the microgravity environment of the International Space Station by means of a tethered system. Four main study tasks were performed. First, researchers analyzed the utilization of the tether systems to improve the lowest possible steady gravity level on the Space Station and the tether capability to actively control the center of gravity position in order to compensate for activities that would upset the mass distribution of the Station. The purpose of the second task was to evaluate the whole of the experiments performable in a variable gravity environment and the related beneficial residual accelerations, both for pure and applied research in the fields of fluid, materials, and life science, so as to assess the relevance of a variable g-level laboratory. The third task involves the Tethered Variable Gravity Laboratory. The use of the facility that would crawl along a deployed tether and expose experiments to varying intensities of reduced gravity is discussed. Last, a study performed on the Attitude Tether Stabilizer concept is discussed. The stabilization effect of ballast masses tethered to the Space Station was investigated as a means of assisting the attitude control system of the Station.

Lucchetti, F.↗

Smallsat 2024 - Starling Cubesat Swarm Technology Demonstration Flight Results

The Starling swarm of four 6U CubeSats launched in July 2023 to test four key technologies to enable future swarm missions: 1) Mobile Ad-Hoc Networking (MANET) over a crosslink radio network 2) Autonomous onboard decision-making for operations 3) Optical-based absolute and relative navigation 4) Autonomous maneuver planning and execution The Starling team implemented the Better Approach to Mobile Ad-hoc Networking (B.A.T.M.A.N.) protocol to automatically manage the crosslink network of four satellites. The B.A.T.M.A.N. protocol uses a decentralized approach to managing a multi-hop mesh network of devices, in this case, a satellite swarm. The four satellites were able to successfully establish a network at multiple data rates and demonstrate file transfer and command issuance between spacecraft over the network. Starling incorporated Distributed Spacecraft Autonomy's (DSA) software to demonstrate onboard decision-making. The DSA software takes L1/L2 band GPS measurements and uses them to estimate the relative Total Electron Count (TEC) in the ionosphere. The onboard software then determines if there are any features of interest and provides that information to the other satellites over the crosslink network. The swarm of satellites then reaches a consensus on the optimal TEC observation strategy and adjusts its measurement collection tactics autonomously. The Starling Formation-Flying Optical Experiment (StarFOX), produced by Stanford's Space Rendezvous Laboratory, uses the onboard star trackers to collect images of the other swarm spacecraft and produce angles-only navigation estimates. This system is envisioned to be valuable in applications in which Global Navigation Satellite Systems (GNSS) are not available, such as in cis-lunar or deep space. StarFOX successfully applied its algorithms to multiple simultaneous spacecraft targets using the star tracker imagery. Finally, Starling used Emergent Space's Cluster Flight Application (CFA) software suite for the Reconfiguration and Orbit Maintenance Experiments Onboard (ROMEO) demonstration of autonomously planning and executing propulsive maneuvers. Large swarms will need to be able to maintain formation requirements with minimal operator involvement, especially as the size of the swarm scales up. Results from the ROMEO experiment are presented. Starling is funded by the Small Spacecraft Technology (SST) program out of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD).

distributed systems↗

Quantitative Three-Dimensional Imaging of Heterogeneous Materials by Thermal Tomography

Infrared thermal imaging based on active thermal excitations has been widely used for nondestructive evaluation ( NDE) of materials. While the experimental systems have remained essentially the same during the last few decades, development of advanced data-processing methods has significantly improved the capabilities of this technology. However, many limitations still exist. One fundamental limitation is the requirement, either explicitly or implicitly, of the tested material to be homogeneous such that detected thermal contrasts may be used to determine an average material property or attributed to flaws. In this paper, a new thermal tomography ( TT) method is introduced, which for the first time can evaluate heterogeneous materials by directly imaging their thermal-property variations with space. It utilizes one-sided flash thermal-imaging data to construct the three-dimensional ( 3D) distribution of thermal effusivity in the entire volume of a test sample. Theoretical analyses for single and multilayer material systems were conducted to validate its formulation and to demonstrate its performance. Experimental results for a ceramic composite plate and a thermal barrier coating ( TBC) sample are also presented. It was shown that thermal diffusion is the primary factor that degrades the spatial resolution with depth for TT; the spatial resolutions in the lateral and axial directions were quantitatively evaluated.

47 OTHER INSTRUMENTATION↗

Reconstruction of the interatomic forces from dynamic scanning transmission electron microscopy data

We explore the possibility for reconstruction of the generative physical models describing interactions between atomic units in solids from observational electron microscopy data. In this work, scanning transmission electron microscopy (STEM) is used to observe the dynamic motion of Si atoms at the edge of monolayer graphene under continuous electron beam illumination. The resulting time-lapsed STEM images represent the snapshots of observed chemical states of the system. We use two approaches: potential of mean force calculation using a radial distribution function and a direct fitting of the graphene–Si interatomic pairwise potentials with force matching, to reconstruct the force fields in the materials. These studies lay the foundation for quantitative analysis of materials energetics from STEM data through the sampling of the metastable states in the chemical space of the system.

42 ENGINEERING↗

The NASA space power technology program

NASA has a broad technology program in the field of space power. This paper describes that program, including the roles and responsibilities of the various NASA field centers and major contractors. In the power source area, the paper discusses the SP-100 Space Nuclear Power Project, which has been under way for about seven years and is making substantial progress toward development of components for a 100-kilowatt power system that can be scaled to other sizes. This system is a candidate power source for nuclear electric propulsion, as well as for a power plant for a lunar base. In the energy storage area, the paper describes NASA's battery- and fuel-cell development programs. NASA is actively working on NiCd, NiH2, and lithium batteries. A status update is also given on a U.S. Air Force-sponsored program to develop a large (150 ampere-hour) lithium-thionyl chloride battery for the Centaur upper-stage launch vehicle. Finally, the area of power management and distribution (PMAD) is addressed, including power system components such as solid-state switches and power integrated circuits. Automated load management and other computer-controlled functions offer considerable payoffs. The state of the art in space power is described, along with NASA's medium- and long-term goals in the area.

Stephenson, R. Rhoads↗

A POLYTROPIC MODEL FOR SPACE AND LABORATORY PLASMAS DESCRIBED BY BI-MAXWELLIAN ELECTRON DISTRIBUTIONS

Non-local electron energy probability functions (EEPFs) are shown to have an important effect on the thermodynamic behavior of plasmas in the context of solar wind and laboratory plasmas. A conservation relation is held for electron enthalpy and plasma potential during the electron transport. For an adiabatic system governed by non-local electron dynamics, the correlation between electron temperature and density can be approximated by a polytropic relation, with different indexes demonstrated using three cases of bi-Maxwellian EEPFs. This scenario differs from a local thermodynamic equilibrium having a single polytropic index of 5/3 for adiabaticity.

79 ASTRONOMY AND ASTROPHYSICS↗

Spectral Filtering Induced by Non-Hermitian Evolution with Balanced Gain and Loss: Enhancing Quantum Chaos

Here, the dynamical signatures of quantum chaos in an isolated system are captured by the spectral form factor, which exhibits as a function of time a dip, a ramp, and a plateau, with the ramp being governed by the correlations in the level spacing distribution. While decoherence generally suppresses these dynamical signatures, the nonlinear non-Hermitian evolution with balanced gain and loss (BGL) in an energy-dephasing scenario can enhance manifestations of quantum chaos. In the Sachdev-Ye-Kitaev model and random matrix Hamiltonians, BGL increases the span of the ramp, lowering the dip as well as the value of the plateau, providing an experimentally realizable physical mechanism for spectral filtering. The chaos enhancement due to BGL is optimal over a family of filter functions that can be engineered with fluctuating Hamiltonians.

71 CLASSICAL AND QUANTUM MECHANICS, GENERAL PHYSIC↗

Coherence Analysis of the Space Launch System using Unsteady Pressure Sensitive Paint

Transonic buffet during atmospheric ascent is a major source of unsteady loading on launch vehicles that, in the past, has led to structural failures. Thus, determining accurate buffet forcing functions (BFFs) to properly predict the vehicle response to buffet is of vital importance in launch vehicle design. The state of the art for obtaining the BFFs relies on wind-tunnel tests where the fluctuating pressures are measured by pressure transducers (PTs) at sparse locations on a rigid, geometrically-scaled buffet model. To compute the BFFs, the outer mold line (OML) of the vehicle is mapped onto contiguous panels centered at the location of the PTs and the measured fluctuating pressures are integrated over the panels’ areas. To mitigate conservatism due to the assumption that the measured buffet pressures act in phase across each panel, coherence factors are applied, effectively reducing the integration areas and, therefore, the buffet forces. For coherence factors to provide the proper level of BFF attenuation, accurate knowledge of the spatial and temporal correlation of the buffet pressures is paramount. Unfortunately, even with hundreds of unsteady pressure transducers instrumenting the models, compromises must be made on the spatial resolution of the PTs. Typically, the PT layout aims at resolving the pressure correlation along the longitudinal axis of the vehicle, assuming that coherent structures propagate mostly in the longitudinal direction. As a result, the distribution of azimuthal/cross-stream correlation is not well known and its impact on the estimated BFFs is often neglected. To fill this and other knowledge gaps, extremely high spatial-resolution uPSP data were collected for three different production-design configurations of the Space Launch System in the NASA Ames Research Center Unitary Plan Wind Tunnel 11-Foot Transonic Wind Tunnel. Specifically, two cargo configurations, the Block 1 and Block 1B, and one crew configuration, the Block 1B crew, were surveyed at resolutions ranging from 600,000 to over 1 million uPSP measurement locations. To shed light on the temporal and spectral behavior of are presented. Several OML regions and flow features of interest are investigated, from theexpansion/shock on the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, to the terminal shock environment on the core stage, and the Strouhal shedding behind the boosters forward attach. The sensitivity of these environments to the vehicle attitude is examined. Furthermore, for selected panels,coherence factors that accurately capture the azimuthal coherence distribution of the buffetpressures are derived and their impact on the estimated BFFs is discussed. Finally, distributions of the local convection velocity and cross spectrum phase are presented.

buffet↗

System level verification applying the Space Shuttle experience to the Space Station

The applicability of the verification process for the Shuttle guidance, navigation and control (GNC) and data management system (DMS) for the development of the Space Station are described. Shuttle avionics hardware/software integration was delayed to finalize the hardware design before detailed definition and testing of the software. A block diagram is provided of the flight simulation laboratory used to test the GNC programs before flight data were available. The Station will have distributed computers, unlike the Orbiter, and will only be assembled fully in space. Standardized integration simulation test equipment are being defined to guide the development of hardware and software. The simulation capability may become part of nominal in-flight operations to initiate new capabilities as they are added to the Station. The Station GNC and DMS systems development will be somewhat simplified relative to those of the Shuttle because ascent and reentry will not be considered for the Station.

Gilbert, David W.↗