Award Data

NASA plans to use intelligent planetary rovers to improve the productivity and safety of human explorers. A key challenge in using robots to support human exploration is orienting remote personnel about robot operations as latency and communication constraints make real-time monitoring impractical. Communication bandwidth will be limited, making it essential to downlink important information early ...

Lynntech proposes a novel flow control methodology for airfoils undergoing dynamic stall. Dynamic stall refers to an aerodynamic phenomenon that is experienced by airfoils that undergo rapid changes in the flow angle of attack such as rotorcraft based airfoils, flapping wing technologies as well as fixed wing aircrafts undergoing sudden angle of attack changes. Dynamic stall is inherently an unste ...

Nanosatellites are receiving increased interest since they are proving reliable for surveillance, communication and other space missions. Also, the possibility of launching "constellations" of them offers unique capabilities for low-cost experimentation, sensing and communications in space. In comparison to larger spacecraft, their development time and costs have reduced and their launch costs a ...

Balcones Technologies, LLC proposes to adapt technologies developed by and resident in The University of Texas at Austin Center for Electromechanics (CEM) in the areas of dynamically controlled precision actuators and flywheel energy storage systems to address STTR 2011-1 Subtopic T3.01, Technologies for Space Power and Propulsion. In particular, our team will develop a concept design for a repla ...

A spacecraft thermal control system must keep the cabin (both air and its structure if manned) and electronic equipment within a narrow temperature range even though the environment may vary from very cold to warmer than room temperature. Since water is safe to use and an excellent coolant (other than its high freeze point and volumetric expansion during freeze), a water coolant loop often is use ...

Research suggests that: (1) orbital debris has reached an unstable point whereby, even with no future launches, the amount of debris will continue to grow through collisions among large-body debris, and (2) removing as few as five large objects each year can stabilize debris growth. For large-body active debris removal (ADR), active technologies are required to safely and efficiently stabilize and ...

The NASA Office of the Chief Technologist (OCT) has identified a "carbon-carbon nozzle (domestic source)" as a "Top Technical Challenge" in the 2011-2016 timeframe in the "Launch Propulsion Systems Roadmap" document. This program, by utilizing a demonstrably capable team with a deep history in the manufacture, testing, and analysis of C/C materials, will address this need by developing a Lyocell ...

An opportunity to boost energy efficiency in homes and buildings exists through the design of functional radiative properties in glass and other building materials. Current surface materials ignore or take first-order approaches to complicated spectral behavior, leading to sub-optimal properties. The sensitivity of material properties to microscale surface structuring creates a design challenge ...

ABSTRACT: The objective of this project is to design and fabricate multi-signal in-situ ablation sensors based on an acoustic transducer system, thermal measurement system (i.e., either photonic technology or in-situ thermal sensors based on ultra small thermocouples), and fast inverse heat transfer algorithms. This project will use the following approaches: Utilize commercially available opt ...

ABSTRACT: The next generation of hypersonic and reentry vehicles being designed for the Department of Defense (DoD) applications will require advanced Thermal Protection System (TPS). While new TPS shields are under development, a key difficulty is the ability to predict and diagnose TPS performance. ElectroDynamic Applications (EDA) has been developing an optical diagnosticfor use during testi ...