Topic

Areport discusses a model developed to explain the unusual properties of polymer- derived ceramics (PDCs), which are so named because they are made by controlled pyrolysis of cross-linked polymers. PDCs are metastable ceramics that have potential to be further developed into high-temperature materials...

This design relates to an eccentric mounting and adjustment (EMA) system for belt driving, or for belt-driven devices, that is installed and operated within the restricted confines of an engine compartment, typically a motor vehicle. It satisfies two essential requirements for...

A laser tracker (LT) is an important coordinate metrology tool that uses laser interferometry to determine precise distances to objects, points, or surfaces defined by an optical reference, such as a retroreflector. A retroreflector is a precision optic consisting of three orthogonal...

A compact, reliable controller for an electrically erasable, programmable readonly memory (EEPROM) has been developed specifically for a space-flight application. The design may be adaptable to other applications in which there are requirements for reliability in general and, in particular, for prevention of...

Solid-state frequency multipliers are used to produce tunable broadband sources at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths. The maximum power produced by a single chip is limited by the electrical breakdown of the semiconductor and by the thermal management properties of the chip. The solution is to...

A method is provided for a radiationhardened (rad-hard) solid-state drive for space mission memory applications by combining rad-hard and commercial offthe- shelf (COTS) non-volatile memories (NVMs) into a hybrid architecture. The architecture is controlled by a rad-hard ASIC (application specific integrated...

High-speed, low-power, reconfigurable electronic hardware has been developed to implement ICER-3D, an algorithm for compressing hyperspectral-image data. The algorithm and parts thereof have been the topics of several NASA Tech Briefs articles, including “Context Modeler for Wavelet...

The high-speed ring bus at the Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) allows for future growth trends in spacecraft seen with future scientific missions. This innovation constitutes an enhancement of the 1393 bus as documented in the Institute of Electrical and Electronics Engineers (IEEE) 1393-1999 standard for a spaceborne...

University of Florida engineers have designed and tested versions of a sensor that can diagnose and treat a variety of diseases, for example, by monitoring diabetics' glucose levels via their breath or detecting possible indicators of breast cancer in saliva. The sensor can be mass-produced inexpensively with technology currently used...

This week’s question concerns 3D TV. The recent success of 3D movies such as Avatar has added to an already-growing interest in 3D television and content. TV makers such as Sony, Samsung Electronics, LG Electronics, and Panasonic showed 3D ready televisions at the recent Consumer Electronics Show and expect to...