Award Data

In Phase I of this NASA SBIR project, Daniel H. Wagner Associates, Inc., designed and demonstrated the feasibility of a system for integrating environmental data into flight planning and execution for Unmanned Air Systems (UAS) in the National Airspace System (NAS). The Weather Aware Route Planning (WARP) system will provide weather-based Indicators and Warnings (I&W) and navigational recommendat ...

This SBIR will develop passive reactor criticality control technology for Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) identified by Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation (USNC) in Phase 1. This technology will allow NTP systems to start up by rotating the control drums to a single predetermined location and remain there for the duration of operation for the majority of the burns associated with a Mars mission. Pas ...

In this Phase II SBIR program, Southwest Sciences will continue the development of small, low power instrumentation for real-time direct measurement of carbonyl sulfide (OCS) in the atmosphere, especially targeting airborne measurements. The instrument is based on a room temperature interband cascade laser (ICL) operating in the 4800 - 4900 nm region. This laser has a substantially reduced (by a ...

Atmospheric clouds have strong impact on the global radiative budget. Cloud's radiative properties are strongly affected by droplet size distribution and number concentration. This SBIR project will develop an innovative, compact and inexpensive droplet measurement system (DMS), which will provide in situ measurement of droplet size distribution function and droplet number concentration in clouds. ...

In order to promote and facilitate broader use of NASA and other Earth observation data sources, the Phase I research focused on development of a cloud-based distributed computation platform for building, storing, and executing complex geospatial models. Widespread access to frequent, high-resolution Earth observation imagery has created the need for innovative tools like ModelLab that will help ...

Unmanned aerial systems (UAS) have the potential to significantly impact modern society. While the technology for unmanned air vehicles operating day in and day out without constant human supervision is maturing steadily, much remains to be done to make these vehicles commonplace. We have identified a number of challenges that must be addressed for these vehicles to safely and efficiently conduct ...

A critical element in the NASA/NRC Technology Roadmap is to develop Power Electronic Building Block (PEBB) devices that can function in Extreme Environments. NASA?s stated aim is to use high power density/high efficiency PEBB devices to streamline design and introduce size, weight, cost and efficiency savings. The formidable challenge is to design such PEBB devices that use materials that can fu ...

Future aircraft propulsion is destined to be electric. All electric aircraft propulsion systems promise significant improvements in energy efficiency, maneuverability, safety, reliability, reduced maintenance costs, noise reduction, higher lift, shorter takeoff, and other factors. NASA's LEAPtech technology is the major departure from the current state-of-art aircraft vehicle/engine design, possi ...

Unmanned aircraft systems (UAS) and, in particular, intelligent, autonomous aircraft operating in the national airspace system (NAS) have the potential to significantly impact modern society. They could perform difficult and dangerous tasks such as fire fighting, border patrol, and search and rescue, and dull tasks such as surveying crops. The elimination of a cockpit and pilot makes UAS operation ...

In this SBIR, USNC will develop an accident tolerant reactor shut-down system for Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) systems that will guarantee sub-criticality in the event of a water submersion accident. Reactor shut down during a water submersion accident is a crucial issue that must be addressed in NTP systems. The technology that USNC will develop in this SBIR is a low risk design feature that ...