Award Data

A significant technology gap for NASA astrobiology missions is the field detection of organics at the sub ppm level. Currently, NASA uses different sensing technologies such as Pyrolysis–GCMS to analyze planetary samples. These instruments require complex sample handling and can process only a limited number of samples. It is critical to develop an effective instrument with extended and enh ...

Hybrid-electric propulsion is becoming widely accepted as a potential disruptive technology for aircraft that can provide significant reduction in fuel consumption as well as many other benefits. The majority of the analysis tools that exist today, however, do not harness the capability to analyze these unique systems, especially in the rotorcraft realm. The Phase I effort focused mainly on the de ...

Ultramet and ARA Ablatives Laboratory previously developed and demonstrated foam-reinforced carbon/phenolic ablators that offer substantially increased high heat flux performance and reduced weight relative to conventional ablators. The structure consisted of an ablator-filled foam front surface backed by Ultramet's highly insulating aerogel-filled foam. Arcjet testing was performed at NASA ARC to ...

National Aeronautical and Space Administration's (NASA) Aviation Safety Program "seeks capabilities furthering the practice of proactive safety management." One area of particular interest is the prognostication of Remaining Useful Life (RUL) of avionic systems. In response, Nokomis is proposing to develop an Electronic Health Monitoring (EHM) Sensor Unit which would be able provide accurate est ...

We have invented a new class of robotics, called `Pneubotics', that rival current manipulators in payload and reach at 1/10th the weight. Our technology leverages insights into lightweight materials and mass manufacturing to create robots that derive power, structure, and movement from pressurized air. As a result, drive trains, motors, bearings, shafts, sliding surfaces, and excess structural mat ...

HJ Science & Technology (HJS&T) and Lawrence Berkeley National Laboratory (LBNL) propose a highly integrated, programmable, and miniaturized microfluidic automation platform capable of running rapid and complex synthetic biology and bioengineering processes for engineering life supporting microbes in space exploration missions. Our approach combines the microfluidic automation technology of HJS&T ...

ProtoInnovations, LLC (PI) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have formed a partnership to research, develop, and experimentally characterize a suite of robotic controls to significantly improve the safety, mean travel speed, and rough-terrain access of wheeled planetary rovers. In meeting this goal we have been developing algorithms for all-terrain adaptive locomotion which inclu ...

In this SBIR Phase II program Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. (ACT) proposes to develop titanium/water heat pipes suitable for Spacecraft Fission Power applications. NASA is currently examining small fission power reactors design, such as the Kilopower, which aims to provide roughly 1 kW of electric power. Kilopower plans to use titanium/water heat pipes to remove the waste heat from the cold ...

Laser communications (Lasercom) technology offers the promise of much higher rate data exchanges while reducing the size and weight of the telecommunications package for deep space missions. This improved system performance is due primarily to the narrow transmit signal beamwidth at the optical wavelength, which allows for more efficient delivery of the transmit signal to the receiver. The proble ...

LaunchPoint Technologies proposes to build a scalable hybrid electric propulsion system. LaunchPoint will build and fly a 1 kW hybrid electric vehicle and will build and bench test a 6 kW hybrid power source to demonstrate scalability to much larger systems. During the phase I, LaunchPoint showed the feasibility of a manned hybrid electric VTOL vehicle that can achieve the speed and fuel efficie ...