Tech Portfolio

A composite material is provided that includes a matrix material, and a plurality of deflectable elements or "machines" disposed in the matrix material, the machines acting to modify one or more physical properties of the composite material in response to forces acting upon the composite material.

A method for main beam alignment verification includes providing data pertaining to one or more patterns associated with an antenna, measuring power levels of a signal acquired by the antenna, and comparing the measured power levels with the data to determine whether a direction of the signal is incident upon a main beam of the antenna.

A laser direct write method creates true three dimensional structures within photocerams using an focused pulsed ultraviolet laser with a wavelength in a weakly absorbing region of the photoceram material. A critical dose of focused laser UV light selectively exposes embedded volumes of the material for subsequent selective etching.

A GPS receiver receives GPS spread spectrum communication signals subject to carrier demodulation and code phase autocorrelation using tightly coupled Kalman filter residual estimation based on Ricatti matrix computation for generating code phase errors and carrier phase errors for improved code phase tracking and carrier phase tracking in feedback loops for use in navigation systems.

A surveillance monitoring and automated reporting method is used for detecting observable changes in data sources over a network, such as the internet, for accessing changing data, such as world wide web content data, and for providing scheduled change detection notifications and results through user defined search criteria for automated monitored search criteria matches on a recurring basis by

A method and system for determining three-axis attitude from line-of-sight (LOS) solutions for two or more GPS satellites uses intersections of null cone patterns and LOS vectors to the GPS satellites. In a preferred embodiment, a unified GPS-based sensor also provides navigation information.

A tunable optical local oscillator is used for optical heterodyne signal detection using an electrooptic Mach-Zehnder modulator to produce a rapidly tunable optical signal from a tunable RF frequency generator.

An off-gimbal pointing system is improved using filtering of resolver and gyro responses respectively applied at the output of the resolvers and gyros for attenuating high frequencies resolver responses and gyro responses that effectively degrades the high frequency responses that are matched and above the control system bandwidth for improving the overall dynamic control of the off-gimbal poin

One or more small self-contained reentry breakup recorders are disposed within a spacecraft and each includes a sensor suite for collecting and recording collected and recorded sensory data during reentry breakup of the spacecraft, and includes a communications system for broadcasting the collected and recorded sensory data after breakup and before impact with the surface of the earth to a remo

An adaptive reflector antenna includes an adaptive reflector and a mechanism for simultaneously effecting feed rotation and shape change for the adaptive reflector so as to maintain antenna performance with large scan angles while simultaneously reducing weight, complexity, and cost.

An integrated microelectromechanical system (MEMS) sun sensor includes a filter, microlens, aperture and a folded MEMS optical element combined with an active pixel sensor array to form an integrated spacecraft sun sensor in an integrated sealed package, offering lower power, smaller size and higher performance for use on spinning spacecraft useful in attitude determinations.

Data aided carrier phase and symbol timing synchronizers are implemented at baseband as digital modulators isolating input signal inphase and quadrature component signals fed into inphase and quadrature Laurent transforms that function as data detector to provide odd and even data bit multiplexed output data signal while cross coupling the inphase and quadrature transformed outputs for removing

A two-phase thermodynamic power system includes a capillary device, an inline turbine, and a condenser for generating output power as a generator or receiving input power as a refrigerator.

An adjustable multipoint docking system includes a plurality of adjustable grasping jaws that are aligned on a mounting surface and adapted to grab onto a wide variety of extending rings, such as conventional spacecraft adapter rings, of an on-orbit target spacecraft for various missions including spacecraft rescue, spacecraft transorbiting to a desired orbit, spacecraft transorbiting to a wast

Integrated glass ceramic spacecraft include a plurality of glass ceramic components including molded, tempered, annealed, and patterned glass ceramic components coupled together for forming a support structure or frame or housing through which is communicated optical signals through an optical communications grid and electrical signals through an electrical communications grid, with the optical

A composite material is provided that includes an array of machine elements disposed within a matrix material. Each machine element includes a cross-section defining an internal space that is filled with a viscous fluid. Preferably, the machine elements are provided in complementary pairs of tubular members, with the internal spaces of the tubular members communicating with one another.

A collision prediction and maneuver method determines which ones of many potential target objects have a close conjunction within a gross miss distance with a subject object by trajectory propagation, then determines which one of the conjunctive objects have a high collision probability within a critical miss distance, and then determines an optimum vehicle maneuver to reduce the probability of

A command and telemetry communication system includes a downlink subsystem having a spacecraft downlink transmitter communicating a quadrature component carrying a pilot code for coarse acquisition and an inphase component carrying a Walsh-Hadamard code and a PN code for fine acquisition using spread spectrum signaling and amplitude modulation for code division multiplexing to downlink receiver

The direct-write pulsed UV laser technique combined with the variable laser exposure fabrication method entails the precise variation of the laser irradiance during pattern formation in the photostructurable glass for variable laser exposing processing.

A power recycling system receives input power at an input and feeds back through an auxiliary output recycled power to the input for supplementing the input power for recycling energy of the recycled power that would normally be wasted so as to provide improved power efficiency.

Data aided carrier phase and symbol timing synchronizers are implemented at baseband as digital modulators isolating input signal inphase and quadrature component signals fed into inphase and quadrature Laurent transforms that function as data detector to provide odd and even data bit multiplexed output data signal while cross coupling the inphase and quadrature transformed outputs for removing

A method of tracking a signal from a moving signal source including commanding angular offsets to control an antenna to track a signal from a moving signal source taking into consideration directional changes of the signal and comparisons between actual and estimated trajectories of the moving signal source.

An adaptive smoother includes a phase lock loop, a scintillation amplitude estimator and a fixed delay smoother operating on amplitude estimates for providing improved phase and/or code delay estimates of coherently modulated signals in the presence of dynamic phase process and time varying amplitudes.

A computationally efficient analytical method determines when two quadric surfaces, such as ellipsoids surfaces, share the same volume by adding an extra dimension to the solution space for providing extradimensional product matrices defining degenerate quadric surfaces.