Award Data

The proposal outlines a research program for developing a novel soft-computing technology composed of an Artificial Immune System and Bayesian Belief Networks for monitoring, knowledge and information processing, and decision support infrastructure for testing of rocket engines of future spacecrafts. An engine failure during test operations may cause catastrophic results for the test article, supp ...

Future NASA architectures and missions will involve many distributed platforms that must work together. This in turn requires guidance, navigation and control (GN&C) technology such as systems that determine spacecraft relative range and attitude. The proposed Hybrid Guidance System (HGS) will be such a system, providing increased relative navigation accuracy and robustness while reducing mass, vo ...

This NASA SBIR Phase II effort will develop a 1 x 10 prototype non-mechanical fiber optic switch for use with high power lasers. The proposed optical device is a fiber-based multi-channel switch to rapidly switch a fiber-coupled laser among ten output channels as an integral part of a fiber-based fixed-array laser transmitter for next-generation NASA lidar systems. The key innovation is the use ...

This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I effort will establish the feasibility of developing a fiber coupled, high power, electro-optically controlled, space qualified, phase modulator for the NASA Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Specific to the LISA project is the use of three spacecraft, spanned by vast distances, to make gravitational wave measurements. A central aspect in mai ...

ASRI proposes to develop an advanced and commercially viable Non-Intrusive Vibration Monitoring System (NI-VMS) which can provide effective on-line/off-line engine vibration monitoring capabilities without relying on intrusive key-phasor speed measurements. Many powerful vibration signature analysis techniques for engine-health monitoring rely on key-phasor signals to extract/enhance critical fau ...

Sample preparation has been recognized as the single most important challenge to be faced in the development of detect-to-warn (DTW) systems (NRC, 2005). Available commercial sample preparation technologies are expensive, slow (30 min to 2 hours) and require trained laboratory technicians for operation. Addressing this need, we propose to design, fabricate, demonstrate, and validate a novel integr ...

Significant improvements in photovoltaic materials and systems are required to enable future exploration missions. This SBIR project, involving two innovative organizations: CFD Research Corporation (CFDRC) and University of California Riverside (UCR), has two major objectives: 1) develop and provide reliable, validated computational tools for assessment, design, and optimization of novel nanostru ...

This project aims to provide Computer Aided Design (CAD) tools for radiation-tolerant, wide-temperature-range digital, analog, mixed-signal, and radio-frequency electronic components suitable for operation in the extreme environments of the Moon, Mars, and other deep space destinations. All such exploration systems will need reliable electronics able to operate in a wide temperature range (-230?C ...

The use of gelled propellants for deep space planetary missions may enable adoption of high performance (Isp-vac>360 sec) propellant combinations that do not require power-intensive heating and stirring cycles before firings, and whose handling and safety characteristics are close to stated goals of "green" propellants. Phase I focused on the ability to gel both halves of the propellant combinati ...

Current bioaerosol monitoring and evaluation systems are largely based on collection of airborne pathogens in a liquid medium, followed by the detection of the targets of interest. While available aerosol collection technologies employ large collection volumes, biosensors are capable of processing only a small fraction of the collection volume. Our overall objective is to design and demonstrate a ...