Award Data

Opterus Research and Development, Inc. proposes to develop and validate multi-scale thin-ply High Strain Composites (HSCs) constitutive modeling tools for incorporation into commercial finite element analysis codes. The constitutive models will capture the time-temperature-load-deformation viscoelastic characteristics common to HSCs as well as the yielding or permanent deformation associated with ...

The landing surface damage and liberation of debris particles caused by rocket plume impingement flow during spacecraft propulsive landing on unprepared surfaces of Moon, Mars, and other celestial bodies poses a high risk for robotic and human exploration activities. Simply determining whether the plume induced loads exceed the bedrock bearing capacity threshold is not sufficient. An integrated m ...

The goal of the proposed Phase I work is to demonstrate the feasibility of the coordination and control of a low cardinality (n=12) swarm of smallsats that realizes a distributed Synthetic Aperture Radar (SAR) in low Earth orbit. Preliminary mission and spacecraft design work has shown that the swarm can support SAR imaging in the L-band (1.35 GHz) with a ground range resolution finer than 10 m wi ...

Spacecraft propulsive landings on unprepared regolith present in extra-terrestrial environments pose a high risk for space exploration missions. Plume/regolith interaction results in (1) the liberation of dust and debris particles that may collide with the landing vehicle and (2) craters whose shape itself can influence vehicle dynamics. To investigate such gas-granular interactions for large-scal ...

This body of research focuses on developing fundamental engineering qualification methods for Thin-Ply High Strain Composites (TP-HSCs). Roccor will collaborate with NASA and Dr. Kwok of the University of Central Florida to develop and validate a robust framework for engineering the viscoelastic behavior of highly strained thin-ply composites. The material systems studied will be highly focused on ...

In resource limited settings, rapid and accurate diagnosis of infections is critical for managing potential exposures to highly virulent pathogens,whether occurring from an act of bioterrorism or a natural event. This is especially important for hard to detect intracellular bacterial andalphavirus infections, that overlap symptomatically and often treated empirically due to a lack of reliable and ...

In a pandemic or exposure to weaponized Marburg virus the morbidity, mortality and social unrest that will ensue before vaccines orMilitary operating on foreign soil as well as to the population of the US Homeland. Practically all threat agents of biological origin (except forcertain non-proteinaceous toxins, typically produced by marine organisms and fungi) have their structure and vital function ...

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 ...

The innovation proposed here is a novel multi-scale coupling methodology implemented in the Loci-STREAM CFD code, for developing a high-fidelity, high-performance multiphase combustion modeling capability to enable accurate, fast and robust simulation of unsteady turbulent, reacting flows involving cryogenic propellants (such as LOX/Methane) in liquid rocket engines (LREs). During Phase 1 work, a ...

Robots need to know their location to map of their surroundings but without global positioning data they need a map to identify their surroundings and estimate their location. Simultaneous localization and mapping (SLAM) solves these dual problems at once. SLAM does not depend on any kind of infrastructure and is thus a promising localization technology for NASA planetary missions and for many ter ...