Award Data

Current state of the art inertial measurement units (IMUs) co-locate a set of accelerometers and gyroscopes into a single package. CU Aerospace (CUA), in partnership with the University of Illinois, propose the continued development of a scalable and distributed IMU (DSIMU) for space robotics and CubeSat applications. The user can deliberately choose a number of inertial sensors beyond the minimal ...

During the NASA program, we will transition the semiconductor nanomembrane self-calibrating cryogenic and minimum pressure sensors from their current concept and prototype TRL 4-5 demonstration stage, to near-term instrumentation products of use to NASArsquo;s propulsion system facilities, other NASA instrumentation programs, academic researchers and industrial technologists. NanoSonic will again ...

We will extend our previous work to create artificial intelligence (AI) Reasoning Modules for planning, scheduling, characterization, machine learning, and fault detection/diagnosis/reconfiguration for spacecraft and their subsystems, each able to operate in standalone fashion or be easily integrated with one another to execute in a variety of computational environments, including in highly distri ...

Sustainable Bioproducts (SBP) has developed a simple and energy efficient bioreactor technology for the purpose of supporting NASArsquo;s in-situ microbial manufacturing needs. The technology capitalizes on the robust nature of filamentous fungi grown as biofilms. SBP has shown that the system can be used to convert a multitude of mission available feedstocks into dense, easily harvestable biomats ...

NASArsquo;s plans to further expand human and robotic presence in space and planetary surface automatically involve significant thermal challenges. A hot reservoir variable conductance heat pipe (VCHP) that can provide much tighter passive thermal control capability is an ideal thermal management device for future planetary landers and rovers. Based on previous ISS test results, advanced fluid man ...

In Phase I we demonstrated the feasibility of a novel aeroservoelastic design approach for scaled model design, and demonstrated fabrication of the resulting designs as a ground test article.nbsp; The test article from Phase I successfully replicated the scaled structural dynamic behavior, and demonstrated the integration of an instrumentation backbone based on PCB technology which allows integrat ...

The REFPROP program developed by the National Institute of Standards and Technology (NIST) is a widely-used database for industrial fluid properties, including propellants used for chemical rocket propulsion.nbsp; For deep space applications, low-temperature propellants are of particular interest but accurate fluid property data was scarce or unavailable to the industry.nbsp; Recently, NASA MSFC h ...

nbsp;This project is developing, testing, and integrating hardware systems and software techniques to enable the co-localization of teams of rovers, specifically targeting small-scale, low size, weight, and power rovers. Utilizing inertial measurement units (IMU), ultra-wideband (UWB) ranging radio, and a model-based approach to relative visual range, bearing, and pose estimation, each rover in a ...

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 gr ...

The primary innovation proposed is the development of a lattice design tool that combines concepts from topology and parameter optimization to generate lattice materials that are aperiodic in nature and do not require a priori definition of cell size. With Additive Manufacturing, we can now specify detail to a degree previously not possible. In the context of cellular materials, however, it is not ...