Award Data

Diode-Pumped Alkali Lasers (DPALs) have great potential for high-energy lasers. Proper design of these systems is challenging because many interrelated processes impact their performance, and critical kinetic rate coefficients are not well known. In response, our team is developing a comprehensive physics-based analysis/design tool, and experimentally determining key kinetic rate coefficients. The ...

The Missile Defense Agency (MDA) is seeking innovative improvements of mature product and material technologies that address increased kinematic performance and containment through reduction of mass, while maintaining or increasing performance. To meet this need, Valley Tech Systems (VTS) has developed, through the MDA SBIR program, a solid, high-fidelity prototype Extinguishable Divert and Attitu ...

In this work, Freedom Photonics will team with University of California, Santa Barbara to develop a hybrid integration platform that integrates yielded, best-of-breed active optical components with low-cost, high functionality Silicon Photonics components in a manner that is compatible with foundry fabrication (such as AIM Photonics). This will be performed in a highly manufacturable manner, using ...

A series of RDT&E activities is proposed to create and demonstrate a reconfigurable, autonomous flight controller for the Aircraft for Distributed Electric Propulsion Throttle-based Flight Control (ADEPT-FC) which was designed and built in Phase I, a 33 lb remote controlled aircraft featuring eight overwing electric ducted fans (EDFs) distributed spanwise along the wing’s trailing edge. The prop ...

.The growing interest in CubeSat swarm and constellation systems by NASA, the Department of Defense and commercial ventures has created a need for self-managed inter-satellite networks capable of handling large amount of data while simultaneously precisely synchronizing time and measuring the distances between the spacecraft. CrossTrac Engineering, Inc., in cooperation with our partners Professor ...

To support development at NASA’s Stennis Space Center (SSC) testing facilities and infrastructure for the monitoring of remote or inaccessible measurement locations, American GNC Corporation (AGNC) and Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute (RPI) have developed the Through Wall Wireless Intelligent Sensor and Health Monitoring (TWall-ISHM) System. This technology allows deploying flexible instrumentat ...

The Advanced Space Suit carries consumable cooling water maintained at ambient pressure within a soft-walled, flexible reservoir. To ensure uninterrupted thermal control it is critical to monitor the volume of water remaining, but no known sensor is suitable for this task. Existing measurement techniques are unacceptably sensitive to the motion and varying geometry of the reservoir in microgravity ...

A key requirement for IR sensors in interceptor seekers is to continue to image through adverse environments, including the radiation from nuclear events. This radiation hardening requirement is addressed with a multifaceted approach that includes a novel filter, implemented in the unit cell, that mitigates the effects of gammas, betas, and protons, while leaving the IR signal unaltered. Other rad ...

Improving capabilities of telemetry systems for next generation e.g. (MOKV) missile defense launch vehicles, kill vehicles, and test/target vehicles subsystems can transform operational testing of such systems and has the potential to increase capabilities of systems that rely on radio communications. As these systems, and their test scenarios become get more complex they will require unprecedente ...

Legacy SDR (Software Defined Radio) has been somewhat hailed as the “be all, end all” solution to communications systems. Reality is that SDR platforms are challenged by the clock speed of the underlying processor, and the fact that waveform design is not a simple process. As missions keep pushing for higher throughput communications platforms, it is often the case that legacy SDR platforms ...