Award Data

This NASA sponsored STTR project will investigate methods for close-out of large, liquid rocket engine, nickel or stainless steel nozzle, coolant channels utilizing robotic laser and pulsed-arc additive manufacturing (AM)methods. Structural jacket to coolant channel land area interface strength will be quantified and metallurgical characterization completed.Process optimizations will be conducted ...

Phase I has proven that the current setup achieves better than 8mm spatial resolution for 2.2MeV prompt gammas. However, 1mm spatial resolution presents a significant challenge for the current setup due in part to limited timing resolution and count rate. A new analog ASIC will be developed to replace the current analog ASIC that will have better timing resolution and deliver higher count rates. I ...

Two main problems are targeted by the proposed work: (1) the underutilization of coal, a valuable natural resource, has led to a catastrophic drop in employment within the coal industry ecosystem in specific geographic areas in the country; and (2) the need within the insurance-driven roof replacement market for a suitable, light weight, low cost, high durability roofing material.These problems wi ...

Thermochemical processing via hydrothermal liquefaction (HTL) is capable of processing a broad range of feedstocks, has a favorable net energy ratio, and produces an energy-dense liquid biooil product.However, there is an obstacle with current HTL processes that has hampered the adoption of this technology—the HTL process produces a considerable amount of aqueous organic byproducts and HTL oil r ...

Liquid-metal coolants are one of the most promising solutions for the challenges of advanced high temperature nuclear reactor systems.They optimize heat transfer, neutronics, safety, and compactness of the reactor systems.Molten lead and lead-bismuth eutectic (LBE) are the primary coolant candidates due to their unique thermo-mechanical and neutronics properties.However, they are highly corrosive ...

Technology currently used for terrestrial navigation is extremely limited in the challenging environments on icy moons and ocean worlds such as Europa. Autonomous platforms used to collect data from beneath these ice and ocean surfaces cannot depend on access to satellite or any other electromagnetic communication. Autonomous systems in these environments are required to perform highly-complex tas ...

Suppression of noise from aircraft is a vital NASA goal, especially important for the vision of Urban Air Mobility. Small urban aircraft may utilize Distributed Electric Propulsion along with advanced structural and electric motor/storage technologies to achieve the necessary flight capability. However, these aircraft utilize propellers or fans to achieve the necessary thrust, with attendant commu ...

We have built our existing Freedom Platform as a cloud based SAAS system with one main goal: simplicity. Every feature we add is driving towards a vision of reducing the complexity of ground system operations and access. nbsp;We propose a technical solution that removes much of the constellation planning daily grind from the customer so they can concentrate on exploiting their data. The end result ...

The Interdisciplinary Consulting Corporation (IC2) proposes the development of a low-profile instrumentation-grade pressure sensor for in-flight aerodynamics measurements using microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) based piezoelectric sensing with backside contacts and advanced packaging technology.nbsp; The goal of this research is to develop a pressure sensor that meets the demanding in-flight p ...

Mainstream proposes to develop a vapor compression (VC) thermal management system suitable for long duration lunar equatorial missions. Because the high lunar surface temperatures during daytime operation exceed the maximum allowable temperature for most electronics, an active lifting cycle is needed rather than typical spacecraft thermal control strategies such as passive thermal links or mechani ...