Enhancing the NASA Expendable Launch Vehicle Payload Safety Review Process Through Program Activities

The safety review process for NASA spacecraft flown on Expendable Launch Vehicles (ELVs) has been guided by NASA-STD 8719.8, Expendable Launch Vehicle Payload Safety Review Process Standard. The standard focused primarily on the safety approval required to begin pre-launch processing at the launch site. Subsequent changes in the contractual, technical, and operational aspects of payload processing, combined with lessons-learned supported a need for the reassessment of the standard. This has resulted in the formation of a NASA ELV Payload Safety Program. This program has been working to address the programmatic issues that will enhance and supplement the existing process, while continuing to ensure the safety of ELV payload activities

Learning multi-stage tasks with one demonstration via self-replay

In this work, we introduce a novel method to learn everyday-like multistage tasks from a single human demonstration, without requiring any prior object knowledge. Inspired by the recent Coarse-to-Fine Imitation Learning method, we model imitation learning as a learned object reaching phase followed by an openloop replay of the demonstrator’s actions. We build upon this for multi-stage tasks where, following the human demonstration, the robot can autonomously collect image data for the entire multi-stage task, by reaching the next object in the sequence and then replaying the demonstration, and then repeating in a loop for all stages of the task. We evaluate with real-world experiments on a set of everydaylike multi-stage tasks, which we show that our method can solve from a single demonstration. Videos and supplementary material can be found at this webpage

Shrapnel-Induced Mandibular Hypomobility

Mandibular hypomobility can develop from direct injury to, or as a result of disorders affecting, the supporting structures of the temporomandibular joint. This can be subdivided into intra-articular and extraarticular processes. Ankylosis is commonly associated with trauma (31% to 98%), followed by infections (10% to 49%) and systemic disease (10%). Temporomandibular joint ankylosis is an intra-articular process characterized by fibrous, fibro-osseous, or osseous obliteration of the joint space. Pseudoankylosis involves extracapsular causes of restricted jaw motion that include, but are not limited to, coronoid-zygomatic fusion, coronoid hypertrophy, and muscular fibrosis. Shrapnel injuries can be as devastating as high-velocity gunshot wounds, with functional and esthetic consequences, depending on the velocity, size, shape, and jagged edges of the fragments. Traumatic life support measures are paramount during the immediate postinjury setting. The airway and hemodynamic status must be maintained, because the oxygen-carrying capacity is essential for wound healing and the prevention of infection. A secure airway controlled with an endotracheal tube or tracheostomy needs early consideration because bleeding and edema can result in airway compromise. The securing of the airway should be followed by a comprehensive examination of the patient to reveal additional injuries

Spin Susceptibility of Interacting Two-dimensional Electrons with Anisotropic Effective Mass

We report measurements of the spin susceptibility in dilute (rs up to 10) AlAs two-dimensional (2D) electrons occupying a single conduction-band valley with an anisotropic in-plane Fermi contour, characterized by longitudinal and transverse effective masses, ml and mt. As the density is decreased, the spin susceptibility is significantly enhanced over its band value, reflecting the role of interaction. Yet the enhancement is suppressed compared to the results of quantum Monte Carlo based calculations that take the finite thickness of the electron layer into account but assume an isotropic effective mass equal to sqrt(ml.mt). Proper treatment of an interacting 2D system with an anisotropic effective mass therefore remains a theoretical challenge.Comment: 4 pages, 3 figures, accepted for publication in Phys. Rev.

Safety Considerations in the Ground Environment

In the history of humankind, every great space adventure has begun on the ground. While this seems to be stating the obvious, mission and spacecraft designers who have overlooked this fact have paid a high price, either in loss or damage to the spacecraft pre-launch, or in mission failure or reduction. Spacecraft personnel may risk not only their flight hardware, but they may also risk their lives, their co-workers lives and even the general public by not heeding safety on the ground. Their eyes may be on the stars but their feet are on the ground! One additional comment: Although the design requirements are very different for human rated and nonhuman rated flight hardware, while on the ground that flight hardware (and its ground support equipment) doesn't care about what it is flying on. On the ground, additional requirements are often levied to protect the work force and general public. (Authors' Note: The source material for this chapter is primarily taken from the Kennedy Space Center Handbook (KHB) 1700.7/45 SW Handbook S-100 Space Shuttle Payload Ground Safety Handbook and the authors' personal experiences

Cobalt: The Next Step in Low SWaP-C Optical Terminal Design

Blue Cubed has developed Cobalt, a full duplex optical terminal which can support both symmetric crosslinks and downlinks. The system has been engineered to be modular, easily mass produced and available at a competitive price. Cobalt is intended for low earth orbit small satellite applications that require 100 Mbps to 10 Gbps per communication links at ranges of up to 4000 km. The Cobalt core transceiver (excluding the telescope) is roughly 0.5U (9 x 9 x 5 cm), one kilogram, and consumes 10 W of electrical power for the 3 Gbps system variant. An increased data rate can be achieved by adding up to three (3) additional 3 Gbps channels which adds 3W of additional power and 100 g of additional mass per channel. The link performance is a function of the radiometery where data rate, telescope size (11 mm to 100 mm) and range can be traded. A gimbal which provides hemispheric coverage and meets the needs of the growing satellite constellation market is also currently under development. The Cobalt optical bench incorporates a novel, patented1 self-alignment technique based on differential tracking of the transmit and receive signals. This approach greatly relaxes manufacturing tolerances and makes the bench uniquely robust to environmental loading. While the self-alignment approach is applicable at any wavelength, Blue Cubed has focused initial development on a 850 nm variant. Silicon-compatible wavelengths offer low cost and high-performance detectors, tracking sensors, and lasers, all of which are critical in highly SWaP and cost constrained applications. Cobalt can be paired with the Bluefin X-band transmitter to provide a hybrid RF and optical downlink terminal. In this talk we describe the status of the Cobalt transceiver, share laboratory test results and discuss our path to initial on-orbit demonstrations targeted for late 2023

Feel of the Ocean: Final Report

The overall goal of this project is to create a system that will enhance the audience’s sense that they are actually in the ocean, surrounded by whales, as they attend the Music Department’s 2014 Spring RSVP show. We have designed something that, through the interaction of light and moving fabric, will augment the performance

Collective excitations of trapped one-dimensional dipolar quantum gases

We calculate the excitation modes of a 1D dipolar quantum gas confined in a harmonic trap with frequency $\omega_0$ and predict how the frequency of the breathing n=2 mode characterizes the interaction strength evolving from the Tonks-Girardeau value $\omega_2=2\omega_0$ to the quasi-ordered, super-strongly interacting value $\omega_2=\sqrt{5}\omega_0$. Our predictions are obtained within a hydrodynamic Luttinger-Liquid theory after applying the Local Density Approximation to the equation of state for the homogeneous dipolar gas, which are in turn determined from Reptation Quantum Monte Carlo simulations. They are shown to be in quite accurate agreement with the results of a sum-rule approach. These effects can be observed in current experiments, revealing the Luttinger-liquid nature of 1D dipolar Bose gases.Comment: 5 pages, 2 EPS figures, RevTeX