Award Data

Researchers have determined that lunar soil contains approximately 43% oxygen in the lunar soil oxides, which could be extracted to provide breathable oxygen for consumption by astronauts. The proposed program will develop a solar receiver for the hydrogen reduction process that uses sodium heat pipes in the 1050oC temperature range. The heat pipe solar receiver is accepts the non-uniform solar ...

Long-term Lunar and Martian systems present challenges to thermal systems, including changes in thermal load, and large changes in the thermal environment between day and night. The innovation in the program is the development of a variable conductance heat pipe (VCHP) that passively accommodates the changing thermal load and environment. This allows the heat pipe evaporators (and any attached h ...

Aniuk Consulting, LLC, proposes to create a GIS software toolkit for easily converting NASA HDF-EOS data into formats that can be readily used within a Geographic Information System (GIS) or other geospatial software programs. The Hierarchical Data Format (HDF) is a widely used scientific data format and serves as the standard format for NASA EOS products. The HDF-EOS toolbar will allow a user t ...

The goal of the proposed work is to create new ways to manage, visualize, and share data produced by multiple software analysis tools, and to create a framework for integrating diversely-sourced analysis tools into software practices, across the lifecycle, in a way that improves both reliability and productivity. Software analysis tools are used by software programmers, analysts, and managers to ...

More than 52% of U.S. urban highway congestion is a direct result of highway incidents. Federal and State transportation authorities are searching for quick, cost-effective and efficient highway incident detection and warning systems. Several solutions have been proposed but none could satisfy requirements of transportation authorities. Central Signal's research and development, grounded in mor ...

Single crystal piezoelectric deformable mirrors with high actuator density, fine pitch, large stroke and no floating wires will be developed for future NASA science and communications applications. Single crystal piezoelectric DMs share the fine pitch with co-fired electrostrictive or ceramic piezoelectric DMs and MEMS DMs, but with large stroke at relatively low voltages (< 150 V) and with a broa ...

Cryogenic fluid transfer components using single crystal piezoelectric actuators are proposed to enable low thermal mass, minimal heat leak, low power consumption and fast response for cryogenic fluid transfer and handling systems to support NASA Lunar Lander, Ground Operations, Ares, and Lunar Surface Systems programs. Single crystal piezoelectrics are attractive because they exhibit 3 to 5 times ...

High temperature piezoelectric crystal (HTP) sensors are desired for future propulsion component structure health monitoring, operating parameters optimization, turbine engine control and health monitoring, as well as improving performance and maintainability of power production facilities and other rotary combustion engines. Recently discovered high temperature piezoelectrics showed stable piezoe ...

A new chemical kinetics model and database will be developed for aerothermodynamic analyses on entry vehicles. Unique features of this model include (1) the ability to model chemical kinetics in highly nonequilibrium flows at high altitudes, (2) the ability to predict nonequilibrium dissociation without reliance on traditional continuum kinetic rate equations, and (3) the ability to model complex ...

Instabilities associated with fluid handling and operation in liquid rocket propulsion systems and test facilities usually manifest themselves as structural vibrations and may cause structural damage such as the cracks observed in the space shuttle hydrogen feed liners. While the source of the instability is directly related to the performance of a component such as a turbopump, valve or a flow co ...