Award Data

The goal of this effort is to develop a compact, rugged, electrically efficient, tunable semiconductor laser for the purpose of injection seeding Nd:YAG lasers in NASA lidar systems for remote sensing and atmospheric profiling. A highly stable low power seed laser plays a crucial role in these systems by keeping the high power, Q-switched, Nd:YAG laser at a fixed wavelength and single mode. In add ...

This NASA Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop a technique to greatly improve the direct coupling of a diode laser to an optical waveguide with embedded Bragg grating using no intermediate lenses. The key innovation proposed for this SBIR effort is a method for generating adiabatic tapers at the input end of optical waveguides in potassium titanyl phosphate (KTP). This ...

A cylindrical, low-mass, high-efficiency, leak-proof cryogenic valve will be designed using composites and exotic metals. Based upon cryogenically-proven Venturi Off-Set Technology (VOST) the valve has no stem-actuator, few moving parts, and an overall cylindrical shape. The valve geometry will help reduce launch vehicle complexity and facilitate assembly and test. Reliability and safety and wi ...

Automated detection of land cover changes between multitemporal images has long been a goal of the remote sensing discipline. Most research in this area has focused on methods for detecting and categorizing changes captured by two or more images [Jensen, 1991, Singh, 1989; Coppin and Bauer, 1996], but precise coregistration of images is required and remains a key challenge [Dai and Khorram, 1998, ...

In this NASA SBIR Phase II effort, AdvR will design and build an efficient, fully integrated, waveguide based, source of spectrally uncorrelated photon pairs that will enable accelerated research and development in the emerging field of quantum information science. The key innovation is the use of sub-micron periodically poled waveguides to produce counter propagating photon pairs using quasi-phas ...

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 ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II effort will develop an all-diode laser and fiber optic based, single frequency, sub-nanosecond pulsed laser source for high resolution lidar applications benefiting SLR, LIST and DESDynI missions. This laser will have a user adjustable pulse width from 2ns to 400ps and will be ideal for seeding high power fiber amplifiers for short pulse, high reso ...

The primary goal of this SBIR effort is delivery of a compact, robust, highly efficient, fiber-coupled UV module to provide the required 355nm light for integration into HSRL's UV interferometric-based measurement system. An additional goal of this effort is to prototype a compact, robust, fiber-coupled UV PLC module which produces the required spectrally formatted 355nm light for stabilizat ...

The Goal of this STTR is to develop a high speed, high power, waveguide based modulator (phase and amplitude) and investigate its use as a pulse slicer. The key innovation in this effort is the use of potassium titanyl phosphate (KTP) waveguides making the high power, polarization based waveguide amplitude modulator possible. Furthermore because it is fabricated in KTP, the waveguide component w ...

This NASA Phase II STTR effort will develop domain-engineered magnesium oxide doped lithium niobate (MgO:LN) for LIDAR-based remote sensing and communication applications. Use of bulk and waveguide-based domain engineered MgO:LN will allow the manufacture of highly efficient and compact, wavelength conversion modules for second-harmonic generation (SHG), sum-frequency generation (SFG), and parame ...