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Mechanism using a helix sequentially feeds prescribed amounts of metal charges into an evaporation boat used for flash vapor deposition of the evaporants onto a substrate in a vacuum chamber. The helix is advanced by external manual controls extending through sealed feed- through devices into the chamber wall.
This paper details the design of the antenna intended for use on the Solar Probe Mission. The antenna consists of a carbon-carbon reflector jointly used as the antenna and thermal shield and helical feed using tungsten wire and ceramic matrix composite (CMC) materials for the back plate, coaxial cable waveguide. A complete prototype feed assembly was fabricated and tested.
The purpose of this development was to validate the use of the external Rover Ultra High Frequency (RUHF) antenna for space under extreme thermal environments to be encountered during the surface operations of the Mars Science Laboratory (MSL) mission. The antenna must survive all ground operations plus the nominal 670 Martian sol mission that includes summer and winter seasons of the Mars thermal environment.The qualification effort was to verify that the RUHF antenna design and its bonding and packaging processes are adequate to survive the harsh environmental conditions. The RUHF is a quadrifilar helix antenna mounted on the MSL Curiosity rover deck. The main components of the RUHF antenna are the helix structure, feed cables, and hybrid coupler, and the high-power termination load. In the case of MSL rover externally mounted hardware, not only are the expected thermal cycle depths severe, but there are temperature offsets between the Mars summer and winter seasons. The total number of temperature cycles needed to be split into two regimes of summer cycles and winter cycles. The qualification test was designed to demonstrate a survival life of three times more than all expected ground testing, plus a nominal 670 Martian sol missions. Baseline RF tests and a visual inspection were performed prior to the start of the qualification test. Functional RF tests were performed intermittently during chamber breaks over the course of the qualification test. For the RF return loss measurements, the antenna was tested in a controlled environment outside the thermal chamber with a vector network analyzer that was calibrated over the antenna s operational frequency range. A total of 2,010 thermal cycles were performed. Visual inspection showed a dulling of the solder material. This change will not affect the performance of the antenna. No other changes were observed. RF tests were performed on the RUHF helix antenna, hybrid, and load after the 2,010 qualification cycles test. The RF performance of the RUHF antenna, hybrid, and load were almost identical before and after the complete test. Therefore, the developed design of RUHF is qualified for a long-duration MSL mission. The RUHF antenna has not been used for long-duration missions such as MSL in the past. The state-of-the-art technology of the RUHF antenna is used to develop the antennas for MSL mission survivability. This developmental test data provides the confidence in using this RUHF antenna for future NASA missions to Mars.
The spacecraft employs two microwave antennas for communications and a single VHF antenna for telemetry, beacon, and command functions. One microwave antenna centered at 6 gc is used to receive broadband signals from a ground transmitter while the other microwave antenna centered at 4 gc is used to transmit signals to a ground receiver. Each microwave antenna is composed of a large number of circularly polarized radiating elements equally spaced around the equator of the spacecraft and connected to the electronic receiver and transmitter by a complex precision feed system. The VHF antenna is a small multi-element helix mounted at the pole of the spacecraft and radiates a linearly polarized signal. All antennas provide nearly isotropic antenna patterns with the axis of symmetry corresponding to the spin axis of the spacecraft. The antenna systems were constructed of light, but rugged, materials and passed extensive electrical, mechanical, and thermal tests.
Astronauts in the International Space Station (ISS) need as much water as they can access, whether it comes from people's breath, sweat or urine, recycled shower water or hand washing. It is of vital importance that any type of water is recycled and filtrated through different methods so it can be re-used. Recently, Cerahelix Inc. offered a ceramic tubular membrane element that uses DNA strands as a pattern in a sol-gel process that allows the sintered product to have a pore size in the picometer scale and claims to achieve ten times higher purity than other commercially available ceramic filters. This should allow higher purities and yields at reduced energy costs and theoretically allow near total dewatering of the reject stream and greater than 80% removal of polyvalent ions. Trials were performed with Cerahelix Inc. filters using an inorganic brine simulant at two pHs to test the efficiency of Pico Helix TM membranes and determine their feasibility for spacecraft wastewater treatment processes. Emphasis was placed on the polyvalent ions: SO42-, PO43-, Mg2+, and Ca2+. These ions should be rejected almost entirely from the feed solution and, not permeate through the filter. Results show that at a pH of 4.2, permeation of the polyvalent ions varied from 59% to 74% and at pH of 8.0, permeation varied from 72% to 87%. An Extended Nernst Planck (ENP) approach that describes the mass transfer process for a pico-filtration membrane was used to construct a model to inform the experimental expectations and outcome.
This grant covered the major part of the work of the Principal Investigator and his collaborators as a Guaranteed Time Observer on the Hubble Space Telescope. The work done naturally divided itself into two portions the first being study of nebular objects and the second investigation of the interstellar medium between stars. The latter investigation was pursued through a contract with Princeton University, with Professor Lyman Spitzer as the supervising astronomer, assisted by Dr. Ed Fitzpatrick. Following the abrupt death of Professor Spitzer, his responsibilities were shifted to Dr. Fitzpatrick. When Dr. Fitzpatrick relocated to Villanova University the concluding work on that portion of this grant was concluded under a direct service arrangement. This program has been highly successful and the resulting publications in scientific journals are listed below. To the scientist, this is the bottom line, so that I shall simply try to describe the general nature of what was accomplished. There were three nebular programs conducted, one on the Orion Nebula, the second on the Helix Nebula, and the third on NGC 6822. The largest program was that on the Orion Nebula. This involved both HST observations and supporting groundbased observations obtained with a variety of instruments, including the Coude Feed Telescope at the Kitt Peak National observatory in Arizona, the Cerro Tololo observatory in Chile, and the Keck Observatory on Mauna Kea, Hawaii. Moreover, considerable theoretical modeling was done and all of the data analysis was performed at the Rice University in Houston, except for the PI's period of sabbatical leave (6-96 through 7-97) when he was based at the Max Planck Institute for Astronomy in Heidelberg, Germany. The Orion Nebula program was the most productive part, resulting in numerous papers, but more important in the discovery of a new class of objects, for which we coined the name "proplyds". The proplyds are protoplanetary disks surrounding very young stars still in the process of creation. The Orion Nebula is the residual material from a burst of star formation that occurred about 300,000 years ago. Each of these new stars has a surrounding disk of protoplanetary material. The same physics that renders the Nebula so highly visible means that the proto-planetary disks are also quite visible. With the wisdom of hindsight, we now see that this was to be expected and that we should have been searching specifically for this type of object. The discovery of these objects and their subsequent detailed investigation has lead to an accurate assessment of the frequency of protoplanetary disks in young stars and determination of the likelihood of survival of these disks into an era where planets actually form.