Award Data

Impact Technologies, LLC in collaboration with the Rochester Institute of Technology, proposes to develop and demonstrate a flight-worthy hardware prototype of a miniature, low cost/weight/ power device that provides stable and highly accurate near continuous positioning, attitude, and inertial measurements while being subjected to highly dynamic maneuvers and high vibration effects. In contrast t ...

Thermal analysis is increasingly used in the engineering of spacecrafts at every stage, including design, test, and ground-operation simulation. Currently used high-fidelity modeling and simulation tools at NASA are computationally prohibitive and not fully compatible with integrated analysis of spacecrafts. We propose to develop and demonstrate an innovative Model Order Reduction (MOR) software t ...

Amplification Technologies Inc ("ATI") proposes to develop the enabling material and device technology for the design of ultra low noise, high gain and high speed near-infrared single photon counting photodetectors and arrays sensitive in the 1000 nm to 1600 nm spectral region for long range space communication applications, based on the already proven mechanism of internal discrete amplification ...

In response to the need for actuators that can operate in the harsh Venusian environment for extended periods of time, Honeybee Robotics conducted extensive research and testing to resolve the tall poles in developing an extreme temperature gear. During the Phase I effort, multiple gear material and lubrication candidates were tested under load in Venus-like conditions (486oC temperatu ...

The continued development of automated sample acquisition and handling tools is of critical importance to future robotic missions on Mars, the Moon, Venus, and other planetary bodies. In response to the need for a compact, low mass, low power, and low weight-on-bit coring device, Honeybee Robotics proposes to continue development of an arm-deployed and arm-stabilized rotary-percussive coring tool. ...

The overall objective of the Phase 1 effort was to demonstrate the technical feasibility of the Advanced Carbothermal Electric (ACE) Reactor concept. Unlike state-of-the-art carbothermal reactors that use concentrated solar energy and/or laser energy to heat the regolith, the ACE Reactor uses an innovative method to electrically heat the regolith to temperatures over 1800ºC within a thermally ins ...

Honeybee Robotics therefore proposed to develop a software tool for facilitating prospecting and excavation system trades in support of selecting an optimal architecture for the Moon. The tool could serve as a starting platform for excavation software for Mars or asteroids. The tool will provide engineers with the ability to quickly examine "What if?" scenarios within a trade space by specifying ...

This proposal leverages a highly successful Phase 1 feasibility effort to further develop a system that satisfies the cold-start requirements of scramjet engines. The system provides energy-dense, low volume hydrocarbon fuel conditioning based on the hydrolysis reaction of triethylaluminum (TEA) with water. TEA is an organometallic liquid that reacts exothermically with water and burns readily i ...

This NASA SBIR Phase II project seeks to develop and demonstrate a suite of sensor products to monitor the health of composite structures. Sensors will be made using the Company¡¦s Direct Write process based on Mesoplasma?§ deposition technology. This allows a wide variety of sensor materials and architectures to be deposited onto conformal components made from polymer composite, metallic, an ...

Future landed robotic missions to the lunar poles will seek to characterize the properties of subsurface regolith. Current instruments for such in-situ analysis, however, require that geological samples be brought to the surface by a sample acquisition tool and subsequently processed and presented to the analyzer. This model has significant limitations with regard to science yield: evaporation of ...