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The Ares launch vehicles team, managed by the Ares projects office (APO) at NASA Marshall Space Flight Center, has completed the Ares I Crew Launch Vehicle System Requirements Review and System Definition Review and early design work for the Ares V Cargo Launch Vehicle. This paper provides examples of how Lean Manufacturing, Kaizen events, and Six Sigma practices are helping APO deliver a new space...
NASA is now focused on the agency's vision for space exploration encompassing a broad range of human and robotic missions including missions to Moon, Mars and beyond. As a result, there is a focus on long duration space missions. NASA is committed to the safety of the missions and the crew, and there is an overwhelming emphasis on the reliability issues for space missions and the habitat. The cost-effective...
NASA's innovative partnerships program (IPP) develops many technologies for NASA's programs and projects through a portfolio of technology investments and partnerships. The investment portfolio includes Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) and small business technology transfer (STTR), the IPP seed fund, and NASA's centennial challenges prize program. In the process of technology development...
For the purposes of space flight, reconnaissance field geologists have trained to become astronauts. However, the initial forays to Mars and other planetary bodies have been done by purely robotic craft. Therefore, training and equipping a robotic craft with the sensory and cognitive capabilities of a field geologist to form a science craft is a necessary prerequisite. Numerous steps are necessary...
The global positioning system (GPS) generally provides worldwide high-accuracy positioning. However, GPS requires lines of sight to multiple satellites and may be blocked or jammed, hence backup navigation techniques are of interest. Navigation via signals of opportunity uses existing radio infrastructure as ad hoc navigational beacons. A mobile receiver determines its position by computing a time...
A highly integrated system-on-chip is currently in development. Based on the flight-proven RAD6000TM microprocessor, this mixed-signal microcontroller supports a wide variety of standard digital interfaces commonly used in spacecraft avionics. Multiple analog input and output channels are also provided.
Recent technological advancements in microelectronics, wireless communications, intelligent systems and networking have led to the conceptualized notion of a "web" of sensors, interconnected and interacting with one another to provide observations and measurements of geophysical phenomena, and routing data (or information) directly to researchers, scientists and other destinations (including...
The WISE project is a NASA-funded medium- class Explorer mission to map the entire sky in four infrared bands during the course of a 6-month survey. Because of the mission's limited financial resources, a traditional robustness strategy of full block-redundancy was not feasible. By leveraging aspects of the mission design that tend to reduce the risk associated with certain failures, the project has...
Future large aperture systems will depend on integrated modeling to assess key performance parameters for designs that cannot be fully tested and verified before flight. Achieving this goal will require integrating component models, results from numerical simulations, and physical tests to predict the performance and prove the viability of such systems within numerous model and measurement uncertainties...
Electrically conductive adhesives are attractive alternatives to solder and die attach materials in electronic assemblies particularly in the lead free era. Compared to metal filled conductive adhesives, multiwall carbon nanotube (MWCNT) filled adhesives are lightweight, corrosion resistant, high strength and resistant to metal migration. Previous studies of MWCNT filled epoxies on bare copper printed...
In aerospace applications there is an increasing interest in metrology systems. Metrology systems are used in applications such as wave front correction and formation flying, for measuring deployable structure deformation/oscillations, and as the crude stage for interferometer missions. In this paper we describe a concept for a metrology system. The metrology system concept will be able to determine...
We report on the progress of an oxygen spectroscopy laser sounding instrument designed as a calibration channel for a carbon dioxide (CO2) laser sounding instrument. We have developed a pulsed, frequency-doubled, fiber laser transmitter for use in an oxygen instrument. The instrument concept uses the pressure broadening of spectroscopic lines of the diatomic oxygen A-band to deduce atmospheric pressure...
A ground-based Differential Absorption Lidar (DIAL) is being developed with the capability to measure range-resolved and column amounts of atmospheric CO2. This system is also capable of providing high-resolution aerosol profiles and cloud distributions. It is being developed as part of the NASA Earth Science Technology Office's Instrument Incubator Program. This three year program involves the design,...
As envisioned by a broad series of trade studies, the lunar elements of the NASA Exploration Initiative will require a significant increase in navigation and communication capacity. Exploration combines robotic and human mission elements that should ideally support each other in terms of advancing the ability to discover, operate, and support a sustained human presence in the lunar environment. While...
Projection-based image registration algorithms use the sum of the pixel values along a given axis of an image to detect spatial changes in temporally separated images. These algorithms have been shown to be computationally efficient and effective for aligning temporally separated images and for visually detecting sensor motion. Registering images via projections has also been shown as a method for...
Launched in early 2003, the geoscience laser altimeter system (GLAS) on the Ice, Cloud and Land Elevation Satellite is the first polar orbiting satellite lidar and is intended for comprehensive earth science applications covering surface altimetry for ice sheets and vegetation and atmospheric profiling. The instrument design includes high performance observations of the distribution and optical scattering...
Government, commercial, scientific, and defense applications in image processing often require transmission of large amounts of data across bandwidth-limited channels. Applications require robust transforms simultaneously minimizing bandwidth requirements and image resolution loss. Image processing algorithms take advantage of quantization to provide substantial lossy compression ratios at the expense...
Renewed interest in human exploration of space suggests a future need for high throughput earth-space links. Anticipating crowding within spectrum used for deep- space communications, particularly at X-band, NASA is investigating the use of bandwidth-efficient modulation (BEM). Requirements for trajectory/orbit determination and vehicle guidance will persist, however, implying that signals for radiometric...
The accuracy of tracking measurements using very long baseline interferometer (VLBI) is seriously limited due to angular and temporal separation between the calibration and spacecraft measurements. Same beam interferometry, where the calibration source is in the same primary beam as the spacecraft being observed eliminates temporal affects and considerably reduces calibration errors due to reduced...
A two terminal laser communication test bed has been developed at The Aerospace Corporation. This paper presents the design and preliminary results of a reprogrammable detector within the Test Bed for use in pointing, acquisition, and tracking between a satellite-to- satellite laser communication link. The detector may be commanded by an emulated spacecraft Command & Data Handling subsystem to...
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