Award Data

This NASA Phase I STTR effort will establish the feasibility of developing a compact broadband near to mid-IR programmable optical comb for use in laser based remote sensing and communications. The comb generator will use a waveguide-based optical parametric gain block technology that can have ultra wideband (>250nm) operation with very high gain (>25dB) in a very compact footprint. This approach ...

To provide reliably secure communications, development of quantum optical devices for encrypted ground-to-space communications is a necessity. The overall goal of this NASA effort is to develop and deliver efficient, single-pass quantum optical waveguide sources capable of backward quasi-phase-matched interactions for generation of high purity photon pairs for use in an on-demand photon source to ...

This SBIR Phase I effort proposes to establish the feasibility of developing a UV Planar Lightwave Circuit (PLC); a compact, highly efficient, waveguide-based frequency conversion module for the generation of phase modulated UV radiation for use in multi-wavelength lidar applications such as NASA LaRC's HSRL program. The proposed module will provide phase modulated 355 nm radiation for calibratio ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I effort will investigate the feasibility of using electro-optic (EO) beam scanning element to control coupling into a fiber as a fiber coupled pulse shaper. The goal of the pulse shaper is to reduce a 4-6ns pulse to 0.4-0.6ns pulse at 1064nm and/or 532nm at input powers at the 2mJ level. The highest utility of the proposed pulse shaper is its progr ...

R-LAM (Rad-hard Location and Attitude Module), promises a new generation of both integrated navigation modules and stand-alone navigation subsystems including nav-grade IMU's, atomic-precision clocks and GPS units compliant with the Space Plug and Play Architecture (SPA) initiative. R-LAM leverages two active DARPA MTO programs. In the Navigation-Grade Integrated Micro-Gyroscope (NG-IMG) project ...

The Mars Sample Return mission is being planned to return samples of Martian rock, regolith, and atmosphere to Earth for scientific analysis. The Martian sample size is directly affected by the propulsion capabilities of the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) and innovations are sought to enhance propulsion capabilities of the MAV for functions including primary propulsion from the Mars surface, orbit inse ...

Accurate real-time microbial monitoring of water environment is of paramount importance to crew health as well as to ensure proper functioning and control of the life support system during space exploration. The existing methods are time-consuming and labor-intensive, and the devices used are bulky, consumable-hungry, and ill-suited for spacecraft deployment. We propose to develop and demonstrate ...

Thermal analysis is increasingly used in thermal engineering of spacecrafts in every stage, including design, test, and ground-operation simulation. Current high-fidelity modeling and simulation tools are computationally prohibitive and not fully compatible to integrated, multi-physics (e.g., thermal-structural-optical) analysis of spacecrafts, particularly in a single model topology currently bei ...

The goal of this SBIR project is to develop a computational tool with unique predictive capabilities for the aerothermodynamic environment around ablation-cooled hypersonic re-entry vehicles. The framework for this tool will be developed such that all relevant models can be coupled to the LeMANS code for nonequilibrium hypersonic flows and the MOPAR code for ablation material response, both develo ...

NASA space exploration projects require avionic systems, components, and controllers that are capable of operating in the extreme temperature and radiation environments of deep space. To design wide-temperature radiation-hardened (rad-hard) electronics and predict characteristics and reliability in space, advanced models and simulation tools are required at multiple levels. Analog and mixed-signal ...