Award Data

Having previously designed, built and successfully tested a Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine (RDRE), GHKN Engineering proposes to evaluate the feasibility of RDRE technology for boost or upper stage propulsion for launch of small satellites to LEO. RDREs represent an innovative new rocket technology that harnesses the potential of continuous detonation combustion in elegant, compact, annular desi ...

The Mobile User Objective System (MUOS) is designed to replace UHF SATCOM with enhanced capacity and performance, modern crypto and modern protocols. The MUOS waveform is being ported to a number of software defined radios (SDRs) that will soon be fielded and capable of utilizing the MUOS network of geosynchronous satellites and ground transport. Once these radios are in place, the process of movi ...

MaXentric is developing a system architecture codenamed WATCHDOGS to improve situational awareness capabilities.The architecture includes a variety of sensor types including wideband RF receiver arrays, low-cost phased arrays, and inexpensive distributed receiver nodes.The measurements collected by the system are collaboratively processed to detect, classify, and track potential threats.MaXentric ...

Existing inspection techniques for corrosion detection and wall thickness monitoring on ICBM silo walls are highly inefficient. Guidedwave (FBS, Inc. d.b.a. Guidedwave) has developed a revolutionary guided wave phased array (GWPA) ultrasound technology for the efficient inspection of large-area structures for plate and weld defects. The patented GWPA technology performs rapid 360-degree volumetric ...

The technical objective of the Phase II project is to develop the production-ready Dynamic Flight Simulation (DFS) system using the F-15 Saudi as a testbed and validate it with the F-15 Saudi flight test data. The key element in the DFS system is the Reduced-Order-Model (ROM)-based aeroelastic solver with an embedded aerodynamic forces database that is generated by a steady Navier-Stokes solver an ...

Alphacore will develop a compact tunable surface mount component (capacitor bank) with tunable component range of more than 10:1. It will provide a tuning mechanism for a wide range of filter topologies with user selectable range of 10 bits. A capacitance selection from 100fF to 100pF using high density CMIM capacitors over small foot print for a variety of bands used in wide applications includin ...

In Phase I of this STTR program, Structured Materials Industries, Inc. (SMI) and Sandia National Laboratories (SNL) will demonstrated high-efficiency mid-IR metasurface flat optics. We will use Metalorganic Chemical Vapor Deposition (MOCVD) to grow Lead Telluride (PbTe) on Barium Fluoride (BaF2) substrates to construct flat meta-lenses equivalent of cylindrical and aspheric lenses for mid-IR image ...

GPS denial is a growing threat to military and civilian operations around the world, both through active jamming and through anticipated failure of an aging GPS satellite constellation. While active jamming can be circumvented with specialized circuitry, obtaining position, navigation, and timing (PNT) during satellite failure remains an unsolved and growing problem. In collaboration with AFRL per ...

Reducing degradation of solar arrays is critically important for Orbital Transfer Elements (OTE). Currently used III-V solar cells suffer from radiation induced degradation.In this project we propose novel ultrathin bifacial silicon solar cells for OTE, which are rad-hard, enabling low degradation, and reducing the cost both in $/W and $/kg by a factor of 10 compared to III-V cells.Ultrathin bifac ...

Theater Weather Imaging and Cloud Characterization Sensor (TWICCS) payload for the MetNet-1 Small Satellite will demonstrate the capabilities of a push-frame, multispectral imager in acquiring high quality weather data covering from the Visible through Longwave Infrared. Data products supported include Theater Weather Imaging products (ie. discrimination of ground fog, dust, and smoke, etc.) and C ...