Award Data

Accurate prediction of aero-thermal demise of post-intercept debris is a high priority for the United States Missile Defense Agency (MDA). Predictive tools for assessing the aero-thermal demise of intercept debris are needed to support BMDS effectiveness evaluations, flight test and range safety operations, and consequence mitigation assessments. During this Phase I effort, Shearwater Technology ...

Three dimensional (3D) imaging and single-wavelength active sensors are very effective for distinguishing moving targets, such as missiles, from decoys and for cutting through natural clutter and thermal noise. For systems equipped with ALS to accurately acquire, track and point moving objects, extremely sensitive detectors are required to be able to provide the bandwidth and resolution necessary ...

The primary objective of Phase I work performed by the team of CU Aerospace and the University of Illinois is to produce a powerful and easy to use, parallel, fluid-dynamic, chemical-kinetic, and optical simulation software package that will function on any modern computational platform (Unix, Linux, Windows, MacOS), be applicable to a wide range of laser systems and other technical problems of in ...

Under the work proposed here, we will develop a physics based comprehensive software for modeling the behavior of a diode pumped alkali laser: DPAL. The software will be designed primarily for a He-Rb DPAL. However, it could easily be applied to DPALs based on other alkali atoms, such as Cs. Furthermore, the model would be versatile enough to be applicable to other high energy lasers as well. ...

High performance infrared detectors in the LWIR regime are highly needed in a number of missile defense missions. In order to image targets from long distance, it is important that imagers have high sensitivity and high resolution. This leads to technical goals of having low noise, low dark current in small size pixels in large arrays. While saturated performance levels of traditional systems base ...

In the proposed effort, we will leverage this extensive experience and capabilities to realize a frequency agile mmW radiometer that can cover the range of DC-110 GHz and can be scaled to DC-200 GHz under Phase II. Ours is a photonic system that multiplies and up-coverts a low-frequency reference signal onto an optical carrier (laser) using EO modulation, then uses the modulation sidebands to inj ...

Quantifying oceanic CO2 uptake and ocean acidification and understanding their impact on global climate and ocean ecology are key goals of NOAA’s climate change research programs. NOAA’s request for Development of a long-term Lagrangian pH and pCO2 drifter (SBIR Subtopic 8.3.1C) aims to address these goals by developing technology that measures both pCO2 and pH that can be widely deployed in t ...

The potential threat of directed energy weapons (DEW) and other high peak power electromagnetic transient signals require radar systems to implement front door protection against high power signals. Fast ultra wideband (UWB) and high power microwave (HPM) signals are not successfully blocked by most current protection technologies. The Phase I work demonstrated a quasi-passive, solid state e ...

In Phase I, Sivananthan Laboratories (SL) demonstrated the ability to polish Si(211) wafers, as supplied by a vendor with an already fine polish, to an even better surface smoothness and uniformity. SL also demonstrated the molecular beam epitaxy (MBE) growth of CdTe films with better crystalline quality and uniformity using SL-polished 2 cm x 2 cm Si(211) samples, compared to those grown on the ...

The Defense Threat Reduction Agency (DTRA) and the U.S. Strategic Command Center for Combating Weapons of Mass Destruction (SCC-WMD) requires transformational materials technology to support the intelligence, surveillance, and reconnaissance (ISR) of personnel and materials associated with weapons of mass destruction (WMD) development, manufacturing, and proliferation. Voxtel, Inc. proposes to fa ...