Award Data

AASC proposes to develop a pulsed field emisson electric propulsion system with adjustable specific impulse for microsatellites. A multiemitter liquid metal ion source array is paired with an innovative pulsing network that allows ion emission to be switched using pulses of a few hundred volts. A new automated system is proposed to ensure high effciency over a wide range of ISP. The phase I will d ...

Filament wound fiber reinforced composite rocket motor cases are widely used on MDA missile systems. However, significant performance and behavior characteristics of the composite structure can be affected by degradation resulting from exposure to environmental conditions or damage resulting from handling conditions. Fueling of the rocket motor adds an additional complexity in that inspection of t ...

This project will develop a data driven prognostic fault tolerant smart weapon system concept for the Airborne Laser. A real-time prognostic health management (PHM) system will be developed to track the likelihood of future system or subsystem failures and initiate or indicate appropriate actions to maintain or optimize system performance. A library of predictive algorithms will be employed to tak ...

This project will develop a data driven prognostic fault tolerant smart weapon system concept for the Airborne Laser. A real-time prognostic health management (PHM) system will be developed to track the likelihood of future system or subsystem failures and initiate or indicate appropriate actions to maintain or optimize system performance. A library of predictive algorithms will be employed to tak ...

The problem of efficient clutter suppression is a challenge for space-based infrared sensors that have to provide early detection/tracking of missiles launches in cloud solar backgrounds. In such systems, reliable target tracking is impossible without clutter rejection down to/below the level of sensor noise. In Phase I we developed novel parametric and nonparametric spatial-temporal techniques fo ...

A near-term low-cost end-to-end optical signature code is proposed which incorporates advanced physical models and simulation methods within a unified code structure to enable unprecedented levels of computational performance (speed, fidelity) for analysis and simulation of target/background signatures (spectra, imagery) and laser-radar cross sections for ground/air/space vehicles. The code is de ...

Advanced interceptor seekers with active ladar systems offer enhanced capabilities for target acquisition, discrimination, tracking, and targeting of a lethal object within a ballistic missile threat train including off-nominal threats and countermeasures. Full exploitation of these capabilities requires robust ladar algorithms to enhance seeker decision functions that include far-range ladar cui ...

A compact, high-performance, low cost optical transmitter chip comprised of a widely-tunable laser, monolithically integrated with an array of semiconductor optical amplifiers and elelectroabsorption modulators, is a key component of an optical source suitable for arbitrary waveform generation in a dynamic scene projector. Agility Communications develops and manufactures widely-tunable CW sources ...

Utilizing recently available exceptional mercurous chloride (Hg2Cl2) acousto-optic material having the largest known optical filter figure of merit, we propose to develop a state-of-the-art high speed and wide-bandwidth long-wavelength acousto-optic tunable filter (AOTF). The proposed device has the desirable performance attributes of wide operating wavelength range, low optical loss, low power c ...

This proposal addresses a novel photonic approach to the high performance IR scene generator. The revolutionary design has intrinsic advantages of broadband, high apparent temperature, compactness, high spatial resolution, low background temperature and noise, high reliability, and low cost, as compared with the competitive approaches. The device design overcomes the major shortcomings of the curr ...