Award Data

This effort is focused on the development of a system called Situational Awareness via Mixed-initiative Universal Recognition, Analysis, and Inference (SAMURAI). SAMURAI will provide a single cloud-enabled end-to-end workflow covering the full range of data analysis from data ingest to situational assessment and decision support. As part of this workflow SAMURAI will provide the ability for automa ...

Control of extremely lightweight, long endurance aircraft poses a challenging aeroservoelastic (ASE) problem due to significantly increased flexibility, and aerodynamic, structural, and actuator nonlinearities. To obtain the benefits of increased aerostructural efficiency, the controller needs to trim at a specified optimal shape while minimizing structural fatigue from gust disturbances. Tao Syst ...

NanoSonic has developed revolutionary multifunctional, super lightweight, self-healing and radiation shielding carbon fiber reinforced polymer (CFRP) composites as a viable lightweight material for space applications such as primary or secondary structures on NASA vehicles, habitat modules, and pressure vessel structures. While current composites are lightweight, they do not offer reliable method ...

NanoSonic has recently developed a hydrogen (H2) dispenser hose to realize H2 as a safe, reliable, and cost competitive replacement for gasoline. NanoSonic's ultra-low glass transition temperature (Tg of -100 ?C) is expected to meet the service requirement of 25,550 fills/year (70 fills/day for 2 years) at a combined ultra-high pressure of 875-bar and very wide service temperature range of -50?C ...

This proposal will develop an innovative architecture and concept of operations that permits reliable, safe, and repeated sampling of small bodies. The Lofted Regolith Sampling (LoRS) architecture is based on advanced astrodynamics and autonomy that is robust to target-body uncertainties and is adaptive during operations. The LoRS architecture is based on several key phases that ultimately lead to ...

This STTR project delivers a compact vibration-based Energy Conversion Module (ECM) that powers sensors for purposes such as structural health monitoring (SHM). NASA customers include the Rocket Propulsion Test (RPT) program, the ISS, and the Orion deep space vehicle, all of which need wireless sensors to monitor and assess structural health. The ECM represents a major advancement in the use of wi ...

Monitoring of structural strain is a well-established method for assessing the fatigue life and operational loads of aerospace vessels, aircraft, bridges, and other load-bearing structures. Information from extensive instrumentation using 100's to 1000's of strain gages can be fed into a condition based maintenance (CBM) algorithm to improve structural health assessments, detect damage, and lowe ...

Thermoelectric devices are critical to multiple NASA missions for power conversion with radioisotope sources. At present, commercially available TE devices typically offer limited heat-to-electricity conversion efficiencies, well below the fundamental thermodynamic limit, calling for the development of higher efficiency materials. The team of MicroXact Inc. and Virginia Tech is proposing to develo ...

Fibertek proposes a configurable, multi-beam, 1.5 um Doppler Lidar sensor, enabled by high-speed non-mechanical beam steering (NMBS). NMBS uses state-of-the-art, high-speed liquid-crystal based components, to provide wide-angle (up to +/- 45 degree), large-aperture, optical beam steering, at speeds of up to 10 kHz. Furthermore, this is integrated into a very compact optical transmit/receive termin ...

A variety of nondestructive inspection (NDI) techniques are already available for detection of small defects within structures. These techniques, although useful, provide little insight in terms of the remaining useful life of components or structures. Furthermore, NDI techniques rely on statistical analyses of historical usage records and can often result in situations where maintenance schedul ...