Award Data

The proposal outlines a research program for developing a novel soft-computing technology composed of an Artificial Immune System and Bayesian Belief Networks for monitoring, knowledge and information processing, and decision support infrastructure for testing of rocket engines of future spacecrafts. An engine failure during test operations may cause catastrophic results for the test article, supp ...

Advanced Liquid Logic proposes to develop a very capable analyzer based on its digital microfluidic technology. Such an analyzer would be:  Capable of both simple and complex biological assays  Small, lightweight, power efficient, and easy to operate  Fully programmable and remotely reprogrammable Under NIH funding we have demonstrated clinical chemistry blood diagnostic testing on our ...

A clear need exists for the next generation of Ceramic Matrix Composites (CMC) for Thermal Protection Systems (TPS), propulsion hardware, and other high temperature applications. No "off-the-shelf" materials and/or processes capable of meeting NASA's goals are available, yet completely integrating a unique combination of commercially available or nearly commercially available technologies can m ...

Future NASA architectures and missions will involve many distributed platforms that must work together. This in turn requires guidance, navigation and control (GN&C) technology such as systems that determine spacecraft relative range and attitude. The proposed Hybrid Guidance System (HGS) will be such a system, providing increased relative navigation accuracy and robustness while reducing mass, vo ...

ASRI proposes to develop an advanced and commercially viable Non-Intrusive Vibration Monitoring System (NI-VMS) which can provide effective on-line/off-line engine vibration monitoring capabilities without relying on intrusive key-phasor speed measurements. Many powerful vibration signature analysis techniques for engine-health monitoring rely on key-phasor signals to extract/enhance critical fau ...

There is an acute need for a networked chemical sensor that is inexpensive enough to allow it to be treated as a disposable item - deployed and left in-place until the end of its useful life, or until operations move out of communications range. Electrochemical microarray sensors can be fabricated at low enough unit cost to make the development of a disposable sensor node feasible. These sensors ...

Significant improvements in photovoltaic materials and systems are required to enable future exploration missions. This SBIR project, involving two innovative organizations: CFD Research Corporation (CFDRC) and University of California Riverside (UCR), has two major objectives: 1) develop and provide reliable, validated computational tools for assessment, design, and optimization of novel nanostru ...

This project aims to provide Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools for radiation-tolerant, wide-temperature-range digital, analog, mixed-signal, and radio-frequency electronic components suitable for operation in the extreme environments of the Moon, Mars, and other deep space destinations. All such exploration systems will need reliable electronics able to operate in a wide temperature range (-230?C ...

The use of gelled propellants for deep space planetary missions may enable adoption of high performance (Isp-vac>360 sec) propellant combinations that do not require power-intensive heating and stirring cycles before firings, and whose handling and safety characteristics are close to stated goals of "green" propellants. Phase I focused on the ability to gel both halves of the propellant combinati ...

This project will develop a much-needed multidisciplinary analysis tool for predicting the impact of aeroelastic effects on the functionality of inflatable aeroassist vehicles in both the continuum and rarefied flow regimes. In this integrated multi-physics multi-disciplinary computing environment, high-fidelity modules for continuum and rarefied aerodynamics, stress, heat transfer, and computat ...