Award Data

Identification of organophosphates (OPs) based nerve agents, is vital to the protection of U.S. armed forces personnel. Existing detection methods use bulky and expensive laboratory equipment, negating their battlefield use. Colorimetric indicators such as the currently deployed M8 and M9 detection papers are the fastest, cheapest, and easiest type of detector to use; however, these cannot detect ...

Future NASA exploration missions will rely on remote operation of robots. As human explorers move further away from Earth, robotic precursors will scout destinations and robotic assistants will perform tasks to reduce astronaut risk and workload. 3D visualization is a key component of how humans will interact with robots for these missions. When the operator engages a robot using visualization, th ...

Airfoils produce more lift and less drag when the boundary layer is attached to the airfoil. With most aircraft there are combinations of airspeed and angle of attack where the boundary layer at least partially detaches from the airfoil. Reducing boundary layer detachment increases lift and reduce drag reducing fuel consumption and improving control for the pilot. Two methods known to improve b ...

Firefly, in collaboration with Rochester Institute of Technology, proposes developing a space solar cell having record efficiency exceeding 40% (AM0) by the introduction of nanowires within the active region of the current limiting sub-cell. The introduction of these nanoscale features will enable realization of an intermediate band solar cell (IBSC), while simultaneously increasing the effective ...

During recent robotic field tests, NASA investigated the use of intelligent planetary rovers to improve the productivity of human explorers on planetary surfaces. For these field tests, a remote Science Team built rover plans to collect data that supplements astronaut EVA and a remote Flight Team supervised the execution of these plans. This model of operation requires the Science Team to generate ...

Balcones Technologies, LLC proposes to adapt technologies developed by and resident in The University of Texas at Austin Center for Electromechanics (CEM) in the areas of superconducting Trapped Field Magnet (TFM) motors, magnetic bearings, terrestrial and space-based flywheel energy storage systems, and air-core generators to address STTR 2010-1 Subtopic T3.01, Technologies for Space Power and Pr ...

For NASA and other organizations, development using reconfigurable technologies can be time consuming and difficult, with expensive to over-budget development cycles and longer time-to-deployment. The proposed Q-DeployÂ? Processor and FPGA Rapid-Deployment Platform, with the endorsement of a leading prime who is heavily involved with NASA programs and allocations, will give NASA a standardized an ...

Limited astronaut time can result in high crew workload and fatigue during International Space Station (ISS) operations. Additionally crew skills can decline over extended mission duration onboard ISS. These stressors can impact task performance both in terms of increased errors and decreased efficiency. As humans go deeper into space, these issues will become even more pronounced. Methods are nee ...

Automation and autonomy technologies, such as automated planning software, are key elements in realizing the vision for space exploration. A fundamental requirement for success with these technologies is that they operate using valid models or ontologies of the application domains. Making ontological information available to automated systems is difficult because 1) domain experts reason in doma ...

Adaptive control offers an opportunity to fulfill present and futureaircraft safety objectives though automatedvehicle recovery while maintaining performanceand stability requirements in the presence of unknown orvarying operating environment.Future aircraft are a natural application of adaptive control. Theseaircraft will be more fuel efficient, have longer operating ranges thoughmore flexible ai ...