Award Data

A catalytic post-processor is the last unit operation that reclaimed water typically sees before being consumed by the crew, therefore the entire sub-system must be safe, reliable and well-understood. The key innovation required to provide a sub-system for longer-term missions is to develop catalyst technologies that maintain a high degree of activity and physical stability over multi-year operati ...

Accurate estimates of the radiative effects of clouds and aerosols are essential for an understanding of the Earth's climate system. Under the EOS program, NASA has placed into orbit a series of satellites devoted to long term observations of the climate state. Central to the observation of the radiation balance are the CERES instruments that fly on both the Terra (2000 - present) and Aqua (2002 ...

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project includes peak demand relief for utilities, reduced freezer operating costs for retail stores, and natural refrigerants for regulators. Unfortunately, no state-ofthe- art system simultaneously addresses all these issues. Industrial/commercial batteries remain unaffordable, refrigeration costs account for 60% of a retail store?s electricity bil ...

The broader impact/commercial potential of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project will be to increase the efficiency of domestic oil production. Using current methods, the oil industry is able to extract only 5% of the known hydrocarbon from shale formation. This represents more than $500B of potential oil and gas that cannot be economically produced for the US economy. Th ...

The broader impact/commercial impact of this Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II project is in promoting the protection of human health, the environment, and our nation's natural resources by providing new sensors that enable fast, accurate, cost-effective sampling and analysis tools to monitor pollution and exposure. The innovations developed here will allow for the rapid identific ...

This SBIR Phase II project studies the problem of how to engage students in STEM (Science Technology Engineering and Mathematics) education through game-based learning in a Virtual Robotics computer game. In the game, students design, assemble and train virtual walking robots to compete against their peer robots to secure a seat on a virtual mission to Mars. The project analyses the effects of com ...

The broader impact/commercial potential of this project stems from the possibility of obtaining real-time precise 3D depth information using a miniature robust sensor system opening up a myriad of opportunities for commercial application. Imaging sensors are now widespread and inexpensive, as is computing power, already an integral part of most cameras. The 3D imaging sensor to be developed enable ...

Radiation Hardened Application Specific Integrated Circuits (ASICs) provide the highest performance, lowest power and smallest size ICs for Space Missions. To dramatically reduce the development cycle, and reduce cost to tape out, Micro-RDC proposes a Structured ASIC approach. In this methodology, we fix an array of complex logic cells and provide a fixed area array for I/O pads supporting in exce ...

Terminal Velocity Aerospace, LLC (TVA) proposes to enable commercial space activity and improve utilization of the International Space Station (ISS) through use of small reentry devices (REDs) for high-temperature materials flight testing and small payload return missions. TVA is presently developing two RED systems with a high degree of technological similarity. The first is RED-Data2, a 1.7 kg c ...

Proposed is the development and validation in a laboratory environment of a photovoltaic (PV) array design of unique and enabling characteristics. Namely, smoothly deployed from compact stowage with one single, continuous sweep of motion, a total PV surface area up to and beyond 4000~m2 (the area associated with 1~MW power) is provided by two wings, with mechanical performance objectives also met ...