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The
Department of Energy's (DoE) Sandia National Laboratory,
in cooperation with NIST, developed the portable Josephson
Voltage Standard. This new compact, fully automated
calibration system for direct current reference standards
and digital voltmeters has proved useful to NASA,
and technicians may eventually adapt this portable
concept for space applications. NASA began using one
portable Josephson Voltage Standard among all its
Centers, saving the cost of $150,000 per laboratory
system at each Center.
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DoE
and NASA collaborated on the Alpha Magnetic Spectrometer
(AMS) experiment, which flew on a Space Shuttle mission
during FY 1998. The AMS collaboration was the first time
such a detector has been put in orbit, and it measured antimatter
and dark matter in space.
Los
Alamos National Laboratory, which is operated by the University
of California for DoE, recently completed testing a space
instrument designed to provide a better understanding of
the compositions of comets and asteroids and delivered the
instrument for eventual integration with the NASA spacecraft.
The first spectrometer combines two spectrometers into one
package and is known as the Plasma Experiment for Planetary
Exploration. This experiment package can analyze the composition
of many types of cosmic matter and can also determine whether
a nuclear or chemical explosion took place in the upper
atmosphere or in space.
Los
Alamos National Laboratory scientists received a grant from
NASA to use laboratory space instrument design and manufacturing
expertise to test critical components of an instrument for
possible use on a future mission to Jupiter's moon, Europa.
Simultaneously, three researchers from Los Alamos worked
as part of a 17-member international team to determine for
NASA the technical requirements for an instrument to study
that moon's icy surface. The team began studying many criteria,
including how to distinguish the various radar reflection
signals returned by rocks, cracks in the ice, salty and
nonsalty ice, and other conditions on the Europa's surface.
DoE's
Oak Ridge National Laboratory continued to serve as one
of NASA's nine Distributed Active Archive Centers as part
of NASA's EOSDIS, a key component of the U.S. Global Change
Research Program. Finally, DoE's Lawrence Berkeley National
Laboratory continued to support NASA's research on radiation
levels in space and their effects on the human body.
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