Company
Portfolio Data
Back to Company SearchSPACE LAB TECHNOLOGIES, LLC
UEI: WDXTJ9AHNZ68
Number of Employees: 5
HUBZone Owned: No
Woman Owned: No
Socially and Economically Disadvantaged: Yes
SBIR/STTR Involvement
Year of first award: 2017
13
Phase I Awards
4
Phase II Awards
30.77%
Conversion Rate
$1,760,641
Phase I Dollars
$3,059,890
Phase II Dollars
$4,820,531
Total Awarded
Awards
SOSHA – Sensor Optimization for Space Habitat Awareness
Amount: $156,431 Topic: T6
Deep space habitats must provide a functional, hospitable, and safe environment with and without crew onboard. This will require Earth independent operation during periods of intermittent crew occupancy and reduced mission control support due to communication delays and data bandwidth limits. NASA needs advanced systems engineering tools to develop and operate integrated autonomous fault management (FM) capabilities. Sensor network (SN) design and tools for FM systems verification and validation (V&V) are critical gaps. The optimal combination, density, and placement of sensors for fault detection and diagnosis and communicating spacecraft state in complex, dynamic, integrated subsystems may be difficult to ascertain from a large SN design space. Model-based systems engineering (MBSE) tools can help to reduce design space complexity, facilitate sensor suite optimization (SSO), and evaluate FM system performance, thus improving the safety, effectiveness, and cost of autonomous FM system development. Space Lab, in collaboration with the University of Colorado at Boulder, proposes the Sensor Optimization for Space Habitat Awareness (SOSHA™), an MBSE tool to support the design, verification, and validation of sensor networks and algorithms employed by smart habitat FM systems. SOSHA will be a major step towards autonomous systems development for Earth-independent spacecraft operation. The design is also readily transferable to terrestrial applications, including the management of industrial internets of things (IIoT) for industrial process monitoring. The Phase I project goal is to demonstrate SOSHA proof of concept. Objectives are to 1) Demonstrate critical functions in an autonomous SSO process; 2) Investigate feasibility of non-critical, low TRL SOSHA functions; and 3) Plan for V&V of high-fidelity SOSHA prototype. Through conceptual design, breadboard prototype demonstration, and high-fidelity V&V planning, the proposed project will raise SOSHA TRL from 2 to 4.
Tagged as:
STTR
Phase I
2024
NASA
An Efficient Freeze Tolerant Radiator for Single-Phase Active Thermal Control Systems
Amount: $156,495 Topic: Z13
The next major step in human space exploration is to establish a sustainable presence on the Moon under the Artemis program. The NASA 2024 SBIR focus area Z13.05 Components for Extreme Environments, calls for heat rejection solutions that allow freeze and thaw cycles without experiencing any damage or performance degradation for human-rated spacecraft on the lunar surface. Specifically, NASA seeks novel freeze-tolerant coolant tubes in radiators or heat exchangers. Deep space habitats, such as Lunar Gateway, lunar landers, or surface habitats, require robust active thermal control systems (ATCS) to maintain cabin temperature despite wide fluctuations in heat loads (during crewed and un-crewed periods) and sink temperatures. NASA spacecraft to date have redundant dual loop single-phase ATCS architectures, because there are no known fluids that are both non-toxic (safe to use inside the habitat) and low-freeze point (reliable for use outside of the habitat). Thus, a low-freeze point fluid is utilized in an external loop and a non-toxic fluid (water) in an internal loop. Despite low-freeze temperature coolants, the external loop may still freeze, especially during lunar night. ISS and other heritage ATCSs permit higher pressures during freezing and thawing of coolant and prevent complete freezing during low heat loads. However, radiator tubes are still subject to structural failure under high pressure. The proposed innovation is a low-mass, corrosion-resistant, freeze-tolerant, deployable radiator for ATCS in a lunar surface habitat. The technology permits compression or expansion of the working fluid throughout the radiator system, enabling coolant freezing/thawing, while meeting other environmental and architecture requirements. The proposed innovation may even be used in a single loop architecture, removing the need of a dual loop and reducing system mass. In Phase I, Space Lab will investigate the feasibility of the Space Lab® FT-Radiator™ freeze-tolerant radiator.
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase I
2024
NASA
EcoMine™ KREEP – Bioregenerative Rare Earth Element Mining from Lunar Mare Regolith
Amount: $156,489 Topic: Z12
NASA’s plans to establish a sustained Lunar presence for scientific research, Mars mission preparation, and a thriving commercial Lunar economy will require significant surface infrastructure. The use of in situ resources enables a more economical and sustainable approach to constructing this infrastructure. Lunar regolith contains an abundance of raw materials, like Rare Earth Elements (REEs), that can be used for in-situ construction on the moon, and on Earth. However, traditional Earth mining processes are not economically feasible on the moon, due to high energy demands, labor needs, high mass transport costs for consumable reagents, lower ore quality, and potential environmental and safety impacts. EcoMine™ is a bioregenerative mining facility for the Lunar surface that combines a closed-loop biomining process with an autonomous, self-powered, bioprocessing facility for commercial mining operations. EcoMine™ offers commercial Lunar mine operators an environmentally safe and more profitable way to recover REE and other valuable minerals, with less energy consumption, higher extraction efficiency, and significantly less mass transport costs than traditional chemical mining solutions. EcoMine™ is a major step towards a viable, sustainable lunar economy. In Phase I, Space Lab will demonstrate the technical feasibility of the EcoMine™ concept to autonomously, safely, and efficiently extract and separate REE minerals from non-polar Lunar mare regolith and prepare for future technology development. Project objectives are to demonstrate proof-of-concept for REE extraction, separation and recovery; and to investigate intra-facility regolith transport solutions, accomplished through conceptual design and analysis, process validation with benchtop experiments, and EDU development planning.
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase I
2024
NASA
EcoMine™ - Bioregenerative Mineral Mining from Lunar Regolith
Amount: $149,973 Topic: Zi02
NASA’s plans to establish a sustained Lunar presence for scientific research, Mars mission preparation, and a thriving commercial Lunar economy will require significant surface infrastructure. The use of in situ resources enables a more economical and sustainable approach to constructing this infrastructure, while providing an alternative source of rare Earth minerals for terrestrial use. Lunar regolith contains an abundance of Si and Al in anorthite, Fe and Ti in ilmenite, magnesium, and other REEs in mare regolith, that can be used for in-situ construction. However, traditional Earth mining processes are not economically feasible on the moon, due to high energy demands, labor needs, high mass transport costs for consumable reagents, lower ore quality, and potential environmental and safety impacts. NASA seeks space mining technologies to extract metals and feedstocks from Lunar regolith that are 1) autonomous, 2) robust to the Lunar surface environment 3) reduce the mass of raw material (ore) transported from the mine to the processor; 4) are economically feasible; and 5) efficiently regenerate and/or recycle reagents used. The proposed EcoMine™ is a bioregenerative mining facility for use on the Lunar surface. The goals of this project are to demonstrate the technical and economic feasibility of the EcoMine™ concept to autonomously, safely, and efficiently extract minerals from Lunar regolith and prepare for future technology development. Phase I objectives are to: 1) Investigate the EcoMine™ process safety and product quality; 2) Investigate the reliability of the EcoMine™ operation on the moon; 3) Assess the economic feasibility of the EcoMine architecture compared with chemical mining practices; and 4) Identify key architecture elements and process parameters for future verification & validation.
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase I
2024
NASA
A Smart Spectral Polarimetric Imager for Autonomous Plant Health Monitoring
Amount: $799,991 Topic: T6
For future long-duration space exploration missions, NASA expressed the need for plant systems that may provide a nutrient dense supplement to crew diet and possibly other life support functions, such as CO2 removal, O2 production, water recovery, and waste recycling.nbsp; Current and future infrastructure for plant growth include chambers with controlled environments.nbsp; To ensure optimal growing conditions in these chambers, the plants will require precise monitoring of health throughout the plant life cycle.nbsp; These monitoring systems will need to operate autonomously with little crew involvement.nbsp; Current plant monitoring instruments include multispectral and hyperspectral sensing that require post-process algorithms to detect physiological phenomena.nbsp; In Phase I, Space Lab Technologies (Space Lab) and the Space Plants Lab at the University of Florida (UF) investigated an improved approach for monitoring space plant health using a smart spectral polarimetric (SSP) imager to monitor morphological features and stresses.nbsp; The Phase II work builds upon the prototypes and analyses completed in Phase I, which includes a deliverable of an engineering demonstration unit (EDU) to NASA Kennedy Space Center.nbsp; The EDU is compact and intended for use in the ground-based plant growth chamber equivalents of the Advance Plant Habitat (APH) or VEGGIE.
Tagged as:
STTR
Phase II
2023
NASA
PHILM (Plant Habitat Ionic Liquid Membrane) for CO2 Control
Amount: $156,479 Topic: S15
Accurate control of the plant environment in space growth chambers is pivotal for space plant biology research. The PHILM (Plant Habitat Ionic Liquid Membrane) for CO2 control uses a supported ionic liquid membrane (SILM) to selectively separate COshy;2 from cabin air and then dose the gas into closed plant chambers to maintain constant CO2 concentrations. Utilizing respired cabin CO2 for plant growth has the advantages of 1) eliminating the continuous resupply mass for compressed cylinders and scrubbing cartridges and 2) reducing the load on the cabin CO2 removal system when larger scale crop production systems are integrated into the spacecraft. Membranes are attractive for spacecraft use because they require less power, fewer components, and less infrastructure volume than alternative methods, with no consumable mass, noise, or safety hazards. In support of NASArsquo;s priorities for space plant biology and space habitation system development, PHILMtrade; provides precise and timely CO2 control for plant growth chambers that is reliable, safe, compact, and energy efficient. PHILMtrade; can operate in microgravity and reduced gravity, advancing space plant biology research and space agriculture capabilities in space stations, transit vehicles, and surface habitats. PHILMtrade; is also readily transferrable to terrestrial botanical research and agriculture (plant growth chambers, greenhouses, and indoor farms). With PHILMtrade;, indoor farmers can enrich greenhouse CO2 for increased crop yield, by sequestering carbon from the atmosphere, a safer and more sustainable alternative. This Phase I project will establish feasibility and demonstrate proof of concept for supported ionic liquid membranes to maintain target CO2 concentrations in spacecraft plant growth chambers utilizing cabin air. The team will analyze a baseline system architecture, develop a breadboard prototype, and conduct experiments to validate performance predictions over expected operating conditions.
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase I
2022
NASA
A Smart Spectral Polarimetric Imager for Autonomous Plant Health Monitoring
Amount: $131,495 Topic: T6
For future long-duration space exploration missions, NASA expressed the need for plant systems that may provide a nutrient dense supplement to crew diet and possibly other life support functions, such as CO2 removal, O2 production, water recovery, and waste recycling.nbsp; Current and future infrastructure for plant growth include chambers with controlled environments.nbsp; To ensure optimal growing conditions in these chambers, the plants will require precise monitoring of health throughout the plant life cycle.nbsp; These monitoring systems will need to operate autonomously with little crew involvement.nbsp; Current plant monitoring instruments include multispectral and hyperspectral sensing that require post-process algorithms to detect physiological phenomena.nbsp; Space Lab Technologies (Space Lab) and the Space Plants Lab at the University of Florida (UF) propose an improved approach for monitoring space plant health using a smart spectral polarimetric imager to monitor morphological features and stresses.nbsp; The Phase I work investigates not only sensing bandlimited reflectance as do current space plant imagers, but also study the polarization flux reflected from the plant surfaces.nbsp; The polarization information conveys electric field direction of the reflected light.nbsp; Spectral polarization studies of plants are an emerging method for plant health monitoring with related published works within the past few years.nbsp; The proposed innovation expands upon this current research, where the biological and physical science for plant spectral polarimetry is still being researched.nbsp; In addition to spectral polarization imaging, real-time image processing using digital signal processing techniques within the on-board FPGA provide autonomous plant health monitoring.nbsp; Combining the use of spectrum, polarization, and real-time image processing in instrumentation enables optimal control for producing healthy plants or crops for space exploration.
Tagged as:
STTR
Phase I
2021
NASA
HEART - Habitat ECLSS Analytics for Resilience Tool for Real Time Habitability Management
Amount: $131,493 Topic: T10
HEART (Habitat ECLSS Analytics for Resilience Tool) is an environmental health monitoring platform that addresses the need for autonomous technologies to manage space habitats. Spacecraft crew on deep space exploration missions will need to manage, plan, and execute a mission independently of mission control on Earth, because of communication time lags or outages. Due to complexity of spacecraft systems, operations management will be prohibitively time consuming and computationally intensive. Off-nominal events may occur that limit crew activity or capacity. Furthermore, space habitats like Lunar Gateway may operate without crew for weeks, months, or even years at a time, necessitating autonomous operations. When a space habitat is unoccupied, unexpected events may require immediate autonomous detection and response. HEART assesses ECLSS robustness in real time for autonomous habitat health management. It provides state estimation, model-based anomaly detection, prioritized anomaly reporting, and managed transitions to different operating modes (dormant, quiescent, and active) in space habitats like Lunar Gateway. The benefits of HEART over state-of-the-art ECLSS health management applications include improved situational awareness, model-based anomaly detection for dynamic systems, early degradation detection, risk assessment for prioritized reporting, state transition readiness, and adaptability. This Phase I project will show proof of concept for the enabling functions of HEART. In support of NASArsquo;s priorities for sustained human exploration of deep space the HEART concept will be a major step towards autonomous systems that enable spacecraft operation independent of Earth-based mission control. The design will be readily transferable to terrestrial applications, including management of any complex controlled environment supporting life forms, such as submarines, plant growth chambers, greenhouses, or even biomanufacturing facilities.
Tagged as:
STTR
Phase I
2021
NASA
MarsOasis - An Efficient Autonomously Controlled Martian Crop Production System
Amount: $754,919 Topic: T7
The MarsOasistrade; cultivation system is a versatile, autonomous, environmentally controlled growth chamber for food provision on the Martian surface.nbsp; MarsOasistrade; integrates a wealth of prior research and Mars growth chamber concepts into a complete system design and operational prototype.nbsp; MarsOasistrade; includes several innovative features relative to the state of the art space growth chambers. nbsp;It can operate on the Mars surface or inside of a habitat.nbsp; The growth volume maximizes available growth area and supports a variety of crop sizes, from seeding through harvest.nbsp; It utilizes in-situ CO2 from the Mars atmosphere.nbsp; Hybrid lighting takes advantage of natural sunlight during warmer periods, and supplemental LEDs during extreme cold, low light, or indoor operation.nbsp; Recirculating hydroponics and humidity recycling minimize water loss.nbsp; The structure also supports a variety of hydroponic nutrient delivery methods, depending on crop needs.nbsp; The growth chamber uses solar power when outside, with deployable solar panels that stow during dust storms or at night.nbsp; It can also use power from the habitat or other external sources.nbsp; The growth chamber is mobile, so that the crew can easily relocate it.nbsp; Autonomous environmental control manages crop conditions reducing crew time for operation. Finally, remote teleoperation allows pre-deployment, prior to crew arrival. nbsp;nbsp;This project directly addresses the NASA STTR technology area T7.02 ldquo;Space Exploration Plant Growthrdquo; and will be a major step towards closed-loop, sustainable living systems for space exploration.nbsp; This collaborative effort between Space Lab Technologies, LLC and the Bioastronautics research group from the CU Smead Aerospace Engineering Sciences Department will culminate in the development of a pilot-scale engineering demonstration unit (EDU) for key components.nbsp; Finally, thermal analysis, PAR distribution models, and ESM estimates for the MarsOasistrade; concept will be refined, based on EDU testing results.nbsp; nbsp;nbsp;nbsp;
Tagged as:
STTR
Phase II
2020
NASA
Low Pressure Drop Oxygen Flow Meter for the PLSS
Amount: $754,982 Topic: H4
The portable life support system (PLSS) of the advanced extravehicular mobility unit (AEMU) provides the necessary environment for a crew member to operate within the space suit.nbsp; Within the PLSS, the oxygen ventilation loop provides carbon dioxide washout, gas temperature control, humidity control, and trace contaminant removal.nbsp; Historically, there have been issues with the measurement of air flow for the oxygen ventilation loop.nbsp; With the Apollo EMU, there were humidity issues with the implemented flow meter.nbsp; For the Space Shuttle/ISS EMU, the flow sensor was a flapper/microswitch combination that only measured a discrete threshold for flow.nbsp; The proposed innovation allows for continuous air flow measurement from 1 to 8 acfm with static pressures of 3.5 to 25 psia in the pure oxygen environment.nbsp; This new method meets the low pressure drop requirement and allows operation beyond low earth orbit (LEO) with radiation hardened electronics.nbsp; An engineering demonstration unit (EDU) will be developed during Phase II.
Tagged as:
SBIR
Phase II
2019
NASA