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NASA NTRS2015

Technology Development of Automated Rendezvous and Docking/Capture Sensors and Docking Mechanism for the Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission

This paper will describe the technology development efforts NASA has underway for Automated Rendezvous and Docking/Capture (AR&D/C) sensors and a docking mechanism and the challenges involved. The paper will additionally address how these technologies will be extended to other missions requiring AR&D/C whether robotic or manned. NASA needs AR&D/C sensors for both the robotic and crewed segments of the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM). NASA recently conducted a commonality assessment of the concept of operations for the robotic Asteroid Redirect Vehicle (ARV) and the crewed mission segment using the Orion crew vehicle. The commonality assessment also considered several future exploration and science missions requiring an AR&D/C capability. Missions considered were asteroid sample return, satellite servicing, and planetary entry, descent, and landing. This assessment determined that a common sensor suite consisting of one or more visible wavelength cameras, a threedimensional LIDAR along with long-wavelength infrared cameras for robustness and situational awareness could be used on each mission to eliminate the cost of multiple sensor developments and qualifications. By choosing sensor parameters at build time instead of at design time and, without having to requalify flight hardware, a specific mission can design overlapping bearing, range, relative attitude, and position measurement availability to suit their mission requirements with minimal nonrecurring engineering costs. The resulting common sensor specification provides the union of all performance requirements for each mission and represents an improvement over the current systems used for AR&D/C today. These sensor specifications are tightly coupled to the docking system capabilities and requirements for final docking conditions. The paper will describe NASA's efforts to develop a standard docking system for use across NASA human spaceflight missions to multiple destinations. It will describe the current design status and the considerations and technologies involved in developing this docking mechanism.

Hinkel, Heather↗

NASA NTRS2016

Technology Development of Automated Rendezvous and Docking/Capture Sensors and Docking Mechanism for the Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission

This paper will describe the technology development efforts NASA has underway for Automated Rendezvous and Docking/Capture (AR&D/C) sensors and a docking mechanism and the challenges involved. The paper will additionally address how these technologies will be extended to other missions requiring AR&D/C whether robotic or manned. NASA needs AR&D/C sensors for both the robotic and crewed segments of the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM). NASA recently conducted a commonality assessment of the concept of operations for the robotic Asteroid Redirect Vehicle (ARV) and the crewed mission segment using the Orion spacecraft. The commonality assessment also considered several future exploration and science missions requiring an AR&D/C capability. Missions considered were asteroid sample return, satellite servicing, and planetary entry, descent, and landing. This assessment determined that a common sensor suite consisting of one or more visible wavelength cameras, a three-dimensional LIDAR along with long-wavelength infrared cameras for robustness and situational awareness could be used on each mission to eliminate the cost of multiple sensor developments and qualifications. By choosing sensor parameters at build-time instead of at design-time and, without having to requalify flight hardware, a specific mission can design overlapping bearing, range, relative attitude, and position measurement availability to suit their mission requirements with minimal non-recurring engineering costs. The resulting common sensor specification provides the union of all performance requirements for each mission and represents an improvement over the current systems used for AR&D/C today. These sensor specifications are tightly coupled to the docking system capabilities and requirements for final docking conditions. The paper will describe NASA's efforts to develop a standard docking system for use across NASA human spaceflight missions to multiple destinations. It will describe the current design status and the considerations and technologies involved in developing this docking mechanism.

Hinkel, Heather↗

NASA NTRS2012

Face-Sheet Quality Analysis and Thermo-Physical Property Characterization of OOA and Autoclave Panels

Increased application of polymer matrix composite (PMC) materials in large vehicle structures requires consideration of non-autoclave manufacturing technology. The NASA Composites for Exploration project, and its predecessor, Lightweight Spacecraft Structures and Materials project, were tasked with the development of materials and manufacturing processes for structures that will perform in a heavy-lift-launch vehicle environment. Both autoclave and out of autoclave processable materials were considered. Large PMC structures envisioned for such a vehicle included the payload shroud and the interstage connector. In this study, composite sandwich panels representing 1/16th segments of the barrel section of the Ares V rocket fairing were prepared as 1.8 m x 2.4 m sections of the 10 m diameter arc segment. IM7/977-3 was used as the face-sheet prepreg of the autoclave processed panels and T40-800B/5320-1 for the out of autoclave panels. The core was 49.7 kilograms per square meters (3.1 pounds per cubic feet (pcf)) aluminum honeycomb. Face-sheets were fabricated by automated tape laying 153 mm wide unidirectional tape. This work details analysis of the manufactured panels where face-sheet quality was characterized by optical microscopy, cured ply thickness measurements, acid digestion, and thermal analysis.

Miller, Sandi G.↗

NASA NTRS2015

Technology Development of Automated Rendezvous and Docking/Capture Sensors and Docking Mechanism for the Asteroid Redirect Crewed Mission

This paper will describe the technology development efforts NASA has underway for Automated Rendezvous and Docking/Capture (AR and D/C) sensors and a docking mechanism and the challenges involved. The paper will additionally address how these technologies will be extended to other missions requiring AR and D/C whether robotic or manned. NASA needs AR&D/C sensors for both the robotic and crewed segments of the Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM). NASA recently conducted a commonality assessment of the concept of operations for the robotic Asteroid Redirect Vehicle (ARV) and the crewed mission segment using the Orion crew vehicle. The commonality assessment also considered several future exploration and science missions requiring an AR and D/C capability. Missions considered were asteroid sample return, satellite servicing, and planetary entry, descent, and landing. This assessment determined that a common sensor suite consisting of one or more visible wavelength cameras, a threedimensional LIDAR along with long-wavelength infrared cameras for robustness and situational awareness could be used on each mission to eliminate the cost of multiple sensor developments and qualifications. By choosing sensor parameters at build time instead of at design time and, without having to requalify flight hardware, a specific mission can design overlapping bearing, range, relative attitude, and position measurement availability to suit their mission requirements with minimal nonrecurring engineering costs. The resulting common sensor specification provides the union of all performance requirements for each mission and represents an improvement over the current systems used for AR and D/C today. These sensor specifications are tightly coupled to the docking system capabilities and requirements for final docking conditions. The paper will describe NASA's efforts to develop a standard docking system for use across NASA human spaceflight missions to multiple destinations. It will describe the current design status and the considerations and technologies involved in developing this docking mechanism.

Hinkel, Heather↗

NASA NTRS1988

STS-26/Discovery Preparations for Launch

This NASA Kennedy Space Center two-part video release is comprised of footage covering STS-26 launch preparations from the arrival of the Tracking and Data Relay Satellite (TDRS) at the Orbiter Processing Facility (OPF) to the lift and mate of the external tanks. The STS-26 flight crew include: Frederick H. (Rick) Hauck, mission commander; Richard O. Covey, pilot; John M. (Mike) Lounge, mission specialist; David C. Hilmers, mission specialist; and George D. (Pinky) Nelson, mission specialist. The primary payload of STS-26 is the TDRS while the secondary payloads include the Physical Vapor Transport of Organic Solids (PVTOS); Protein Crystal Growth (PCG); Infrared Communications Flight Experiment (IRCFE); Aggregation of Red Blood Cells (ARC); Isoelectric Focusing Experiment (IFE); Mesoscale Lightning Experiment (MLE); Phase Partitioning Experiment (PPE); Earth-Limb Radiance Experiment (ELRAD); Automated Directional Solidification Furnace (ADSF) and two Shuttle Student Involvement Program (SSIP) experiments. Launch preparation footage includes flight crew arrival at KSC, rollout of Discovery to Pad B, OV-103 Discovery power-up, main engine unpacking and installation, solid rocket boosters' arrival prep and stacking, and aft skirt to aft segment mating.

Source record↗

NASA NTRS1992

Automated detection of jet contrails using the AVHRR split window

This paper investigates the automated detection of jet contrails using data from the Advanced Very High Resolution Radiometer. A preliminary algorithm subtracts the 11.8-micron image from the 10.8-micron image, creating a difference image on which contrails are enhanced. Then a three-stage algorithm searches the difference image for the nearly-straight line segments which characterize contrails. First, the algorithm searches for elevated, linear patterns called 'ridges'. Second, it applies a Hough transform to the detected ridges to locate nearly-straight lines. Third, the algorithm determines which of the nearly-straight lines are likely to be contrails. The paper applies this technique to several test scenes.

Engelstad, M.↗

NASA NTRS1996

Meshing of a Spiral Bevel Gearset with 3D Finite Element Analysis

Recent advances in spiral bevel gear geometry and finite element technology make it practical to conduct a structural analysis and analytically roll the gearset through mesh. With the advent of user specific programming linked to 3D solid modelers and mesh generators, model generation has become greatly automated. Contact algorithms available in general purpose finite element codes eliminate the need for the use and alignment of gap elements. Once the gearset is placed in mesh, user subroutines attached to the FE code easily roll the gearset through mesh. The method is described in detail. Preliminary results for a gearset segment showing the progression of the contact lineload is given as the gears roll through mesh.

Bibel, George D.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

BioSentinel: NASA’s First Deep Space Biological Mission

Since Apollo 17 in 1972, NASA has sent no humans or other biological organisms outside of Earth’s protective magnetosphere. NASA’s current Artemis program plans to put astronauts back on the Moon and eventually land human missions on Mars. One of the major challenges to long-duration crewed travel and habitation in deep space is an in-depth understanding of the biological effects of space radiation, often convoluted by the impact of reduced gravity. Such missions will require significant countermeasures, likely both technological and biomedical, to protect organisms from chronic radiation exposure. Small satellite missions like CubeSats can inform these countermeasures by investigating model organisms in relevant space environments. The BioSentinel mission is comprised of four segments developed at NASA Ames Research Center: a 6U CubeSat (1U = 10-cm cube), an ISS payload launched in December 2021 and two ground units, one for the mission’s CubeSat and one for the ISS payload. The last three segments have been operational since January 2022 and serve as experimental controls. BioSentinel’s 6U CubeSat is planned to launch as a secondary payload on the Artemis-1 rocket. It will be deployed on a lunar fly-by trajectory and into a heliocentric orbit. BioSentinel will be the first interplanetary satellite to study the biological response to space radiation outside Low Earth Orbit (LEO) in almost 50 years. BioSentinel is a complete, autonomous spacecraft capable of conducting experiments in deep space. Its 4U BioSensor payload is a fully automated and adaptable platform that can perform biological measurements with a range of microorganisms in multiple space environments, including the ISS, free flyers, and other platforms like the Lunar Gateway and lander vehicles. Once it reaches its orbit, BioSentinel’s CubeSat will measure the DNA damage response to ambient radiation in a model organism, the budding yeast Saccharomyces cerevisiae, which will be compared to information provided by an onboard radiation sensor and to data obtained in LEO (on ISS) and on Earth. Once in interplanetary space, fluidic cards containing desiccated yeast will be activated by growth medium addition at different time points throughout the mission. Growth and metabolic activity will be tracked continuously via optical measurements. This paper describes BioSentinel’s objectives, science, data management, and preliminary results from the ISS segment.

BioSentinel↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

BioSentinel: NASA’s First Deep Space Biological Mission

BioSentinel↗

NASA NTRS1993

Rover requirements for the planet surface segment of the space exploration initiative

Annotated requirements for rovers to be used for the First Lunar Outpost (FLO) of the Space Exploration Initiative (SEI) and for Mars missions are presented. The requirements are presented in the form of functions as opposed to performance. SEI surface systems will be required to execute many roving vehicle functions ranging from transporting humans to recovery and transporting raw materials to a processing plant. Some of the roving vehicles will be highly automated. These automation functions may include the following: teleoperated site survey and certification; teleoperation for repair; autonomous operations for resource location and mining; autonomous navigation and terrain traverse; and telerobotic scientific investigations. These requirements are complex, contradictory, and will be costly if they are not carefully analyzed and properly allocated to conceptual elements. Of greatest importance will be the iterative analysis of requirements and synergistic utilization of vehicle elements.

Roberts, Barney B.↗

NASA NTRS2006

Automated Solvent Seaming of Large Polyimide Membranes

A solvent-based welding process enables the joining of precise, cast polyimide membranes at their edges to form larger precise membranes. The process creates a homogeneous, optical-quality seam between abutting membranes, with no overlap and with only a very localized area of figure disturbance. The seam retains 90 percent of the strength of the parent material. The process was developed for original use in the fabrication of wide-aperture membrane optics, with areal densities of less than 1 kg/m2, for lightweight telescopes, solar concentrators, antennas, and the like to be deployed in outer space. The process is just as well applicable to the fabrication of large precise polyimide membranes for flat or inflatable solar concentrators and antenna reflectors for terrestrial applications. The process is applicable to cast membranes made of CP1 (or equivalent) polyimide. The process begins with the precise fitting together and fixturing of two membrane segments. The seam is formed by applying a metered amount of a doped solution of the same polyimide along the abutting edges of the membrane segments. After the solution has been applied, the fixtured films are allowed to dry and are then cured by convective heating. The weld material is the same as the parent material, so that what is formed is a homogeneous, strong joint that is almost indistinguishable from the parent material. The success of the process is highly dependent on formulation of the seaming solution from the correct proportion of the polyimide in a suitable solvent. In addition, the formation of reliable seams depends on the deposition of a precise amount of the seaming solution along the seam line. To ensure the required precision, deposition is performed by use of an automated apparatus comprising a modified commercially available, large-format, ink-jet print head on an automated positioning table. The printing head jets the seaming solution into the seam area at a rate controlled in coordination with the movement of the positioning table.

Rood, Robert↗

NASA NTRS2011

Alignment and Integration of Lightweight Mirror Segments

The optics for the International X-Ray Observatory (IXO) require alignment and integration of about fourteen thousand thin mirror segments to achieve the mission goal of 3.0 square meters of effective area at 1.25 keV with an angular resolution of five arc-seconds. These mirror segments are 0.4 mm thick, and 200 to 400 mm in size, which makes it difficult not to impart distortion at the sub-arc-second level. This paper outlines the precise alignment, permanent bonding, and verification testing techniques developed at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center (GSFC). Improvements in alignment include new hardware and automation software. Improvements in bonding include two module new simulators to bond mirrors into, a glass housing for proving single pair bonding, and a Kovar module for bonding multiple pairs of mirrors. Three separate bonding trials were x-ray tested producing results meeting the requirement of sub ten arc-second alignment. This paper will highlight these recent advances in alignment, testing, and bonding techniques and the exciting developments in thin x-ray optic technology development.

Evans, Tyler↗

NASA NTRS1993

Efficient development and processing of thermal math models of very large space truss structures

As the spacecraft moves along the orbit, the truss members are subjected to direct and reflected solar, albedo and planetary infra-red (IR) heating rates, as well as IR heating and shadowing from other spacecraft components. This is a transient process with continuously changing heating loads and the shadowing effects. The resulting nonuniform temperature distribution may cause nonuniform thermal expansion, deflection and stress in the truss elements, truss warping and thermal distortions. There are three challenges in the thermal-structural analysis of the large truss structures. The first is the development of the thermal and structural math models, the second - model processing, and the third - the data transfer between the models. All three tasks require considerable time and computer resources to be done because of a very large number of components involved. To address these challenges a series of techniques of automated thermal math modeling and efficient processing of very large space truss structures were developed. In the process the finite element and finite difference methods are interfaced. A very substantial reduction of the quantity of computations was achieved while assuring a desired accuracy of the results. The techniques are illustrated on the thermal analysis of a segment of the Space Station main truss.

Warren, Andrew H.↗

NASA NTRS1996

Effects of modeling errors on trajectory predictions in air traffic control automation

Air traffic control automation synthesizes aircraft trajectories for the generation of advisories. Trajectory computation employs models of aircraft performances and weather conditions. In contrast, actual trajectories are flown in real aircraft under actual conditions. Since synthetic trajectories are used in landing scheduling and conflict probing, it is very important to understand the differences between computed trajectories and actual trajectories. This paper examines the effects of aircraft modeling errors on the accuracy of trajectory predictions in air traffic control automation. Three-dimensional point-mass aircraft equations of motion are assumed to be able to generate actual aircraft flight paths. Modeling errors are described as uncertain parameters or uncertain input functions. Pilot or autopilot feedback actions are expressed as equality constraints to satisfy control objectives. A typical trajectory is defined by a series of flight segments with different control objectives for each flight segment and conditions that define segment transitions. A constrained linearization approach is used to analyze trajectory differences caused by various modeling errors by developing a linear time varying system that describes the trajectory errors, with expressions to transfer the trajectory errors across moving segment transitions. A numerical example is presented for a complete commercial aircraft descent trajectory consisting of several flight segments.

Jackson, Michael R. C.↗

NASA NTRS1991

Analysis of SSME inspection imagery using AI approaches

The automated analysis of SSME injector assemblies has been investigated for the cases of LOX post surface defects and injector-baffle deterioration. Defects are isolated via 2D feature extraction from borescope and camera images; temporal-frequency transforms are then used to create a multiresolution set of feature vectors representing image contents. The potential flaws thus discriminated are then segmented and classified according to known categories. AI is applied in the form of a blackboard architecture that is controlled by a rule-based production system.

Finegan, Michael K., Jr.↗

NASA NTRS2002

Direct-To Tool for En Route Controllers

This paper describes a new automation tool for en route air traffic controllers, called the Direct-To Tool. The Tool is designed to reduce the time of flight and fuel consumption for aircraft flying in en route airspace. It provides each controller with the identities of aircraft in his/her sector, which can reduce their time en route by bypassing dog-legged route segments and flying "direct to" a waypoint closer to the destination airport. The Tool uses its build-in conflict probing capability to determine if the improved route is free of conflicts with other aircraft. The Tool's graphical computer interface enables the controller to enter a direct-to clearance by a simple point and click action. Because of its low workload and convenience, this method is strongly favored by controllers The Tool has been running since January with live radar data received at NASA from the Fort Worth Air Route Traffic Control Center. For aircraft operating in the Fort Worth Center, the Tool has the potential to save in excess of 500,000 in-flight minutes per year. A provisional patent application for this Tool has been filed. A field task in planned for the last quarter of this year.

Erzberger, Heinz↗

NASA NTRS2010

Finding Interstellar Particle Impacts on Stardust Aluminium Foils: The Safe Handling, Imaging, and Analysis of Samples Containing Femtogram Residues

Impact ionisation detectors on a suite of spacecraft have shown the direction, velocity, flux and mass distribution of smaller ISP entering the Solar System. During the aphelion segments of the Stardust flight, a dedicated collector surface was oriented to intercept ISP of beta = 1, and returned to Earth in January 2006. In this paper we describe the probable appeareance and size of IS particle craters from initial results of experimental impacts and numerical simulation, explain how foils are being prepared and mounted for crater searching by automated acquisition of high magnification electron images (whilst avoiding contamination of the foils) and comment on appropriate analytical techniques for Preliminary Examination (PE).

Kearsley, A. T.↗

NASA NTRSDate not supplied

A Multi-Disciplinary Analysis Framework for the Design of Small Launch Vehicles

The decisions made in the conceptual design phase have large impacts on the resulting vehicle capability and cost. With the large and varied design space of Small Launch Vehicles(SLVs), it is even more important to have the data necessary to make informed design choices during the conceptual design phase. To enable extensive exploration of the SLV design space, a multi-disciplinary design framework was created. The design framework consists of trajectory, aerodynamics, propulsion, and structures disciplines. The framework then integrates and automates these tools, thus allowing for rapid design space exploration at the conceptual design phase. The outputs of the framework provide preliminary information on SLV size and structural configurations as well as propulsion and aerodynamic characteristics. Finally, the framework provides information necessary for the designer to make informed decisions on what variables lead to the desired performance characteristics and what segment of the design space would benefit from more detailed exploration.

Nikita Birbasov↗