Award Data

To capture critical weather and SST data in the Tropical Cyclone Boundary Layer (TCBL), Piasecki Aircraft proposes to evaluate existing meteorological sensor packages, integrate new off-the-shelf MEMS sensors, and design an air-launched UAS to improve the resolution of observations captured in the TCBL. Capturing latent and sensible heat fluxes can be achieved reliably with a powered UAS (compare ...

The goal of this proposed program through Phase III is to build a space-worthy Drug Stability Analyzer that can determine the extent of drug degradation. It will be able to monitor the drug active pharmaceutical ingredient (API) and its degradation product concentrations as a function of time, as well as determine if a drug is suitable for use. This will be accomplished by designing and building ...

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 ...

Given that SysML is becoming a standard for model-based systems engineering and Integration (SE&I), system health management (SHM)-related models will either be done in SysML, or be done outside of SysML but enabled by conversion, mapping, and traceability of information across SysML and SHM models. Given that current implementations of SysML are not particularly useful to perform analyses, and th ...

One cannot build a system-level Prognosis and Health Management (PHM) solution by cobbling together a bunch of existing prognostic techniques; it will have a very high rate of false-positive indications. On the other hand, if a system-level health management solution could identify the individual degradations and indictors associated with those degradations, and thereby decouple the problem into s ...

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 ...

NASA missions for planetary exploration require high power, long-life Hall thrusters. However, thruster power and lifetime are limited by the erosion of plasma channel walls. Current plasma channel insulators, BN or Borosil, have the required low secondary electron emission (SEE) but are susceptible to xenon plasma erosion. AlN has exceptionally high plasma erosion resistance but suffers from hig ...