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Permanent magnet AC generators are robust, inexpensive, and efficient compared to wound-field synchronous generators with brushless exciters. Their application in variable-speed applications is made difficult by the variation of the stator voltage with shaft speed. This paper presents the use of stator-side reactive power injection as a means of regulating the stator voltage. Design-oriented analysis of machine performance for this mode of operation identifies an appropriate level of machine saliency that enables excellent terminal voltage regulation over a specified speed and load range, while minimizing stator current requirements. This paper demonstrates that the incorporation of saliency into the permanent magnet generator can significantly reduce the size of the reactive current source that is required to regulate the stator voltage during operation over a wide range of speeds and loads.

Humidity control within confined spaces is of great importance for existing NASA environmental control systems and Exploration applications. The Engineered Multifunction Surfaces (MFS) developed in this STTR Phase II form the foundation for a modular and scalable Distributed Humidity Control System (DHCS) while minimizing power, size and mass requirements. Key innovations of the MFS-based DHCS include passive humidity collection, control, and phase separation without moving parts, durable surface properties without particulate generation and accumulation, and the ability to scale up, or network in a distributed manner, a compact, modular device for Exploration applications including space suits, CEV, Rovers, Small and Transit Habitats and Large Habitats.

The demand for highly flexible manipulation of plant growth generations, modification of specific plant processes, and genetically engineered crop varieties in a controlled environment has led to the development of a Commercial Plant Biotechnology Facility (CPBF). The CPBF is a quad-middeck locker playload to be mounted in the EXPRESS Rack that will be installed in the International Space Station (ISS). The CPBF integrates proven ASTROCULTURE” technologies, state-of-the-art control software, and fault tolerance and recovery technologies together to increase overall system efficiency, reliability, robustness, flexibility, and user friendliness. The CPBF provides a large plant growing volume for the support of commercial plant biotechnology studies and/or applications for long time plant research in a reduced gravity environment.

The ASTROCULTURE™ (ASC) middeck flight experiment series was developed to test subsystems required to grow plants in reduced gravity, with the goal of developing a plant growth unit suitable for conducting quality biological research in microgravity. Previous Space Shuttle flights (STS-50 and STS-57) have successfully demonstrated the ability to control water movement through a particulate rooting matrix in microgravity and the ability of LED lighting systems to provide high levels of irradiance without excessive heat build-up in microgravity. The humidity and temperature control system used in the middeck flight unit is described in this paper. The system controls air flow and provides dehumidification, humidification, and condensate recovery for a plant growth chamber volume of 1450 cm3.

The adaptation to changes in human operator dynamics and changes in working environment dynamics can be an important issue in designing high performance telerobotic systems. This paper describes an approach to force control in telerobotic hand systems in which model reference adaptive control techniques are used to adapt to changes in human operator and working environment dynamics. The techniques have been applied to force-reflective control of a single degree-of-freedom telerobotic gripper system at Wisconsin Center for Space Automation and Robotics (WCSAR). This adaptive gripping system is described in the paper along with results of experiments with human subjects in which the performance of the adaptive system was analysed and compared to the performance of a conventional non-adaptive system. These experiments emphasized adaptation to changes in compliance of gripped objects and adaptation to the on-set of human operator fatigue.

Five potato (Solanum tuberosum L.) leaf cuttings were flown on STS-73 in late October, 1995 as part of the 16-day USML-2 mission. Pre-flight studies were conducted to study tuber growth, determine carbohydrate concentrations and examine the developing starch grains within the tuber. In these tests, tubers attained a fresh weight of 1.4 g tuber-1 after 13 days. Tuber fresh mass was significantly correlated to tuber diameter. Greater than 60% of the tuber dry mass was starch and the starch grains varied in size from 2 to 40 mm in the long axis. For the flight experiment, cuttings were obtained from seven-week-old Norland potato plants, kept at 5°C for 12 hours then planted into arcillite in the ASTROCULTURE™ flight hardware. The flight package was loaded on-board the orbiter 22 hours prior to launch.

Lithium-ion and Lithium polymer batteries are fast becoming ubiquitous in high-discharge rate applications for military and non-military systems. Applications such as small aerial vehicles and energy transfer systems can often function at C-rates greater than 1. To maximize system endurance and battery health, there is a need for models capable of precisely estimating the battery state-of-charge (SoC) under all temperature and loading conditions. However, the ability to perform state estimation consistently and accurately to within 1% error has remained unsolved. Doing so can offer enhanced endurance, safety, reliability, and planning, and additionally, simplify energy management. Therefore, the work presented in this paper aims to study and develop experimentally validated mathematical models capable of high-accuracy battery SoC estimation.

The combined impacts of engine speed and fuel reactivity on energy-assisted compression-ignition (EACI) combustion using a commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) ceramic glow plug for low-load operation werexxz investigated. The COTS glow plug, used as the ignition assistant (IA), was overdriven beyond its conventional operation range. Engine speed was varied from 1200 RPM to 2100 RPM. Three fuel blends consisting of a jet-A fuel with military additives (F24) and a low cetane number alcohol-to-jet (ATJ) sustainable aviation fuel (SAF) were tested with cetane numbers (CN) of 25.9, 35.5, and 48.5. The ranges of engine speed and fuel cetane numbers studied are significantly larger than those in previous studies of EACI or glow-plug assisted combustion, and the simultaneous variation of engine speed and fuel reactivity are unique to this work. For each speed and fuel, a single-injection of fixed mass was used and the start of injection (SOI) was swept for each IA power.