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NASA NTRS2003

NASA Tech Briefs, June 2003

Topics covered include: Nulling Infrared Radiometer for Measuring Temperature; The Ames Power Monitoring System; Hot Films on Ceramic Substrates for Measuring Skin Friction; Probe Without Moving Parts Measures Flow Angle; Detecting Conductive Liquid Leaking from Nonconductive Pipe; Adaptive Suppression of Noise in Voice Communications; High-Performance Solid-State W-Band Power Amplifiers; Microbatteries for Combinatorial Studies of Conventional Lithium-Ion Batteries; Correcting for Beam Aberrations in a Beam-Waveguide Antenna; Advanced Rainbow Solar Photovoltaic Arrays; Metal Side Reflectors for Trapping Light in QWIPs; Software for Collaborative Engineering of Launch Rockets; Software Assists in Extensive Environmental Auditing; Software Supports Distributed Operations via the Internet; Software Estimates Costs of Testing Rocket Engines; yourSky: Custom Sky-Image Mosaics via the Internet; Software for Managing Inventory of Flight Hardware; Lower-Conductivity Thermal-Barrier Coatings; Process for Smoothing an Si Substrate after Etching of SiO2; Flexible Composite-Material Pressure Vessel; Treatment to Destroy Chlorohydrocarbon Liquids in the Ground; Noncircular Cross Sections Could Enhance Mixing in Sprays; Small, Untethered, Mobile Roots for Inspecting Gas Pipes; Paint-Overspray Catcher; Preparation of Regular Specimens for Atom Probes; Inverse Tomo-Lithography for Making Microscopic 3D Parts; Predicting and Preventing Incipient Flameout in Combustors; MEMS-Based Piezoelectric/Electrostatic Inchworm Actuator; Metallized Capillaries as Probes for Raman Spectroscopy; Adaptation of Mesoscale Weather Models to Local Forecasting; Aerodynamic Design using Neural Networks; Combining Multiple Gyroscope Outputs for Increased Accuracy; and Improved Collision-Detection Method for Robotic Manipulator.

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NASA NTRS2005

Robotic and Human-Tended Collaborative Drilling Automation for Subsurface Exploration

Future in-situ lunar/martian resource utilization and characterization, as well as the scientific search for life on Mars, will require access to the subsurface and hence drilling. Drilling on Earth is hard - an art form more than an engineering discipline. Human operators listen and feel drill string vibrations coming from kilometers underground. Abundant mass and energy make it possible for terrestrial drilling to employ brute-force approaches to failure recovery and system performance issues. Space drilling will require intelligent and autonomous systems for robotic exploration and to support human exploration. Eventual in-situ resource utilization will require deep drilling with probable human-tended operation of large-bore drills, but initial lunar subsurface exploration and near-term ISRU will be accomplished with lightweight, rover-deployable or standalone drills capable of penetrating a few tens of meters in depth. These lightweight exploration drills have a direct counterpart in terrestrial prospecting and ore-body location, and will be designed to operate either human-tended or automated. NASA and industry now are acquiring experience in developing and building low-mass automated planetary prototype drills to design and build a pre-flight lunar prototype targeted for 2011-12 flight opportunities. A successful system will include development of drilling hardware, and automated control software to operate it safely and effectively. This includes control of the drilling hardware, state estimation of both the hardware and the lithography being drilled and state of the hole, and potentially planning and scheduling software suitable for uncertain situations such as drilling. Given that Humans on the Moon or Mars are unlikely to be able to spend protracted EVA periods at a drill site, both human-tended and robotic access to planetary subsurfaces will require some degree of standalone, autonomous drilling capability. Human-robotic coordination will be important, either between a robotic drill and humans on Earth, or a human-tended drill and its visiting crew. The Mars Analog Rio Tinto Experiment (MARTE) is a current project that studies and simulates the remote science operations between an automated drill in Spain and a distant, distributed human science team. The Drilling Automation for Mars Exploration (DAME) project, by contrast: is developing and testing standalone automation at a lunar/martian impact crater analog site in Arctic Canada. The drill hardware in both projects is a hardened, evolved version of the Advanced Deep Drill (ADD) developed by Honeybee Robotics for the Mars Subsurface Program. The current ADD is capable of 20m, and the DAME project is developing diagnostic and executive software for hands-off surface operations of the evolved version of this drill. The current drill automation architecture being developed by NASA and tested in 2004-06 at analog sites in the Arctic and Spain will add downhole diagnosis of different strata, bit wear detection, and dynamic replanning capabilities when unexpected failures or drilling conditions are discovered in conjunction with simulated mission operations and remote science planning. The most important determinant of future 1unar and martian drilling automation and staffing requirements will be the actual performance of automated prototype drilling hardware systems in field trials in simulated mission operations. It is difficult to accurately predict the level of automation and human interaction that will be needed for a lunar-deployed drill without first having extensive experience with the robotic control of prototype drill systems under realistic analog field conditions. Drill-specific failure modes and software design flaws will become most apparent at this stage. DAME will develop and test drill automation software and hardware under stressful operating conditions during several planned field campaigns. Initial results from summer 2004 tests show seven identifi distinct failure modes of the drill: cuttings-removal issues with low-power drilling into permafrost, and successful steps at executive control and initial automation.

Glass, Brian↗

NASA NTRS2004

Latent Heating from TRMM Satellite Measurements

Rainfall production is the fundamental variable within the Earth's hydrological cycle because it is both the principal forcing term in surface water budgets and its energetics corollary, latent heating, is the principal source of atmospheric diabatic heating. Latent heat release itself is a consequence of phase changes between the vapor, liquid, and frozen states of water. The properties of the vertical distribution of latent heat release modulate large-scale meridional and zonal circulations within the tropics - as well as modifying the energetic efficiencies of midlatitude weather systems. This paper focuses on the retrieval of latent heat release from satellite measurements generated by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) satellite observatory, which was launched in November 1997 as a joint American-Japanese space endeavor. Since then, TRMM measurements have been providing an accurate four-dimensional account of rainfall over the global tropics and sub-tropics, information which can be used to estimate the space-time structure of latent heating across the Earth's low latitudes. The paper examines how the observed TRMM distribution of rainfall has advanced an understanding of the global water and energy cycle and its consequent relationship to the atmospheric general circulation and climate via latent heat release. A set of algorithm methodologies that are being used to estimate latent heating based on rain rate retrievals from the TRMM observations are described. The characteristics of these algorithms and the latent heating products that can be generated from them are also described, along with validation analyses of the heating products themselves. Finally, the investigation provides an overview of how TRMM-derived latent heating information is currently being used in conjunction with global weather and climate models, concluding with remarks intended to stimulate further research on latent heating retrieval from satellites.

Tao, Wei-Kuo↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Autonomous Navigation of a Lunar Relay Using GNSS and Other Measurements

Many of the highest priority destinations at the Moon lack a continuous view of Earth, such as the lunar poles or lunar far side. Exploration of these sites will require spacecraft in cislunar space to relay communications and provide position, navigation, and timing (PNT) services. Accurate knowledge of relay position, velocity, and time is essential to these services. This paper describes a concept for a PNT Instrument being developed for the Lunar Communications Relay and Navigation Systems (LCRNS) Project. The instrument is intended as a payload that would enable autonomous, on-board, real-time navigation and timing using Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS), optical navigation, and one-way measurements from Earth-based ground stations. Hardware-in-the-loop simulations using flight software are used to realistically characterize performance on hardware platforms with a path to flight. These results provide preliminary validation of the proposed PNT Instrument, demonstrate the benefits of augmenting GNSS with other measurements, and serve as an insightful reference for the design of future lunar missions, including those that will operate within the LunaNet framework of standards. This instrument concept relies on several technologies developed at NASA Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). For GNSS observables, the instrument relies on the high-altitude NavCube 3 mini (NC3m) GNSS receiver specifically designed for cislunar applications. The autoNGC system, which consists of flight software and a hardware platform, is responsible for fusing the observables using its extended Kalman filter, the Goddard Enhanced Onboard Navigation System (GEONS). Optical navigation observables are processed within autoNGC (“autonomous Navigation, Guidance, and Control”) using the Goddard Image Analysis & Navigation Tool (GIANT) which is also responsible for simulating high-fidelity images for test and analysis. In addition to describing the PNT Instrument and its components, the paper will present predicted performance based on simulation results. As a baseline, it will present GNSS-only hardware-in-the loop results using a NC3m test unit to process Spirent-simulated GPS signals in a potential lunar relay trajectory: a 12-hour elliptical frozen lunar orbit (ELFO). GEONS then processes the GPS pseudorange and time differenced carrier phase measurements to estimate and propagate the relay state (position, velocity, and time). These results extend previously published work that showed preliminary ELFO performance. Previous work has shown the importance of other measurement types, so additional simulations are performed which augment GNSS with ground station observables and several methods of optical navigation, including celestial navigation, limb-finding (e.g., observations of the lunar horizon), and terrain relative navigation (TRN). TRN involves correlating simulated predicted images of the lunar surface with actual imagery; misalignments of landmarks identified in each image are translated into relay state updates. TRN is valuable as a measurement of the relay’s state relative to the Moon, especially during GNSS outages or after maneuvers. One-way Pseudorange and Doppler measurements from Earth-based ground stations are also simulated. The full set of observables is processed using autoNGC. These simulations make use of autoNGC and NC3m test units, a lab atomic clock, and a pulse-per-second (PPS) generation and distribution system. This combination of subsystems, and the hardware platforms used in this analysis, represents a PNT Instrument that could be flown on a lunar relay. Results from the hardware-in-the-loop simulations presented in this paper provide a preliminary assessment of the achievable navigation performance of this instrument concept. PNT Instrument performance is compared to the GPS-only performance, and a discussion is provided on the apparent merits and challenges of each measurement type.

Ben Ashman↗

NASA NTRS1978

Microwave scatter and sea state estimation - Two-scale ocean wave models

The efficient estimation of ocean wave-structure parameters with a remote, narrow-beam, pulsed, microwave radar at intermediate incidence angles is discussed. The sea surface is described as the sum of random small- and large-scale structures (waves), the latter the sum of a sinusoid and a random field. It is shown that the small-scale structure is responsible for scattering and that the scatter depends parametrically on the large-scale structure. For the estimation problem it is assumed, reasonably, that the received signal is normally distributed: a relatively simple processor which will efficiently estimate parameters of the sinusoidal structure is illustrated and its performance discussed. A brief comparison is made with a normal incidence system with which the variance of the large-scale random roughness can be estimated.

Harger, R. O.↗

NASA NTRS2000

Aerospace Systems Design in NASA's Collaborative Engineering Environment

Past designs of complex aerospace systems involved an environment consisting of collocated design teams with project managers, technical discipline experts, and other experts (e.g., manufacturing and systems operation). These experts were generally qualified only on the basis of past design experience and typically had access to a limited set of integrated analysis tools. These environments provided less than desirable design fidelity, often lead to the inability of assessing critical programmatic and technical issues (e.g., cost, risk, technical impacts), and generally derived a design that was not necessarily optimized across the entire system. The continually changing, modern aerospace industry demands systems design processes that involve the best talent available (no matter where it resides) and access to the the best design and analysis tools. A solution to these demands involves a design environment referred to as collaborative engineering. The collaborative engineering environment evolving within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a capability that enables the Agency's engineering infrastructure to interact and use the best state-of-the-art tools and data across organizational boundaries. Using collaborative engineering, the collocated team is replaced with an interactive team structure where the team members are geographical distributed and the best engineering talent can be applied to the design effort regardless of physical location. In addition, a more efficient, higher quality design product is delivered by bringing together the best engineering talent with more up-to-date design and analysis tools. These tools are focused on interactive, multidisciplinary design and analysis with emphasis on the complete life cycle of the system, and they include nontraditional, integrated tools for life cycle cost estimation and risk assessment. NASA has made substantial progress during the last two years in developing a collaborative engineering environment. NASA is planning to use this collaborative engineering engineering infrastructure to provide better aerospace systems life cycle design and analysis, which includes analytical assessment of the technical and programmatic aspects of a system from "cradle to grave." This paper describes the recent NASA developments in the area of collaborative engineering, the benefits (realized and anticipated) of using the developed capability, and the long-term plans for implementing this capability across Agency.

Monell, Donald W.↗

NASA NTRS1999

Aerospace Systems Design in NASA's Collaborative Engineering Environment

Past designs of complex aerospace systems involved an environment consisting of collocated design teams with project managers, technical discipline experts, and other experts (e.g. manufacturing and systems operations). These experts were generally qualified only on the basis of past design experience and typically had access to a limited set of integrated analysis tools. These environments provided less than desirable design fidelity, often lead to the inability of assessing critical programmatic and technical issues (e.g., cost risk, technical impacts), and generally derived a design that was not necessarily optimized across the entire system. The continually changing, modern aerospace industry demands systems design processes that involve the best talent available (no matter where it resides) and access to the best design and analysis tools. A solution to these demands involves a design environment referred to as collaborative engineering. The collaborative engineering environment evolving within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) is a capability that enables the Agency's engineering infrastructure to interact and use the best state-of-the-art tools and data across organizational boundaries. Using collaborative engineering, the collocated team is replaced with an interactive team structure where the team members are geographically distributed and the best engineering talent can be applied to the design effort regardless of physical location. In addition, a more efficient, higher quality design product is delivered by bringing together the best engineering talent with more up-to-date design and analysis tools. These tools are focused on interactive, multidisciplinary design and analysis with emphasis on the complete life cycle of the system, and they include nontraditional, integrated tools for life cycle cost estimation and risk assessment. NASA has made substantial progress during the last two years in developing a collaborative engineering environment. NASA is planning to use this collaborative engineering infrastructure to provide better aerospace systems life cycle design and analysis, which includes analytical assessment of the technical and programmatic aspects of a system from "cradle to grave." This paper describes the recent NASA developments in the area of collaborative engineering, the benefits (realized and anticipated) of using the developed capability, and the long-term plans for implementing this capability across the Agency.

Monell, Donald W.↗

NASA NTRS2019

Goddard Latent Heating (LH) Retrieval Algorithm

Rainfall production is a fundamental process within the Earth's hydrological cycle because it represents both a principal forcing term in surface water budgets, and its energetics corollary, latent heating, is the principal source of atmospheric diabatic heating. Latent heat release itself is a consequence of phase changes between the vapor, liquid, and frozen states of water. The properties of the vertical distribution of latent heat release modulate large-scale meridional and zonal circulations within the Tropics - as well as modify the energetic efficiencies of mid-latitude weather systems. This paper highlights the retrieval of latent heat release from satellite measurements generated by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) satellite observatory, which were launched in November 1997 and February 2014, respectively. Both TRMM and GPM measurements have been providing an accurate four-dimensional account of rainfall over the global Tropics and mid-latitudes: information that can be used to estimate the space-time structure of latent heating. Two sets of latent heating retrieval algorithm methodologies (Goddard Convective-Stratiform or CSH, and Japan Spectral Latent Heating or SLH) have been developed to estimate latent heating based on rain rate profile retrievals obtained from TRMM and GPM measurements. The CSH algorithm will be described followed by a discussion its improvements and performance against the combined derived surface ran rates. We will also present the CSH retrieved LH for TRMM and GPM.

Tao, Wei-Kuo↗

NASA NTRS2019

Latent Heating Algorithm

Rainfall production is a fundamental process within the Earth's hydrological cycle because it represents both a principal forcing term in surface water budgets, and its energetics corollary, latent heating, is the principal source of atmospheric diabatic heating. Latent heat release itself is a consequence of phase changes between the vapor, liquid, and frozen states of water. The properties of the vertical distribution of latent heat release modulate large-scale meridional and zonal circulations within the Tropics - as well as modify the energetic efficiencies of mid-latitude weather systems. This paper highlights the retrieval of latent heat release from satellite measurements generated by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission (TRMM) and Global Precipitation Measurement (GPM) Mission satellite observatory, which were launched in November 1997 and February 2014, respectively. Both TRMM and GPM measurements have been providing an accurate four-dimensional account of rainfall over the global Tropics and mid-latitudes: information that can be used to estimate the space-time structure of latent heating.Two sets of latent heating (LH) retrieval algorithm methodologies (Goddard Convective-Stratiform Heating or CSH, and Japan's Spectral Latent Heating or SLH) have been developed to estimate latent heating based on rain rate profile retrievals obtained from TRMM and GPM measurements. The differences and similarities between the CSH and SLH algorithm designs will be presented. The presentation then will provide the results of LH structures derived from the TRMM and GPM. At the end of presentation, the further research on latent heating retrieval from satellites will be discussed.

Tao, Wei-Kuo↗

NASA NTRS2004

Latent Heating Structures Derived from TRMM

Rainfall is the fundamental variable within the Earth's hydrological cycle because it is both the main forcing term leading to variations in continental and oceanic surface water budgets. The vertical distribution of latent heat release, which is accompanied with rain, modulates large-scale meridional and zonal circulations within the tropics as well as modifying the energetic efficiency of mid-latitude weather systems. Latent heat release itself is a consequence of phase changes between the vapor, liquid, and frozen states of water.This paper focuses on the retrieval of latent heat release from satellite measurements generated by the Tropical Rainfall Measuring Mission 0. The TRMM observatory, whose development was a joint US-Japan space endeavor, was launched in November 1997. TRMM measurements provide an accurate account of rainfall over the global tropics, information which can be .used to estimate the four-dimensional structure of latent heating across the entire tropical and sub-tropical regions. Various algorithm methodologies for estimating latent heating based on rain rate measurements from TRMM observations are described. The strengths and weaknesses of these algorithms, as well as the latent heating products generated by these algorithms, are also discussed along with validation analyses of the products. The investigation paper provides an overview of how TRMM-derived latent heating information is currently being used in conjunction with global weather and climate models, and concludes with remarks designed to stimulate further research on latent heating retrieval

Tao, W.-K.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

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↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Vision-Based Distributed Sensing at Vertiports for Advanced Air Mobility and Urban Air Mobility Approach and Landing

Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) encompasses a broad vision for air transportation, including Urban Air Mobility (UAM) as a subset. AAM aims to create a more connected and efficient transportation network across various geographical settings. However, navigating AAM aircraft in GPS-denied or degraded environments during approach and landing is challenging. Traditional vision aids like glideslopes and localizers are limited in vertiport environments due to narrow beam constraints and reduced landing angle options. This paper addresses the need for accurate navigation solutions at vertiports by proposing a vision-based distributed sensing (VIDIS) system utilizing cameras with bundle adjustment to assist incoming AAM aircraft during approach and landing while monitoring surface movements to enhance safety and efficiency. Key focus areas for current and future vertiport developers include identifying suitable sensor types and infrastructure standards to support AAM operations and including vertiport markings as vision-based navigation aids. The proposed system offers a novel approach to overcoming navigation challenges in AAM operations, particularly in urban settings where traditional aids may be insufficient. Preliminary simulation results with distributed cameras demonstrate promising outcomes for implementing bundle adjustment techniques to enhance vision-based navigation solutions at vertiports. Generating waypoint-based trajectories via waypoint integration using explicit guidance synthesis (WINGS) creates smooth AAM trajectories for landing at vertiports by using the current waypoint's terminal conditions as the initial conditions for the next waypoint. Combining bundle adjustment's ground-based solution of vertiport features with WINGS, Coplanar Pose from Orthography and Scaling with Iterations (COPOSIT), and an extended Kalman filter (EKF) estimates the state of an incoming aircraft during approach and landing at vertiports. Future work includes testing VIDIS in a high-fidelity simulation and with real-world data.

Distributed sensing↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

Vision-Based Distributed Sensing at Vertiports for Advanced Air Mobility and Urban Air Mobility Approach and Landing

Distributed sensing↗

NASA NTRS1996

Advanced Orion Optimized Laser System Analysis

Contractor shall perform a complete analysis of the potential of the solid state laser in the very long pulse mode (100 ns pulse width, 10-30 hz rep-rate) and in the very short pulse mode (100 ps pulse width 10-30 hz rep rate) concentrating on the operation of the device in the 'hot-rod' mode, where no active cooling the laser operation is attempted. Contractor's calculations shall be made of the phase aberrations which develop during the repped-pulse train, and the results shall feed into the adaptive optics analyses. The contractor shall devise solutions to work around ORION track issues. A final report shall be furnished to the MSFC COTR including all calculations and analysis of estimates of bulk phase and intensity aberration distribution in the laser output beam as a function of time during the repped-pulse train for both wave forms (high-energy/long-pulse, as well as low-energy/short-pulse). Recommendations shall be made for mitigating the aberrations by laser re-design and/or changes in operating parameters of optical pump sources and/or designs.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS2007

NASA Tech Briefs, March 2007

Topics include: Advanced Systems for Monitoring Underwater Sounds; Wireless Data-Acquisition System for Testing Rocket Engines; Processing Raw HST Data With Up-to-Date Calibration Data; Mobile Collection and Automated Interpretation of EEG Data; System for Secure Integration of Aviation Data; Servomotor and Controller Having Large Dynamic Range; Digital Multicasting of Multiple Audio Streams; Translator for Optimizing Fluid-Handling Components; AIRSAR Web-Based Data Processing; Pattern Matcher for Trees Constructed From Lists; Reducing a Knowledge-Base Search Space When Data Are Missing; Ground-Based Correction of Remote-Sensing Spectral Imagery; State-Chart Autocoder; Pointing History Engine for the Spitzer Space Telescope; Low-Friction, High-Stiffness Joint for Uniaxial Load Cell; Magnet-Based System for Docking of Miniature Spacecraft; Electromechanically Actuated Valve for Controlling Flow Rate; Plumbing Fixture for a Microfluidic Cartridge; Camera Mount for a Head-Up Display; Core-Cutoff Tool; Recirculation of Laser Power in an Atomic Fountain; Simplified Generation of High-Angular-Momentum Light Beams; Imaging Spectrometer on a Chip; Interferometric Quantum-Nondemolition Single-Photon Detectors; Ring-Down Spectroscopy for Characterizing a CW Raman Laser; Complex Type-II Interband Cascade MQW Photodetectors; Single-Point Access to Data Distributed on Many Processors; Estimating Dust and Water Ice Content of the Martian Atmosphere From THEMIS Data; Computing a Stability Spectrum by Use of the HHT; Theoretical Studies of Routes to Synthesis of Tetrahedral N4; Estimation Filter for Alignment of the Spitzer Space Telescope; Antenna for Measuring Electric Fields Within the Inner Heliosphere; Improved High-Voltage Gas Isolator for Ion Thruster; and Hybrid Mobile Communication Networks for Planetary Exploration.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS2016

Predicting Real-Time Safety of the National Airspace System

To gain the situational awareness necessary for informed decision making regarding avoidance of airspace hazards, each operator must consolidate operations-relevant information from disparate sources and apply extensive domain knowledge to correctly interpret not just the current state of the NAS but forecast its (combined) evolution over the duration of the operation. This time- and workload-intensive process is periodically repeated throughout the operation so that changes can be managed in a timely manner.The imprecision, inaccuracies, inconsistency, and incompleteness of the incoming data further challenges the process. To facilitate informed decision making, this paper presents a model-based framework for the textitautomated real-time monitoring and prediction of possible effects of airspace hazards on the safety of the National Airspace System (NAS). First, hazards to flight are identified and transformed into sms, that is, quantities of interest that could be evaluated based on available data and are predictive of an unsafe event. The sms and associated thresholds that specify when an event transitions from emphsafe to emphunsafe are combined with models of airspace operations and aircraft dynamics. The framework can include any hazard to flight that can be modeled quantitatively. Models can be detailed and complex, or they can be considerably simplifed, as appropriate to the application. Real-time NAS safety monitoring and prediction begins with an estimate of the state of the NAS using the dynamic models. Given the state estimate and a probability distribution of future inputs to the NAS, we can then predict the evolution of the NAS - the future state - and the occurrence of hazards and unsafe events. The entire probability distribution of airspace sms is computed, not just point estimates, without significant assumptions regarding the distribution type andor parameters. We demonstrate our overall approach through a simulated scenario in which we predict the occurrence of some unsafe events and show how these predictions evolve in time as flight operations progress. Predictions accounting for common sources of uncertainty are included and it is shown how the predictions improve in time, become more confident, and change dynamically as new information is made available to the prediction algorithm.

safety↗

NASA NTRS1973

Equilibrium properties of a one-dimensional kinetic system.

One-dimensional systems of N = 500 and 250 particles in equilibrium are numerically simulated utilizing the method of molecular dynamics. Periodic boundary conditions are imposed. The classical two-body interaction potential is short range, repulsive and has a corresponding finite force. The equations of state are determined for densities both less and greater than one. Corresponding theoretical isochores are determined from models based on nearest-neighbor interactions and on a truncated virial expansion, and a comparison is made with the experimental isochores. Time independent radial distributions are constructed numerically and discussed. A change of state from a solidlike state to a fluid-gas state based on the penetrability of the particles is predicted. The transition temperatures are estimated from the radial distribution functions and the nearest-neighbor model. Self-diffusion is observed and the corresponding constants are determined from the velocity autocorrelation functions.

Williams, J. H.↗

NASA NTRS2000

Tropical Cyclone Lightning Distribution and Its Relationship to Convection and Intensity Change

The long distance National Lightning Detection Network (NLDN) was used to monitor the distribution of lightning strokes in various 1998 and 1999 western North Atlantic tropical cyclones. These ground-based lightning observations together with the Defense Meteorological Satellite Program (DMSP) Special Sensor Microwave/Imager (SSM/I) and the Tropical Rain Mapping Mission (TRMM) Microwave Instrument (TMI) derived convective rain rates were used to monitor the propagation of electrically charged convective rain bands aid to qualitatively estimate intensification. An example of the lightning analyses was performed on hurricane George between 25-28 September, 1998 when the system left Key West and moved towards the Louisiana coast. During this period of time, George's maximum winds increased from 38 to 45 meters per second on 25 September and then remained steady state until it made landfall. Time-radius displays of the lightning strokes indicated that the greatest number of lightning strokes occurred within the outer core region (greater than 165 km) with little or no lightning strokes at radii less than 165 km. The trend in these lightning strokes decreased as George move into the Gulf of Mexico and showed no inward propagation. The lack inward propagating lightning strokes with time indicated that there was no evidence that an eye wall replacement was occurring that could alter George's intensity. Since George was steady state at this time, this result is not surprising. Time-azimuth displays of lightning strokes in an annulus whose outer and inner radii were respectively, 222 and 333 km from George's center were also constructed. A result from this analysis indicated that the maximum number of strokes occurred in the forward and rear right quadrant when George was over the Gulf of Mexico. This result is, consistent with the aircraft and satellite observations of maximum rainfall.

Rodgers, Edward↗