Award Data

In this proposal, Bluecom Systems proposes to develop a framework in designing and manufacturing smart materials that can be used as adaptive radiating structures to operate at different frequencies, with different radiation patterns, and achieve polarization diversity. The solution proposed, based on optically pixilated Silicon or GaAs surfaces, can be used as reflective surfaces for reconfigurab ...

Adaptive Optics allow ground-based astronomical observatories to overcome atmospheric distortion limited observation by using natural and artificial guide stars to measure the distortion. Sodium-layer guide stars provide near all-sky coverage for high resolution astronomy. Over the last 20 years, Optically Pumped Semiconductor Laser (OPSL), also referred to as Vertically Extended Cavity Surface Em ...

Over the past 2 years, Roccor has successfully qualified and delivered High Strain Composite (HSC) products for space-flight customers including, 1) RF-Furlable boom, 2) a furlable-antenna system; and is currently qualifying HSC products for space-flight customers including 3) an FCC certified deorbit device, and 4) a solar array deployment system. Three of these missions will be launched in 2018. ...

Current fielded sensor protection is limited to fixed wavelength filters. Broadband filters designed to circumvent multi-wavelength laser threats are plagued by low transmittance, which degrades the sensitivity and performance of the sensor. Future warfighter threats include frequency agile lasers and thus have the potential of defeating fixed filters. Self-activating (passive) devices where prote ...

Current scene projection hardware is challenged to simultaneously meet the requirements for high peak temperature (> 2000K), high resolution (> 1Kx1K), response time < 1 ms, cryogenic and temporally uniform photon flux. MEMS, Resistor arrays, liquid crystals, and photonic crystals all suffer in one or more areas. MEMS suffer from flicker and low dynamic range. Resistor arrays suffer from low frame ...

The development of compact and telescope-deployable laser sources emitting in the yellow portion of the visible spectrum is critical for the advancement of DoD-relevant adaptive optics capabilities. The objective of this project is to continue the development of novel laser architectures based on optically-pumped substrate-transferred epitaxial gain media capable of efficient thermal management an ...

MZA partnered with the Michigan Technological University (MTU) proposes development and testing of key components for our unified Atmospheric Refractivity and Turbulence Sensor (ARTS.) Software upgrades will be made to MZA’s DELTA-Sky sensor to enable atmospheric refraction measurements in addition to existing turbulence profiling. The illuminator assembly to implement the ARTS probe laser ...

The objective of the proposed Phase-II effort by Spectral Energies LLC is to design and develop a fiber-coupled hyperspectral thermal LWIR imaging sensor suite to provide reliable, accurate 2D surface temperature measurements with high flexibility in practical gas turbine engines and propulsion systems. During the phase-II efforts, our team will work with fiber manufacture on custom designing of a ...

Spectral Energies proposes to design a multisensory diagnostic suite for measurements within elevated-pressure RDEs. This sensor will utilize tunable-laser absorption spectroscopy to measure temperature, pressure and H2O concentrations in the annulus of a rocket-RDE and background-oriented schlieren imaging system for flow density gradient imaging to provide time resolved information about the sho ...

The objective of this project is to develop human intelligence-inspired algorithms that exploit multi-modal sources of low and high quality data to achieve a series of objectives such as detection, localization, tracking, and classification. A Bayesian model-based hierarchical adaptive decision making (HADM) algorithm will be developed which includes multiple levels of decision making organized in ...