National Aeronautics and Space Administration THE 2021 Issue 1 NRPA Publication of NASAP OSTResearch Park CMU Works on Wide Bandwidth to Avert Interference Full article on page 4 USGS & SSA Research Smaller Earthquakes “With Ambition” Full article on page 10 NRP Post IN THIS ISSUE 3 | Geoffrey Ament of STC Receives NASA Ames Contractor of the Year Award NASA recognizes Mr. Geoffrey Ament’s accomplish- ments at Ames Research Center 4 | CMU Reducing Interference ECE researchers were awarded a $1M NSF grant to investigate new ways to avert interference 6 | Breakthrough Initiatives Help to Look for Life in the Clouds of Venus Initiatives to fund study into search for primitive life in the clouds of Venus 8 |RMV’s Hands on Approach to Educa- tion on ESD RMV’s in person and virtual classes on electrostatic discharge by Bob Vermillion 10 |USGS’s Study on the Movements of Smaller Earthquakes Study by USGS on how smaller quakes can actually shake more aggressively 2 www.nasa.gov NRP Post Mr. Geoffrey Ament of STC Receives NASA Ames Contractor of the Year Award Moffett Field, California, Summer 2020 r. Geoffrey Ament, an STC employ- Francisco, CA, and subsequently led ee who works on the AEMMS con- to a NASA Contractor Report (NASA/ Mtract at NASA Ames in Mountain View, CR-2018-219736). Furthermore, as part CA, was recently awarded the NASA of the Mars Helicopter risk reduction Ames Contractor of the Year Award. effort, he designed and assembled the Mr. Ament is a Research Associatein test hardware for the rotor blade spin- the field of Mechatronics Engineering. up in the JPL Space Simulator, a re- The award citation reads, “Mr. Ament’s quirement for Mars Helicopter testing; desire to explore, design, and inno- moreover, he led efforts to build a dust vate embodies the true spirit of what chamber and coaxial rotor control sys- a NASA Engineer should be. He is ar- tem to perform dust studies in order to ticulate, meticulous with his work, and study saltation and the effects of dust strives for excellence.” In their nomi- on the helicopter’s on-board sensors. nation letter the nominators cited that, Currently, Mr. Ament is the lead for all “Since the start of his employment as rotorcraft testing performed at Martian a Science and Technology Corporation atmospheric densities in the Planetary (STC) research associate in August of Aeolian Laboratory (PAL), and he de- 2015, Mr. Ament has made substantial signed (and is currently assembling) a contributions to NASA’s RLVT mission 2-by-2 meter wind tunnel for rotor test- with respect to both terrestrial and Mar- ing at Martian atmospheric conditions tian flight. In 2017, he was part of the as well as terrestrial UAV testing.” Multicopter Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) performance test team, during STC would like to congratulate Mr. which he designed and manufactured Ament on this award and to thank him quadcopter mounting hardware for for the years of exceptional service that mounting to the 7-by-10 ft wind tunnel he has provided to NASA Ames through sting mount. He was the test director STC. for the first-ever wind tunnel test of a simulated rotorcraft in forward flight at Mars atmospheric condi- tions, which led to a data report that he present- ed at the 2018 AHS conference in San www.nasa.gov/researchpark 3 NRP Post Detecting Wireless Interference BY Krista Burns June 23, 2020 ECE researchers were awarded a $1M NSF grant to investigate a system that allows devices to scan wide bandwidths to avert interference. n a time where countless devic- er and simplicity of most IoT devic- es are connected to the Internet es,” said Swarun Kumar, assistant wirelessly, interference is inevita- professor and principal investigator. Ible. Spectrum pollution in the Inter- “They are narrowband and unable net-of-Things (IoT) era is something to sense and avoid incumbents on all users experience—a lag in con- shared spectrum.” necting to your favorite app, not be- ing able to sync to a wireless print- The proposal presents a system er, the dreaded loading circle when designed for low-power devices to trying to stream your favorite show. sense spectrum at minimal energy But what if IoT devices could detect and cost, allowing these devices to and respect the presence of other behave as low-cost and distributed devices on a shared spectrum? spectrum observatories. This would allow for devices and users to have a seamless wireless Much like land and water, radio experience. spectrum is a shared resource by many stakeholders; Wi-Fi routers, Swarun Kumar, Anthony Rowe, and cellular companies, AM/FM radio Robert Iannucci from Carnegie Mel- stations, television towers, etc. lon University’s Department of Elec- Companies lease spectrum use un- trical and Computer Engineering der multi-year contracts. However, in new window have been award- a lot of the spectrum is not used ed a $1 million National Science consistently, leading to significant Foundation (NSF) grant to investi- wastage of a costly resource. What gate a system that allows teams of if there was a way to monitor the geo-distributed low-power devices spectrum and signal when it’s avail- to quickly and efficiently scan wide able at a given location so that it bandwidths to avert interference. could be leased on-the-fly when va- “The core challenge is the low-pow- cant? This would save companies 44 www.nasa.govwww.nasa.gov NRP Post “The core challenge is the low-power and sim- plicity of most IoT devices. They are narrowband and unable to sense and avoid incumbents on shared spectrum.” money, and increase the speed of “The testbed developed through the our devices. However, building such project will serve as a vehicle for a spectrum monitoring infrastruc- undergraduate and graduate-level ture can be costly. It would need projects as well as workshops for to be replicated all over the coun- K-12 students in the city of Pitts- try, and it would need to scan huge burgh,” said Kumar. “The team has swaths of spectrum, increasing the direct experience working with sen- cost further. sor deployments at Carnegie Mel- lon, the city of Pittsburgh, United Referred to as Swallow, this project States Geological Survey (USGS), explores the use of low-cost and and local industry partners and will low-power IoT devices to serve as leverage these connections to de- spectrum monitors that are cheap ploy Swallow at scale.” and can be placed anywhere. Glob- ally, IoT devices are projected to The project will be implemented and be deployed in tens of billions and evaluated on a large programmable be ubiquitous in the coming years. Low-Power Wide-Area Network- Rather than viewing these as yet ing testbed in the Carnegie Mellon another part of the spectrum shar- University campus that serves large ing problem, this project views them parts of the City of Pittsburgh. This as part of the solution in effectively award reflects NSF’s statutory mis- monitoring radio spectrum. sion and has been deemed worthy of support through evaluation using The project’s objective, if success- the Foundation’s intellectual merit ful, could pave a new way to man- and broader impacts review criteria. age, monitor, and better exploit spectrum—a valuable national re- source—as the world embarks on high-speed wireless beyond 5-G. www.nasa.gov/researchpark 5 NRP Post San Francisco – September 15, 2020 INITIATIVES TO FUND STUDY INTO SEARCH FOR PRIMITIVE LIFE IN THE CLOUDS OF VENUS ew evidence suggests presence of Discovery of Phosphine Npotential biosignature on closest planet to Earth. The new paper, from lead author Jane Greaves of Cardiff University, Seager and Breakthrough Initiatives, the privately-fund- their collaborators, demonstrates the pres- ed space science programs founded by sci- ence of phosphine (PH3) in the Venusian ence and technology investor and philan- atmosphere via an analysis of millime- thropist Yuri Milner, are funding a research ter-waveband observations by the Atacama study into the possibility of primitive life in Large Millimeter Array (ALMA) in Chile, with the clouds of Venus. The study is inspired additional evidence from the James Clerk by the discovery, announced yesterday, of Maxwell Telescope (JCMT in Hawai’i). the gas phosphine, considered a potential biosignature, in the planet’s atmosphere. The level of phosphine detected in the clouds of Venus – about 20 parts per billion The science team undertaking the research – is completely unexpected for a gas sus- will comprise of world-class physicists, as- ceptible to destruction by ultraviolet radia- tronomers, astrobiologists, chemists and tion, either directly or by ultraviolet-induced engineers, led by Sara Seager, Professor of radicals. This suggests that some process Planetary Science, Physics and Aerospace is replenishing the gas. But what process? Engineering at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. The group will investigate Phosphine is a “biogenic” chemical: all the scientific case for life and analyze the samples encountered on Earth have been technical challenges of an exploratory mis- produced by biological or human-made sion in the event that such evidence proves processes requiring considerable ener- compelling. gy inputs. Although the precise biological mechanisms generating phosphine are un- 6 www.nasa.gov NRP Post known, they are associated with the break- nus atmosphere and what further evidence down of organic matter by bacteria, with for life a mission to Venus could search for.” the gas being found in oxygen-free environ- ments such as marshlands and swamps, as Project Leadership well as the guts of animals. While the pres- ence of phosphine on Venus may turn out Sara Seager – MIT – Principal Investigator to stem from a non-living process, no such Janusz Petkowski – MIT – Deputy PI process on a terrestrial planet is currently Chris Carr – Georgia Tech known to science.