Award Data

ABSTRACT: State of the art Orbital Transfer Vehicle systems and GEO transfer missions require the demanding combined requirements of both high Thrust-to-Power (greater than 150 mN/kW) and high specific impulse (greater than 3000 s), all at constant power. The 9 kW PROTEAN system is a two-stage plasmoid thruster which adds secondary Neutral Entrainment (NE) to the ElectroMagnetic Plasmoid Thruster ...

ABSTRACT: Busek Co. Inc. and Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) propose to explore the physical limits of ionic liquid propulsion via development of new theory to explain effects of close packing emission density and to predict performance limits. The research is motivated by observations and tests demonstrating that emission from 2-dimensional porous surfaces yields order of magnitude g ...

ABSTRACT: The ability of plasmas to modify combustion has been known for more than 50 years. Recent advances in plasma generation technology and measurement diagnostics have led to extensive efforts to understand both the kinetics of the plasma-flame interaction and the enhancement of combustion properties such as ignition, extinction, flame speed and dynamics. Combustion Science & Engineering, ...

ABSTRACT: The objective of this STTR proposal is to develop and demonstrate a radiation hardened organic-based solar array adaptable to nanosatellites which exhibits flexibility, variable topology, high specific power, and low cost. Organic photovoltaics (OPVs) represent a transformative technology with great potential for extremely high-throughput manufacturing at very low cost. They have the po ...

ABSTRACT: High-performance organic electro-optic (OEO) polymers can enable the development of advanced EO technologies for achieving significantly reduced energy consumption and bandwidth enhancement in future information and communication technologies. One of the most critical steps in developing successful photonic technologies is to have high quality, reproducible materials that can be availab ...

ABSTRACT: The Phase II technical objectives follow directly from the Phase I effort, where all tasks necessary for RF photonic receiver fabrication were demonstrated. The Phase II effort will pursue two major objectives: 1) further development of SEO100 EO polymer based chips, packaged devices and arrays in collaboration with University of Dayton (antenna designs), taking advantage of multiphoto ...

ABSTRACT: Thermospheric densities are critical in determining orbital drag for providing collision avoidance warnings for manned and unmanned spaceflight, accurately cataloging orbiting objects, predicting reentry times, and estimating satellite lifetimes, on-board fuel requirements, and attitude dynamics. One of the critical drivers to thermospheric density models is the extreme ultraviolet (EUV ...

ABSTRACT: LongShortWay Inc, Boston University, and Applied Communication Sciences propose to develop a dynamic multi-sensor learning system that can adaptively detect target types and activities and schedule sensors to optimize the detection rate BENEFIT: Improved detection rate, increase field of view

ABSTRACT: High power and low insertion loss WDM components will be developed. In manufacturing WDM components, solid core fibers in both polarization insensitive and polarization maintaining, will be pursued, along with photonics crystal fiber components. A range of fiber sizes and device specifications will be developed and commercially offered by Q-Peak. The component that we propose to develo ...

ABSTRACT: AdValue Photonics and University of Arizona propose to demonstrate the capability of fabricating wavelength division multiplexers (WDM) for high-power fiber laser applications. It is based on AdValue Photonics"unique fused fiber technology using large-mode-area (LMA) fibers. Both polarization-maintaining (PM) and non-PM LMA fiber WDMs will be fabricated. By the end of Phase I, two proto ...