Award Data

The design concepts being considered for Heatshield for Extreme Entry Environment Technology (HEEET) rely on the use of 3D woven carbon fiber preforms. Therefore, there is a need to be able to predict the properties and performance of a woven material. Validation of predictive modeling tools would allow for the use of these tools to design and optimize the 3D weaves, significantly reducing the c ...

Thick, 3D woven carbon/phenolic composites offer potential improvement over legacy thermal protection systems (TPS) for re-entry vehicle heat shield applications. However due to the scale and complexity of typical re-entry vehicle structures, it is likely that multiple 3D woven panels would need to laid up to create the overall heat shield, creating a potential weak spots at the panel joints. ...

Reliable monitoring of the microcrack formation in the complex composite structure components in NASA spacecraft and launch vehicles is critical for vehicle operations. Early diagnosing and reporting vehicle capability has tremendous impact on mission readiness, safety, and life cycle cost. Microcrack formation in complex composite structure components can be challenging from a monitoring and eval ...

National Aeronautical and Space Administration's (NASA) Aviation Safety Program "seeks capabilities furthering the practice of proactive safety management." Specifically, one of the key interests in Topic A1.04 are proposals for Remaining Useful Life prediction techniques. In response, Nokomis is proposing to develop an Electronic Health Monitoring (EHM) Sensor Unit which would be able provide a ...

ProtoInnovations, LLC (PI) and the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) have formed a partnership to research, develop, and experimentally test a suite of methods for significantly improving the safety, mean travel speed, and rough-terrain access of wheeled planetary exploration rovers. We will accomplish this by developing algorithms for all-terrain adaptive locomotion. This will include a ...

NASA GRC is developing fission power system technology for future space transportation and surface power applications. The early systems are envisioned in the 10 to 100kWe range and have an anticipated design life of 8 to 15 years with no maintenance. A non-nuclear system ground test in thermal-vacuum is planned by NASA GRC to validate technologies required to transfer reactor heat, convert the he ...

The program delivers a completely new technology solution to isolation and sensing of power flow (current and voltage). Based on striction materials technology, these small isolation and sensing devices replace Opto-isolation, Hall-effect and Magnetic Transformer isolation and sensing with a lower cost and lower risk solution. The elimination of optical, processor and magnetic components in the ...

The proposed program will develop titanium/water heat pipes suitable for Spacecraft Fission Power. NASA is examining small fission power reactors for future space applications with the most recent being Kilopower, which provides roughly 1 kW of electric power. Kilopower uses titanium/water heat pipes to remove the waste heat from the cold end of the convertors. Previous water heat pipe designs f ...

The goal of the Phase I effort is to design, develop and demonstrate a novel solid-state ceramic-based voltage isolator and demonstrate its potential to provide a highly radiation tolerant digital voltage isolation solution applicable to a wide range of NASA mission requirements. The related design success QorTek has will lead to development in Phase I of a completely new gate drive technology wi ...

This project will develop advanced DC link capacitors using flexible ultrathin glass dielectric materials. The glass capacitor will be able to be operated in a broad temperature range (-150 degree C to 500 degree C), frequency (1 kHz to 1 MHz), and high voltage (>1,000 volts). This SBIR project will be focused on examining the technical performance of the glass dielectrics at very high (>200 deg C ...