Marshall Space Flight Center Research and Technology Report 2019

Today, our calling to explore is greater than ever before, and here at Marshall Space Flight Centerwe make human deep space exploration possible. A key goal for Artemis is demonstrating and perfecting capabilities on the Moon for technologies needed for humans to get to Mars. This years report features 10 of the Agencys 16 Technology Areas, and I am proud of Marshalls role in creating solutions for so many of these daunting technical challenges. Many of these projects will lead to sustainable in-space architecture for human space exploration that will allow us to travel to the Moon, on to Mars, and beyond. Others are developing new scientific instruments capable of providing an unprecedented glimpse into our universe. NASA has led the charge in space exploration for more than six decades, and through the Artemis program we will help build on our work in low Earth orbit and pave the way to the Moon and Mars. At Marshall, we leverage the skills and interest of the international community to conduct scientific research, develop and demonstrate technology, and train international crews to operate further from Earth for longer periods of time than ever before first at the lunar surface, then on to our next giant leap, human exploration of Mars. While each project in this report seeks to advance new technology and challenge conventions, it is important to recognize the diversity of activities and people supporting our mission. This report not only showcases the Centers capabilities and our partnerships, it also highlights the progress our people have achieved in the past year. These scientists, researchers and innovators are why Marshall and NASA will continue to be a leader in innovation, exploration, and discovery for years to come

Definition and Preliminary Design of the Laser Atmospheric Wind Sounder (LAWS) Phase 1. Volume 1: Executive Summary

The laser atmospheric wind sounder (LAWS) is a facility instrument of the Earth Observing System (EOS) and is the culmination of over 20 years of effort in the field of laser Doppler wind sensing. LAWS will by the first instrument to fly in space with the capability of providing global-scale tropospheric wind profiles at high spatial resolutions. Global-scale wind profiles are necessary for: (1) more accurate diagnostics of large-scale circulation and climate dynamics; (2) improved numerical weather prediction; (3) improved understanding of mesoscale systems; (4) improved understanding of global biogeochemical and hydrologic cycles. The objective of phase 1 of the LAWS study was to evaluate competing concepts and develop a baseline configuration for the LAWS instrument. The first phase of the study consisted of identifying realistic concepts for LAWS and analyzing them in sufficient detail to be able to choose the most promising one for the LAWS application. System configurations were then developed for the chosen concept. The concept and subsequent configuration were to be compatible with two prospective platforms: the Japanese polar orbiting platform (JPOP) and the Space Station Freedom (as an attached payload). After an objective and comprehensive concept selection process, a heterodyne detection Doppler lidar using a CO2 laser transmitter operating at 9.1 microns over a 2.1 micron system with a solid state laser was chosen. The CO2 lidar concept was then analyzed in detail to arrive at a configuration for the instrument and its major subsystems. A configuration for LAWS was arrived at which meets the performance requirements, and this design is presented

Orbit Transfer Rocket Engine Technology Program: Advanced engine study, task D.1/D.3

Concepts for space maintainability of OTV engines were examined. An engine design was developed which was driven by space maintenance requirements and by a failure mode and effects (FME) analysis. Modularity within the engine was shown to offer cost benefits and improved space maintenance capabilities. Space operable disconnects were conceptualized for both engine change-out and for module replacement. Through FME mitigation the modules were conceptualized to contain the least reliable and most often replaced engine components. A preliminary space maintenance plan was developed around a controls and condition monitoring system using advanced sensors, controls, and condition monitoring concepts. A complete engine layout was prepared satisfying current vehicle requirements and utilizing projected component advanced technologies. A technology plan for developing the required technology was assembled

Sunmaster: An SEP cargo vehicle for Mars missions

Options are examined for an unmanned solar powered electric propulsion cargo vehicle for Mars missions. The 6 prime areas of study include: trajectory, propulsion system, power system, supporting structure, control system, and launch consideration. Optimization of the low thrust trajectory resulted in a total round trip mission time just under 4 years. The argon propelled electrostatic ion thruster system consists of seventeen 5 N engines and uses a specific impulse of 10,300 secs. At Earth, the system uses 13 engines to produce 60 N of thrust; at Mars, five engines are used, producing 25 N thrust. The thrust of the craft is varied between 60 N at Earth and 24 N at Mars due to reduced solar power available. Solar power is collected by a Fresnel lens concentrator system using a multistacked cell. This system provides 3.5 MW to the propulsion system after losses. Control and positioning to the craft are provided by a system of three double gimballed control moment gyros. Four shuttle 'C' launches will be used to transport the unassembled vehicle in modular units to low Earth orbit where it will be assembled using the Mobile Transporter of the Space Station Freedom

A Geographic 3D Visualization and Browser of the World Wide Web

Internet är ett stort globalt nätverk som fortsätter växa i komplexitet med nya tekniker och protokoll som utvidgar dess användbarhet och sättet vi sprider information. Trender, nyheter, videor och annan information sprider sig snabbt över världen vilket gör Internet till ett fantastiskt redskap för de användare som prenumererar på rätt informationsströmmar eller nyheter. Webläsare är en nödvändighet för att struktuera den information vi hittat och för att surfning av webben ska bli bekväm. De områden som en traditionell webläsare saknar är främst en vägledning in i den digitala världen för en icke-erfaren användare. Det är svårt att få en uppfattning av Internets storlek, djup och var man är respektive alla andra användare. Internet har en stor kultur som kan anses transparent i första ögonblicket då man öppnar en webläsare för första gången. Traditionella webläsare saknar en vägvisande introduktion till Internets kultur och dess populära hemsidor. Om man visualiserar alla Internet's publika hemsidor i en 3-dimensionell värld så ger det möjlighet till att se dess storlek och utforska det på ett alternativt sätt. Vilket därmed också simplifierar dess komplexitet. Användaren kan då få en överblick av webben där dess aktivitet och kultur kan visas i formen av en mer spelliknande miljö. Denna avhandling handlar om att visualisera en delmängd av Internet's publika hemsidor som byggnadsobjekt i en värld där användaren interaktivt kan besöka varje hemsida i världen, där höjden av varje byggnadsobjekt återspeglar hemsidans popularitet. Ett bot-program med flera trådar har används för att lagra relationerna mellan hemsidorna vi hittat för att senare använda denna data i en så kallad force-directed algorithm. Denna algoritm kommer skapa attraktions och repulsions krafter mellan noder som representerar hemsidorna, där nodernas position ändras iterativt av dessa krafter i mån om att få dem geografiskt placerade. Krafterna mellan noderna bestäms av hur mycket PageRank en sida har gett en annan. Världen kommer renderas i WebGL med hjälp av en 3D JavaScript motor som heter Three.js. En användare kommer kunna nå den visualiserade världen via sin webläsare som ansluter till min hemsida där de laddar ner alla nödvändiga resurser t.ex. texturer, objekt och skript. Jag använder mig av olika tekniker bl.a. en variant av Level of Detail för att kunna rendera en så stor mängd av hemsidor som möjligt i världen.Internet is a vast digital network. Evergrowing in its complexity with frequent newly developed protocols extending the technology and changing the way we communicate and share information over the world. Trends, news, videos and other information spread quickly over the world, making web browsers an incredible tool for users who listen to the right feeds or news networks. Web browsers are a necessity for structuring our obtained information and are needed for convenient surfing of the web. But for the non-experienced user it may not be completely self-explanatory what the Internet is, where to go or how far its borders stretches, the depth isn't shown and have to be individually explored mainly through the use of search engines. The culture of Internet can seem transparent the first time you open the traditional web browser. Traditional web browsers lack an introductional guidance into the culture and to the popular sites. By visualizing public websites of the Internet as objects in a 3-dimensional world, the user will be able to see the boundaries of the web and explore it in a new fashion where the complexity of its structure is greatly reduced. The user will get an overview of the web in which activity and the culture can be shown in a game-alike environment. This thesis will be about visualizing a crawled subset of websites as a city of buildings, where each building represents a website that the user can visit inside the world, the building's height reflecting its website's popularity. A multi-threaded crawler is used to find and store the relations between the set of websites, namely how many outgoing and which outgoing links each site has. This data in turn will be used by a force-directed algorithm that will position these buildings relatively geographical by attaching imaginary strings between them that either repulse or attract websites with high respective low relational attraction. The attractional forces being defined by the calculated PageRank that are passed between the sites. The world will be rendered in WebGL and use the JavaScript library Three.js, and will thus be accessed through a web browser that connects to a web server and download all the necessary resources, e.g. textures, objects and JavaScript functions. Trying to render a subset of Internet's websites as objects obviously puts a lot of stress on standard web browsers. Graphical features and tricks such as Level of Detail have been necessary to implement in order to make it appear a larger part is visualized than what actually is

ODDFUZZ: Discovering Java Deserialization Vulnerabilities via Structure-Aware Directed Greybox Fuzzing

Java deserialization vulnerability is a severe threat in practice. Researchers have proposed static analysis solutions to locate candidate vulnerabilities and fuzzing solutions to generate proof-of-concept (PoC) serialized objects to trigger them. However, existing solutions have limited effectiveness and efficiency. In this paper, we propose a novel hybrid solution ODDFUZZ to efficiently discover Java deserialization vulnerabilities. First, ODDFUZZ performs lightweight static taint analysis to identify candidate gadget chains that may cause deserialization vulner-abilities. In this step, ODDFUZZ tries to locate all candidates and avoid false negatives. Then, ODDFUZZ performs directed greybox fuzzing (DGF) to explore those candidates and generate PoC testcases to mitigate false positives. Specifically, ODDFUZZ applies a structure-aware seed generation method to guarantee the validity of the testcases, and adopts a novel hybrid feedback and a step-forward strategy to guide the directed fuzzing. We implemented a prototype of ODDFUZZ and evaluated it on the popular Java deserialization repository ysoserial. Results show that, ODDFUZZ could discover 16 out of 34 known gadget chains, while two state-of-the-art baselines only identify three of them. In addition, we evaluated ODDFUZZ on real-world applications including Oracle WebLogic Server, Apache Dubbo, Sonatype Nexus, and protostuff, and found six previously unreported exploitable gadget chains with five CVEs assigned.Comment: To appear in the Main Track of IEEE S&P 202