Award Data

Both pyrolysis and incineration steps have been considered as the key solid waste processing step for a Controlled Ecological Life Support System (CELSS). Pyrolysis is more amenable to handling mixed solid waste streams in a microgravity environment, but produces a more complex product stream. Incineration produces a simpler product stream, but the incineration of mixed solids is a complex unit op ...

The NASA objective of expanding the human experience into the far reaches of space will require the development of regenerable life support systems. On-board carbon dioxide (CO2) removal units play a key role in such systems ensuring high quality cabin air for crew members. Similar but more compact units are needed for extravehicular activities (space suit). The overall objective is to develop a C ...

Advanced Fuel Research, Inc. (AFR) has developed a technology to provide radiation shielding, while simultaneously increasing the capacity of hydrogen storage tanks. This technology uses carbon foam filler with a complex pore structure (?microporosity?). The tank with the filler has, counter-intuitively, more capacity to store hydrogen than an otherwise empty tank. This technology increases hydrog ...

The present invention provides an inexpensive and low loss fiberoptic manifold for lightweight, high-efficiency, electronically steerable, phased-array antennas. Our approach is sate-of-the-art in design and closely coupled with proven volume fiber optic component manufacturing techniques, holding a promise of realizing practical optical digital delay with performance and cost that have not been a ...

CCDs (Charge-Coupled Devices), and more recently, CMOS (complementary-symmetry metal-oxide-semiconductor) APS (Active Pixel Sensor) cameras have revolutionized imaging instrumentation and the many fields that utilize these instruments. Both of these technologies rely on detecting, or integrating, the analog photo-current generated in each pixel, which limits their sensitivity and bandwidth. Counti ...

This Phase I SBIR describes the fabrication and characterization of a position sensitive detector with internal gain. During this program, Radiation Monitoring Devices (RMD) will fabricate several position sensitive avalanche photodiodes (APDs), including both quadrant and lateral-effect photodiodes. Using RMD's advanced planar processing technology, the position sensitive detectors will be optimi ...

ALTAIR Center proposes to develop a new class of nano-electro-mechanical systems (NEMS) based on carbon nanotubes operating at low control voltages. The proposed system consists of thin film of an appropriate solid-state material sandwiched between two nanolayers of carbon nanotubes embedded into a special matrix. The device takes advantage of recently demonstrated effect of elongation or contract ...

This project builds on experience in an SBIR phase I project which successfully determined that the particle transport code Geant4 could be applied to the simulation of biological shielding. Among the many lessons learned during phase I was that while the physics and functionality embodied in Geant4 is either already excellent, or clearly extendible as needed, the great lacuna lies in its ability ...

We propose to develop a formal modeling tool, Networks in Organizational Risk Management (NORM), that allows mission planners and organizational designers to create and experiment with organizational structures that minimize risk throughout the lifecycle of a system. The core of our approach is a model of the network of interrelationships among people, knowledge, tasks, technology, organizational ...

This proposal will enable the most efficient integration of NASA?s semiconductor lasers into strategic optical systems. To protect laser lifetimes and increase performance, these lasers will require isolators to protect them from back-reflections, similar to the isolators in all fiber-optic networks. This work proposes to monolithically integrate magneto-optical isolators with semiconductor platfo ...