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The mass properties of the Low Density Supersonic Decelerator (LDSD) Supersonic Flight Dynamics Test Vehicle (SFDTV) were analyzed and measured to ensure a successful test flight and allow for accurate post-flight reconstruction. This paper covers the methods used for analytical estimates of the mass properties throughout the design process, balancing and ballasting design, mass trends, measurements...
Carrier synchronization is of paramount importance in any communications or positioning system. Mass-market Global Navigation Satellite System (GNSS) receivers typically implement traditional carrier tracking techniques based on well-established phase-locked loop architectures, which are only reliable in quite benign propagation conditions. Under nonnominal harsh propagation conditions, the signal...
NISAR (NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar) would be the inaugural collaboration between National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) and Indian Space Research Organization (ISRO) on an Earth Science mission, which would feature an L-Band SAR instrument and an S-Band SAR instrument. As partners, NASA and ISRO would each contribute different engineering elements to help achieve the proposed...
This paper reports on current habitability concepts for an Evolvable Mars Campaign (EMC) prepared by the NASA Human Spaceflight Architecture Team (HAT). For many years NASA has investigated alternative human Mars missions, examining different mission objectives, trajectories, vehicles, and technologies; the combinations of which have been referred to as reference missions or architectures. At the...
The Satellite Range Scheduling problem has been traditionally approached in a centralized manner. Existing literature provides a wide variety of sub-optimal algorithms for allocating communication times between a list of satellites and a network of ground stations. The authors have provided an optimal solution for this problem in previous work. But regardless of the optimality, the application of...
A common method of spacecraft concept design is to estimate size, mass, power and cost based on parametric or analogous relationships obtained from historical satellite data from similar systems that meet similar mission requirements. These are tried and true methods often used to perform early trade space analysis that depend heavily on the relevance and accuracy of the historical data. These methods...
As the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) prepares to extend human presence beyond Low Earth Orbit, we are in the early stages of planning missions within the framework of an Evolvable Mars Campaign. Initial missions would be conducted in near-Earth cis-lunar space and would eventually culminate in extended duration crewed missions on the surface of Mars. To enable such exploration...
This paper describes the results of a study evaluating options for supporting a series of human missions to a single Mars surface destination. In this scenario the infrastructure emplaced during previous visits to this site is leveraged in following missions. The goal of this single site approach to Mars surface infrastructure is to enable “Steady State” operations by at least 4 crew for up to 500...
This paper presents a hybrid prognostic approach which is applied on electro-thermally actuated MEMS valve. The method can be applied on different categories of MEMS to assess their health state, calculate the remaining useful life (RUL) and take appropriate decisions to anticipate the failures. In this paper a detailed description of the proposed method is presented. It consists of combining both...
Microwave and millimeter-wave ranging systems, waveforms, and experimental results are described for coherent distributed RF systems applications. Measured results show that coherent distributed systems operating at carrier frequencies with coherence at λ/10 are possible well into the millimeter-wave regime by using widely separated two-tone ranging waveforms. The two-tone waveform in the context...
The Dynamic Stereoscopic Long Range System (DSLRS) has been developed to offer an engineering perspective on the behavior of herds and flocks of animals for bio-inspired engineering applications. The system provides the relative spacing and velocity of each member within a herd or flock. The DSLRS employs two fixed cameras which simultaneously capture stereoscopic image pairs. These image pairs are...
NASA's Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) is a challenging mission to capture and bring back either an entire asteroid (Option A) or a large boulder from the surface of an asteroid (Option B) to a cislunar orbit. Options A and B have a range of risks; one of them relates to the unknown strength of the asteroid or boulder. This paper describes methods of estimating asteroid regolith strength and density,...
The Mars Atmosphere and Volatile EvolutioN (MAVEN) mission launched in late 2013 and began commissioning operations in September 2014 following a 10 month cruise to Mars. The Mission will study the upper atmosphere of the planet. In addition to the science instruments, the MAVEN spacecraft is equipped with an Electra UHF transceiver to support relay communication with landed assets. This paper describes...
We present progress toward the formulation of a mathematical model for a cognitive communication network with applications to satellite systems. Our model employs abstract concepts including communicators, communications channels, and demand for capacity. These model elements may be tailored to represent a wide variety of practical communication scenarios. We present a dynamic automated reasoning...
The use of unmanned aerial vehicles (UAVs) that can operate autonomously in dynamic and dangerous operational environments are becoming increasingly common. In such operations, object detection, classification and tracking can often be one of the main goals. In recent years there has been an increased focus on embedded hardware that is both small and powerful, making UAV on-board data processing more...
Telemetry is an essential subsystem in Low Earth Orbit (LEO) Remote-Sensing satellites, as it is responsible for gathering satellite housekeeping data from all satellite subsystems, malfunction detection, performance evaluation and statistics. In this paper, a novel Checkout-and-Testing-Equipment (CTE) is proposed which simulates the Telemetry interfaces to other satellite subsystems and the Telemetry...
Astronaut health and wellness is a key component within any manned spaceflight. While there has been research advances in the monitoring of physiology of astronauts, the research has focused on data acquisition devices for discontinuous monitoring, retrospective analysis and real-time univariant display. Recent medical research is demonstrating the potential of Big Data analytics techniques for earlier...
Resistive random access memory (RRAM) is widely recognized to be an excellent candidate of non-volatile memory for the next generation, especially for potential application in aerospace or nuclear industry due to its intrinsic radiation-hard superiority to other non-volatile memories. Therefore, a classical RRAM device with the structure of TiN/HfOx/Pt is fabricated and the total ionizing dose (TID)...
The Hurricane Imaging Radiometer (HIRAD) is an airborne passive microwave synthetic aperture radiometer designed to provide high resolution, wide swath imagery of surface wind speed in tropical cyclones from a low profile planar array antenna. This paper will present the array radiometer system concept and summarize its development, including multiple flight tests on NASA's Genesis and Rapid Intensification...
Three aspects of the proposed Asteroid Redirect Mission (ARM) could be extended to provide greater capability for future NASA missions: higher-power versions of the baseline asteroid redirect vehicle, in-space resource utilization, and planetary defense. The baseline ARM vehicle assumes the use of a 50 kW beginning-of-life solar array which provides a maximum of 40 kW to the electric propulsion system...
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