Award Data

Fires in dry bays of military aircraft present a significant hazard that must be addressed with advanced fire suppression systems. The USAF is interested in concepts that do not require power or active sensing of fire for proper operation. ADA Technologies, Inc. has been developing fine water mist fire suppression technology for the past 10 years, and proposes a solution for this problem that inco ...

There is a need to monitor the structural health of aerospace components operating in extreme temperatures ranges (e.g. -60 to +300C) and with high accelerations. Ideally the sensors employed for this task should be passive (i.e. not powered through batteries), permanently placed on the critical components and transmit the relevant data to a remote data processing center wirelessly.  Albido is pr ...

Polymers in space are subjected to various threats including hyperthermal oxygen atoms, UV and VUV photons, and ions.  These threats can degrade the polymer and lead to static charge accumulation.  This Phase II proposal will build on the Phase I work which demonstrated that inorganic films grown by atomic layer deposition (ALD) can protect polymers such as Kapton, Teflon and PMMA.  Al2O3 ALD f ...

We propose to apply a non-intrusive embedded acoustic sensor concept, which has been used successfully in reentry vehicle aerodynamics applications for detecting exterior flow conditions to penetrator munitions for detecting various media and buried structures during penetration. This effort includes: review of existing data and literature to choose promising signal characteristics for media and ...

Aqwest proposes to develop an advanced thermal management for cooling of electronic components using a variable conductance heat sink (VCHS) offering unparalleled capabilities in high-heat flux handling and temperature control. The project will produce a cooling system with the following benefits to wide band gap amplifiers and high-power laser diodes (HPLD): 1) Heat flux handling > 1200 W/cm2 2) ...

With the appropriate analytical resources, the Space & Missile Technology Directorate will be able to "look into the future" of the development of space system technologies, development which spans definition, acquisition, and operations phases. For example, developers will be able to clearly quantify system requirements before system acquisition begins, use component test data to predict overall ...

The optical beam scanners developed under this program will have linear resolution of up to 1000 angles with access times as low as 10 nanoseconds. Besides contributing to existing systems in optical memory access, optical signal processing, and optical switching, the unprecedented speed at such high resolutions will open up further applications previously unaccessible like real-time ...

This proposal describes a novel high throughput, massively parallel, ferroelectric liquid crystal-based Fourier transform spectrometer. The proposed system improves upon conventional polarization interference filters for applications requiring the recovery of spectral signatures. The basis for the proposed approach is that the high speed of FLC materials can be used to reduce hardware requiremen ...

Solution Engineering, Inc. (SEI) proposes to develop and demonstrate a prototype real time tracking system that supports robust multiple target tracking in an urban environment.  The approach will focus on increasing the robustness of the core feature tracking algorithms, utilizing target invariant characteristics to extend the ability to track, coast, and reacquire targets.  In addition higher ...

We introduce an innovative laser which brings inherently new capabilities to lidar that were not available with other coherent lidar laser sources. The unique design of this laser allows production of a greater range of pulse widths and energies than was previously obtainable from a single source. This 1.56 um eye-safe laser utilizes an intracavity Solid State Raman Shifter (SSRS) which is pumpe ...