Award Data

CU Aerospace (CUA) and team partners San Jose St. University (SJSU) and Lockheed Martin Space Systems Company (LMSSC) propose to develop a robust epoxy resin regenerator capable of improving cryocooler efficiency by more than 30%, and to design an enhanced compressor motor capable of improving the cryocooler efficiency by more than 20%. LMSSC manufactures a space cryocooler that already meets most ...

Future MDA space missions will utilize small spacecraft with correspondingly small, advanced sensor systems. Cooling of these sensors is required to decrease detector noise and increase detector sensitivity by maintaining the detector at a reduced operating temperature. The cooling system comprises a mechanical cryocooler and its control electronics, both of which are critical technologies to enab ...

Ross-Hime Designs, Inc. (RHD) Minneapolis, Minnesota is responding to MDAs Phase I SBIR solicitation Advanced Lightweight, Low Cost High-g Seeker Gimbal. RHDs design features 40 degrees of Az/El and is built almost entirely out of COTS components used in current production seeker gimbals. Building on the past SBIR contract Lightweight, Low-Cost Seeker Gimbals Army Space Missile Defense Command con ...

The NMT/UA team propose to develop a radiation-hardened, low power, and highly robust delay-insensitive asynchronous circuit design methodology in 90nm technology, prototyped by designing a SET/SEL/SEU immune asynchronous microcontroller test chip (PIC 16C57, for example).The proposed Phase 1 SBIR effort will focus on design, simulation, prototyping and demonstration of the key functional blocks o ...

Trusted Semiconductor Solutions will demonstrate how high-reliability substrate material, leading-edge commercial memories, advanced manufacturing processing, and our radiation circumvention and recovery approach enables high density electronic payloads needed for next generation guided missile and space applications. We will develop a prototype system-in-package (SiP) that utilizes commercial mem ...

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 primary objective of CU Aerospace’s Phase I work will be to investigate a relatively new, highly innovative high pressure singlet-delta oxygen generator (SOG) concept for the chemical oxygen-iodine laser (COIL). Estimates are that this SOG concept will significantly improve the pressure recovery of COIL systems while retaining efficiency. The results of the Phase I research will lay the fo ...

High sensitivity HgCdTe infrared detector arrays operating at 77K can be tailored for response across the infrared spectrum and are commonly utilized for infrared focal plane arrays (FPAs). However, the cooling systems required to achieve the desired sensitivity makes them heavy and therefore unsuitable for many applications. Infrared arrays operating above ~200K could be thermoelectrically-cooled ...

High performance infrared detectors in the very long wavelength infrared (VLWIR) spectral bands are highly needed in a number of missile defense missions. The current state-of-the-art infrared detection technology for missile defense programs is based on the Mercury Cadmium Telluride (HgCdTe) compounds. However, at present it is becoming increasingly apparent that this detection technology is ap ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II proposal describes a latching anti-tamper (AT) stress sensor (LATSS) for volumetric protection of military systems. LATSS devices are intended to passively detect and remember if a change in some mechanical aspect of the shield enclosing a protected volume has occurred and provide a signal that can be queried to report the change. They are based o ...