Dr. Scott Barthelmy is the principal investigator for the Burst Alert Telescope (BAT), a sophisticated instrument that detects and precisely locates elusive gamma-ray bursts in the universe. Developed as part of NASA’s Swift mission, the instrument technology is now being considered for a variety of homeland security applications because of its ability to pinpoint and identify nuclear materials – both legal and illegal – in transit or storage. Dr. Barthelmy also created the Gamma-Ray Bursts Coordinates Network (GCN) to distribute data collected on gamma-ray bursts to researchers throughout the world in real time.

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Making its first flights to the International Space Station by the middle of the
next decade, the Orion crew exploration
vehicle is part of the Constellation
Program, which will send human explorers
back to the Moon, and then to Mars
and other destinations in the solar system.
Future astronauts will ride into orbit on
Ares I, Orion’s launch vehicle, which uses
a single, five-segment solid rocket booster.
NASA’s first test flight, called Ares I-X, will
provide NASA with an early opportunity
to test and prove the hardware, facilities,
and ground operations associated with
the Ares I.

A dual cryogenic capacitive density
sensor has been developed. The device
contains capacitive sensors that monitor
two-phase cryogenic flow density to within
±1% accuracy, which, if temperature
were known, could be used to determine
the ratio of liquid to gas in the line. Two
of these density sensors, located a known
distance apart, comprise the sensor, providing
some information on the velocity
of the flow.

The fourth servicing mission (SM-4)
for the Hubble Space Telescope
(HST) offered an impressive and
unprecedented set of advanced technologies
that may yield the most remarkable
discoveries and imaging to date of
Earth, the solar system, and beyond. The
mission was, according to Deputy
Associate Director for the HST
Development Project Frank Cepollina,
“the most complicated mission – from a
servicing perspective – that NASA has
ever flown.”

After a 23 year career at Bell Labs, Dr. Gerard Holzmann joined NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in 2003 to help create the Laboratory for Reliable Software (LaRS), which he currently manages. Dr. Holzmann is credited with inventing the SPIN model checker for distributed software systems and a Method and Apparatus for Testing Event Driven Software, as well as authoring The Power of 10: Rules for Developing Safety Critical Code, and the groundbreaking book Beyond Photography – The Digital Darkroom.

NASA is funding the development of a prototype system to
provide aircraft with updates about severe storms and turbulence
as they fly across remote ocean regions. Scientists at
the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR) in
Boulder, CO — in partnership with the
University of Wisconsin — are developing
a system that combines satellite data
and computer weather models with artificial
intelligence techniques.

NASA’s Glenn Research Center
(Cleveland, OH) and Boeing
employees have won the 2008 NASA
Software of the Year Award for the development
of a general-purpose program
used to perform trajectory optimization
and performance studies for a wide variety
of vehicles including aircraft, rockets,
satellites, and interplanetary vehicles.
The Software of the Year Award recognizes
developers of exceptional software
created for or by NASA and owned
by NASA.

The Radiometric Sensor Development
and Applications Team of the Sensors
and Electron Devices Directorate
(SEDD) at the U.S. Army Research
Laboratory (ARL) has developed a 2D
laser profiling scanner system to study its
operational characteristics, performance,
and effectiveness in detecting targets in
the battlefield and homeland security
environments. A profiling scanner provides
output images that reveal the size,
height, and outline or shape of an object.
This information can be useful in a wide
range of applications, ranging from simple
intrusion detection, to monitoring of
parts during a manufacturing process for
quality control purposes.

NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) researchers who
developed a new way to power robotic underwater vehicles
believe a spin-off technology could help convert ocean energy
into electrical energy on a much larger scale. The researchers
hope that clean, renewable energy produced from the motion
of the ocean and rivers could potentially meet an important
part of the world’s demand for electricity.