Award Data

Long-lived Venus landers require power and cooling. Heat from the roughly 64 General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) modules must be delivered to the convertor with minimal ÄT. The cooling system must be shutoff during the transit to Venus without overheating the GPHS modules. This program will develop an alkali metal Variable Conductance Heat Pipe (VCHP) integrated with a two-phase heat collection/tr ...

Loop heat pipes (LHPs) can provide variable thermal conductance needed to maintain electronics and batteries on Lunar/Martian rovers/landers within desired temperature range. During lunar day, the LHP transfers the heat to the radiator for rejection. During the fourteen-day-long lunar night, the sink temperature drops, lowering LHP and WEB/battery temperatures. Without a variable thermal link, the ...

This Phase I Small Business Innovative Research project proposes to develop a multiscale computational methodology capable of accurate prediction of the properties and performance of insulating ablative materials that are used to protect the re-entry of vehicles from excessive thermal loads. In particular, this effort will focus on multi-million atom, reactive molecular dynamics (MD) simulations o ...

Advanced Materials Technology, Inc (AMTI) responds to the NASA SBIR solicitation X8 "Space Cryogenic Systems" under subtopic X8.01, "Cryogenic Fluid Transfer and Handling". The proposed Phase I SBIR program is aimed at developing new cryogenic insulations for passive thermal control, resulting in zero boil-off storage of cryogens. The passive thermal control will serve to limit the heat leak int ...

Recent advancements in open rotor engine concepts warrant continued research, however the cost of wind tunnel tests is not insignificant. Because the jet noise of an open rotor engine, or even that of a geared fan, is very low in relation to the fan noise, it is evident that fan noise reduction technology is now just as important as jet noise reduction. A low cost test system is needed that woul ...

Silicon carbide (SiC) and other wide band-gap semiconductors offer great promise of high power rating, high operating temperature, simple thermal management, and ultra-high power density for both space and commercial power electronic systems. However, this great potential is seriously limited by the lack of reliable high temperature device packaging technology. The objective of this proposed resea ...

R-LAM (Rad-hard Location and Attitude Module), promises a new generation of both integrated navigation modules and stand-alone navigation subsystems including nav-grade IMU's, atomic-precision clocks and GPS units compliant with the Space Plug and Play Architecture (SPA) initiative. R-LAM leverages two active DARPA MTO programs. In the Navigation-Grade Integrated Micro-Gyroscope (NG-IMG) project ...

PI at ArkLight proposes a novel approach to photon counting detectors at near-IR (1-1.8 µm) and mid-IR (3-4 µm) with single photon sensitivity, representing an innovative Lidar technology for ASCENDS mission. She will convert the input signals at 1.27 µm and 1.57 µm to those at 579 nm and 634 nm, respectively, within a periodically-poled LiNbO3 wafer, pumped by a Nd:YAG laser at 1.064 µm or a ...

The Mars Sample Return mission is being planned to return samples of Martian rock, regolith, and atmosphere to Earth for scientific analysis. The Martian sample size is directly affected by the propulsion capabilities of the Mars Ascent Vehicle (MAV) and innovations are sought to enhance propulsion capabilities of the MAV for functions including primary propulsion from the Mars surface, orbit inse ...

Clamp-on ultrasound cryogenic flowmeters using single crystal piezoelectric transducers are proposed to enable reliable, accurate cryogenic instrumentation needs in support of NASA Lunar Lander, Ground Operations, Altair, Ares, and Lunar Surface Systems programs. In-space, on the lunar surface, and on the Earth Exploration Systems architecture presents cryogenic storage, distribution, and fluid ha ...