Award Data

Advanced lightweight ablative materials are needed to provide additional performance gains for next-generation ballistic missile defense system (BMDS) interceptors. The interceptor third stage, in particular, will benefit substantially from a reduction in inert weight, which enables increased missile stack velocity. Operational targets for the interceptor third-stage rocket motor (TSRM), and for o ...

San Diego Composites (SDC) is developing a toroidal composite overwrap pressure vessel (COPV) for use on next generation propulsion systems. A development effort sought to optimize the electron beam welding process parameters to reduce weld integrity sensitivity to poor fit up conditions when butt-welding the thin titanium liners integral to these composite overwrapped tanks. Results from this dev ...

The team of Makel Engineering, Inc. (MEI), TruWeather Solutions, LLC., and Latitude Engineering, LLC. propose to develop a novel, high sensitivity, fast response, solid state, electrochemical carbon monoxide sensor system for use in small UAVs which is capable of PPB level atmospheric measurements. The sensor is based on a thick film multi-element potentiometric micro sensor approach which has bee ...

We will produce a prototype Capillary Absorption Spectrometer (CAS) capable of measuring dissolved methane in water. The concept utilizes mid-infrared laser absorption spectroscopy within a hollow fiber optic capillary that both confines a gas sample and acts as an optical waveguide. A tunable laser beam propagates through the hollow fiber to a detector with near unity overlap between the beam and ...

Reliance on fishmeal and fish oil is a significant constraint to aquaculture expansion in America, and globally. As U.S. marine fish farming expands, genetic improvements could increase economic performance and decrease ecological footprint. This is critically important to sustainability, scalability and profitability of the industry, and is key to attracting capital investment. Commercial opportu ...

There is currently no low-cost, high performance minimally invasive, bottom-crawling ROV system for monitoring coastal and littoral benthic environments which is also deployable by a single marine researcher. Such a system augmenting divers’ observations would greatly expand the quantity and quality of data critical to managing coastal environments and preserving the economic benefits derived by ...

NOAA and in particular, the National Weather Service (NWS), have an unmet need of a cost feasible small Unmanned Aerial Systems (UAS) which can support multiple sensing missions which will either directly save lives or indirectly save lives through improved weather forecasts, warnings and public alerts. NOAA has enumerated two dozen valuable applications of small UAS for itself and partners. Toyon ...

The intent of the Phase I was to develop a LPS for large composite missile structures, and demonstrate functionality through manufacturing and testing. During the Phase I program, San Diego Composites (SDC) designed, manufactured, and successfully tested subcomponents with different integrated thermal protection system (TPS) - lightning protection system (LPS) configurations. SDC focused on pro ...

Addressing the MDAs need for an integrated circuit-based sensor to measure the ambient radio frequency (RF) near field, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to advance, in Phase II, the development of a new Two Dimensional Ambient RF FielD Integrated Sensor (TARDIS), which was successfully proven feasible in Phase I. TARDIS is based on state-of-the-art fully depleted thin-film silicon-on-ins ...

Initial research into potential in-situ KA sensor technologies has uncovered viable sensor technologies and demonstrated the existence of exploitable features that could discriminate between objects of similar shape and size, but very different materials and internal structure. A few different KA sensor types have been hypothesized and it is likely that more than one sensor type is necessary to co ...