Award Data

NASA has numerous requirements for in-space repair capabilities to aid future missions beyond earth orbit. A subset of these requirements is adhesive patch materials that provide permanent or temporary repair of a wide variety of surfaces with minimal surface preparation and that can operate in the space environment. This work will result in the production of a repair kit for in-space applicatio ...

The nature of human exploration missions to the Moon and Mars demands a frequency-agile, reconfigurable, durable digital radio delivering telemetry, ranging, voice, video, and data, with low Size, Weight, and Power (SWAP), and easy operation in the demanding space environment of Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA). AeroAstro and Virginia Tech propose to continue development of the EVA radio, building u ...

Modern electronic systems tolerate only as many point failures as there are redundant system copies, using mere macro-scale redundancy. Fault Tolerant Electronics Supporting Space Exploration (FTESSE) creates an electronic design paradigm using reprogrammable FPGAs to create swappable Circuit Object Blocks (COBs) – analogous to software objects – for the first time enabling redundancy on a micr ...

Financial constraints, government recommendations, and the need for improved operational efficiency are requiring airlines to review their "on-condition" maintenance practices. Many of the specific conditions and events of interest to airline maintenance are not being monitored by automatic systems, and some events are being identified through a subjective determination by the aircrew. This subj ...

This project extends Probability Bounds Analysis to model epistemic and aleatory uncertainty during early design of engineered systems in an Integrated Concurrent Engineering environment. This method uses efficient analytic and semi-analytic calculations, is more rigorous than probabilistic Monte Carlo simulation, and provides comprehensive and (often) best possible bounds on mission-level risk a ...

ATA has demonstrated the primary innovation of combining a precision MEMS gyro (BAE SiRRS01) with a high bandwidth angular rate sensor, ATA's ARS-14 resulting in a low-noise, high bandwidth hybrid sensor, or HYSENS in a Phase I SBIR. The primary emphasis in Phase I development was the implementation and real-time demonstration of the sensor fusion algorithms that combined the output from a MEMS g ...

We propose the development of automated systems to improve radiobiology research capabilities at NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL). Current radiobiology experimentation at the NSRL is limited primarily by the amount of time required to manually move samples to/from the radiation target area. Additionally, the NSRL facility currently does not support p ...

The new Presidential directive to place humans on Mars and establish bases on the moon will require advances in space nuclear power generation. Nuclear power generation has a combined advantage in power density, low fuel/mass ratio, mission duration and cost over any other generation method for these missions. To meet the needs of reactor safety, health monitoring and performance, light-weight, re ...

In the future, exploration missions will benefit greatly from advanced metrology capabilities, particularly structural health monitoring systems that provide real time in-situ diagnostics and evaluation of structural integrity. Safety- and mission-critical components and systems will be instrumented with embedded sensors to provide a real-time indication of health, helping to ensure that America's ...

The need for in-flight event detection and monitoring systems is clear. To address this and other safety and security needs, IEM proposed the Reactive In-flight Multisensor Security System (RIMSS) an affordable system which would improve safety and security within an aircraft by: ?detecting abnormal events (including but not limited to unusual passenger/crew activities, losses of pressure, deviati ...