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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 1,603 records · Page 89

A Standard Kinematic Model for Flight Simulation at NASA Ames

A standard kinematic model for aircraft simulation exists at NASA-Ames on a variety of computer systems, one of which is used to control the flight simulator for advanced aircraft (FSAA). The derivation of the kinematic model is given and various mathematical relationships are presented as a guide. These include descriptions of standardized simulation subsystems such as the atmospheric turbulence model and the generalized six-degrees-of-freedom trim routine, as well as an introduction to the emulative batch-processing system which enables this facility to optimize its real-time environment.

Mcfarland, R. E.↗

Martian stable isotopes: volatile evolution, climate change and exobiological implications

Measurements of the ratios of stable isotopes in the martian atmosphere and crust provide fundamental information about the evolution of the martian volatile and climate system. Current best estimates of the isotope ratios indicate that there has been substantial loss of gases to space and exchange of gases between the atmosphere and the crust throughout geologic time; exchange may have occurred through circulation of water in hydrothermal systems. Processes of volatile evolution and exchange will fractionate the isotopes in a manner that complicates the possible interpretation of isotopic data in terms of any fractionation that may have been caused by martian biota, and must be understood first. Key measurements are suggested that will enhance our understanding of the non-biological fractionation of the isotopes and of the evolution of the martian volatile system.

Review, Tutorial↗

SCDU Testbed Automated In-Situ Alignment, Data Acquisition and Analysis

In the course of fulfilling its mandate, the Spectral Calibration Development Unit (SCDU) testbed for SIM-Lite produces copious amounts of raw data. To effectively spend time attempting to understand the science driving the data, the team devised computerized automations to limit the time spent bringing the testbed to a healthy state and commanding it, and instead focus on analyzing the processed results. We developed a multi-layered scripting language that emphasized the scientific experiments we conducted, which drastically shortened our experiment scripts, improved their readability, and all-but-eliminated testbed operator errors. In addition to scientific experiment functions, we also developed a set of automated alignments that bring the testbed up to a well-aligned state with little more than the push of a button. These scripts were written in the scripting language, and in Matlab via an interface library, allowing all members of the team to augment the existing scripting language with complex analysis scripts. To keep track of these results, we created an easily-parseable state log in which we logged both the state of the testbed and relevant metadata. Finally, we designed a distributed processing system that allowed us to farm lengthy analyses to a collection of client computers which reported their results in a central log. Since these logs were parseable, we wrote query scripts that gave us an effortless way to compare results collected under different conditions. This paper serves as a case-study, detailing the motivating requirements for the decisions we made and explaining the implementation process.

Automation↗

VIIRS Thermal Emissive Bands L1B Calibration Uncertainty

The Visible Infrared Imaging Radiometer Suite (VIIRS) is a key instrument on-board the Suomi National Polar-orbiting Partnership (S-NPP) spacecraft. The S-NPP launched in October 2011 and it has been collecting valuable Earth science data with VIIRS and four other instruments for more than five years. The VIIRS Characterization Support Team (VCST) of the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) Science Investigator-led Processing Systems (SIPS) is designed to support the VIIRS sensor pre-launch geometric and radiometric characterization and to access on-orbit long-term Level-1B (L1B) calibration and performance. This paper reviews the VIIRS thermal emissive bands (TEB), covering wavelengths from 3.7 to 12.0 μm, L1B radiometric calibration algorithms and presents the calibration uncertainty methodology which will be implanted in the L1B processing software. Discussions will be focused on the key uncertainty parameters and the application in L1B.

S-NPP VIIRS TEB Uncertainty↗

Apache Calcite: A Foundational Framework for Optimized Query Processing Over Heterogeneous Data Sources

Apache Calcite is a foundational software framework that provides query processing, optimization, and query language support to many popular open-source data processing systems such as Apache Hive, Apache Storm, Apache Flink, Druid, and MapD. The goal of this paper is to formally introduce Calcite to the broader research community, brie y present its history, and describe its architecture, features, functionality, and patterns for adoption. Calcite's architecture consists of a modular and extensible query optimizer with hundreds of built-in optimization rules, a query processor capable of processing a variety of query languages, an adapter architecture designed for extensibility, and support for heterogeneous data models and stores (relational, semi-structured, streaming, and geospatial). This exible, embeddable, and extensible architecture is what makes Calcite an attractive choice for adoption in big-data frameworks. It is an active project that continues to introduce support for the new types of data sources, query languages, and approaches to query processing and optimization.

Begoli, Edmon↗

Regional agriculture surveys using ERTS-1 data

The Center for Remote Sensing Research has conducted studies designed to evaluate the potential application of ERTS data in performing agricultural inventories, and to develop efficient methods of data handling and analysis useful in the operational context for performing large area surveys. This work has resulted in the development of an integrated system utilizing both human and computer analysis of ground, aerial, and space imagery, which has been shown to be very efficient for regional crop acreage inventories. The technique involves: (1) the delineation of ERTS images into relatively homogeneous strata by human interpreters, (2) the point-by-point classification of the area within each strata on the basis of crop type using a human/machine interactive digital image processing system; and (3) a multistage sampling procedure for the collection of supporting aerial and ground data used in the adjustment and verification of the classification results.

Draeger, W. C.↗

Thermal Process Technology for Nuclear Applications - 20379

ANSTO's Synroc technology has been developed to provide a safe, secure matrix for the immobilization and final disposal of radioactive waste. Synroc technology will be used to manage radioactive wastes from the production of the radioisotope Molybdenum-99 (Mo-99). This paper shall outline various stages of the process development with specific reference to the thermal treatment technology of calcination. Calcination is a key step in the Synroc process [1-2].The rotary thermal processing system includes: an advanced heating element design for increased robustness and ease of remote operation and maintenance, an enhanced modular design of components for ease of remote maintenance in a hot cell and in compliance with hot cell radioactive environment requirements for safety, reliability and maintainability. In addition to thermal treatment of waste from nuclear medicine production, this technology provides solutions for a variety of nuclear materials processing applications including sintering UO{sub 2} pellets for reactor fuel rods, oxidation of UO{sub 2} pellets, swarf, and powder to U{sub 3}O{sub 8}, de-nitration of Uranyl nitrate and hydrofluorination of UO{sub 2} pellets. The paper will also discuss thermal processing solutions for a range of nuclear applications. (authors)

12 MANAGEMENT OF RADIOACTIVE AND NON-RADIOACTIVE W↗

A design approach for ultrareliable real-time systems

A design approach developed over the past few years to formalize redundancy management and validation is described. Redundant elements are partitioned into individual fault-containment regions (FCRs). An FCR is a collection of components that operates correctly regardless of any arbitrary logical or electrical fault outside the region. Conversely, a fault in an FCR cannot cause hardware outside the region to fail. The outputs of all channels are required to agree bit-for-bit under no-fault conditions (exact bitwise consensus). Synchronization, input agreement, and input validity conditions are discussed. The Advanced Information Processing System (AIPS), which is a fault-tolerant distributed architecture based on this approach, is described. A brief overview of recent applications of these systems and current research is presented.

Lala, Jaynarayan H.↗

Measuring precise sea level from a buoy using the Global Positioning System

The feasibility of using the Global Positioning System (GPS) for accurate sea surface positioning was examined. An experiment was conducted on the Scripps pier at La Jolla, California from December 13-15, 1989. A GPS-equipped buoy was deployed about 100 m off the pier. Two fixed reference GPS receivers, located on the pier and about 80 km away on Monument Peak, were used to estimate the relative position of the floater. Kinematic GPS processing software, developed at the National Geodetic Survey, and the Jet Propulsion Laboratory's GPS Infrared Processing System software were used to determine the floater position relative to land-fixing receivers. Calculations were made of sea level and ocean wave spectra from GPS measurements. It is found that the GPS sea level for the short 100 m baseline agrees with the PPT sea level at the 1 cm level and has an rms variation of 5 mm over a period of 4 hours.

Rocken, Christian↗

Miniature Mass Spectrometers on Space and Planetary Missions

Space flight mass spectrometers contribute our understanding of the origin and evolution of our solar system and even of life itself. This fundamental role has motivated increasing interest in miniature mass spectrometry for planetary missions. Several remarkable new instruments are en route or under development to investigate the composition of planetary bodies such as Mars and comets. For instance, the Sample Analysis at Mars (SAM) suite on the 2009 Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission includes a quadrupole mass spectrometer with a sophisticated gas processing system as well as pyrolysis and chemical derivatization protocols for solid samples. Future missions will require even lighter, lower power, and yet more capable mass spectrometers, particularly to analyze samples in situ on planetary surfaces. We have been developing laser-based mass spectrometers for elemental and organic/molecular analysis of rock, ice, or fine particle samples. These typically use time-of-flight (TOF) mass analyzers, which are readily miniaturized and can detect both atomic species and complex organics that occur in a variety of planetary materials. For example, nonvolatile polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons and kerogen-like macromolecular carbon are found in some carbonaceous meteorites, which derived from asteroid parent bodies. A single focused laser pulse is able to volatilize and ionize some of these compounds for direct TOF analysis. While this is possible without any sample preparation or contact, sensitivity and quantitative performance can improve significantly with some sample handling. As such we have also been examining robotic mechanisms and protocols to accompany space flight mass spectrometers. In addition, sensors in early development may significantly improve these capabilities, via use of techniques such as switchable polarity, ambient pressure, or resonant ionization; tandem mass spectrometry (TOF or ion trap); and chemical imaging.

Brinckerhoff, William↗

Architectures and Evaluation for Adjustable Control Autonomy for Space-Based Life Support Systems

In the past five years, a number of automation applications for control of crew life support systems have been developed and evaluated in the Adjustable Autonomy Testbed at NASA's Johnson Space Center. This paper surveys progress on an adjustable autonomous control architecture for situations where software and human operators work together to manage anomalies and other system problems. When problems occur, the level of control autonomy can be adjusted, so that operators and software agents can work together on diagnosis and recovery. In 1997 adjustable autonomy software was developed to manage gas transfer and storage in a closed life support test. Four crewmembers lived and worked in a chamber for 91 days, with both air and water recycling. CO2 was converted to O2 by gas processing systems and wheat crops. With the automation software, significantly fewer hours were spent monitoring operations. System-level validation testing of the software by interactive hybrid simulation revealed problems both in software requirements and implementation. Since that time, we have been developing multi-agent approaches for automation software and human operators, to cooperatively control systems and manage problems. Each new capability has been tested and demonstrated in realistic dynamic anomaly scenarios, using the hybrid simulation tool.

Malin, Jane T.↗

Recommendations concerning satellite-acquired earth resource data: 1982 report of the Data Management Subcommittee of the GEOSAT Committee, Incorporated

End user concerns about the content and accessibility of libraries of remote sensing data in general are addressed. Recommendations pertaining to the United States' satellite remote sensing programs urge: (1) the continuation of the NASA/EROS Data Center program to convert pre-1979 scenes to computer readable tapes and create a historical archive of this valuable data; (2) improving the EROS archive by adding geologically interesting scenes, data from other agencies (including previously classified data), and by adopting a policy to retire data from the archive; (3) establishing a computer data base inquiry system that includes remote sensing data from all publically available sources; (4) capability for prepurchase review and evaluation; (5) a flexible price structure; and (6) adoption of standard digital data products format. Information about LANDSAT 4, the status of worldwide LANDSAT receiving stations, future non-U.S. remote sensing satellites, a list of sources for LANDSAT data, and the results of a survey of GEOSAT members' remote sensing data processing systems are also considered.

Source record↗

The Arecibo Observatory as an MST radar

The radars and other systems at the Arecibo Observatory were designed and built, originally, for incoherent-scatter and radio-astronomy research. More recently, important additions have been made for planetary radar and artificial RF heating of the ionosphere. Although designed and built for a different application, these systems have shown to be very powerful tools for tropospheric, stratospheric and mesospheric research. The Observatory at present has two main radars: one at 430 and the other at 2380 MHz. In addition, 50-MHz MST radar work has been done using portable transmitters brought to the Observatory for this purpose. This capability will become permanent with the recent acquisition of a transmitter at this frequency. Furthermore, control and data processing systems have been developed to use the powerful HF transmitter and antennas of the HF-heating facility as an HF bistatic radar. A brief description of the four radars available at the Observatory is presented.

Woodman, R. F.↗

Development of the ARM Lagrangian Large-Scale Forcing Data (ARMLAGTRAJ) Value-Added Product Based on the lagtraj Framework

The Atmospheric Radiation Measurement (ARM) large-scale forcing data developed based on the constrained variational analysis (VARANAL) value-added product (VAP) (Zhang and Lin 1997, Zhang et al. 2001, Xie et al. 2004, Tang et al. 2019) has been widely used for single-column models (SCMs), cloud-resolving models (CRMs), and large-eddy simulation models (LESs) to understand and improve physical processes in models. Recently, the U.S. Department of Energy (DOE) ARM user facility conducted several major field campaigns using ship-based moving observational platforms. For example, the Marine ARM GPCI Investigation of Clouds (MAGIC) field campaign focused on the role of subtropical marine-boundary layer (MBL) clouds, and the Multidisciplinary Drifting Observatory for the Study of Arctic Climate (MOSAiC) field campaign aimed to improve understanding of the coupled climate systems in the Arctic. Observations from moving platforms are critical to provide a comprehensive characterization of coupled-system processes associated with all stages of the cloud and/or sea-ice life cycle. Traditional ARM large-scale forcing data have been developed at fixed locations. They need to be extended to include these moving platforms to address data needs for ship-based field campaigns or to support LES modeling in a Lagrangian framework. With these considerations in mind, we develop ARM-type Lagrangian large-scale forcing data sets based on the lagtraj framework (Boeing et al. 2020) with notable enhancements in generating forcings that are more suitable for ARM field campaigns. The lagtraj is a novel tool that generates forcings for LES and SCM simulation in both Lagrangian and Eulerian perspective. This technical report focuses on the major changes we performed on the lagtraj algorithm and provides an overview of the ARM Lagrangian Large-Scale Forcing Data (ARMLAGTRAJ) value-added products.

54 ENVIRONMENTAL SCIENCES↗

The Earth Radiation Budget (ERB) experiment - An overview

The development of ERB observational systems is traced from its beginnings in the late 1950's through to the current ERB on the Nimbus 7 satellite. The instruments comprising the current 22-channel ERB experiment are described in some detail. Noteworthy are the inclusion in one solar channel, of a self-calibrating cavity to measure the solar constant and the use of biaxial scanning telescopes to determine the angular reflection and emission model required for processing the narrow-angle radiometric data. A fairly detailed description of the prelaunch and in-flight calibrations is given along with an analysis of the radiometric performance of the instruments. The data processing system is traced with the aid of a schematic flow diagram showing the steps required to produce the many tape and microfilm products archived. Future plans for improving the quality and accuracy of the data products are discussed. Finally, the upcoming Earth Radiation Budget Experiment (ERBE) is briefly mentioned. It will be capable of simultaneously measuring the radiation budget from three satellites, each having a different equator crossing time and angle.

Jacobowitz, H.↗

CCD TV focal plane guider development and comparison to SIRTF applications

It is expected that the SIRTF payload will use a CCD TV focal plane fine guidance sensor to provide acquisition of sources and tracking stability of the telescope. Work has been done to develop CCD TV cameras and guiders at Lick Observatory for several years and have produced state of the art CCD TV systems for internal use. NASA decided to provide additional support so that the limits of this technology could be established and a comparison between SIRTF requirements and practical systems could be put on a more quantitative basis. The results of work carried out at Lick Observatory which was designed to characterize present CCD autoguiding technology and relate it to SIRTF applications is presented. Two different design types of CCD cameras were constructed using virtual phase and burred channel CCD sensors. A simple autoguider was built and used on the KAO, Mt. Lemon and Mt. Hamilton telescopes. A video image processing system was also constructed in order to characterize the performance of the auto guider and CCD cameras.

Rank, David M.↗

Multi-Sensor Cloud and Aerosol Retrieval Simulator and Remote Sensing from Model Parameters : Aerosols - Part 2

The Multi-sensor Cloud Retrieval Simulator (MCRS) produces a simulated radiance product from any high-resolution general circulation model with interactive aerosol as if a specific sensor such as the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) were viewing a combination of the atmospheric column and land ocean surface at a specific location. Previously the MCRS code only included contributions from atmosphere and clouds in its radiance calculations and did not incorporate properties of aerosols. In this paper we added a new aerosol properties module to the MCRS code that allows users to insert a mixture of up to 15 different aerosol species in any of 36 vertical layers. This new MCRS code is now known as MCARS (Multi-sensor Cloud and Aerosol Retrieval Simulator). Inclusion of an aerosol module into MCARS not only allows for extensive, tightly controlled testing of various aspects of satellite operational cloud and aerosol properties retrieval algorithms, but also provides a platform for comparing cloud and aerosol models against satellite measurements. This kind of two-way platform can improve the efficacy of model parameterizations of measured satellite radiances, allowing the assessment of model skill consistently with the retrieval algorithm. The MCARS code provides dynamic controls for appearance of cloud and aerosol layers. Thereby detailed quantitative studies of the impacts of various atmospheric components can be controlled. In this paper we illustrate the operation of MCARS by deriving simulated radiances from various data field output by the Goddard Earth Observing System version 5 (GEOS-5) model. The model aerosol fields are prepared for translation to simulated radiance using the same model sub grid variability parameterizations as are used for cloud and atmospheric properties profiles, namely the ICA technique. After MCARS computes modeled sensor radiances equivalent to their observed counterparts, these radiances are presented as input to operational remote-sensing algorithms. Specifically, the MCARS-computed radiances are input into the processing chain used to produce the MODIS Data Collection 6 aerosol product (MOYD04). TheMOYD04 product is of course normally produced from MOYD021KM MODIS Level-1B radiance product directly acquired by the MODIS instrument. MCARS matches the format and metadata of a MOYD021KM product. The resulting MCARS output can be directly provided to MODAPS (MODIS Adaptive Processing System) as input to various operational atmospheric retrieval algorithms. Thus the operational algorithms can be tested directly without needing to make any software changes to accommodate an alternative input source. We show direct application of this synthetic product in analysis of the performance of the MOD04 operational algorithm. We use biomass-burning case studies over Amazonia employed in a recent Working Group on Numerical Experimentation (WGNE)-sponsored study of aerosol impacts on numerical weather prediction (Freitas et al., 2015). We demonstrate that a known low bias in retrieved MODIS aerosol optical depth appears to be due to a disconnect between actual column relative humidity and the value assumed by the MODIS aerosol product.

aerosol retrieval↗

Earth Observatory Satellite (EOS) Definition Phase Report, Volume 1

System definition studies were conducted of the Earth Observatory Satellite (EOS). The studies show that the concept of an Earth Observatory Satellite in a near-earth, sun-synchronous orbit would make a unique contribution to the goals of a coordinated program for acquisition of data for environmental research with applications to earth resource inventory and management. The technical details for the proposed development of sensors, spacecraft, and a ground data processing system are presented.

Source record↗