Award Data

Reaction wheels are used to stabilize satellites and to slew their orientation from object to object with precision and accuracy by varying the rotational speed of the wheels. Three or four wheels are usually used with three of them aligned along orthogonal axes. The degree to which pointing stability is achieved depends on the stability of the wheels' angular momentum vectors while spinning, ...

Energid Technologies proposes the development of a digital simulation to replace robotic vehicles in field studies. It will model the dynamics, terrain interaction, sensors, control, communications, and interfaces of a robotic vehicle with the goal of supporting validation and training. The simulation will be very easy to use by simple execution on a networked PC. It will connect to NASA's ...

Model calculations and risk assessment estimates indicate that secondary neutrons, with energies ranging between 0.5 to>150 MeV, make a significant contribution to the total absorbed dose received by space crews during long duration space missions [1-3]. Advanced scintillation materials, which exhibit radiation type and mass dependent emission times, coupled to SSPM detectors, provide the optimum ...

The innovative High Efficiency, High Output Plastic Melt Waste Compactor (HEHO-PMWC) is a trash dewatering and volume reduction system that uses heat melt compaction to remove nearly 100% of water from trash and reduce the volume by up to 11 times. The HEHO-PMWC system incorporates novel methods to compress the trash, recover water, and remove the resultant plastic tiles. This system requires acce ...

In the proposed Phase II program, we will continue the development of Mg bipropellant rockets for Martian PAV applications. In Phase I, we proved the feasibility of this game-changing technology. Through chemical analysis, we determined that Mg can be combusted with CO2 condensed in-situ from the Martian atmosphere to yield Isp ~240 s. We then successfully demonstrated a low fidelity Mg-CO2 roc ...

The key innovation of this project is the application of advanced Bayesian methods to integrate real-time dense stereo vision and high-speed optical flow with an Inertial Measurement Unit (IMU) to produce a highly accurate planetary rover navigation system. The software developed in this project leverages current computing technology to implement advanced Visual Odometry (VO) methods that will acc ...

In NASA is seeking an electric propulsion system capable of producing 20mN thrust with input power up to 1000W and specific impulse ranging from 1600-3500 seconds. The key technical challenge of the topic is the target mass of 1kg for the thruster and 2kg for the power processor (PPU). In Phase 1 Busek develop an overall subsystem design for the thruster/cathode, PPU and XFS. The feasibility of ...

Busek leveraged previous, internally sponsored, high power, Hall thruster discharge converter development which allowed it to design, build, and test new printed circuit board converter within this Phase 1 effort. The new converter consists of two series or parallel boards (slices) intended to power NASA GRC HiVHAC thruster or other similarly sized EP devices. The converter accepts 80 to 160V in ...

A Mars ascent vehicle (MAV) uses solid rocket motors to propel soil samples into orbit, but the motors cannot provide steering. Flexseal TVC control is planned for the first stage while hydrazine thrusters will be used for spin stabilization of the second stage. This approach is heavy and results in a spinning sample container in orbit, which is difficult to recover. Wickman Spacecraft & Propulsi ...

ORBITEC proposes to develop and test new, non-toxic ionic liquid fuels for propulsion applications. Vintage propulsion systems frequently use highly toxic propellants such as MMH. The toxicity of these propellants increases not only the risk of the missions but also the expense, due to special handling required during the entire lifetime of the propellant. Replacing toxic propellants with stron ...