Award Data

Temperature is the critical signal that allows monitoring of a myriad of Earth’s processes. From direct measurements of wildfire and urban heat to more complex relationships with drought, agriculture, aquaculture, and biodiversity, maintaining a steady pulse on Earth’s surface temperature enables us to mitigate for and adapt to the impacts of extreme events and increasingly variable water avai ...

The brevetoxins (PbTx) produced by Karenia brevis cause harmful algal blooms (HAB) or "red tide" in seawater. Currently, the only available ways of detecting PbTx are laboratory tests such as enzyme-linked immunosorbent assays, which are expensive and slow, and require complex instrumentation and multiple processing steps. In previous work Intelligent Optical Systems (IOS) demonstrated a compact l ...

In this program, we aim to pioneer a chip-scale packaged platform to enable efficient coupling from single-mode photonic integrated circuits (PICs) to a large-area (several millimeters in diameter or larger), diffraction-limited beam in response to Topic T8.07 Photonic Integrated Circuits. We further aim to leverage this technology to realize a chip-scale optical engine for light detection and ran ...

Quantum Sensors have use in a wide variety of applications including microscopy, positioning systems, communication technology, electric and magnetic field sensors, as well as geophysical areas. Significant gains from Quantum Sensors include technologies important for a range of NASA missions including efficient photon detection, optical clocks, gravimetry, gravitational wave sensing, ranging, and ...

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) and the University of Illinois Urbana-Champaign (UIUC) will develop integrated optical frequency shifters to enable Quantum-memory Wavelength-Division Multiplexing (QWDM). Our approach will enable the connection of multiple quantum memory registers across a free-space or fiber optical channel, increasing the bandwidth of near-term quantum networks by 10ndash;100x. As m ...

NASA will use swarms of robot vehicles for future planetary exploration, including Moon explorations in support of a sustained lunar presence. Advanced robotic and autonomous systems can overcome challenges inherent in navigating extreme terrain. Other tasks, such as obtaining mineral or ice samples from a wide area of a planetary surface or exploring terrain that blocks the transmission of signal ...

The proposed effort concerns technologies related to cryogenic propellant production, storage, transfer, and usage to support NASArsquo;s in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) goals. nbsp;They include a broad range of applications, scales, and environments consistent with future NASA missions to the Moon and Mars.nbsp;nbsp;More specifically, the project will addressnbsp;development of a piecewise-sm ...

Achieving trustworthy and trusted autonomy starts early in the development process through performing hazard analysis, fault analysis, identifying mitigating requirements, and carefully and rigorously tracing those requirements all the way into design, models, implementation, and tests. However, traceability can be time-consuming, costly, and error-prone. To address these challenges, significant a ...

The program will develop a spectrometer with chip-scale footprint and performance rivaling high-end benchtop spectrum analyzers leveraging an innovative digital Fourier Transform (dFT) architecture, which uniquely enables exponential scaling of performance. Specifically,nbsp;the Phase II project will build on the accomplishments from Phase I and fabricate the photonic circuits via AIM Photonicsrsq ...

The growing volume and quality of Earth observations offer improvements in data assimilation and weather forecasting that can only be fully realized by advances in AI. 3D atmospheric profiles, including temperature, humidity, and winds, are key missing observables in NASA#39;s Earth Observation System (EOS) and presents large initial condition uncertainties in numerical weather prediction (NWP).nb ...