Topic: Carbon Nanotubes

NASA looks to advance Nanomaterial-Based Detector Platform

February 18, 2019 |

Written by Lori Keesey
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – A NASA technologist is taking miniaturization to the extreme.

Mahmooda Sultana won funding to advance a potentially revolutionary, nanomaterial-based detector platform. The technology is capable of sensing everything from minute concentrations of gases and vapor, atmospheric pressure and temperature, and then transmitting that data via a wireless antenna — all from the same self-contained platform that measures just two-by-three-inches in size.

Under a $2 million technology development award, Sultana and her team at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, will spend the next two years advancing the autonomous multifunctional sensor platform.

Technologist Mahmooda Sultana holds an early iteration of an autonomous multifunctional sensor platform, which could benefit all of NASA’s major scientific disciplines and efforts to send humans to the Moon and Mars. (NASA/W. Hrybyk)

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NASA looks to use Carbon Nanotube Technology for Spaceflight Applications

May 14, 2018 |

Written by Lori Keesey
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – An ultra-dark coating comprised of nearly invisible shag rug-like strands made of pure carbon is proving to be highly versatile for all types of spaceflight applications.

In the most recent application of the carbon-nanotube coating, optical engineer John Hagopian, a contractor at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, and Goddard scientist Lucy Lim are growing an array of miniscule, button-shaped bumps of multi-walled nanotubes on a silicon wafer.

John Hagopian (left) collaborated with instrument scientist Lucy Lim to develop a new instrument that relies on carbon nanotubes to provide the electrons needed to excite minerals contained in an extraterrestrial sample. Larry Hess (right) patterns all the leads and patches where the catalyst for growing nanotubes is deposited. (NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center/Bill Hrybyk)

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NASA looks at studying Venus using CubeSats

August 16, 2017 |

Written by Lori Keesey
NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Greenbelt, MD – Venus looks bland and featureless in visible light, but change the filter to ultraviolet, and Earth’s twin suddenly looks like a different planet. Dark and light areas stripe the sphere, indicating that something is absorbing ultraviolet wavelengths in the planet’s cloud tops.

A team of scientists and engineers working at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland, has received funding from the agency’s Planetary Science Deep Space SmallSat Studies, or PSDS3, program to advance a CubeSat mission concept revealing the nature of this mysterious absorber situated within the planet’s uppermost cloud layer.

As seen in the ultraviolet, Venus is striped by light and dark areas indicating that an unknown absorber is operating in the planet’s top cloud layer. The image was taken by NASA’s Pioneer-Venus Orbiter in 1979. (NASA)

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NASA explores using Nanotechnology for Aerospace Applications

May 17, 2017 |

NASA Headquarters

Washington, D.C. – Mastering the intricacies of controlling matter at the nanoscale level is part of a revolutionary quest to apply nanotechnology to benefit industrial processes. A key element of that technology is the use of carbon nanotubes.

Carbon nanotubes are small hollow tubes with diameters of 0.7 to 50 nanometers and lengths generally in the tens of microns. While ultra-small, carbon nanotubes offer big-time attributes.

For instance, materials can be manufactured that exhibit superior strength but are still extremely lightweight. Think in terms of 200 times the strength and five times the elasticity of steel. For good measure, add in that they offer highly-efficient electrical and thermal conductivity.

A carbon nanotube Composite Overwrap Pressure Vessel (COPV) is to fly this month as part of the SubTec-7 mission using a 56-foot tall Black Brant IX rocket launched from NASA’s Wallops Flight Facility in Virginia. Shown here is the SubTec7 payload undergoing final testing and evaluation at Wallops Flight Facility. (NASA/Berit Bland)

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