Award Data

In this project, the team will develop a prototype of History Maker, a virtual reality (VR) content creation tool, where students and teachers produce digital movies to be used as reports and/or presentations about particular historical topics. Within the platform, students will research primary sources documents, write scripts, and act scenes from history. Student work will be presented in VR to ...

Cooperative robots can explore the surface of planets with higher efficiency and lower mission risk, perform novel and precise resource and science surveys, and gather and share resources and information with other assets to bring planetary exploration. In order to work together more efficiently and effectively, robots must understand their location relative to their peers, which is challenged in ...

We propose to develop a method to effectively utilize the massive amount of image and range data that cameras and laser scanners can generate for an autonomous navigation system. Our innovative approach is to use deep learning to detect and segment only the most useful portions of the data and to use that to build better 3D models. We have proven methods for building accurate 3D models of the en ...

In contrast to the standard cold reservoir Variable Conductance Heat Pipe (VCHP) where for tight thermal control an electrical heater is used for the reservoir (wicked), Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc (ACT) developed a hot reservoir VCHP with the reservoir thermally coupled to the evaporator. This novel feature will provide a tight temperature control capability without the need for control po ...

The objective of this proposal is the development and demonstration of a cost-effective high-fidelity aeroacoustic design tool for future commercial supersonic nozzle designs and installations. Although eddy-resolving CFD methods for computing high-speed jet noise are available, such methods are computationally expensive and are currently deemed impractical for use in a design optimization loop. ...

There is a large unserved and well-defined need in several heavy industrial markets such as steel, petroleum, energy, and mining for aerial inspection, particularly by small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (sUAS) conducting close proximity imaging and contact sensing. We propose to increase the utility of aerial inspection beyond the current state of the art where imagery typically is manually collected ...

There is a significant gap between the properties of materials that are produced using the current 3D printing processes and the properties that are needed to support critical space systems. The polyetherimide/polycarbonate (PEI/PC) composite recently demonstrated on the ISS is a significant step forward in development, however, FDM with PEI/PC represents the current practical limits of AM in spa ...

Many existing or proposed NASA small propulsion systems and advanced scientific instruments will require high voltages at medium to high power levels to function. Such space power supplies are generally bulky and lossy and, as missions increasingly migrate to ever smaller platforms, there will be an increasing need to substantially reduce the size/weight costs of providing such on-board power acce ...

All space missions utilize low-voltage power for small signal, processor core and peripheral systems. The traditional approach for non-isolated point of load (POL) converter systems is to perform multi-stage down-conversions from space bus down to 5V, then down to the lower core voltages for provision of power to processors and small-signal components. We are proposing to research and develop a ne ...

The concept describes a booster for a launch vehicle that is simpler to make, transport and launch than current launch vehicles. It is composed of two major components. The first being a booster structure and the second being a liquid rocket engine that uses a thermodynamic cycle that is a combination of two common cycles.Furthermore, the engine is actually fairly simple when compared to modern li ...