Award Data

Fires in dry bays of military aircraft present a significant hazard that must be addressed with advanced fire suppression systems. The USAF is interested in concepts that do not require power or active sensing of fire for proper operation. ADA Technologies, Inc. has been developing fine water mist fire suppression technology for the past 10 years, and proposes a solution for this problem that inco ...

There is a need to monitor the structural health of aerospace components operating in extreme temperatures ranges (e.g. -60 to +300C) and with high accelerations. Ideally the sensors employed for this task should be passive (i.e. not powered through batteries), permanently placed on the critical components and transmit the relevant data to a remote data processing center wirelessly.  Albido is pr ...

Polymers in space are subjected to various threats including hyperthermal oxygen atoms, UV and VUV photons, and ions.  These threats can degrade the polymer and lead to static charge accumulation.  This Phase II proposal will build on the Phase I work which demonstrated that inorganic films grown by atomic layer deposition (ALD) can protect polymers such as Kapton, Teflon and PMMA.  Al2O3 ALD f ...

Aqwest proposes to develop an advanced thermal management for cooling of electronic components using a variable conductance heat sink (VCHS) offering unparalleled capabilities in high-heat flux handling and temperature control. The project will produce a cooling system with the following benefits to wide band gap amplifiers and high-power laser diodes (HPLD): 1) Heat flux handling > 1200 W/cm2 2) ...

The DOD requires an environmentally friendly, rapid, and non-destructive method to selectively remove coatings from composite substrates.  Atmospheric Plasma Solutions Inc. (APS) has developed a cold atmospheric plasma process to accomplish this goal. Current processes for the removal of coatings from composite materials are slow, expensive, and potentially damaging to the environment. APS has de ...

Bridger Photonics proposes to prove the feasibility of an innovative method for multi-mode target identification. To achieve this system, the team will combine the most advanced ultra-high-resolution FM-CW LADAR unit in existence with state-of-the-art feature-specific computational imaging concepts. This marriage will enable the team to identify and realize the truly optimal solution to the Air ...

An innovative data collection and analysis approach is proposed to enable body mount magnetometers for space application. In order to achieve high accurate magnetic field measurement in space, the magnetometer has to be located in a âmagnetically cleanâ place, where the magnetic field from spacecraft is negligible. Usually, the magnetometers are placed on deployable booms, so that the field sens ...

Robust altitude estimation for over-the-horizon HF radar requires a combination of advanced signal processing and high fidelity ionospheric propagation modeling. Since aircraft height is manifested in closely-spaced direct and ground-bounce multipath reflections off the target, we propose two new high resolution signal processing methods for discriminating small time delay differences from a seque ...

This work proposes to develop two critical subsystems and a rotation platform designed to enable ultracold atom inertial sensing research and development, with emphasis on rotation sensing (gyroscopes) for navigation, geolocation, mapping, and similar tasks.  The two subsystems presented here, the computer control and interface subsystem, and the integrated atom chip power source/current driver s ...

The U.S. has an inadequate capability to precisely calibrate ground and space-based Space Situational Awareness (SSA) sensors (U.S. SOSI system) with objects of known signatures. There is a need for a low cost, space-based capability that provides simultaneous electro-optical (EO), infrared (IR), and radio-frequency (RF) characteristics to calibrate the U.S. SOSI system. This enhanced U.S. SOSI sy ...