NASA Projects Research Articles

Boundary Layer Ingestion Propulsion: A Review on Numerical Modeling

Abstract The present paper focuses on the numerical modeling approaches adopted in boundary layer ingestion (BLI) studies. Three driving aircraft concepts have been identified, namely propulsive fuselage concept (PFC), rear engines concept (REC), and distributed fans concept (DFC). The affiliation to relevant research projects has been considered. Specifically, European projects DisPURSAL and CENTRELINE, NASA projects STARC-ABL, D8, and N3-X, as well as ONERA projects NOVA and DRAGON have been examined, together with other significant works. The methodologies adopted by the reviewed analyses have been investigated and summarized for each concept, in order to assess the main trends of BLI modeling strategies.

Extended COCOMO: robust and interpretable neuro-fuzzy modelling

Prediction of software development efforts is one of the crucial activities in software project management. Still, search for the perfect model for software cost estimation has become most difficult task of the organisations dealing in software development. This paper presents the extended version of COCOMO, which is done with the help of two very popular methods, i.e., artificial neural networks (ANN) and fuzzy logic. Firstly, the expert judgement about model is used for validation, and overpowers the common software engineering 'black box' problem that arises widely in ANN-based solutions. Moreover, we choose the best combination of one of the three membership functions for continuous-rating values, which reduce the variance while estimating the cost of similar projects. The validation, using 93 NASA projects dataset, shows that the model significantly improves the estimation accuracy in terms of mean magnitude of relative error (MMRE) by 10.104% relative to other known estimation models.

DebriSat fragment characterization: Quality assurance

The DebriSat project is a joint NASA and DoD project to generate data to update orbital debris models. The DebriSat test article, designed and fabricated to be representative of a modern-day LEO satellite, was subjected to a laboratory hypervelocity impact (HVI) test to emulate a catastrophic on orbit event. The items generated from the HVI test were collected and transported to the University of Florida for debris fragment extraction and characterization. During the characterization process, fragments are qualitatively (material, shape, color) and quantitatively (mass and size) assessed. The quantitative assessments are performed on mass balances and imaging systems by a student technicians that vary during the academic year. To ensure quality data and system operation by a group of varying technicians, a series of modified Gage Repeatability and Reproducibility (R&R) testing methods were created and implemented. This paper summarizes the DebriSat post-HVI activities and discusses the Gage R&R testing methods implemented to ensure high quality quantitative data.

Long-duration Venus lander for seismic and atmospheric science

An exciting and novel science mission concept called Seismic and Atmospheric Exploration of Venus (SAEVe) has been developed which uses high-temperature electronics to enable a three-order magnitude increase in expected surface life (120 Earth days) over what has been achieved to date. This enables study of long-term, variable phenomena such as the seismicity of Venus and near surface weather, near surface energy balance, and atmospheric chemical composition. SAEVe also serves as a critical pathfinder for more sophisticated landers in the future. For example, first order seismic measurements by SAEVe will allow future missions to deliver better seismometers and systems to support the yet unknown frequency and magnitude of Venus events. SAEVe is focused on science that can be realized with low data volume instruments and will most benefit from temporal operations. The entire mission architecture and operations maximize science while minimizing energy usage and physical size and mass. The entire SAEVe system including its protective entry system is estimated to be around 45 ​kg and approximately 0.6 ​m diameter. These features allow SAEVe to be relatively cost effective and be easily integrated onto a Venus orbiter mission. The technologies needed to implement SAEVe are currently in development by several funded activities. Component and system level work is ongoing under NASA’s Long Lived Insitu Solar System Explorer (LLISSE) project and the HOTTech program.. LLISSE, is a NASA project to develop a small Venus lander that will operate on the surface of Venus for 60 days and measure variations in meteorology, radiance, and atmospheric chemistry. LLISSE is developing a full-function engineering model of a Venus lander that contains essentially all the core capabilities of SAEVe thus greatly reducing the technology risk to SAEVe.The SAEVe long duration Venus lander promises exciting new science and is an ideal complimentary element to many future Venus orbiter missions being proposed or planned today.

Modernization of Water Treatment System at Agricultural Enterprises Due to Introduction of Solar Energy

Energy saving today is an integral part of the development strategy of agricultural organizations. Considerable attention is paid to the modernization and automation of technological processes in agricultural enterprises, which can improve the quality of work and reduce the cost of production. The direction of modernization is to reduce the consumption of electric energy by improving the water treatment system in livestock complexes. (Research purpose) The research purpose is to determine the potential of solar energy used in the Nizhny Novgorod region and to determine the possibility of its use for water heating in livestock complexes and to consider the cost-effectiveness of using a device to heat water through solar energy. (Materials and methods) Authors used an improved algorithm of Pixer and Laszlo, applied in the NASA project «Surface meteorology and Energy», which allows to calculate the optimal angle of inclination of the device for heating water. (Results and discussion) Designed a mock-up of a livestock complex with a solar water heater installed on the roof, protected by patent for invention No. 2672656. A mathematical model was designed experimentally to predict the results of the plant operation in non-described modes. (Conclusions) The article reveales the optimal capacity of the circulation pump. Authors have created a mathematical model of the device that allows to predict the water heating in a certain period of time. The article presents the calculations on the energy and economic efficiency of using a solar water heater. An electric energy saving of about 30 percent, in the economic equivalent of 35 percent.

Design of an Autonomous and Timed Water Delivery System in Microgravity

For long-duration, manned, space exploration missions to be feasible, farming techniques in space must become reliable and fruitful. The NASA Project Veggie team currently runs experiments on the International Space Station (ISS) in order to better understand how plants react to a microgravity environment. Current watering strategies on the ISS involve manual watering of all plants by the crewmembers. This poses a problem because watering plants must be scheduled into the crewmembers’ days which means less time to work, etc. The objective of Team International Space Salads (ISSa) was to create a device and prove that it could function in microgravity without electricity to autonomously water the plants in order to allow for schedule flexibility of the ISS crewmembers and to lay the foundation for watering systems for deep-space travel. The final device did not function fully as planned, however, the plant growing, surface tension experiments, and the device collectively progressed the multi-year project to a state where successive teams would have the knowledge and tools necessary to create a fully functioning device.

Europe’s next mission to the Sun

As the Solar Orbiter spacecraft is scheduled for launch this month, European Space Agency (ESA) and NASA Project Scientists provide an overview of this major ESA–NASA mission to the Sun.

Invited Lecture 8: Innovation and Exponential Technologies in the Era of COVID 19

Brief Biosketch Prof. Mary Hrachoohi Boghosian did her PhD in “Physics of Magnetic Materials” from the University of London, Imperial College of Science and Technology, London, England, and MBA in “Innovation, Technology Planning and Management” from the Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI), School of Management and Technology, Troy, New York. She is working as Adjunct Professor at the American University of Armenia (AUA) and the California State University of Los Angeles (USA). She is also a visiting professor at the Yerevan State University, School of Journalism initiating and teaching a postgraduate-level course on the “Essentials of Creative Thinking”. She spent 16 years working for NASA and the Aerospace Companies leading NASA projects and studies as well as developing the first-ever cost estimation methodology for costing very small satellites. Dr Boghosian is the author of more than forty publications and two inventions on space-related sensors and actuators. She is a recipient of several NASA technology achievement awards. In highly competitive economies, technology advancements move at an exponential pace leading to rapid change in innovation. Covid-19 has reshaped the global scientific and technological community through urgency for sharing information in research and technology development. COVID 19 has also shaped business commercialization and consumer behaviour allowing faster response and new infrastructure for technology and business development. In the midst of all this, exponential technologies supported by disruptive digitization allow companies to create their own innovation processes allowing cross industries and break down barriers. We will discuss the exponential technologies and the disruptive digitization process leading to new innovations and digital society and economy.

The Puny Success of the Kyoto Protocol

The Kyoto Protocol was agreed upon at the end of 1997 with the main goal of combating global warming by the reduction of the emissions of six greenhouse gases: carbon dioxide (CO2), methane (CH4), nitrous oxide (N2O), perfluorocarbons (PFCs), hydrofluorocarbons (HFCs), and sulfur hexachloride (SH6). Like the Montreal Protocol (1987) – which was negotiated on the back of solid scientific evidence that the ozone layer is thinning dangerously, the grounds for the Kyoto Protocol were laid by solid scientific evidence about the negative side effects of global warming (rising sea levels, extreme weather, etc.) and the causal links with the above mentioned six gases. Back in the 1980s and 1990s the scientists correctly predicted that if greenhouse gas (GHG) emissions were left unchecked, our planet will continue to warm and humanity will have to face the consequences. Whereas the Montreal Protocol so far has turned out to be a moderate success – NASA projects ozone recovery in the Arctic by 2025, and global averages and the Antarctic recovering by 2040, the success of the Kyoto Protocol is quite limited. Only the Annex I countries – as a group – have managed to achieve reductions of GHG emissions compared to 1990 (the base year) levels. Globally however, territorial CO2 emissions have increased from 22.7 Gt in 1990 to 36.6 Gt in 2018 – or about 60%. Therefore, the Kyoto Protocol’s main achievement seems to be playing the role of a limiting factor in a context of growing emissions. This paper examines the reasons behind the Protocol’s puny success and suggests that for all its limitations and shortcomings it has played an important role in the organized response to the challenge of global warming.

Educational NASA Project: Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity at a Mobile Lunar Base

Educational NASA Project: Artificial Intelligence and Cybersecurity at a Mobile Lunar Base

Enabling Stakeholder Decision-Making With Earth Observation and Modeling Data Using Tethys Platform

Tethys Platform is an open source framework for developing web-based applications for Earth Observation data. Our experience shows that Tethys significantly lowers the barrier for cloud-based app development, simplifies the process of accessing scalable distributed cloud computing resources and leverages additional software for data and computationally intensive modelling. The Tethys software development kit allows users to create web apps for visualizing, analyzing and modelling Earth Observation data. Tethys platform provides a collaborative environment for scientists to develop and deploy several Earth Observation web applications across multiple Tethys portals. We work in partnership with leading regional organizations world-wide to help developing countries use information provided by earth-observing satellites and geospatial technologies for managing climate risks and land use. This paper highlights the several Tethys portals and web applications that were developed as part of this effort. Implementation of the Tethys framework has significantly improved the Application Readiness Level metric for several NASA projects and the potential impact of Tethys to replicate and scale other applied science programs.

Airborne hyperspectral and satellite imaging of harmful algal blooms in the Great Lakes Region: Successes in sensing algal blooms

Harmful algal blooms have become a more significant issue in recent years in many lakes and rivers, and it is a particularly significant issue in the western basin of Lake Erie. In response, several research organizations in the United States and Canada have increased their efforts to improve capabilities for the remote sensing of harmful algal blooms. Efforts are underway to improve the ability to monitor, assess and study harmful algal blooms using various remote sensing platforms. Research into improvements in remote sensing platforms and algorithms provide powerful new tools to study and understand spatial and temporal aspects of harmful algal blooms. These developing tools will also help stakeholders to assess the efficacy of harmful algal bloom mitigation efforts into the future. In this commentary we describe selected NASA, NOAA, and ECCC's ongoing research projects as well as brief descriptions on the overall goal and specific objectives of the programs. Specific results from these three agencies' investigations, including modeling efforts, are discussed in a number of papers found within a special section of this issue.

A new high performance empirical model for software cost estimation

A software project can be successful when it is delivered on time, within the budget and maintaining the required quality as per client requirement. But in today's software industry, cost estimation is a critical issue for modern software developers. To estimate the effort and cost is significantly difficult and a challenging task. Since last 20 years' more than 30 models are already developed to estimate the effort and cost for the betterment of software industry. But these algorithms cannot satisfy the modern software industry due to the dynamic behaviour of the software for all kind of environments. On this study an empirical high performance interpolation model is developed to estimate the effort of the software projects. This model compares with the COCOMO based equations and predicts its result analysing individually taking different cost factors. The equation consists one independent variable (KLOC) and two constants a, b which are chosen empirically taking different NASA projects historical data and the results viewed in this model are compared with COCOMO model with different scale factor values.

Low‐rank representation for semi‐supervised software defect prediction

Software defect prediction based on machine learning is an active research topic in the field of software engineering. The historical defect data in software repositories may contain noises because automatic defect collection is based on modified logs and defect reports. When the previous defect labels of modules are limited, predicting the defect-prone modules becomes a challenging problem. In this study, the authors propose a graph-based semi-supervised defect prediction approach to solve the problems of insufficient labelled data and noisy data. Graph-based semi-supervised learning methods used the labelled and unlabelled data simultaneously and consider them as the nodes of the graph at the training phase. Therefore, they solve the problem of insufficient labelled samples. To improve the stability of noisy defect data, a powerful clustering method, low-rank representation (LRR), and neighbourhood distance are used to construct the relationship graph of samples. Therefore, they propose a new semi-supervised defect prediction approach, named low-rank representation-based semi-supervised software defect prediction (LRRSSDP). The widely used datasets from NASA projects and noisy datasets are employed as test data to evaluate the performance. Experimental results show that (i) LRRSSDP outperforms several representative state-of-the-art semi-supervised defect prediction methods; and (ii) LRRSSDP can maintain robustness in noisy environments.

David Colin Phillips

David Colin Phillips, 77, died on Oct. 26, 2017, in North Wales. “Colin worked in the fields of laser chemistry, gas-phase reaction kinetics, electropolymerization, particulate chemistry, and isotope separation. He worked on NASA projects, including Project Apollo and the space shuttle’s fuel system; he also worked extensively on President Ronald Reagan’s Strategic Defense Initiative. He held over 50 patents. In 1975, through the Office of Naval Research, Colin patented a method for electrochemically depositing bone and collagen onto prostheses—a technique that enhanced bone repair and increased survival rates amongst Vietnam veterans with severe combat-sustained bone injuries. In 1976, he won the R&D 100 Award, along with J. D. B. Smith, for his organic particulate analysis instrument.”—Gareth Phillips, son Most recent title: Manager of physical chemistry research, Westinghouse Research Laboratories Education: B.Sc., chemistry, 1965, and Ph.D., physical chemistry, 1968, University College of Wales, Abery...

The system design of the civil aircraft based on NASA systems engineering approach

With the development of science and technology, as well as the increasing demand for aircraft in the civil fields, the design of an aircraft has become more comprehensive with more disciplines involved, that requires not only the high performance, reliability, and cost-effectiveness of the civil aircraft, but is also connected with the implementation of the professional and modern approaches. One of the relevant and effective approaches for the complex system design is systems engineering including the sequence of the activities that are used for NASA projects realization. In our work, we focused on the widely used NASA Systems Engineering techniques for creating successful systems, such as the logical decomposition models that should be applied for the civil aviation objects. The high-quality competent planning and realization of the life cycle stages “step-by-step” using the NASA Systems Engineering approach promote the avoiding of the mistakes and excessive costs. The universality of these methods allows meeting the requirements of the modern civil aircraft that primarily ensure the safety of the flight and meet the customer needs.

A STUDY ON LONG TERM RAINFALL PATTERN OF DHUBRI AND GUWAHATI IN ASSAM, INDIA: A TIME SERIES APPROACH

Understanding the rainfall pattern is tough for the solution of several regional environmental issues of water resources management, with implications for agriculture, climate change, and natural calamity such as floods and droughts. Statistical computing, modelling and forecasting meteorological data are the key instruments for studying these patterns. This study aims to establish the rainfall trends of the two stations of Assam viz. Guwahati and Dhubri. The collected data is secondary in nature and obtained from the website of Global Precipitation Climatology Project (GPCP) of NASA, Goddard Space Flight Center, United States consisting of 36 years monthly rainfall records for the period 1979-2014. We have performed Sen’s slope method and Mann-Kendall test to assess the magnitude along with the statistical significance of trend. So far as monthly analysis is concerned, a gradual decrease in rainfall has been observed for maximum months in both the stations. Moreover, seasonal analysis has witnessed a noticeable similarity between the stations that is the presence of significant downward trend for winter and monsoon months over the entire period of 1979-2014.

Independent Mars spacecraft precise orbit determination software development and its applications

In this paper, we present an independent software for Mars spacecraft precise orbit determination and gravity field recovery we call the Mars Gravity Recovery and Analysis Software (MAGREAS), which is aimed to analyze tracking data from the Chinese Mars exploration mission and similar NASA and ESA Mars-related projects. The design structure, module distribution, and functions of the software are described in this manuscript. A detailed cross validation with the mature precise orbit determination platform Geodyn-II was done. Additionally, we use MAGREAS to process the MEX orbital tracking data with two-way and three-way tracking modes separately. Measurement residuals and the difference from the reconstructed ephemeris provided by Royal Observatory of Belgium indicate that our software is reliable. In addition to describe of our software and validate with Geodyn-II, we give a simulation case close to Chinese Mars exploration mission to indicate the application of our software. We present a simulation of a four-way tracking mode between Earth tracking station, Mars orbiter, and Mars lander to validate the effectiveness of our MAGREAS-based approach for Mars orbiter determination and lander positioning. Experimental results show that our proposed tracking mode significantly improves positioning accuracy. This work will provide a reference for the design of the Chinese Mars exploration mission as well as for the processing of Chinese Mars mission orbital tracking data.

Inertial frames and breakthrough propulsion physics

The term “Breakthrough Propulsion Physics” comes from the NASA project by that name which examined non-rocket space drives, gravity control, and faster-than-light travel. The focus here is on space drives and the related unsolved physics of inertial frames. A “space drive” is a generic term encompassing any concept for using as-yet undiscovered physics to move a spacecraft instead of existing rockets, sails, or tethers. The collective state of the art spans mostly steps 1–3 of the scientific method: defining the problem, collecting data, and forming hypotheses. The key issues include (1) conservation of momentum, (2) absence of obvious reaction mass, and (3) the net-external thrusting requirement. Relevant open problems in physics include: (1) the sources and mechanisms of inertial frames, (2) coupling of gravitation to the other fundamental forces, and (3) the nature of the quantum vacuum. Rather than following the assumption that inertial frames are an immutable, intrinsic property of space, this paper revisits Mach's Principle, where it is posited that inertia is relative to the distant surrounding matter. This perspective allows conjectures that a space drive could impart reaction forces to that matter, via some as-yet undiscovered interaction with the inertial frame properties of space. Thought experiments are offered to begin a process to derive new hypotheses. It is unknown if this line of inquiry will be fruitful, but it is hoped that, by revisiting unsolved physics from a propulsion point of view, new insights will be gained.

Dr. Kenneth Plotkin’s myriad contributions to the National Aeronautics and Space Administration’s supersonic mission

The world as a whole, and NASA, in particular, owes a large debt of gratitude to Dr. Kenneth Plotkin for his decades of service in the field of sonic boom research and advancement of quiet supersonic transportation. This presentation will highlight the contributions of Dr. Plotkin to a myriad of NASA projects. One of the largest efforts was the assembly and continual improvement of sonic boom propagation software tools, collectively called PCBoom, which allowed the analysis of real and imagined vehicles from Mach cutoff conditions to the hypersonic. He was a driving force behind reshaping aircraft to demonstrate quieter sonic booms, first with the plans for a modified Firebee drone and SR-71, and then with the highly successful Shaped Sonic Boom Demonstrator series of flights. Dr. Plotkin’s partnership with NASA Armstrong resulted in the development of the low boom dive maneuver to allow quiet sonic boom testing on structures and people using existing aircraft, as well as a sonic boom cockpit display that has recently been tested in flight. Dr. Plotkin was also instrumental in such research campaigns as SCAMP, WSPR, and FaINT. Throughout all, Dr. Plotkin’s phenomenal intellect, tireless dedication, and irreverent humor made working with him a joy.