Award Data

Public and commercial application of NOAA developed products such as climate observations, weather products, and datasets are underutilized by public decision makers, infrastructure asset owners, or the public. Communities realize the risk posed by increases in storm intensity, flooding, and heat waves. However, communities lack understandable models targets to stakeholder questions that are affor ...

Recent theoretical studies of eddy flux correlation have suggested that the commonly used assumption of dry air having no net flux is erroneous and can lead to significant errors in reported observations. Presently, dry air density is calculated indirectly from measured temperature, pressure and relative humidity, all of which contribute to increased uncertainties in the result. If instead the den ...

Environmental species measurement on airborne atmospheric research craft is a demanding application for optical sensing techniques. Yet optical techniques offer many advantages including high-precision, fast response, and high species selectivity. Balloonsonde, kite, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or glider deployment demands that sensors meet stringent size, weight and power requirements. Few mea ...

Southwest Sciences proposes to develop small, low power instrumentation for the real-time direct measurement of carbonyl sulfide (OCS) in the atmosphere, especially targeting airborne measurements. The instrument will be based on a recently introduced room temperature interband cascade laser (ICL) operating in the 4830 nm region. This laser has a substantially reduced (by a factor of approximate ...

The objective of this SBIR is to investigate passive technology that will enable criticality control of a Nuclear Thermal Propulsion (NTP) reactor during a burn with little to no mechanical movement of the circumferential control drums. Specifically, this work will study passive reactor design features that mitigate and counteract the effects of 135Xe, the dominant fission product contributing to ...

There is growing recognition that success in a variety of space mission types can be greatly enhanced by making current communication transceivers and networks evolve towards networked communication systems that are intelligent, self-aware and thus can support greater levels of autonomy. This will be especially relevant as networked clusters of smaller-size satellites, made of CubeSats or microsat ...

Future small-spacecraft thermal engineers and integrators will contend with increasing spacecraft power and temperature variations resulting from challenging new missions in extreme environments. The LoadPath High heat flux Enhanced Acquisition and Transport system for Small spacecraft (HEATS) is an innovative, passive, two-phase thermal transport system that will help realize these missions of to ...

Atmospheric clouds have strong impact on the global radiative budget. Cloud's radiative properties are strongly affected by droplet size distribution and number concentration. This SBIR project will develop an innovative, compact and inexpensive droplet measurement system (DMS), which will provide in situ measurement of droplet size distribution function and droplet number concentration in clouds. ...

Mesa Photonics, in collaboration with the College of Optics and Photonics (CREOL) at the University of Central Florida, proposes to develop a spacesuit gas sensor based upon its Enhanced Raman Gas Sensor (ERGS) technology. The goal a moisture tolerant, drop-in replacement for the current CO2 sensor. Preliminary work achieved detection sensitivities for CO2, CH4, O2, and N2 of 1000, 300, 1000 and 1 ...

Southwest Sciences Inc. (SWS), in collaboration with the Southwest Research Institute (SwRI), will develop a reliable, ultra compact, low power diode laser multigas sensor to measure carbon dioxide (CO2), ammonia (NH3), oxygen (O2) and water vapor (H2O) concentrations in the presence of saturated and condensable water concentrations appropriate for NASA's portable life support system (PLSS). A hig ...