Award Data

The bone loss associated with extended space missions in astronaut represents a serious health threat, both over the flight period and upon returning to gravitational fields. Continuously monitoring bone qualities during prolonged space missions will lead to a better understanding of the progressive adaptation of bone loss in astronauts subject to both microgravity and aging, and the ensuing muscu ...

The current state-of-the-art in DEM modeling has two major limitations which must be overcome to ensure that the technique can be useful to NASA engineers and the commercial sector: the computational intensive nature of the software, and the lack of an established methodology to determine the particle properties to best accurately model a given physical system. The proposed work will address bot ...

The goal of this STTR program is to employ nanostructured materials in advanced device designs to enhance the tolerance of solar cells to extreme conditions while achieving high solar electric power conversion. By using InN-based quantum dots embedded within a higher band gap GaN barrier material, a larger fraction of the solar spectrum can be harnessed while minimizing the effects of high temper ...

Aspen Aerogels Inc. (AAI) and the Man Vehicle Laboratory (MVL) at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology propose to develop nanostructured, lightweight, rubbery aerogel composites for multifunctional insulation materials which will significantly improve advanced extravehicular activity (EVA) systems and habitats. The proposed rubbery aerogel composite materials will exhibit excellent flexibili ...

In order to meet the challenges of long-duration space exploration (e.g., missions to the Moon, Mars and beyond), onboard real-time health management of spacecraft that responds rapidly to system and subsystem events is essential. In response to this need, Qualtech Systems, Inc. (QSI), in cooperation with Vanderbilt University, proposes to develop a distributed multi-agent fault diagnosis and rec ...

Helium plays several critical rolls in spacecraft propulsion. High pressure helium is commonly used to pressurize propellant fuel tanks. Helium cryocoolers can be used to sub-cool and thereby densify cryogenic propellants such as liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LO2). The use of densified cryogenic propellants can reduce the gross payload weight of a launch vehicle by up to 20%, or incr ...

In this program, Agiltron and the groups of Professors Rubner and Cohen at MIT propose a novel nano-porous coating for next generation NASA UV anti-reflection (AR) applications. The collaborative research leverages recent breakthroughs in nano-porous self-assembled low reflective index multilayer structures achieved at MIT, and Agiltron's recently developed mist coating processes. The proposed UV ...

Many commercially available digital dosimeters are bulky and are unable to properly measure dose for space radiation. The complexity of space flight design requires reliable, fault-tolerant equipment with the capability of providing real-time dose readings during a mission, which is not feasible with the existing thermo-luminescent dosimeter (TLD) technology. The project will create a compact, ...

New technology is needed for sensing and characterizing incipient defects, and assessing the effects of aging in aerospace components. Next generation materials, including nickel-based superalloys that are exceedingly difficult to inspect with existing technology are being adopted by designers and manufacturers. The ability to ascertain the remaining life of a spacecraft component, and develop mit ...

Long range, RF space communications do not meet anymore the bandwidth requirements or power constraints of future NASA missions. Optical communications offer the potential to dramatically increase the link bandwidth and decrease the emitter power. High-bandwidth, long-range optical communications require reliable high-gain, photon-counting detectors operated at moderate cooling with high detection ...