Award Data

NASA has been tasked to develop new and advanced capabilities to support both future manned and robotic missions to the lunar and Martian surfaces. It is the purpose of this program to develop advanced avionics, software, and information technologies for exploration missions. In particular, NASA is concerned with the extreme radiation present on the lunar surface, Martian surface, and in deep sp ...

Current modeling of Lunar and Martian soil erosion and debris transport caused by rocket plume impingement lacks essential physics from the peculiar granular characteristics of highly irregular regolith particles. Current granular mechanics models are based on mono-disperse spherical particles empiricism unsuitable for capturing the poly-disperse irregularly shaped grain mechanics. CFDRC and the U ...

The deleterious effects of lunar dust, typically less than 50 µm in diameter, have to be addressed prior to establishing a human base and long duration human presence on the surface of the moon. These effects include abrasion of seals, gaskets, motors, actuators, gimbals, bearings, blocking of optical windows, and coating of thermal control surfaces and solar panels with lunar dust. Negative phy ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II project develops novel materials processing and device design that extract the maximum possible performance out of the lithium niobate electro-optic material. The novel modulator device incorporates reconfigurable quasi-phase matching (RQPM) to produce an arbitrary RF bandpass response. The Phase I effort has laid a firm foundation for the creation ...

Radiation-cooled, bipropellant thrusters are being considered for the Ascent Module main engine of the Altair Lunar Lander. Currently, iridium-lined rhenium combustion chambers are the state-of-the-art for radiatively cooled thrusters. To increase the performance of radiation-cooled engines, improved chamber materials are needed that will allow higher operating temperatures, better resistance to ...

The goal of this SBIR project is to develop an innovative, high fidelity computational tool for accurate prediction of aerothermal environment around space vehicles. This tool will be based on the Unified Flow Solver (UFS) developed at CFDRC for hybrid simulations of rarefied, transitional and continuum flows. In this project, UFS will be enhanced to include: radiation transport, non-equilibrium c ...

Direct electrochemical reduction of molten regolith is the most attractive method of oxygen production on the lunar surface, because no additional chemical reagents are needed. The process is proven on a laboratory scale, but the cathode-anode system and melt containers need to be improved for practical applications. The electrochemical processing of molten oxides requires high surface area inert ...

Chlorine gas was first used as a weapon during World War I, and reemerged as a threat in Iraq compounding the dangers from existing improvised explosive devices. One of the significant challenges with preventing attacks that involve toxic industrial chemicals (TICs) like chlorine and ammonia is that they have genuine civilian uses for water treatment, in refrigeration systems, and other applicatio ...

Within harsh environment areas, Naval vessels require illumination. Incandescent based Symbol 48.2 explosion-proof fixtures are rated to operate in these spaces but are inefficient, resulting in unsafe fixture surface temperatures and unnecessarily high energy consumption. Under such extreme operating conditions, the lamps in the fixtures fail frequently, leading to high maintenance costs. Prod ...

A significant amount of personal injury and property damage as well as lost productivity could be avoided by speeding up the body’s adjustment cycle to new circadian schedules or re-synchronizing body schedules that have slipped or advanced. For the military, this problem is especially acute because the warfighters’ duties include dangerous equipment and a need for 24-hour operational readine ...