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The MarsOasis™ cultivation system is a versatile, autonomous, environmentally controlled growth chamber for food provision on the Martian surface. MarsOasis™ integrates a wealth of prior research and Mars growth chamber concepts into a complete system design and operational prototype. MarsOasis™ includes several innovative features relative to the state of the art space growth chambers. I ...

Regenerative space life support will undoubtedly require food production, to recover nutrients and close the carbon loop in a spacecraft habitat. Aquatic plants have enormous potential for edible biomass production but have been little studied as potential food crops for space applications. The proposed μG-LilyPond™ is an autonomous environmentally controlled floating plant cultivation system ...

The proposed innovation, a distributed architecture for intelligent characterization, fault detection/diagnosis/ reconfiguration/replanning/rescheduling, and adaptive execution, substantially leverages large previous NASA investments to assemble the correct set of technologies to implement all aspects of the required intelligent, autonomous vehicle and distributed EPS and other subsystem managers. ...

Advanced turbomachinery components play a critical role in launch vehicle and spacecraft liquid rocket propulsion systems. To achieve desired efficiencies, extremely tight tolerances are often imposed between inducer blades and shrouds or other system components which sets up strong interactions that influence both the aerodynamics and the structural performance of blades and vanes. These transien ...

Chemical contamination of spacecraft components as well as thermal and force loading from firing liquid propellant thrusters are critical concerns for in-space propulsion applications. Gas molecular contamination and liquid droplet deposition due to incomplete combustion threaten to damage surface materials, sensitive instruments and optical sensors, and poses major risks for mission success. Liqu ...

NASA's goals to explore deep space through manned missions requires development of self-sustaining life support systems. A diverse team from Freight Farms, Inc. have partnered with Clemson University to merge knowledge of sustainable farming with engineering expertise to create off-grid infrastructure for self-sustaining plant life that will assist NASA with their goals. Freight Farms' current pro ...

Distributed Spacecraft Missions (DSM) have become increasingly important in the effort to extend the capabilities of instruments to gather critical Earth and Space science data. DSMs, which include constellations, formations and clusters, have already been employed and have been proposed for several future space science missions. The Magnetospheric Multiscale (MMS) mission is a current Solar-terre ...

Fractionated spacecraft architectures to distribute mission performance from a single, monolithic satellite across large number of smaller spacecraft, for missions like close proximity inspection, sparse aperture arrays, robotic assembly, servicing, refueling, etc., can enable higher mission capability, reconfigurability and robustness. This distributed satellite architecture, with large numbers o ...

GTL?s SNS technology aids in the operation of new or existing structural health monitoring (SHM) systems by integrating data and power pathways into the structure. The use of this technology within a composite structure would allow engineers to place sensors from an SHM system directly where they are needed on a structure with instant power. GTL?s SNS technology offers the potential for developers ...

NASA recognizes the importance of conservation, smart utilization and reuse of resources for their deep space missions to address the need for regeneration of air, water and waste with highly reliable systems to reduce mission payload. Additionally, energy for life support and other systems needs to be obtained from renewable energy sources or waste streams. In order to address NASA's requirements ...