Award Data

For long-term exploratory space travel, there will be a critical need for in-situ diagnosis and assessment of biological specimens from symptomatic astronauts, especially, disease pathogens (virus, bacterium, or fungus) and microbial contaminants. Hence, a real-time, non-culture-based microbial detection, identification and quantification system for on-flight monitoring and evaluation of pathogens ...

Single multi-sensor teleoperated systems are not optimal for NASA exploratory missions because they limit the coverage area and scope of exploration and create a single point for mission failure. A better solution would use many robots cooperating to maximize exploration area and location accuracy while minimizing total system power and weight. The goal of this research is to investigate pulsed ...

An accurate predictive capability of coupled fluid-structure interaction in propulsion system is crucial in the development of NASA's new Space Launch System (SLS). This STTR effort will develop a multi-disciplinary tool to improve CFD prediction capability in modeling coupled fluid structure interaction (FSI) phenomena for many SLS propulsion applications such as flexible inhibitors for SRMs ...

During initial design studies, parametric variation of vehicle geometry is routine. In addition, rotorcraft engineers traditionally use the wind tunnel to evaluate and finalize designs. Correlation between wind tunnel results and flight tests, when not good, have been often attributed in part to uncertainty in blockage corrections. Estimation of rotor blockage is significantly more complex than bl ...

Radiation-cooled, bipropellant thrust chambers are being considered for the ascent/descent engines and reaction control systems for NASA missions such as Mars Sample Return and Orion MPCV. Currently, iridium-lined rhenium combustion chambers are the state-of-the-art for in-space engines. NASA's Advanced Materials Bipropellant Rocket (AMBR) engine, a 150-lbf iridium-rhenium chamber produced by Pla ...

Non-toxic monopropellants have been developed that provide better performance than toxic hydrazine. Formulations based on hydroxylammonium nitrate (HAN) have superior performance as compared to hydrazine with Isp (261 seconds, 12% greater), higher density and volumetric impulse (60% greater density-impulse), lower melting point, and much lower toxicity (No self contained breathing apparatus requir ...

Cornerstone Research Group Inc. (CRG) proposes to continue the efforts from the 2010 NASA SBIR Phase I topic X5.03, "No-Oven, No-Autoclave (NONA) Composite Processing." NONA offers NASA the ability to manufacture composites without an oven or autoclave, which will significantly decrease manufacturing costs. Large, single-piece composite structures for NASA Heavy Lift Launch Vehicles are currently ...

Teraphysics Corporation completed the Phase I objectives for the electrical design of a 94 GHz, 26 W TWT with 53% overall efficiency, including the helical circuit with efficiency enhancing taper, input/output couplers, electron gun, magnetic circuit and multistage depressed collector. The device includes a novel, microfabricated, helical circuit with electron beam propagating above the helix rat ...

RNET has demonstrated the feasibility of developing an innovative radiation hardened (RH) and ultra low power (ULP) field programmable gate array (FPGA), called the RH/ULP FPGA. The design utilizes an advanced SOI process technology. It is the vision of RNET to develop a family of radiation hardened FPGA products with a variety of features including programmable logic, configurable analog functi ...

Orbital Research proposes to develop, build and test 3 additional high temperature components for use in the design of a Data Concentrator Module in distributed turbine engine control at high temperatures. The concentrator receives analog and digital signals related to turbine engine control and communicates with a FADEC or high level command processor. This data concentrator follows the road map ...