Award Data

The overall objective of the proposed research is to design, develop and demonstrate fluidic actuator arrays for aerodynamic separation control and drag reduction. These actuators are based on a compact design of low mass-flow fluidic oscillators that produce high frequency (1-5 kHz) oscillating or pulsing jets. Our preliminary experiments on separation control over trailing edge flaps, cavity to ...

Orion requires a rendezvous and docking sensor to provide relative navigation information during proximity operations and docking. In order to dock, the sensor must provide full six degree of freedom (6 DOF) relative position and relative attitude information at a rate sufficient for the rendezvous spacecraft guidance system to robustly control the docking maneuver. Orion faces critical weight iss ...

This proposal describes the preliminary development of passive wireless surface acoustic wave (SAW) based humidity sensors for NASA application to distributed humidity monitoring systems. SAW devices are a platform technology for passive wireless sensing of numerous possible measurands. SAW devices have been demonstrated as passive wireless temperature sensors in NASA contracts NNK04OA28C and NN ...

We will develop an efficient tool for formal verification of PowerPC 750 executables. The PowerPC 750 architecture is used in the radiation-hardened RAD750 flight-control computers that are utilized in many space missions. The resulting tool will be capable of formally checking: 1) the equivalence of two instruction sequences; and 2) properties of a given instruction sequence. The tool will automa ...

Balcones Technologies, proposes to adapt actively controlled suspension technology developed for high performance off-road vehicles to address NASA's requirement for Active Vibration Control for Ground Support Equipment (GSE). This innovative approach to meeting NASA needs exploits approximately $23M of highly successful R&D since 1993 at the University of Texas Center for Electromechanics (CEM) ...

Long-term exposure to microgravity and radiation during space exploration can pose a critical threat to the health of a flight crew. Real-time monitoring of urine protein levels is an effective way to follow the onset and progress of many diseases and guide the prompt selection of proper therapy. The success of such diagnostic tasks, which is strongly desired for flight missions, critically depend ...

Accurate CFD modeling of fuel/oxidizer injection and combustion is needed to design and analyze liquid rocket engines. Currently, however, there is no mature modeling capability for liquid fuel/oxidizer injectors in LOCI-Chem, used by NASA and its contractors to analyze rocket engines. In this STTR, an innovative, high fidelity injection module will be developed that features the Level Set (LS) i ...

CFDRC proposes to develop, validate and demonstrate a comprehensive aeroservoelastic analysis framework for aerospace vehicles by enabling coupled interactions between multi-physics simulation modules with variable fidelity for flexible structures, aerodynamics, flight dynamics, and embedded smart materials. In Phase I, a nonlinear electrodynamics finite-element model for smart materials, capable ...

The use of UAVs has increased exponentially since 1995, and this growth is expected to continue. Many of these applications require extensive Research and Development; however, the need to fund development of the UAV often competes with funding intended for the end-user application. Therefore, off the shelf, low cost, easily configurable integrated avionics systems will significantly reduce the bu ...

CU Aerospace and its University of Illinois teammate propose the design, sub-component fabrication and preliminary test of an UltraSail "Cubesat" 20 m2 solar sail spacecraft leading to a flight test in low Earth orbit. The complete flight test program consists of: preliminary design and sub-component tests; fabrication and assembly of a University of Illinois Cubesat spacecraft bus adapted to sol ...