ADATS Could Assist X-planes With Large, Super-Fast Data Transmission 03-29

A network and communication architecture that can more efficiently move data from research aircraft, while using half the bandwidth of traditional methods, could eventually also enable data collection of precise measurements needed for testing the next generation of X-planes.


Called the Advanced Data Acquisition and Telemetry System, or ADATS, researchers at NASA Armstrong Flight Research Center in California integrated the new systems into a NASA King Air recently for a series of three flights following extensive ground testing. The new system can move 40 megabits per second, which is the equivalent of streaming eight high-definition movies from an online service each second, said Otto Schnarr, principal investigator.


Researchers aren’t looking to make binge watching easier – they are interested in the system’s speed in moving large amounts of data up to four times faster than previous network-based telemetry efforts and up to 10 times faster than current systems Armstrong researchers are using, Schnarr explained.

All of this capability is gained without new architecture and using the advanced modulation technique to save spectral bandwidth, time and research dollars, said electrical engineer Matthew Waldersen. In addition, the system allows people to participate in the flight test from wherever a secure network is available. As many as 3.3 million sensor measurements per second can be acquired, or a focused data set can be targeted to free up bandwidth for other tasks, like streaming high-definition video simultaneously, he added.


ADATS aims to advance flight test data acquisition and telemetry systems using an Ethernet via telemetry subsystem that wirelessly transmits test data and an advanced data acquisition system that allows remote researchers to command experiments and receive data collection during flight.

“The main components are a ground station, a transceiver on the airplane and the instrumentation systems that tie everything together,” said Tom Horn, ADATS project manager. “The tests explored what this system does and how it behaves. We wanted to make sure we understood the nuances and determine if additional testing is required for researchers to feel comfortable using it.”

The flights capped a three-year effort to fill in existing gaps in the technology, such as range, instrumentation and system design challenges. ADATS team members have made well-received presentations at the center that led to additional brainstorming session on potential uses for the technology.


“People were not having trouble coming up with how they could put it to use,” Waldersen explained. “Having more data allows researchers to do what they do better. Everyone at the sessions agreed the technology is worth pursuing. You know a project is a success when you take questions from engineers like, ‘have you considered using it for this case, or could we do this with it?’”

Building up the capability is the next step.


“In any electronics project there is a hardware and a software component,” Waldersen said. “We have completed a lot of work with the hardware component to see what it can do and now it’s a matter of the software aspect and how it integrates with ground operations, which projects will put it to use immediately and what other systems can we build around it to fully utilize the capability.”


Maturing the technology could be useful for upcoming X-plane testing. For example, measurements of airflow data measurement along the entire face of a fan engine could be efficiently researched, Horn explained. Another advantage is unlike traditional data collection that can experience loss of data, or “dropouts,” ADATS can eliminate the loss with this data collection method. However, delays can still occur and researchers are looking into understanding the ramifications of that for safety.

In addition, the system also could have implications for uninhabited air vehicles and systems for uplinks and bandwidth management. For example, aircraft like the Ikhana or Global Hawk could gain efficiencies. ADATS also could work in combination with an Ethernet-based fiber optic sensing system to streamline data collection.


The ADATS effort can be traced back to The Hi-Rate Wireless Airborne Network Demonstration (HIWAND) in 2005, which also flew on the King Air. It demonstrated in flight a network-enhanced telemetry system that enabled connectivity between air and ground, including airborne Internet access. The capability was focused on allowing scientists and others to downlink scientific data and uplink critical information to airborne sensors more efficiently.


NASA’s Flight Demonstrations and Capabilities project, which is part of the Integrated Aviation Systems program, is funding the current effort.

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New NASA Radar Technique Finds Lost Lunar Spacecraft 03-11

DSS-14 is NASA's 70-meter (230-foot) antenna located at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California. It is known as the “Mars Antenna” as it was first to receive signals from the first spacecraft to closely observe Mars, Mariner 4, on March 18, 1966.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

Finding derelict spacecraft and space debris in Earth’s orbit can be a technological challenge. Detecting these objects in orbit around Earth’s moon is even more difficult. Optical telescopes are unable to search for small objects hidden in the bright glare of the moon.

However, a new technological application of interplanetary radar pioneered by scientists at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Pasadena, California, has successfully located spacecraft orbiting the moon -- one active, and one dormant. This new technique could assist planners of future moon missions.


“We have been able to detect NASA’s Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter [LRO] and the Indian Space Research Organization’s Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft in lunar orbit with ground-based radar,” said Marina Brozović, a radar scientist at JPL and principal investigator for the test project. “Finding LRO was relatively easy, as we were working with the mission’s navigators and had precise orbit data where it was located. Finding India’s Chandrayaan-1 required a bit more detective work because the last contact with the spacecraft was in August of 2009.”


Add to the mix that the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft is very small, a cube about five feet (1.5 meters) on each side -- about half the size of a smart car. Although the interplanetary radar has been used to observe small asteroids several million miles from Earth, researchers were not certain that an object of this smaller size as far away as the moon could be detected, even with the world’s most powerful radars. Chandrayaan-1 proved the perfect target for demonstrating the capability of this technique.

This computer generated image depicts the Chandrayaan-1’s location at time it was detected by the Goldstone Solar System radar on July 2, 2016. In the graphic the 120-mile (200-kilometer) wide purple circle represents the width of the Goldstone radar beam at lunar distance. The radar beam was pointed 103 miles (165 kilometers) off the lunar surface. The white box in the upper-right corner of the animation depicts the strength of echo. As the spacecraft entered and exited the radar beam (purple circle), the echo from the spacecraft alternated between being very strong and very weak, as the radar beam scattered from the flat metal surfaces. Once the spacecraft flew outside the beam, the echo was gone.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

While they all use microwaves, not all radar transmitters are created equal. The average police radar gun has an operational range of about one mile, while air traffic control radar goes to about 60 miles. To find a spacecraft 237,000 miles (380,000 kilometers) away, JPL’s team used NASA's 70-meter (230-foot) antenna at NASA's Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California to send out a powerful beam of microwaves directed toward the moon. Then the radar echoes bounced back from lunar orbit were received by the 100-meter (330-foot) Green Bank Telescope in West Virginia.


Finding a derelict spacecraft at lunar distance that has not been tracked for years is tricky because the moon is riddled with mascons (regions with higher-than-average gravitational pull) that can dramatically affect a spacecraft’s orbit over time, and even cause it to have crashed into the moon. JPL’s orbital calculations indicated that Chandrayaan-1 is still circling some 124 miles (200 kilometers) above the lunar surface, but it was generally considered “lost.”


However, with Chandrayaan-1, the radar team utilized the fact that this spacecraft is in polar orbit around the moon, so it would always cross above the lunar poles on each orbit. So, on July 2, 2016, the team pointed Goldstone and Green Bank at a location about 100 miles (160 kilometers) above the moon’s north pole and waited to see if the lost spacecraft crossed the radar beam. Chandrayaan-1 was predicted to complete one orbit around the moon every two hours and 8 minutes.  Something that had a radar signature of a small spacecraft did cross the beam twice during four hours of observations, and the timings between detections matched the time it would take Chandrayaan-1 to complete one orbit and return to the same position above the moon’s pole.

Radar imagery acquired of the Chandrayaan-1 spacecraft as it flew over the moon’s south pole on July 3, 2016. The imagery was acquired using NASA's 70-meter (230-foot) antenna at the Goldstone Deep Space Communications Complex in California. This is one of four detections of Chandrayaan-1 from that day.

Credits: NASA/JPL-Caltech

The team used data from the return signal to estimate its velocity and the distance to the target.  This information was then used to update the orbital predictions for Chandrayaan-1.


“It turns out that we needed to shift the location of Chandrayaan-1 by about 180 degrees, or half a cycle from the old orbital estimates from 2009,” said Ryan Park, the manager of JPL’s Solar System Dynamics group, who delivered the new orbit back to the radar team.  “But otherwise, Chandrayaan-1’s orbit still had the shape and alignment that we expected.”

Radar echoes from the spacecraft were obtained seven more times over three months and are in perfect agreement with the new orbital predictions. Some of the follow-up observations were done with the Arecibo Observatory in Puerto Rico, which has the most powerful astronomical radar system on Earth. Arecibo is operated by the National Science Foundation with funding from NASA’s Planetary Defense Coordination Office for the radar capability.


Hunting down LRO and rediscovering Chandrayaan-1 have provided the start for a unique new capability. Working together, the large radar antennas at Goldstone, Arecibo and Green Bank demonstrated that they can detect and track even small spacecraft in lunar orbit. Ground-based radars could possibly play a part in future robotic and human missions to the moon, both for a collisional hazard assessment tool and as a safety mechanism for spacecraft that encounter navigation or communication issues.

JPL manages and operates NASA's Deep Space Network, including the Goldstone Solar System Radar, and hosts the Center for Near-Earth Object Studies for NASA's Near-Earth Object Observations Program, an element of the Planetary Defense Coordination Office within the agency's Science Mission Directorate.

Scientists Confirm Three Potentially Habitable Planets Around A Nearby Star 06-26

Scientists Confirm Three Potentially Habitable Planets Around A Nearby Star

Alex Knapp

Astronomers from the European Space Observatory have confirmed that there are three potentially habitable worlds around the red dwarf Gliese 667C.

 

Scientists at the European Southern Observatory announced today that they’ve confirmed the existence of three planets existing in the habitable zone of the star Gliese 667C – meaning that they orbit at a distance from the star where temperatures might allow for liquid water on the planets’ surface. The study also found four additional planets around the star, which is part of the triple-star system Gliese 667. This system is a neighbor of ours – it’s only about 22 light years away.Astronomers had previously found three of the worlds around Gliese 667C, but finding seven planets around one stars helps to confirm that there may be plenty of stars out there with a lot of planets around them like our own Sun.

The three potentially habitable planets are considered to be “super-Earths” – meaning that they are more massive than our planet but less massive than a gas giant like Uranus. Right now, though, scientists haven’t been able to make the measurements they need to determine the composition of these planets.

Of course, there’s a catch: like most stars that astronomers have found planets on, Gliese 667C is a red dwarf, and whether life could evolve on planets orbiting red dwarves is a very open quesiton. That’s true for a number of reasons. First, because they’re so close to their stars, planets around a red dwarf may become tidally locked – meaning that they don’t rotate around their axis like the Earth does. The sun will always shine on one side of the planet and not the other. As a result, in the early years of the planet, all of the water might be “boiled off” –leaving no water to create life.

Of course, that’s one possibility. But it depends on the how thick the atmosphere is around the planets in question. The scientists conducting this research noted that at the present time, it’s impossible to tell the composition of the planets or their atmospheres. As a result, they note, “we assert that tidal locking does not preclude habitability” of the Gliese 667C planets.

There are other issues with red dwarves that might preclude habitability. Still, those are just some possible issues – and scientists have developed hypotheses about mechanisms that might allow for the evolution of life around red dwarves. Even here on Earth, scientists recently discovered tons of bacteria living in the upper atmosphere – an area where scientists expected very little life to thrive. So there may be the possibility for many kinds of interesting life to evolve on planets near red dwarves.

And it looks like we’ll have plenty of chances to explore the possibilities. As the authors conclude in their paper, the evidence they’ve found “suggests the existence of a numerous population of planetary systems with several potentially habitable worlds each. GJ 667C is likely to be among first of many of such systems that may be discovered in the forthcoming years.”

(Image: An artists conception of the planetary surface of planet Gliese 667d. Credit: ESO)

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Planets Outside Of Our Solar System

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NASA/JPL-Caltech

Super Earth 55 Cancri e

55 Cancri e is a super-Earth - more massive than the Earth but lighter than a gas giant. This planet is so close to its Sun that it orbits every 18 hours. Its light was detected by the Spitzer Space Telescope.