Award Data

The Phase II project will develop a suite of diagnostic sensors using Direct Write technology to measure temperature, surface recession depth, and heat flux of an ablative thermal protection system (TPS) in real time, which can be integrated to support TPS evaluation and in-situ diagnostics during planetary entry. Standalone heat flux sensors and those fabricated by direct deposition will be deve ...

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 potential weak spots at the panel joints. In Pha ...

Mesa Photonics has developed laser-based gas sensor technology compatible with UAV deployment. Our Airborne MUlti-Gas Sensor (AMUGS) technology is based upon two-tone frequency-modulated spectroscopy (TT-FMS). TT-FMS retains the advantages of near-infrared diode lasers while pushing detection sensitivity more than two orders of magnitude closer to the theoretical limit. Phase I results demonstrate ...

There has been a renewed push across NASA centers and programs to make Systems Engineering & Integration (SE&I) processes more efficient and results-oriented than the current cumbersome and expensive cross-checking processes using text documents, and transition to a repeatable and a cost-effective process of Model Based Systems Engineering (MBSE). In parallel, Systems Health management (SHM), with ...

In Phase II, the QSI-Vanderbilt team seeks to develop a system-level diagnostics and prognostic process that incorporates a "sense and respond capability," which first uses error codes and discrete sensor values to correctly diagnose the system health including degradations and failures of sensors and components, and then invokes appropriate prognostics routines for the assessment of RUL and perfo ...

A significant technology gap for NASA astrobiology missions is the field detection of organics at the sub ppm level. Currently, NASA uses different sensing technologies such as Pyrolysis–GCMS to analyze planetary samples. These instruments require complex sample handling and can process only a limited number of samples. It is critical to develop an effective instrument with extended and enh ...

Hybrid-electric propulsion is becoming widely accepted as a potential disruptive technology for aircraft that can provide significant reduction in fuel consumption as well as many other benefits. The majority of the analysis tools that exist today, however, do not harness the capability to analyze these unique systems, especially in the rotorcraft realm. The Phase I effort focused mainly on the de ...

We propose building upon the modular extensible architecture and existing capabilities of Open|SpeedShop to provide seamless, integrated, heterogeneous processor performance analysis. The NVIDIA GPU and Intel Many Integrated Core (MIC) processors are increasingly important at high performance computing (HPC) laboratories within NASA for use on NASA's high-end computing (HEC) projects because of th ...

In Phase I of this project, SSCI carried out initial development of the Generalized Guidance, Navigation & Control Architecture for Reusable Development (GUARD). The resulting framework is applicable across different Autonomous Rendezvous and Docking (AR&D) domains, and enables further development and testing of reusable GN&C software for such applications. GUARD is based on the key functional req ...

The Variable Camber Continuous Trailing Edge Flap (VCCTEF) concept offers potential improvements in the aerodynamic efficiency of aircraft through real time wing shaping. NASA and Boeing have been studying the suitability of this concept to address the drag reduction problem in aircraft with reduced-stiffness wings. However, reduced stiffness may lead to wing flutter. In addition, displacements of ...