Award Data

New classes of aircraft, providing personal, on-demand mobility, are under development and are poised to revolutionize short-duration air travel.nbsp; The impetus for this work comes from advances in electronics and controls, and increases in electric motor power densities.nbsp; As these aircraft are integrated into the transportation system, they will encounter icing conditions that may challenge ...

Of interest to JPL, GRC and GSFC are laser communications telescopes (LCTs) with 30 to 100 cm clear aperture, wavefront error (WFE) less than 62 nm, cumulative WFE and transmission loss not to exceed 3-dB in the far field, advanced thermal and stray light design for operation while sun-pointing (3-degrees from the edge of the sun); -20deg; C to 50deg; C operational range (wider range preferred), a ...

Hyperspectral datasets are massive. This size makes them difficult to acquire, store, transmit, analyze and use. Hyperspectral imagers (HSI) are also costly and complex, taking significant time or portions of a focal plane to acquire each spectral band. In addition, orbital HSIs are susceptible to radiation damage and inaccessible for repairs, making any damage long-lasting.nbsp;In this effort, we ...

CU Aerospace (CUA) proposes further development of the Dynamically Leveraged Automated (N) Multibody Trajectory Optimization (DyLAN) tool, which solves impulsive and low-thrust global optimization problems in multibody regimes, and can do so in an automated fashion. NASA and commercial entities are in need of advanced methods that allow for rapid analysis of complex optimal trajectory problems, so ...

The STTR topic T5.01 envisions Autonomous Communications Systems (ACS) that can be aware of RF environment and the network status and learn from experience to enhance adaptability to nominal/anomalous conditions, self-reconfigure network connections, dynamically maximize performance in response to sensed conditions and mitigate system-level effects of outages and interference. In Phase II, Bluecom ...

MaXentric proposes the GAU2x2 wideband power amplifier system. The design combines MaXentric’s wideband RF PA technology with advanced digital signal processing in a single small footprint package. This tight integration is made possible through the extremely high efficiency and low power dissipation. Since very little power is dissipated as heat, the package and heat sink size can be minimized. ...

Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) offers high promise to reduce launch mass, decrease mission costs and increase mission effectiveness, particularly for crewed missions to the planets. However, NTP has been plagued with high uncertainties in cost, schedule and safety, particularly launch safety. To reduce programmatic uncertainty, an unambiguous approach to documenting NTP safety prior to, during a ...

Using technology spun out from Sandia National Laboratories, Goodman Technologies LLC with our Small Business and Minority Serving Institution partner (Team GT) has demonstrated the feasibility of 3D printed and additively manufactured SiC/SiC composite and Reaction Bonded SiC for low areal cost, ultra-lightweight mirrors and structures. Our technology development roadmap shows production of the f ...

Over the past decade, the importance of understanding the sources and sinks of carbon dioxide and othergreenhouse gases has been recognized. A variety of research studies funded by NASA, DOE and NOAA tomeasure the fluxes of CO2 from average conditions have been performed. In particular, flux measurements of CO2 in the boundary layer are critical toward understanding the carbon budget for this impo ...

In recent years, Type-II superlattices have experienced significant development. However, the full potential of Type-II superlattice has not been fully explored and alternate superlattice architectures hold great promise. Despite demonstration of SWIR photodetectors based on this material system, there has been no report about Type-II superlattice-based photodetectors that have been sensitive to v ...