Award Data

This Phase I STTR project will develop a highly reflecting, broadband, radiation resistant, low-stress and lightweight, membrane integrated into an electrostatically actuated microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) device for wavefront control applications in space telescopes. The underlying technology builds on nanomaterial coatings and electro-optical modeling competency of the company. InnoSense ...

Proposed work envisions development of high-rejection filters and smart reconfigurable antennas using MEMS switches. Adaptive feature of the proposed antenna provides higher S/N ratio and extends range for surface-to-surface communications. Tunable high-rejection filters lend themselves easily to software defined radios.

This STTR project aims to develop a process-hardened, simple and low cost multi-analyte sensor for detecting components of rocket engine plumes. The sensor will be constructed with materials for operating continuously at 550 OK. It will also withstand temperatures as high as 2100 OK for at least five seconds. NASA roadmaps point towards new hydrocarbon fueled engines. A non-intrusive instrument s ...

To address the need for non-intrusive sensors for rocket plume properties, we propose a laser-based velocity diagnostic that does not require seeding, works in high or low temperature flows, and can be used over a broad range of velocities. Hydroxyl tagging velocimetry (HTV) "writes" a line of OH molecules into the flow and interrogates them after a short delay to determine the velocity. Since the ...

An integrated computational environment for multidisciplinary, physics-based simulation and analyses of airbreathing hypersonic flight vehicles will be developed. These vehicles are among the most promising alternatives for the next generation of Highly Reliable Reusable Launch Systems (HRRLS). The proposed work will enable development of models with varying fidelity, incorporating the coupled dyn ...

The proposed innovation is to use the refrigerant capabilities of nitrous oxide (N2O) to provide the cooling required for reusable operation of an aerospike nozzle in conjunction with an N2O-HTPB† hybrid rocket motor. The phase change cooling as liquid N2O is flashed into a vapor is crucial to limiting to acceptable levels the erosion of both the nozzle throat and spike, thereby enabling reusabl ...

Advanced liquid rocket propulsion systems must achieve longer burn times without performance degradation to allow the lowest cost per kilogram access to space. Ablative thrust chambers have an extensive heritage and are the low cost approach to fabricating rocket thrust chambers. However, composite ablative chambers suffer from erosion that typically limits performance of the engine in terms of bu ...

The recent advances in data collection and storage capabilities have led to information overload in many applications, including on-line monitoring of spacecraft operations with time series data. Such datasets present new challenges in data analysis, especially for implementation in memory-constrained DECUs. Also, the traditional statistical methods break down partly because of the increase in th ...