Award Data

This Phase I Small Business Innovation Research Project develops methods of recycling rare earth alloys from used nickel metal hydride batteries. Alloys of rare earth metal, nickel and other metals provide functional hydride storage materials that are critical to the operation of nickel metal hydride batteries and their applications. The current fleet of hybrid electric vehicles relies upon nick ...

Current anaerobic digester systems are designed for capturing energy from waste from large heads of farm animals. GHD, Inc., a leading manufacturer of anaerobic digesters, has stated that a minimum dairy heard size for economical implementation of a biogas system as 800 cows. These require turbine or diesel generator sets of 100 Kilowatt size and larger, a limiting factor in economically scaling ...

Infrared spectroscopy is an invaluable detection and measurement tool intensively used in Earth Science, Solar Physics and Astrophysics experiments pursued from satellite platforms. The geometrical characteristics and sensitivity of satellite infrared spectroscopy systems is often determined or limited by their optical elements. Improvements in optical components allow one to reduce the mass and i ...

The goals of reducing total cost and increasing reliability and safety of access to space continue to be top priorities for NASA. The most immediate propulsion launch challenge involves increasing lift weight from 70 to 130 metric tons by developing the heavy lift Space Launch System (SLS). Solid rocket motor analysis tools are needed to simulate ignition and propellant recession during the burn ...

Large-area (3m2), UV-sensitive focal plane arrays are needed for observation of air showers from ultra-high energy cosmic rays (JEM-EUSO) as well as for visible-wavelength spectrographic and photometric instruments planned for future telescopes (OWL). Existing photocathode-based technologies for visible and UV instruments lack sensitivity, are bulky, and have limited reliability. Solid-state silic ...

We propose a hollow reservoir cathode to improve performance in ion and Hall thrusters. We will adapt our existing reservoir cathode technology to this purpose. Reservoir cathodes are the only emission sources that are capable of supplying the necessary current density (>5.0 A/cm2) and life (>100,000 hours) for next generation high-power thrusters. More powerful thrusters are needed for i ...

High-performance HDTV cameras are commercially widespread, but are not presently available in radiation-hard versions. The objective of the proposed SBIR effort is to develop and commercialize a radiation-hard, high-performance HDTV sensor for NASA missions and other space-based and high-energy physics applications. Key features of this program are the use of radiation-hard, fully depleted silicon ...

We will develop a prototype of a GPU-based parallel Binary Decision Diagram (BDD) software package. BDDs are a data structure that satisfies some simple restrictions, resulting in a unique representation of a Boolean function regardless of its actual implementation. This property of BDDs allows the efficient solution of many problems. The proposed tool will exploit multi-core CPUs and the thousand ...

The Innovation Laboratory, Inc., proposes to use Automatic Dependent Surveillance?Broadcast (ADS-B) information as the basis of atmospheric wave and turbulence identification. Working in conjunction with the National Center for Atmospheric Research (NCAR), we research the feasibility of using the high rate ADS-B altitude information to detect the presence of mountain waves and Mountain Wave Turbu ...

Volume reduction is a critical element of Solid Waste Management for manned spacecraft and planetary habitations. To this end, the proposed fecal waste incinerator may be utilized to completely mineralize feces to harmless inorganic substances such as CO2 and water. These products may then be rerouted to the ECLSS processes for hydrogen CO2 reduction to form water and water electrolysis to yield ...