Topic

Plasmons are collective oscillations of the free electrons in a metal or an ionized gas. Plasmons dominate the optical properties of noble-metal nanoparticles, which enables a variety of applications including electromagnetic energy transport at nanoscale dimensions, single-molecule...

Quantum dots (QDs) and nanoparticles (NPs) are made of metal and/or semiconductor materials with diameters ranging from 5 to 100 nm. The properties of these nanomaterials, which depend on their size and the material they are made from, are usually completely different than the properties of...

A dense transducer array is an acoustic transducer with relatively high operational bandwidth. It includes a cable harness component that provides and organizes various conductors within piezocomposite substrates to form transducer arrays with minimum impact on electroacoustic performance. Several underwater sonar...

This system was one of the test methods considered for measuring the radius of curvature of one or more of the 18 segmented mirrors that form the 6.5 m diameter primary mirror (PM) of the James Webb Space Telescope (JWST). The assembled telescope will be...

A fiber-optic sensor system is designed to measure magnetic fields associated with a lightning stroke. Field vector magnitudes are detected and processed for multiple locations. Since physical limitations prevent the sensor elements from being located in close proximity...

As shown by the Phoenix Mars Lander’s Thermal and Electrical Conductivity Probe (TECP), contact measurements of thermal conductivity and diffusivity (using a modified flux-plate or line-source heat-pulse method) are constrained by a number of factors. Robotic...

Photocatalytic materials are being used to purify air, to kill microbes, and to keep surfaces clean. A wide variety of materials are being developed, many of which have different abilities to absorb various wavelengths of light. Material variability, combined with both spectral illumination...

Computer Generated Holograms (CGHs) have been used for some time to calibrate interferometers that require nulling optics. A typical scenario is the testing of aspheric surfaces with an interferometer placed near the paraxial center of curvature. Existing CGH technology...

Prior technology for machinery data acquisition used slip rings, FM radio communication, or non-real-time digital communication. Slip rings are often noisy, require much space that may not be available, and require access to the shaft, which may not be possible. FM radio is not accurate or stable, and is limited...

A telemetry-based ranging scheme was developed in which the downlink ranging signal is eliminated, and the range is computed directly from the downlink telemetry signal. This is the first Deep Space Network (DSN) ranging technology that does not require the spacecraft to transmit a separate ranging signal. By contrast, the...

A Matlab-based toolbox has been developed for the wavefront control and optimization of segmented optical surfaces to correct for possible misalignments of James Webb Space Telescope (JWST) using influence functions. The toolbox employs both iterative and non-iterative methods to converge to an optimal solution by...

This library, written in Java, supports input and output of images and metadata (labels) in the VICAR, PDS image, and ISIS-2 and ISIS-3 file formats. Three levels of access exist.

The X-band Acquisition Aid (AAP) software is a low-cost acquisition aid for the Deep Space Network (DSN) antennas, and is used while acquiring a spacecraft shortly after it has launched. When enabled, the acquisition aid provides corrections to the antenna-predicted trajectory of the spacecraft to compensate for the...