This innovation is a low mass, low volume, gas based system that will acquire size selective powdered samples from the extreme ambient (such as Mars or Venus surface). Then it will transfer and deliver samples to the analytical instrument(s) that are situated in a controlled environment such as a robotic or lander platform where measurements can be made. This research will further develop a miniature sample acquisition, transfer and delivery system that will enhance NASA's capability of studying the origin, evolution and distribution of life in the planets.

This system has a compact-robust construction and consumes very low power with no moving parts, which make this system very reliable for extreme environmental applications. It is a pneumatically operated system and has great potential for using in-situ resource (e.g. concentrated CO2 on Mars) for the operations.  

Size selective precision sampling, low cross-contaminations, possibility of high temperature sterilization are many of the unique features of this system. Proper development of this innovation (in the course of Phase I, II and III) will be key for the astrobiological, resource allocations and geophysical investigations that are addressed in NASA's defined Mars and Venus science missions.
NASA and DoD are seeking economical and high-performance bipropellant thrusters for various applications. These goals cannot be achieved using the silicided C103 chambers in current use. Ultramet has developed and successfully demonstrated carbon fiber-reinforced zirconium carbide (C/ZrC) and carbon fiber-reinforced zirconium-silicon carbide (C/Zr-Si-C) ceramic matrix composites (CMCs) for use in liquid propellant applications up to 4200&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;F. Although the density of these CMCs is less than that of C103, further reducing overall weight is desired with a target goal of 2.6 g/cm3. Carbon/carbon (C/C) is widely used because of its light weight and high specific strength at elevated temperatures. However, adequate long-term protection of C/C is the limiting factor for its use in liquid propellant propulsion components. Ultramet will combine the light weight of C/C and the ultrahigh temperature oxidation resistance of C/Zr-Si-C CMCs in a unique laminate composite. This system will possess an overall density that is similar to C/SiC while increasing the operating temperature to 4000&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;F in liquid propulsion applications. Net-shape fabrication of CMC-lined C/C combustion chambers will be accomplished by adapting an innovative variant of Ultramet's melt infiltration technology.
Extended-duration spaceflight requires self-sustained patient care capable for the treatment of emergency medical conditions, thus requiring medical grade water to reconstitute pharmacological substances when needed. Conventional method to produce medical grade water is either energy inefficient or too complex, requiring high pressure and using considerable consumables. We propose a novel foul-resistant nano-pervaporation (NVP) membrane with minimized mass, volume, consumables, and power consumption for producing medical grade water in both micro-g and sub-g environments. Our proposed concept is based on a near-room-temperature pervaporation process. The nano-pore selectively adsorbs liquid water and excludes other undesirable constituents in the portable water, such as particles, microbes, virus, and volatile organic compounds. The permeated water vapor is subsequently condensed allowing the heat of evaporation to be recovered. This smart system uses space vacuum to obtain low vapor pressure, together with a build-in heat recovery, aims at minimizing the required power. This membrane is foul-resistant.  It only requires a low pressure gradient to achieve high water flow rate, minimizing the driving force for fouling. Also, without any moving part, the system enjoys low maintenance. The NPV process shows potentially the lowest amount of power consumption, mass/volume, and consumables among possible technologies for producing medical grade water.
The development of condition-based monitoring sensor network systems has the potential to provide an enhanced aircraft safety by real time assessment of the aircraft's structural integrity.    Los Gatos Research proposes to develop a structural health monitoring sensor system, capable of simultaneously monitoring  dynamic strain and structural  damages in aircraft components in real time.  Our novel sensor technology offers a number of advantages including compactness (0.2mm x 5mm x 5mm), lightweight (few grams), low cost, and fast response (milliseconds).  We achieve this by fabricating Bragg gratings on stress-sensitive polymer planar waveguides on a flexible substrate, which is capable of measuring stress, strain, and temperature, and monitoring damages in advanced material structures.  In Phase I, using a DFB laser with a feedback control we will demonstrate the sensor's capability to measure both static and dynamic strain with large dynamic range, high accuracy and high sensitivity. In addition, combing the low-cost laser-based demodulation technique and an acousto-ultrasonic method we will demonstrate the polymer gratings' capability to monitor ultrasonic stress waves indicating the presence and severity of damages in a metal structure, when the structure is probed by an ultrasonic wave generation actuator device.
Sunpower will introduce thermoacoustic Stirling heat engine (TASHE) technology into its existing Stirling convertor technology to eliminate the moving mechanical displacer.  The displacer function will be performed by a thermal buffer tube and supporting thermoacoustic components containing no moving mechanical parts. Sunpower's linear alternator will be retained, except re-sized to accommodate the power of the TASHE.  TASHE technology has evolved independently, spearheaded by efforts at Los Alamos National Laboratory and typically packages components (heat exchangers, thermal buffer tube) in a physically different layout than typical Stirling convertor technology.  The innovation here is to recognize the similarity between components and repackage the thermoacoustic components as closely as possible to the proven layout used for Sunpower's engines. In this way it will be possible to make direct comparisons of size, weight and efficiency between thermoacoustic and displacer-type Stirling convertors.  The research will help NASA assess the relative benefits of thermoacoustic and displacer-type Stirling convertors for space power applications and may lead to technology uniquely suited to some missions where displacer-type technology is unacceptable for whatever reason.  In Phase 1 we will optimize the concentric TASHE design to provide as much electrical output as possible from a single GPHS (nominally 220 W of heat delivered to the convertor).  This design will use the same temperature levels currently used for the ASC convertor of 850 C hot end and 90 C reject.  This will provide a direct comparison of size, mass, and efficiency differences between TASHE and displacer type convertors designed for the same application and using the same temperature levels.  During Phase 1 we will also scale up this basic TASHE to a higher output power (~400W), and higher temperature levels, to provide a conceptual design of a high efficiency TASHE suited for Venus exploration.
Future NASA architectures and missions will involve many distributed platforms that must work together. This in turn requires guidance, navigation and control (GN&amp;C) technology such as systems that determine spacecraft relative range and attitude. The proposed Hybrid Guidance System (HGS) will be such a system, providing increased relative navigation accuracy and robustness while reducing mass, volume, and power consumption by a factor of 2 to 4. The HGS's key innovation is integration of three proven and developed sensor technologies (laser-based retro-image pattern matching, laser range-finding, and correlation) into a low-power package. We will develop non-linear navigation estimation algorithms to fuse the sensor outputs together as well as to integrate the system output with other on-board navigation systems. The state estimate generation using three different techniques will increase the system's robustness through the ability to reject faulty measurements from one component of the system. Phase I of the SBIR will verify feasibility of the HGS design and the navigation algorithms and will culminate in a realistic mission simulation of vehicles using the HGS as part of an integrated GN&amp;C system. The results of this simulation will serve as an excellent springboard to Phase II HGS prototype hardware and embedded software development.
Multi-roller traction drives have several advantages relative to geared units for aerospace and commercial drive applications. Among these are zero backlash, low torque ripple, compactness, light weight, and unlike gears, the potential to operate without liquid or grease lubrication. Current traction drives are made from heat treated bearing steels and require special traction fluids which limited their use to terrestrial applications. Space applications such as planetary vehicles operate in hostile environments.  Innovations in material technology for non-lubricated operation will be required in order to benefit from the inherent advantages of traction drives relative to gears.  Phase I work of this proposal will provide the basis for alternative nonmetallic materials to be substituted for bearing steel.  These materials must have low wear but high traction characteristics.  The proposed effort under Phase I will be used as a basis for a Phase II effort, in which one or more prototype systems will be designed, built and tested for space exploration applications. Applications include robotic arms, speed and torque balanced drives for scientific instruments and zero torque reaction drives for planetary vehicles.
The key element in producing an efficient low temperture cryocooler is the performance of the regenerator. It must have good heat transfer characteristics while providing low pressure drop, especially for compact high speed coolers. The axial thermal conductivity must be low to reduce losses but provide good radial conductivity for flow uniformity and maximum use of all material. At low termperatures, the heat capacity of the regenerator material must be high to achieve these low temperatures. The geometry of the regenerator material will be investigated to meet the requirements and minimize losses while providing the necrssary characteristics for efficient cryocooler performance. Altermative fabricaiton methods and materials, including rare earths will also be investigated to take advantage of the improved low temperature material properties.
System &amp; Processes Engineering Corporation (SPEC) proposes a miniature solid state surface imaging LADAR, for imaging the landing areas providing precision surface profile and range to impact.  The LADAR utilizes an advanced hybridized detector Readout Integrated Circuit (ROIC) single chip solution that supports an integrated detector and ROIC configuration enabling a single chip LADAR receiver solution capable of operating at multiple wavelengths.  This single chip receiver is combined with multiple laser diodes to give a miniature flash LADAR with high frame rates, 3mm range accuracy, low power draw and small data frames (100x smaller than typical LIDARS).  The LADAR provides the range and amplitude of the first three targets encountered in each pixel, giving the ability to detect subpixel rocks and craters without overwhelming data rates or image processing.  The integrated Micro Channel Plate (MCP) allows ultra high receiver sensitivity, with high gain and wavelength flexibility by changing the photo cathode materials.  The use of a MCP with CMOS chip anode pickup pixels, allows the chip to be vertically integrated using a standard CMOS process, the pickup anode on the top layer, the sample and holds and amplifiers below.
We propose a new modeling effort that will make substantial refinements and improvements to our existing models of the interplanetary meteoroid environment near Earth. Because of recent theoretical and observational advancements within the field of radar meteors, we believe that existing models for the interplanetary meteor environment that are based upon or validated with radar meteor observations (Such as the NASA Meteoroid Enviornment Model MEM) lack important theoretically underpinning, and can be improved. Specifically, we now understand that the plasma generated during meteor entry is highly unstable and turbulent, and the evolution of this plasma, is at all stages largely influenced by plasma processes such as wave and ambipolar electric fields. Yet this has not been taken into account in any detailed radar meteor scattering theory. We propose to use our existing and on-going plasma simulations and models to provide the input profiles of conductivity and permittivity for finite difference time domain (FDTD) simulations which can then interrogate the structure using plane waves that replicate radar pulses over the range of used frequencies from HF to L-Band. Using this approach together with our models for how the meteor plasma varies as a function of both meteor parameters such as size, composition, and velocity, and, atmospheric parameters such as winds/electric fields, density, temperature and altitude, will allow us to understand and characterize the full range of radar derivable information from meteors. 

Achieving these proposed goals will close the existing information gap and resolve the conflicting observations we have on the interplanetary meteor flux. Our results will provide a revised model for the interplanetary meteoroid environment that will strongly support NASA's planned manned and un-manned missions near Earth and to the Moon and Mars.
Nanotechnology which includes carbon nanotubes has the potential to produce materials that exhibit properties beyond those expected from conventional materials which are anticipated to have a profound impact on NASA's future missions.  Graphite fiber composites are multifunctional with high strength to weight ratios which form the basis of many aerospace systems.  The combinations of carbon nanotubes with graphite fibers have the potential to significantly enhance fiber strength; offering significant advantages in multi-functional space flight applications.  A unique approach will be utilized to incorporate carbon nanotubes onto existing graphite fibers to produce exemplary fiber strengths that will be utilized in composites with significantly higher strength to weight ratios.  Nanotube reinforced graphite fibers will be produced and characterized in epoxy composites to demonstrate the expected property enhancements.
Managing the health of vehicle, crew, and habitat systems is a primary function of flight controllers today.  We propose to develop an architecture for automating many of the response actions in problem situations and coordinating these actions with human response activities.  Our approach is to develop a basic module that automates (1) Planning what response actions to take, (2) Executing these planned actions, and (3) Monitoring the effects of these actions to ensure they are successful.  These modules will be organized into layers, operating at different levels of abstraction and with different time constants and time horizons.  The architecture will support both hierarchical coordination between layers of control and peer-to-peer interaction among modules within a layer.  This proposal is innovative in combining centralized planning for hierarchical coordination with distributed negotiation techniques for peer-to-peer coordination to provide flexible contingency response.  The successful completion of a Phase II project will deliver a system health management architecture to NASA that improves system safety and makes more effective use of human time and capabilities when problems occur.
The goal of NASA's Quiet Aircraft Technology project is to reduce perceived aircraft noise by half in 10 years and by 75 percent in 25 years, using 1997 levels as the baseline. These reductions are necessary to meet the expected demand for air travel and increasingly stringent noise standards around the world. A significant portion of noise reduction will be achieved through lighter aircraft as a result of advances in composite materials, such as nanocomposites.  Vibrations are undesirable for structures, due to the need for structural stability and dynamic response, position control, and durability.  Vibration and acoustic reduction can be obtained in structural materials by increasing the damping capacity (expressed by the loss factor) and/or decreasing the stiffness (expressed by the storage modulus).  It is proposed to investigate carbon nanofiber composites for their expected acoustic damping properties by adjusting fiber volume fraction and length to appropriately tailor acoustic damping responses for this material.  Nanocomposites based on carbon nanofibers have high potential for advances in material performance (weight specific strength and stiffness, vibration damping, flammability reduction, and electrical conductivity) as well as manufacturing simplification and cost reduction.
A ferroelectric non-linear dielectric was recently discovered that, in their film form, possess a number of properties that make it an excellent choice for radiation-hardened electronics, particularly a radiation hardened (total dose hardened and SEE immune) non-volatile (NV) static random access memory (SRAM).  Electrical measurements of these films demonstrated a relatively low dielectric constant (~20), an inherent ability to form a native buffer layer when deposited directly on silicon, and a strong polarization hysteresis effect. These results indicate that this film may be used to replace the two n-channel and two p-channel transistors in a traditional 4-T SRAM latch cell with two n-channel and two p-channel non-linear dielectric field effect transistors (NLDFETs). The threshold voltage hysteresis effect of the NLDFET should achieve full SEU immunity to at least 80MeV-cm2/mg of ionizing radiation, when used in a standard 6-transistor SRAM cell structure, thus have ultra-fast access times (like commercial SRAMs) while offering full non-volatility.  In Phase I we will provide the device proof of concept, then in Phase II build a prototype memory.  Phase III will see commercialization by licensing and sales. The resulting NV-SRAM products have the potential to be orders of magnitude faster than any existing EEPROM or FLASH devices because the nonlinear dielectric film forms a native dielectric with silicon giving the structure resistance to "wear-out" or "data-retention" problems.  Finally, the SMI material is fully compatible with CMOS processing and has been accepted into major commercial silicon fabrication lines as a high-k dielectric for linear applications.
Surmet will demonstrate a novel processing method to develop environmentally resistant C/SiC composites for turbomachinery.  The need to reduce the weight, size, and costs of current systems make the use of SiC ideal in these high temperatures and extreme environments.  Traditional processing of SiC materials are inherently limited in terms of component thicknesses and overall sizes that can be processed, as well as uniform densification.  Also, pure SiC matrices are subject to attack in the environments expected for these components, e.g., hydrogen rich steam and oxygen rich environments.  
	Surmet proposes a protected C/SiC composite from preceramic polymer as a solution to NASA systems' weight, environmental resistance, and cost requirements.  A number of specimens will be fabricated to demonstrate mechanical strength, thermal capability, and environmental durability of these materials.  The Phase II program will demonstrate repeatability in properties and produce relevant CMC components that will be tested under simulated service conditions.
Sion Power is developing a rechargeable lithium sulfur (Li-S) battery
with a demonstrated specific energy exceeding 350 Wh/kg and the range of
operating temperatures from ?40 to +45oC. The range will be extended to
?60 +60oC and specific energy to 400 Wh/kg. Performance improvement will
be based on developing three components:  1. Advanced electrolytes with
high ionic conductivity at liquid or glassy state at temperatures down
to minus 70-100oC; 2. Advanced cathode with homogeneous and
heterogeneous catalysts increasing electrochemical sulfur utilization to
90&amp;#37; and energy to 400 Wh/kg; 3. Additives protecting lithium anode
surface from reaction with electrolyte and providing long calendar life
and low self-discharge; To demonstrate the effectiveness of components
developed, we will build and cycle the series of 1.2 ? 2.5 Ah cells in
the range of temperatures from ?70 to +60oC at rates from C/20 to 2C.
Flexible electronic circuits can be easily integrated with large area (&gt;10m aperture), inflatable antennas to provide distributed control and processing functions. Flexible electronic circuits can also perform dynamic antenna sub-arraying and gain pattern reconfiguration for active phased-array antenna (PAA) and thus significantly enhance the reliability of NASA's space radar systems. However, existing flexible electronics are based on organic semiconductor materials that have carrier mobility four orders of magnitude lower than conventional single crystal silicon. Such low carrier mobility limits the operating speed of flexible electronics to a few kilohertz and thus makes it unsuitable for multi-GHz RF antenna applications. The proposed research aims to develop a printable silicon nano-FET with high carrier mobility of over 400 cm2/V?s. Such a high carrier mobility provides an unprecedented opportunity to achieve flexible electronics with high operating frequency of over 40GHz. The high-speed flexible electronics are expected to be integrated large-area, inflatable radar antennas and achieve smart antenna systems for high performance and reliable space operations. In this SBIR phase I program, a preliminary printable silicon nano-FET will be developed and characterized for proof-of-concept verification. The feasibility of building high-speed flexible electronics and its monolithic integration with large-area inflatable antennas will also be demonstrated.
The goal of this project is to develop flexible food packaging materials with an effective barrier against oxygen and moisture.  This technology will build on sol-gel core competency of the company, which has been expanded under NASA funding. In this Phase I project, InnoSense LLC (ISL), in collaboration with Professor Melvin Pascall at Ohio State University, will demonstrate the potential of ISL's nanomaterials-based barrier technology in NASA space exploration. The Phase I project would demonstrate: (a) that flexible thin film barrier layers can be deposited onto polymeric substrates and can be adhesively bonded to a polypropylene layer for flexible food packaging applications, (b) achievement of water vapor transmission rate (WVTR) &lt; than 0.001 g/m2-day and oxygen transmission rate (OTR) &lt; than 0.001 cc/m2-day for the flexible thin-film barrier. The focus of Phase II will be optimization of the barrier architecture, and the evaluation of prototype flexible pouches for their mechanical and barrier layer properties after retorting, a process typically used to package reheatable foods in flexible packaging applications. To assure success of this project, ISL has assembled a technical team with a cumulative 60 person-years of experience in specialty coatings, polymers and packaging areas.
MesoScribe Technologies, a high tech start-up from SUNY-Stony Brook, proposes to apply a breakthrough new direct writing technology to meet the objectives set-forth in the NASA SBIR topic S2.06 Advanced Flexible Electronics.  This technology is based on revolutionary advances to modern day thermal spray materials processing enables deposition of wide range of electronic materials onto large areas at low processing temperatures and, for most part, requires no post-processing.  MesoScribe will develop large area patterning capability to demonstrate electronically steerable L-band, phased array antennas to meet NASA's goals.  During phase I the maximum dimensions for considerations will be ? x ? m.  This is based on the capabilities of our current motion system and not a limitation of the process itself.  The antennas will be designed, modeled, fabricated and characterized for performance attributes.  The flexibility of the system will also be assessed through appropriate bending experiments.  In parallel, conceptual strategies for large area fabrication will also discussed for future consideration.  Finally, MesoScribe will also demonstrate our unique ability in terms of direct fabrication of antenna elements on large space based objects that would provide a robust means for multi-functional integration of electromagnetics with space structures.
An important mission for NASA is the development of revolutionary flight concepts and technology.  The development of Micro unmanned air vehicles (MAVs) and Mars aircraft has received considerable attention recently.  Unlike conventional aircraft, MAVs and Mars aircraft suffer from operation in an extremely low Reynolds number flight regime.  Generally, a low Reynolds number is considered to be between 150,000 and 500,000.  Both MAVs and Mars aircraft, however, can have operational Reynolds number regimes from 20,000 to 120,000.  At these extremely low Reynolds numbers, the aerodynamic flow features are dominated by laminar separation and separation bubble effects, which are highly unstable and very dependent upon the free-stream conditions and atmospheric turbulence.  Although it is often argued that an exploratory vehicle will operate over a benign portion of the flight envelope, an encounter with strong winds or gusts, particularly during a maneuver, could excite a highly non-linear response.  This means that the assumption of linear derivatives for stability and control may not be valid, which could cause the loss of a vehicle designed with a control system based on linear assumptions.  It is proposed that a low-cost, integrated ground test, simulation, and flight control development environment be created to address these challenges.
An ultra-miniature (&lt;50 grams) high-performance brushless-motor controller, code named 'Puck', has been developed by Barrett for Earth-based mobile-manipulation use where efficiency, low mass, and robustness are critical attributes.  Application of a distributed intelligent system will enable these Pucks to be used liberally across a variety of NASA's future satellite, articulated-machine, and robotic applications requiring low-level robust brushless commutation directed by high-level task intelligence.  In addition to supporting space-vector control of brushless motors, each Puck carries a virtually unburdened 32-bit DSP running at 80 MHz with plenty of memory and high-speed serial communications to neighboring Pucks.  So even as machines increase in degrees of freedom - and therefore complexity - the excess computational power provided by the Pucks increases proportionately, working in tandem to overcome increasingly complex controls issues.  While another Barrett proposal submitted to NASA is focused on developing the hardware for a space-qualified Puck controller, this proposal focuses on a control architecture that leverages the distributed DSPs.  Phase I will build an architecture that best leverages a distributed network of Pucks, such as a solution of computationally-intensive kinematics equations (e.g. Jacobian matrix), and local tasks, such as estimating precise realtime velocities and supporting series-elastic-actuator (SEA) strain-gages.
In response to NASA's need for a 3D virtual reality environment providing scientific data visualization without special user devices, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes a new Holographic Image Plane Projection Integral (HIPPI) 3D display that projects real moving (video rate) 3D color images in air.  These 3D images will appear to a viewer as real, opaque (hidden line obscuration), volumetric 3D images over a wide look-around field-of-view (180 to 360 deg.) with high-fidelity realism.  The proposed HIPPI-3D display consists of a high-speed, high-resolution, full-color projector, a spinning beam scanner, beam-forming optics, and a lightweight, transparent, spatially multiplexed (thin strip) off-axis reflective holographic projection screen.  By projecting 2D perspective views of a 3D object, via the strip hologram, and by scanning multiple strips at 30 Hz, a multiplanar integral volume 3D image is created in the air in front of the curved screen.  The screen and the projector can be set up and disassembled very quickly.  In Phase I, POC will conduct a detailed feasibility study by analytical design supported by experimental verification, and a proof-of-concept demonstration setup.  Phase II will focus on optimizing the system design and component technologies to complete a fully operational prototype.
In this phase I program MicroCell Technologies, LLC (MCT) proposes to demonstrate the feasibility of an electrochemically modulated phase separator for in situ processing and refining in future space missions.  Two-phase (liquid and gas) flow can be a vital part of many life support and or thermal management systems which will be supported using in situ resources on spacecraft and on future habitations on the Moon and Mars. In this phase I program, we propose to demonstrate the use of an  innovative electrochemically modulated gas/liquid separation system for use in 0-g conditions. In phase I, we propose to develop a supported ionic liquid membrane electrode assembly and demonstrate the separation of CO2 from water. The phase II program will optimize this system, as well as adapt this technnology to selectively separate other gases of interest for ISRU applications such as nitrogen and oxygen in a two-phase flow. In phase II we will also develop innovative reactor designs to minimize size and weight for space applications.
We propose an Electromagnetically Clean Solar Array (ECSA) with enhanced performance, in Watts/kg and Watts/m2, using flight proven, high efficiency solar cells. For electrostatic cleanliness, our innovation is to use large flat sheets of specially processed environmentally durable, ITO-coated DC93-500 transparent silicone material to replace the multitude of coverglasses and grounding components on a solar panel. For magnetic environments, we propose the use of a Kapton layer with a printed wiring pattern that mirrors the solar cell string to cancel magnetic moments. This metallized Kapton layer would replace the bare Kapton normally used as the solar panel substrate insulating front surface. A key innovation is to reduce the cost of solar panels by adapting the transparent shielding layer and the printed circuit layer with features to assemble solar cells into completely connected and wired panels using lamination. Features built into the layers position the Cell-Interconnect (CI) assemblies, solder pre-forms and wiring connections, allowing a one step process for "glassing," stringing, laydown and wiring. This eliminates the most costly labor and schedule intensive elements of conventional solar panel assembly. This research directly addresses the topic needs of providing electrostatic and magnetic cleanliness and affordability for flight proven solar panel technology.
Wireless sensors show enormous promise for safety improvements and cost reductions in monitoring the structural health of aircraft and spacecraft.  A significant challenge for wireless sensors is power.  Because of the labor and associated costs associated with changing hundreds, if not thousands of batteries, combined with the fact that many will be deployed in inaccessible locations, these systems will have to rely on harvesting energy from the environment to provide long-lived power.  

TPL and Washington State University (WSU) propose to develop a vibrational energy harvesting system based on the P3 (Palouse Piezo Power) Micropower Generator.  The P3 is a patented, MEMS-based, piezoelectric membrane generator that has been demonstrated to operate over 1 billion cycles.  In this effort, TPL will team with WSU researchers to develop a microfabricated proof mass for coupling vibrational energy into the piezoelectric membrane and to develop packaging for the device so it can be deployed in real world situations. 

Combined with TPL's patented microbatteries and microsupercapacitors for energy storage, the proposed system will provide a stand-alone power source that does not need recharging or refueling for wireless structural health monitoring (SHM) systems.
We propose a tactical grade MEMS IMU for spin-stabilized rockets for metric tracking and autonomous systems. The enabling instrument is a gyroscope designed for very low cross-axis sensitivity. The IMU is formed by integrating all the gyroscopes and accelerometers on a single, planar chip. An advantage of integration is the well-defined alignment of all instruments with respect to the spin axis. During Phase I we propose to design and fabricate a complete IMU and conduct a proof-of-concept test of the enabling gyroscope under high, cross-axis spin rate.
High temperature power electronics have become a vital aspect of future designs for power converters in spacecraft, battle zone electric power, satellite power conditioning, and well drilling. The performance of these applications would benefit significantly from materials designed for high temperatures and harsh environmental conditions. NASA's Venus mission has some of the most stringent requirements with an operating temperature of 486C. Power systems must operate efficiently at these temperatures to eliminate the need for onboard cooling systems. The removal of these cooling systems will save space, reduce weight, and improve reliability. Currently, BaTiO3-based X7R capacitors are re-rated for use above 125C, and are rendered inoperable at temperatures approaching 300C. NPO-type dielectrics tend to operate at somewhat higher temperatures, but have low dielectric constants and become unreliable above 400C. TRS Technologies is pleased to respond to NASA's need for high temperature capacitors with this Phase I SBIR proposal. In this SBIR program, TRS Technologies and its subsidiary, Centre Capacitor, will develop a new family of high temperature capacitors based on high Curie temperature ferroelectrics that operate at temperatures far beyond conventional dielectric formulations. These new higher temperature (~490C) materials will be suited for the advanced power electronics required for Venus exploration.
A new carbon-based fuel is introduced with outstanding potential to eliminate the loss of uranium, minimize the loss of carbon, and retain fission products for many hours of operation in hydrogen environment at temperatures in excess of 3,200K.  The proposed fuel is a Cer-Cer made of mixed uranium-refractory carbide particles such as (U, Zr)C or (U, Zr, Nb)C dispersed in a refractory carbide matrix such as ZrC. For efficient operation in NTR applications for Isp of 1000 sec. or more, a fuel temperature of 3000 K or greater is necessary.  Various fuel materials have been tested for NTR applications with most based on carbide fuel technology because of their improved thermal properties enabling the design of very small, high power density cores.  Fuel designs from dispersed microspheres in graphite, to composite mixed carbides with graphite, to solid solution mixed carbides have been tested.  Fuels bearing graphite are not tenable because of the high reactivity of free carbon with the hot hydrogen propellant.  Solid solution, mixed carbides are most often brittle but otherwise perform well under the high temperature flowing hot hydrogen environment.  The life limiting phenomenon for their use in NTR applications is the loss of uranium due to vaporization from the fuel surface at temperatures in excess of 2800 K.  Though the proposed Cer-Cer fuel is relatively at lower level of technology maturity, its unique potential for elimination of uranium loss and retention of fission fragments at very high operational temperatures would amply justify the proposed research program.
By combining thin thermoplastic films, woven Vectran reinforcements, and heat a reliable, deployable, rigidizing space habitat can be created.  Although much research has been performed on rigidizing space structures, characteristic material flaws prevent reliable deployment of rigidizing extraterrestrial habitats.  Many materials fail space qualification due to the catalytic nature of their rigidization method.  However, by layering thin low-density polyethylene with virtually any composite weave, a pliable composite is created.  When inflation pressure and heat are applied, the low density polyethylene melts into the composite weave and causes the entire matrix to harden.  The proposed composite would consist of Vectran with a low-density polyethylene laminate.  Because our composite is stable at nearly cryogenic temperatures through around 100 C, it outperforms most other rigidizing materials currently being studied.  The thermal properties coupled with nearly zero creep provide strong promise for its compatibility with rigidizing habitats.
This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop heat pipe and loop heat pipe (LHP) working fluids for what is known as the intermediate temperature range, from roughly 500 K to 700 K.  Currently, there are no working fluids in this range that can be used in NASA applications, due in part to unknown physical properties and insufficient life test data.  The overall objective of the proposed Phase I and Phase II programs is to validate one or more fluids for use in the intermediate temperature range.  This will include life tests, determination of the physical property data required to design heat pipes and LHPs in this temperature range, and the design, fabrication, and testing of suitable heat pipes and/or LHPs.
Significant improvements in existing technologies for icing weather information systems are required to increase the level of safety for all aircraft flying in the atmospheric icing environment.  Innovative Dynamics, Inc. proposes to develop a cloud properties sensor for providing warning of hazardous airborne icing conditions. The proposed innovation is a new capability for measuring cloud properties that would consist of a small expendable radiosonde-borne optical probe. This cloud property information is currently obtained by launching an aircraft or positioning a satellite to the desired location, which makes it difficult obtain this information economically. New low cost commercially available semiconductor lasers, developed for the fiber optic communication industry, allows this innovation to be possible. The sensor would measure liquid water content, mean drop size, and droplet phase using a low-power infrared laser based sensor system. These parameters would be used to identify certain cloud conditions that pose airborne icing hazards to aircraft.  Current low cost expendable radiosondes provide altitude, location, temperature, and atmospheric pressure information, but not water content information that indicate aircraft icing potential.  This cloud property information is crucial to aircraft operating at altitudes, as well as important in weather forecasting models.  Phase I will develop the sensing technique for cloud icing potential.  Phase II will integrate this technology with a current weather radiosonde for complete atmospheric profiling.
Fire suppression systems provide an essential safety function onboard spacecraft. The transition away from halon-based systems has presented an opportunity for efficient and cost-effective alternative approaches. ADA Technologies proposes to develop a fine-water-mist fire suppression system suitable for use in microgravity. The ADA design features a single pressure tank with a patented effervescent-gas spray nozzle to generate droplets of a size that is optimum for fire suppression. The proposed work will modify ADA's current fine-water-mist device to allow for operation in reduced and micro-gravity environments. Design modifications will focus on providing a uniform mixture of water and atomization gas to the effervescent nozzle. The resulting extinguisher will be compact, simple, and rugged, with pound-per-pound better suppression capability than carbon dioxide fire extinguishers. ADA is teaming with the Colorado School of Mines to employ their expertise in micro-gravity combustion and related fire suppression test facilities. In Phase II, the designs will be refined and upgraded to improve their manufacturability, reduce weight and volume, and lower unit costs. The project team is collaborating with an aviation safety hardware supplier to market the systems to the commercial aircraft industry and is exploring industrial applications.
The development of highly flexible thermal insulation materials with multifunctional properties based in polyimide polymers and designed to provide significant radiation abatement is proposed. These new material forms provide their enhanced properties while ensuring benign behavior in adverse thermal environments ranging from cryogenic to elevated temperatures. In addition, the introduction of radiation abating materials into the polymeric precursor or foam provides a protective element not available in current state-of-the-art insulation materials.  The proposal team provides a fundamental understanding of the chemistry and physics of polyimide foams, the test facilities for measurement of structural and mechanical properties and production facilities sufficient to produce materials in volume necessary for prototype tests in NASA applications.
A recently developed mathematical theory has great value for deployable space structures and in situ manufacture of large beams, panels, cylinders and other components.  The new technology offers diverse capacity to design, manufacture, and self-assemble periodically folded sheet material.  The range of materials includes many customized core materials for laminated panels, cellular habitat wall constructions, structural beams, parabolic reflectors, and efficient truss systems that can be packaged ideally as a roll of sheet material and deployed in space by inflation or passive radiation.  The goal of this proposal is to launch the technology by demonstrating the diversity of folding architectures for deployable and in situ manufacture of space structures, and by developing the design and simulation software for distribution to the engineering community.

To fully illustrate the scope of applying the design methodology for deployable space structures, inventories of the strategy for deployment, the desired laminate geometry, and the folding architectures will be made. By relating the dynamical constraints of these three inventories in a three-axis matrix and then optimizing the found solutions through the software, a diverse scope of deployable structures will be illustrated.  Moreover, proof of concept for a second generation of software operating through new algorithms will be  shown concurrently for space applications and others.
Acellent Technologies proposes to develop an autonomous and automated diagnostic system for condition based maintenance (CBM) of safety critical structures for space exploration vehicles. The proposed system will provide real-time information on the integrity of critical structures on launch vehicles, improve their performance, and greatly increase crew safety while decreasing inspection costs. The system will encompass a gamut of functions from sensing hardware through diagnosis and prognosis all the way to presentation of the asset condition with recommended maintenance actions. Additionally the system will be developed for qualification and reliable use with space vehicles from the time of manufacture through launch. The biggest payoff of IVHM is development of system determining health prior to vehicle operation. Technologies will be developed to reliably instrument and monitor damage in critical structures such as rocket motors. The system development will be based on Acellent's SMART Layer technology that utilizes a network of sensors and actuators to query and monitor the integrity of a structure. In Phase I, a prototype CBM system for rocket motors will be developed and preliminary qualification tests conducted in collaboration with ATK-Thiokol. Phase II will focus on complete system development and interface with the rocket motor IVHM system.
This project addresses two vital problems for long-term space travel
activities: radiation shielding and hydrogen storage for power and propulsion.  While both problems have been studied for many years, there is currently no satisfactory technology for providing adequate non-parasitic shielding.  Even in low-Earth orbit, astronauts must be closely monitored for radiation exposure, and some missions simply cannot be performed due to the current inability to adequately shield astronauts (e.g. Mars or surface Lunar bases).  The overall objective of the proposed project is to implement a new manufacturing technique for the fabrication of monolithic sorbent modules for hydrogen storage and radiation shielding.  We will evaluate the resulting  
process for quality control in terms of shape and size consistency.   
We will work with Boeing on component and system characterization of elemental composition, mechanical strength, and other functional properties.  AFR will explore, in partnership with ATMI, an alternate commercialization strategy, described in the proposal.  During the process and product assessment, we will coordinate possible commercial ventures with Boeing and ATMI.  Previously, a prototype system was operated at two accelerators, demonstrating both operational effectiveness and the ability to significantly reduce the energy of high energy particles (48 GeV Ti ions and various energy protons).
A low-cost, standardized-architecture power system is proposed for NASA electric propulsion (EP) applications.  Three approaches are combined to develop a system that will meet current and future NASA needs and exceed currently available power processor unit (PPU) performance in terms of electrical efficiency, specific mass (kg/kW), and cost.   The approaches include the use of (a) high-efficiency, 3-phase, dc-dc converters to minimize cooling requirements, mass, and parts count and maximize reliability and efficiency, (b) modularized and standardized sub-system design and fabrication techniques to accommodate power output scaling and re-configuration for specific ion thruster designs without the need to re-qualify hardware, and (c) attention to cost and manufacturability issues that will allow the implementation of electric propulsion systems on future NASA missions without the hidden costs of "hard-to-build" and "hard-to-scale" designs that are currently available.   The innovations proposed herein will allow NASA to obtain the flexibility and performance it needs in power processors for electric propulsion systems while ensuring that their cost and difficulty of fabrication is low.
Spire Corporation proposes to investigate InGaAs thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells optimized for high temperature operation (~150C) and radiation hardness against the 1.64MeV neutron flux likely from plutonium dioxide general purpose heat sources. We propose to develop a temperature-dependent TPV cell model and select an optimum bandgap for 150C operation with a 1100C heat spectrum, using a cell design with a thin (~1 micron vs standard ~3 micron) base that improves tolerance to diffusion length degradation from radiation. In order to increase photon absorption in this thin cell, we propose to epitaxially grow a monolithic 15 period InGaAs/InAlAs Bragg mirror to reflect about 90&#37; of the incident usable (2 ~micron wavelength) photons back through the cell. The proposed advantage of the Bragg over a standard back metal mirror reflector is that the dielectric mirror has some ability to use strain exerted at the interfaces of the different mirror materials as a threading-to-misfit dislocation filter to further enhance the cell efficiency. We also propose to examine polyimide along with standard SiN for MIMs (monolithically integrated multijunction module) edge passivation.
A robust flow control method promising significantly increased performance and virtual shape control for natural laminar flow (NLF) sections is proposed using a novel momentum porting concept.  Significant aerodynamic, systems, and control benefits are possible through the integration of virtual aerodynamic shaping technology into modern aircraft.  Virtual aerodynamic shaping involves using flow control technology to manipulate the flow field to achieve a desired result regardless of the geometry.  A high-payoff approach to significantly increased air vehicle performance is the use of a novel momentum porting concept for the virtual shaping of extended run natural laminar flow sections.  The objective of this research is to incorporate a robust and simple tangential pulsed jet blowing system that requires no external air to design and virtually shape an extended natural laminar flow section offering radical performance enhancement in the form of increased lift-to-drag and maximum lift.  Additionally, the system will produce a wing design enabling a hinge-less, full-span virtual shaping capability which can be used for fully pilot reactive roll control, span load tailoring, and gust load alleviation.  The system will provide significantly enhanced performance for the air vehicle throughout the entire flight envelope.
One of the most efficient ways to create narrow band filter is the use
of reflective Bragg gratings or which allow increasing of efficiency and
decreasing of weight compare to conventional technologies. OptiGrate
have proved the concept of high efficiency narrow-band mirrors in
photo-thermo-refractive glass (PTR) glass for high power laser
applications based on a unique technology for phase hologram recording.
Bragg mirrors with more then 90&amp;#37; of diffraction efficiency and spectral
bandwidth of 80 pm have been demonstrated. OptiGrate proposes
development of reflecting Bragg gratings in PTR glass with spectral
selectivity less than 0.1 nm and clear aperture up to 25x25 mm. To
achieve spectral resolution of reflective Bragg grating below 0.1 nm,
several problems should be solved which are uniformity of refractive
index and photosensitivity of PTR glass across the aperture of 25 mm in
a glass blank with thickness exceeding 10 mm.  The unique hybrid filter
based on reflective Bragg gratings and Fabry-Perot etalon will results
in unprecedented spectral bandwidth combined with efficiency of more
then 90&amp;#37;. Successful completion of these tasks would results in
technology of narrow band filters with high diffraction efficiency for
visible and near IR region of spectrum. A number of prototypes for
wavelengths of NASA's interest will be delivered.
OPTRA proposes to develop an Automated Optical Tracking Capability tailored to NASA's network of optical tracking stations at the Kennedy Space Center. This will be based on target recognition and tracking algorithms that will be developed during Phase I, and tested using a prototype optical tracking station that will be designed and built for this purpose. The goal will be the totally automatic tracking by all tracking stations, without the need for human intervention. If any single station loses sight of the target, it will continue to track based on trajectory information that will be continuously generated from the ALT/AZ data supplied to the Central Tracking Computer by the active tracking stations.  During Phase I OPTRA will model the optical tracking scenario and will provide estimates of the maximum downrange tracking distance, and of the tracking errors as functions of downrange distance, atmospheric visibility, and wind (turbulence). OPTRA will also provide data on the speed with which the algorithms will be able to process image data; compensation for any time lag in data processing will be built into the algorithms.
The goal of the proposed work is the development of a portable and efficient pulsed laser system for LIDAR and ranging applications, which make use of the latest developments in fiber optic technology. Even though there have been significant advances in fiber lasers, there is still a need for development of a reliable fiber laser system generating nanosecond and sub nanosecond  (100 ps ? 5 ns) pulses with enough energy for ranging applications. The potential applications of such a laser would be LIDAR systems that are flown in smaller UAV platforms where size and efficiency are key requirements. The proposed laser system follows the classical arrangement of a Master Oscillator Power Amplifier (MOPA). The master oscillator consists of a microchip laser which is a commercially off the shelf (COTS) component. The power amplifier will be constructed using photonic crystal fiber (PCF).  Due to the many developments over the last few years in the area of fiber optic technologies and components, Phase I work will start with an in-depth evaluation of all available technologies, which will lead to the design and development of a space-worthy high power nanosecond laser.
S&amp;K Technologies proposes to develop a storyboard tool to assist with the generation, verification, and refinement of storyboard information and its subsequent translation into model data for systems analysis and design tools.  The most important contribution is an improved communication of the concept of operation between prospective customers and system developers.  It addresses the difficulty of communicating highly technical information among specialized engineering groups so that the concept of operations illustrated by the storyboard accommodates the consideration of context of use, user task performance, effective application of new technologies, safety, and reliability.  This difficulty is especially pronounced when the user's tasks are unusual (space operations) and the technology to support the task is novel (autonomous software with which humans interact and monitor).  Communication is enhanced by focusing on the common language of storyboard information.  The storyboard tool will help authors manage versions of storyboards to track alternate approaches for human task support and to maintain libraries of storyboards from previous systems.  After assisting with the creation of storyboards and refining them in concurrent engineering sessions, the tool will assist in translating the storyboard information into data forms importable by analysis tools used by NASA systems engineers.
This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project seeks to
investigate and prove the feasibility of developing ultra-wide
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C) motor drives utilizing Silicon-Germanium (SiGe) asynchronous logic
digital control electronics.  Asynchronous circuits remove the concept
of a global clock by incorporating handshaking protocols to control the
circuit. The handshaking protocols allows for flexible timing
requirements, high power efficiency, and low noise/emission generation.
The flexible timing nature of asynchronous logic makes this type of
logic circuit an excellent candidate for extreme temperature control
electronics. In addition, the outstanding low-temperature performance of
SiGe coupled with its industry standard manufacturing processes makes
the SiGe-based asynchronous digital electronics an ideal technology
choice for developing digital electronics for space applications.  By
utilizing the benefits of asynchronous logic in conjunction with the
excellent temperature performance of SiGe, future ultra-wide temperature
digital control electronics will operate reliably, exceeding the
capabilities of today's state-of-the-art Si electronics by several
folds. Lastly, The marriage of SiGe-based asynchronous control with
power electronics into an ultra-wide temperature range DC-motor drive
will prove to be immensely valuable to the NASA program in reducing
systems' weight, improving efficiency, reliability, and performance?all
resulting in significant cost savings.
Photon-X has developed a proprietary EO spatial phase technology that can passively collect 3-D images in real-time using a single camera-based system. This technique provides the capability to sense and understand objects and features within a range of distances from low atmospheric altitudes to space. Feedback from the camera allows the Photon-X system to perform 3-D path planning and trajectory assessment for multiple objects of various sizes and shapes. Spatial phase technology provides scene date that is range independent and angle invariant allowing data of tumbling objects to be collected even in the presence of smoke, clouds, or haze. During Phase I, Photon-X plans to model 3D views of tumbling objects and develop preliminary feature extraction and predictive trajectory and range software tools. These tools will be used to demonstrate proof-of-concept for a single controlled scenario. This initial groundwork will be used in selecting the best design approach for Phase II to meet established system goals. A Phase II system will build on the concepts shown in the Phase I proof-of-concept demonstration. A Phase II system will collect image data and track an object in real-time with collected data stored and processed later for feature extraction and 3D modeling.
Optra will build an Advanced 3D Object Identification System utilizing three or more high resolution imagers spaced around a launch platform.  Data from each imager will be analyzed in real time using a complex morphological image processing scheme to extract up to 100 objects of interest.  These objects will then be individually tracked in the field-of-view of each imager then correlated between imagers to produce an accurate three-dimensional trajectory of each object with estimated ground impact position.  Information from each imager's field-of-view is then be used to discern object size and shape information.  The system is designed to be completely automated from launch through failure.   The primary focus of the Phase I effort is development of the image processing algorithms involved with detecting, tracking, and identifying the objects of interest.  The algorithms will be further refined during the Phase II effort and a prototype of the system will be built.  Phase II preliminary field tests are planned in which recreational parachutists leaving an aircraft will be tracked and imaged from two stations. These tests will prepare the equipment and personnel for the recorded observation of a live rocket launch, with booster or stage separation, near the end of the program.
It is proposed to develop and implement a simulation of spacecraft rendezvous and docking guidance, navigation, and control in elliptical orbit. The foundation of the simulation will be an extension of an existing tool for optimal rendezvous and docking simulations for spacecraft in circular orbit. The existing tool architecture functions in two phases. In the first phase, optimal trajectories are obtained for the point mass model of the docking vehicle subject to path constraints, with the assumption that the target vehicle is in a known, circular orbit. In the second phase of the simulation, the vehicle is considered as a rigid body whose attitude and trajectory is controlled such that the docking port is aligned with the target vehicle at the time of docking, and the flight path follows the optimal trajectory. It is proposed to extend the first phase trajectory optimization capability of this tool to the case when the target vehicle is in an elliptical orbit, and to also add the capability to model rendezvous navigation sensors in order to make use of estimated state feedback rather than true state feedback during the second phase of the simulation.
Wide bandgap SiC power devices have the potential for reliable operations at higher junction temperatures, higher voltages, higher frequencies and thus higher power densities than what can be achieved with Si devices. These advantages enable the SiC technology-based power conversion systems (PCM) to be made smaller, lightweight, more efficient and robust. Recent studies predicted that the volume of a power converter system could be reduced five times through the utilization of SiC power devices.   Despite this potential promise and encouraging results, more studies are needed to address the design and fabrication of SiC-based PCMs before their full potential can be realized. This project will develop an ultrahigh-efficiency, light and compact power converter system based on emerging SiC semiconductor technologies, quantifying the system benefits and addressing the related technical issues. The Phase I work include: (1) Circuit design of an SiC-based converter and modeling to evaluate the converter performance (power loss, efficiency, temperature rise, and weight/size heatsink etc.), and (2) High temperature packaging and high power density thermal management to support the SiC converter.
The purpose of this project is to develop and demonstrate a communications system capable of operation at extreme temperatures and pressures in hostile and corrosive environments such as found on the surface of the planet Venus.  Although already explored by various orbiters and short-lived atmospheric probes and landers, Venus retains many secrets pertaining to its formation and evolution and also the ability to further probe and investigate Venus' surface is of significant scientific value.  However the measurement of data and collection of information in an extreme environment is of limited use or value unless the data and information can be sent out of the environment.  This proposed project will address vital communication needs of the future in situ exploration of Venus and atmospheric probes for giant planets.  The technology to be employed in the proposed extreme environment communications system is based on a proven class of electronic devices called solid state vacuum devices (SSVD&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt;s).  S-band (~ 2 to 4 GHz) power amplifiers and transmitters along with S-band receivers will be designed and built in this proposed SBIR project to enable essential and critical communications between vehicles and probes located on Venus' surface and systems in orbit around Venus.
Global Technology Connection, Inc., in collaboration with Georgia Tech (Center for Fuel Cell and Battery Technologies) and our industrial partner, Eagle Pichers, proposes to develop and test the feasibility of a Battery Diagnostics and Prognostics System for space exploration applications.  The architecture couples neural network, support vector machine, and fusion algorithms to yield battery remaining useful life predictions taking into account battery usage patterns and detected failure modes to increase the reliability of NASA's electrical power systems. This improved high fidelity architecture will be applied to fault detection and life prediction of both Lead Acid and Lithium-Ion Batteries for several space applications like MER, CEV, CLV, ISS, etc.  A multi-disciplinary team with a collaborative approach has been assembled for successful development and demonstration of Battery Life Prediction. Cycle testing of representative cells and batteries will be conducted at the Georgia Tech Research Institute to develop and validate remaining capacity and cycle life models for feasibility.  Existing work by GTC on Li-Ion battery deep discharge models and data from our industrial and research partners will be leveraged for development of commercial software that can enhance and monitor battery health and accurately predict remaining useful life. Aggressive commercialization and technology transition plans will be pursued with our industrial team partners.
Lightweight composite structures are required to provide space vehicles with increased thrust-to-weight ratio and durability.  New methods for toughening composites that also add functionality, such as making high temperature structural composites more thermally and electrically conductive, can increase spacecraft performance.  Infoscitex proposes to enhance toughness of a thermal-oxidatively stable structural composite by more than 50 percent (measured by G1C) by depositing dispersed carbon nanofibers within insulating, resin-rich, interlaminar regions. Our approach also increases z-direction thermal and electrical conductivity, enabling dissipation of heat and electrical charge from hot spacecraft power supply and propulsion enclosures.  In Phase I, we will process commercial carbon nanofibers and high temperature composite prepreg into nanofiber-toughened and control composite test panels using an autoclave.  Cured composite test panels will be tested for G1C, open hole tensile and short beam shear strength, thermal and electrical conductivity and failure analysis to demonstrate feasibility.  In Phase II, we will refine the composite toughening process and materials, conduct compression-after-impact tests, scale-up and produce a prototype multifunctional composite spacecraft structure for testing.  Our team includes commercial prepreg and carbon nanofiber suppliers, a space vehicle structure manufacturer and experts in high temperature composite processing.
Sensor Electronic Technology, Inc. (SET) proposes to develop ultraviolet detectors for focal plane arrays based on wide-bandgap semiconductor materials.  Direct gap III?N AlInGaN materials are the only materials capable of combining a high sensitivity for detecting UV radiation with a sharp cutoff for either visible blind (cutoff &lt; 400 nm) or solar-blind (cutoff &lt; 290 nm) operation.  These solid state detectors are rugged, suitable in high temperature applications, have fast response times, and have spatial resolution when integrated with a silicon readout integrated circuit (ROIC).  

This Phase I effort will focus on the feasibility for fabricating high quantum efficiency UV detectors with the possibility to integrate multi-wavelength detection onto a single pixel.  This will include heterojunction optimization that will be applicable for both single color and multi-color UV detectors.  SET will perform MEMOCVD growth of high Al containing heterojunctions and will investigate the influence of material properties such as doping efficiency, donor and acceptor compensation, dopant diffusion and profile, and adatom surface migration and their influence on heterojunction performance in advanced UV photodetectors.
Advanced Technologies Group, Inc. proposes the development of a Methane Liquid-Level Sensor, (MLS) for In-Space cryogenic storage capable of continuous monitoring  of liquid quantities to better than 1&#37; accuracy. The proposed sensor builds on previous liquid hydrogen sensor development successes and patents.  It can be utilized to measure cryogenic propellants, and sub-critical cryogenic fluids in use on a wide range of space applications and in ground applications to monitor fluids ranging from liquid methane to MMH and N2O4.  The MLS can also indicate the presence of contaminants such as nitrogen used to purge the system. The current methods use either wire resistance measurements, capacitance or point sensors, combined with pressure and temperature measurements.  The MLS will be lighter, require less energy to operate, and provide less heat leak than existing technologies. Current techniques will not function correctly in boiling or stratified liquid cryogens or in reduced gravity. During phase I, Proof-of Concept experiments will be performed with liquid methane. Commercial applications in the Power/fuel industry have been identified.
Solar sails as a propulsive device have several potential applications: providing access to previously inaccessible orbits, longer mission times, and increased payload mass. NASA has identified a need for better simulations of sail-enabled missions to reduce the cost and risk associated with sail development. PSS has a unique capability due to our previous work in sail modeling and high-fidelity simulation. The simulation must model maneuvering, navigation, trajectory control, propulsive performance, and operations, which represents wide range of capability. PSS meets this capability for solar sails by integrating sail shape models for disturbance computation with attitude and orbit dynamics, first in MATLAB and then in the proposed C++ real-time simulation. The real-time simulation will provide users the ability to duplicate their MATLAB models in an environment to which they can attach hardware and flight software. This innovative package will support mission development from the earliest stages of analysis through flight operations. The same solar sail simulation will be used for mission planning and operator training. ATK Space Systems will consult on the project and develop refined models of propulsive performance of real sails, considering wrinkles, crinkles, billow, and manufacturing-induced asymmetries.
A methodology is to be developed that will allow the development and implementation of fault-tolerant control system for distributed collaborative spacecraft.  The objective is to ensure that the cluster of spacecraft continue to meet high precision performance objectives in the presence of system faults and uncertainty.  The proposed innovation is the development of a fault-tolerant control system for distributed spacecraft.  The development process begins with fault-tolerant control system architecture and then the analysis of its performance.   The essential elements of this proposed fault-tolerant control system architecture are: 
    The fault detection filters and parity equations that generate residuals (the difference between the actual measurement and the estimated value)  with      important geometrical properties that enhance fault detection and identification. 
    The residual processor that takes these corrupted residuals and announces a fault with a given probability of false and miss alarm in minimal time. 
    A fault reconstruction system that estimates the fault magnitude once the fault has been identified. 
    A distributed control system that reconfigures based on the particular fault and the fault magnitude.
A cryogenic flow-control valve based on Venturi-Offset Technology (VOST) will be designed and modeled.  VOST provides precise linear flow control within a hermetically sealed, thermally efficient, cylindrical envelope. Intended to demonstrate a breakthrough in cryogenic flow control, the valve has no external leak paths, holds position without power and has no dynamic seals.  With only two moving parts, the valve is inherently simple and robust.
The future of reconfigurable/reprogrammable transceivers with !Y 1 Gbps transmission and reception data rates for future NASA space communications applications will greatly depend on radiation-tolerant, high-speed and precise Digital-to-Analog Converter (DAC), Analog-to-Digital Converter (ADC) and digital processing devices. The present digital state-of-the-art components are limited, especially for ultra high sampling rate ADCs. Most low power ADCs are restricted to rates of about 150 Msps and 12 bits of precision. During Phase I of the program, Hittite will research combining analog front-ends with advanced DACs, ADCs and digital processors for creating Software-Define Radio (SDR) or Cognitive Communication Transceiver (CCT) systems. A study of MMIC low noise amplifiers, power amplifiers and up/down-converters and digital components will lead to selection of devices to be modeled for SDR/CCT design. The Phase I effort will establish a baseline for a cognitive/adaptive transceiver. The final SDR/CCT design shall include a reconfigurable analog front-end and digital signal processor including a programmable frequency synthesizer for LO and digital clock generation. The Phase II program will proceed to miniaturized fully integrated power efficient cognitive/adaptive transceivers with scalable bandwidth and digital bit precision. Advanced SDR/CCT technology will support future DoD/military/NASA requirements and industrial/commercial applications for remotely reprogrammable communication systems.
The proposed activities will result in the development of a novel hyperspectral feature-extraction toolkit that will provide a simple, automated, and accurate approach to materials classification from hyperspectral imagery (HSI).  The proposed toolkit will be built as an extension to the state-of-the-art technology in automated feature extraction (AFE), the Feature Analyst software suite, which was developed by the proposing company.  Feature Analyst uses, along with spectral information, feature characteristics such as spatial association, size, shape, texture, pattern, and shadow in its generic AFE process. Incorporating the best AFE approach (Feature Analyst) with the best HSI techniques promises to greatly increase the usefulness and applicability of HSI.  While current HSI techniques, such as spectral end-member classification, can provide effective materials classification, these methods are slow (or manual), cumbersome, complex for analysts, and are limited to materials classification only. Feature Analyst, on the other hand, has a simple workflow of (a) an analyst providing a few examples, and (b) an advanced software agent classifying the rest of the imagery. This simple yet powerful approach will become the new paradigm for HSI materials classification since Phase I experiments show it is (a) accurate, (b) simple, (c) advanced, and (d) exists as workflow extension to market leading products.   The deliverables of this proposal will allow HSI products to be fully exploited for the first time by a wide range of users.
Development of an innovative microwave-based continuous flow sterilization system for the energy efficient gravitationally independent production of Medical Grade Water (MGW) is proposed.  During the Phase I, microwaves were very efficiently coupled to a single-phase flowing water stream using an antenna based microwave sterilization chamber that rapidly heated water to temperatures well above normal autoclave conditions.  Microbial sterilization was demonstrated for single and mixed cultures of gram-positive and gram-negative bacteria including Bacillus stearothermophilus, a thermophilic spore former utilized to validate autoclave sterilization.  Novel ultrahigh temperature sterilization processes eliminated chemical sterilization requirements for external connections, and more significantly, inactivated endotoxins, a major MGW purity requirement.  These attributes results in an extremely low ESM, MGW generator that will meet autonomous medical care needs for MGW aboard manned spacecraft, or Lunar and planetary habitations. A fully functional computer controlled prototype capable of producing MGW from NASA potable water without expendables will be developed during the Phase II.  To achieve these objectives, a compact controllable microwave power generator will be mated to an optimized sterilization chamber producing an energy efficient MGW generator without the need for expendables.  Characterization of system performance and ESM will provide the basis for future NASA development decisions.
Development of a microgravity and hypogravity compatible microwave plasma methane pyrolysis reactor is proposed to recover hydrogen which is lost as methane in the conversion of carbon dioxide to water via the Sabatier process.  This will close the hydrogen loop which currently requires 50&#37; resupply. Efficient production of hydrogen from methane was conclusively demonstrated during Phase I using microwave plasmas with power levels ranging between 50 - 120 W.  In the plasma reactor, formation and deposition of solid phase elemental carbon was shown to be far less problematic than for current methods of catalytic methane decomposition in fixed bed and fluidized bed reactors.  This new technology has strong potential for continuous hydrogen production over extended time periods, with minimal maintenance and operator intervention.  Microwave plasmas produce extremely high temperatures localized within very small volumes, resulting in low overall power requirements. Microwave plasmas also produce minimal thermal effects on downstream piping and other system components. These features provide the basis for a small, light, and low power method for hydrogen reclamation. By recovering all of the hydrogen which is lost as methane in the Sabatier reactor, the requirement for production or resupply of hydrogen is reduced to the absolute minimum.
Traditional instrumentation of an aircraft is a complex and time-consuming chore.  Once the sensors are installed, long wires for power and data must be routed through to a central data collection location where several large off-the-shelf electronic components reside, adding weight, cost and increasing the probably of introducing noise or faults into the testing system.  All of this necessary infrastructure leads to prohibit the use of some types of sensors and limit the total number of sensors used so save on time, cost, complexity and resources.  During the course of this Phase II SBIR research, Metis Design Corporation (MDC) proposes to develop a standardized data acquisition hub for aircraft testing sensors dubbed a "sensor-logger".  The sensor-logger would essentially serve as a durable sensor infrastructure node capable of autonomously facilitating local testing for multiple sensors of various types.  Controlled wirelessly by PC or PDA, data could be displayed in real-time, or logged internally for up to 40 hours.  The second half of the proposed research would then tie together the sensor-logger with the Phase I research, developing a power-replenishment device to attached to the sensor-logger to extend its operating capabilities.  Finally both devices will be flight tested in true aircraft environments.
Significant improvements in photovoltaic materials and systems are required to enable NASA future exploration missions. In this project, CFD Research Corporation (CFDRC) with University of California Riverside (UCR), Rochester Institute of Technology, and International Photonics  will: 1) develop and provide reliable, validated computational tools for assessment, design, and optimization of novel nanostructures based on Quantum Dots (QD) for future nano-devices for space applications; 2) investigate, design, and demonstrate new photovoltaic (PV) structures based on QD nanotechnology, with improved efficiency and radiation hardness. The inherently radiation tolerant quantum dots of variable sizes maximize absorption of different light wavelengths ("multicolor" cell), which dramatically improves photovoltaic efficiency and diminishes the radiation-induced degradation. 
Phase 1 included development of numerical tools for modeling electron-phonon transport in quantum-dot for photovoltaic applications, using experimental data from UCR Nano-Device Laboratory for validation and calibration of the models, computational and experimental proof-of-concept.  In Phase 2, the new QD models will be integrated into CFDRC's advanced photonic-electronic device simulator and used for further optimization of QD superlattices. Novel QD photovoltaic nano-engineered materials and designs will be down-selected for further development to the point of testable prototypes. They will be fabricated and demonstrated by detailed electrical characterization and radiation testing.
This proposal provides a breakthrough solution to realize a compact THz local-oscillator, which is phase-lockable and can tune 1-2 THz with flat output power in excess of 100 mW. The innovation is based on high efficiency intra-cavity difference frequency generation. A dual cavity optical parametric oscillator (OPO) is designed to generate two phase-locked optical beams with orthogonal polarizations, which share an EO crystal inside the OPO cavity for THz generation. The frequency difference of the two optical wavelengths can be tuned by changing the phase matching condition of either one of the sub-OPOs.  The package size of the local oscillator can be designed smaller than 50x40x20 cm3. The power consumption is &lt;20 W. In Phase I, the feasibility will be demonstrated in a prototype and the system design will be optimized.  A fully functional phase-lockable THz local-oscillator with unprecedented performance is anticipated in Phase II.
SSCI proposes to further develop, implement and test the damage-adaptive control algorithms developed in Phase I within the framework of an Integrated Damage Modeling &amp; Adaptive Control (IDMAC) system. The proposed IDMAC system design will be based on the following: (i) Development of a coupled structural and aerodynamic model of aircraft dynamics under structural damage, (ii) Generation of a set of models describing different damage cases; (iii) Model set reduction to arrive at a reduced set of control design models; and (iv) Use of the reduced model set to design
multiple-model stochastic damage estimators and corresponding reconfigurable controllers to stabilize the aircraft and achieve acceptable performance of the closed-loop flight control system. The proposed IDMAC system will be tested on transport aircraft models selected in consultation with NASA Langley.
In this SBIR program, TRS Technologies has developed several new dielectrics for high temperature applications including signal conditioning, filtering and energy storage, and high-power RF.  Feasibility was demonstrated by constructing prototype multilayer ceramic capacitors (MLCCs) with capacitance values in the 80 to 100nF range @ 450&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C and voltage handling capability of at least 250V.  In particular, high dielectric constant (5,000 to 30,000), moderate loss (2-6&#37;) capacitors were demonstrated with voltage handling capabilities of over 250V; and low dielectric constant (30-100), low loss (&lt;&lt;1&#37;) capacitors were demonstrated with voltage handling capabilities of over 1000V that were capable of working from &lt;30K to over 500&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C while maintaining ca. 114&#37; of the room temperature capacitance.
Tools for extracting resources from the moon are needed to support future space missions. Of particular interest is the production of gases and metals for life support, propulsion, and in-space fabrication.  The only practical source for these materials is the decomposition of lunar regolith. Described herein is an innovative plasma reduction technique for the production of gases and metal powders. This technique is characterized by its high temperatures and rapid quenching. During Phase 1, silicon, iron, and magnesium in crystalline form were produced using the plasma reduction technique.  Based on the analysis of captured gas samples and the fact that metallic species were produced, oxygen was also evolved as a result of plasma processing.  During Phase 2, the plasma techniques developed during Phase 1 will be optimized.  Techniques to separate and collect pure oxygen from the regolith and the processing gases will be developed. Steps will be taken to reduce the power requirements needed for plasma reduction. Additional metals such as aluminum, titanium, and calcium will also be produced by varying processing parameters.  Precise measurement of particle temperature and velocity will be performed and correlated with processing parameters and thermodynamic calculations so that these objectives can be met.
New and innovative lightweight radiation shielding materials are needed to protect humans in future manned exploration vehicles. Radiation shielding materials are needed for large structures such as the space station, orbiters, landers, rovers, habitats, and spacesuits. Materials currently used are heavy, bulky, and ineffective in shielding humans against cosmic radiation, especially over long periods (months or years). One means of solving the problem of heavy radiation shields is to use lightweight polymeric shields that do not produce dangerous secondary radiation when irradiated, but these are typically not mechanically sound in structural applications. Ultramet has developed a versatile method for producing metal and ceramic foams that would function well as reinforcement phases in polymeric shields. This material is amenable to complexly shaped and large components and has been demonstrated under other programs to provide good particle trap capacity and exhibit no damage under extreme variations of temperature, high porosity, and low density. Ultramet proposes to fabricate high-efficiency polymer matrix composite radiation shields that will withstand repeated exposure to cosmic radiation. Initial shielding performance will be demonstrated through simulated cosmic radiation testing at Eril Research, and the program will benefit from collaboration with Northrop Grumman, a potential end user of the technology.
Improvements in existing technologies for icing weather information systems are required to increase the level of safety for aircraft flying in the atmospheric icing environment.  Icing forecasts cannot provide the needed accuracy at the present time. Under a NASA sponsored SBIR program, Innovative Dynamics, Inc. is developing a Radiosonde Cloud Assessment System (RCLASS) that measures liquid water content, drop size, and droplet phase using low-power infrared lasers. These parameters would be used to identify certain cloud conditions that pose airborne icing hazards to aircraft.  The innovation is a new capability for measuring cloud properties that would consist of a small optical probe flown on an expendable weather balloon. Phase I demonstrated the feasibility of the IR-based approach. A series of tests were conducted in an environmental test chamber to demonstrate the overall detection capability. The proposed Phase II will continue development and calibration of the sensor package and integrate it into a commercially available balloonsonde system for evaluation testing in the atmosphere.
A robotic sample management device and system for the exposure of biological and material specimens to heavy ion beams of the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) and other irradiation venues is proposed by SHOT, Inc.  Full and efficient utilization of NSRL requires the automation of precise sample positioning and sample exchange that is otherwise performed manually at the cost of hours of beam time, compromised biostatistics and risk of personnel.  The device and system will consist of eight sample holders providing an environmentally controlled enclosure.  Samples to be irradiated will be translated into the ion beam, one at a time, within the controlled environment.  Samples to be accommodated include, but are not limited to, cell cultures (multiple containers), small animal (flies, worms, fish) cultures, mice, rats and small samples of shielding or electronic materials.  Operating software will be compatible with that in use at the irradiation venues, specifically NSRL, and will be used to establish environmental control settings, to record environmental conditions, and to control and record the insertion of samples into the ion beam.  Stray doses to samples in waiting will be less than 0.001 of the dose delivered to exposed samples, and measures are included to minimize neutron flux within the sample chamber assembly.  Total and neutron doses will be measured. Three objectives will be met in Phase II research: (1) implementation of user requirements (determined in Phase I) in a final design to be subjected to Critical Design Review (2) construction and testing of a complete sample management system at SHOT, and (3) installing the final prototype product at NSRL and placing it into use for the benefit of the user community.
We propose to develop the Intelligent, Semi-Automated Procedure Aid (ISAPA) intended for use by International Space Station (ISS) ground controllers to increase the efficiency and safety of flight operations while reducing costs for NASA. ISAPA is innovative in that it is centered on a "person-in-the-loop" approach to automation. While ISAPA executes procedures, it asks the user for confirmations, decisions and allows the user to easily override. To increase situational awareness, the aid clearly presents, through notifications and advanced visualizations, what is being performed. The second major innovation is ISAPA's intuitive authoring tool which enables controllers (without programming skills) to build new and modify existing semi-automated procedures using drag-and-drop graphical widgets. As space station construction progresses and procedures change, authoring utilities allow the straightforward updating of procedures. ISAPA also supports gradual procedure automation, allowing flight controllers to migrate a manual procedure towards automation as confidence is gained. The system will integrate with existing mission control center systems, specifically: "Thin Layer" for sending commands, "Information Sharing Protocol" for receiving telemetry, and use official formats, such as "PRL", for persisting procedure data. ISAPA will also include a simulator to assist in the validation process of procedures. 

During Phase I, Stottler Henke developed a prototype of the ISAPA execution tool, authoring tool and simulation tools while constructing two sample procedures based on real-life controller procedures. During Phase II, Stottler Henke will develop a full ISAPA system ready for integration into the ISS MCC. Special emphasis will be placed on compliance with NASA ground console software certification. 

ISAPA technologies from the Technology Taxonomy are Autonomous Reasoning/Artificial Intelligence and Human-Computer Interfaces from the Information section.
The Lunar Materials Handling System (LMHS) is a method for transfer of lunar soil into and out of process equipment in support of in situ resource utilization (ISRU). The LMHS conveys solids to the ISRU vessel, provides a gas-tight seal, and minimizes wear related to abrasive particles. Lunar ISRU scenarios require that equipment be operated over many cycles with minimal consumption of expendables and with minimal leakage in order to maintain high overall process leverage. 

The LMHS increases equipment life and minimizes process losses, thereby increasing overall leverage and reducing uncertainties in ISRU process evaluation. The LMHS is based on a seal arrangement by which lunar regolith can be introduced into and removed from reaction chambers operating under a wide range of batch operating conditions.

Most lunar ISRU processes will use regolith as feed. Hydrogen reduction is a prime candidate for nearer-term lunar ISRU implementation. The LMHS was integrated with hydrogen reduction and operated in vacuum during Phase I. The LMHS-hydrogen reduction unit demonstrated feeding, sealing, water recovery for oxygen production, and discharging of residue in realistic operating conditions.
A power supply concept capable of operation over 25:1 and 64:1 impedance ranges at full power has been successfully demonstrated in our Phase I effort at efficiencies of 96&#37; and above.  The benefits of electric propulsion systems are highest when an electric thruster can be operated at high efficiencies over wide ranges of thrust and specific impulse.  Hall and ion thruster technologists are close to demonstrating this capability with laboratory and flight model thrusters, and power conversion systems based on the power supply concept demonstrated in our Phase I program will enable wide-ranging operation of these devices.  Although ambitious missions with extreme throttling capabilities would now be possible with the CPE wide ranging power supply (WRPS) design, less ambitious (single throttle point) missions are also well served.  This is because one power supply design could meet the needs of many different single-throttle-point devices without the need to re-design and re-qualify hardware.  We judge that this innovation will save NASA, DoD, and commercial aerospace entities precious non-recurring engineering resources without sacrificing performance.
The new devices and missions to achieve the aims of the NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD) are creating increasingly demanding thermal environments and applications.  A key element that drives the design of thermal management systems in these demanding applications is the thermal interface material (TIM) between mating surfaces.  Our innovation is a novel, vacuum-compatible, durable, heat-conduction interface that employs carbon nanotube (CNT) arrays directly anchored on the mating metal surfaces via microwave plasma-enhanced, chemical vapor deposition (PECVD).  By directly anchoring the CNTs to the metal surface, the joint conductance is substantially increased over current TIMs due to the elimination of thermal contact resistance at the metal surface-TIM interface.  During the Phase I project, we demonstrated thermal resistance values of approximately 35 mm2 K/W at a contact pressure of 0.7 MPa in testing at Creare for a direct-deposited, CNT-based, thermal interface on copper substrates. Using this approach, our team partner has demonstrated thermal resistance values as low as 8 mm2 K/W, demonstrating the remarkable potential of this innovation.  The use of our innovative CNT-based TIMs will enable increased reliability, decreased size, and increased performance of spaceborne thermal management systems for the SMD.
A low-cost, standardized-architecture power system is proposed for NASA electric propulsion (EP) applications.  Three approaches are combined to develop a system that will meet current and future NASA needs and exceed currently available power processor unit (PPU) performance in terms of electrical efficiency, specific mass (kg/kW), and cost.   The approaches include the use of (a) high-efficiency, 3-phase, dc-dc converters to minimize cooling requirements, mass, and parts count and maximize reliability and efficiency, (b) modularized and standardized sub-system design and fabrication techniques to accommodate power output scaling and re-configuration for specific ion thruster designs without the need to re-qualify hardware, and (c) attention to cost and manufacturability issues that will allow the implementation of electric propulsion systems on future NASA missions without the hidden costs of "hard-to-build" and "hard-to-scale" designs that are currently available.
An electrochemical reactor is proposed by MicroCell Technologies, LLC to electrochemically reduce carbon dioxide to oxygen. In support of NASA's advanced life support processes and human exploration missions, recovering oxygen from carbon dioxide is important since oxygen resupply is not a viable option. During a Phase I program, we demonstrated a process that uses a low temperature molten salt to selectively adsorb carbon dioxide and reduce it to separated streams of oxygen and carbon monoxide.  This carbon dioxide removal and oxygen generator may be used by NASA to provide oxygen for cabin crew life support or for propellant generation on the moon or Mars as a part of the In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) process. During the Phase II project, we will develop this technology into a compact and lightweight reactor to efficiently produce oxygen from carbon dioxide.
ElectroChem proposes a Phase II program to advance its very successful SBIR Phase I PEM fuel cell (PEMFC) program.  In Phase I, the unique integrated-flow-field design (IFF) has been shown to provide highly superior passive water management that results in a H2/O2 PEMFC that is gravity independent, achieves higher voltage efficiencies than conventional PEMFC designs, can be operated safely at high pressure (with resulting higher efficiencies), will enable passive operation, and requires extremely low excess O2 to maintain stable operation.
           
The Phase II Program will bring ElecroChem's IFF PEMFC concept to the threshold of commercialization.  In Phase II, scale-up and IFF optimization will be carried out.  For complete passive operation, stack systems will incorporate an ejector to produce the low reactant flows and for product water removal. High performance membrane electrode assemblies (MEAs) will be developed. These Ph II efforts will produce a 250W IFF stack deliverable that will be integrated directly into NASA's Exploration Energy Storage Plan.

The use of the IFF innovation will significantly simplify PEMFC operation and will result in higher and safer performance.  Specifically, for space applications, the higher voltage efficiencies produced and the lower excess O2 required by the IFF will result in significantly lower fuel cell power plant weight.
The efficient utilization of ground test facilities and launch sites is critical for the success of NASA's New Vision for Space Exploration.  The development of an innovative Wireless Integrated Microelectronic Vacuum Sensor System for monitoring vacuum-jacketed pipelines is proposed that would address the need of NASA for measurements of the insulating capability of cryogenic lines for ground testing, flight vehicles, and launch facilities.  Recent advances in both MEMS vacuum gauge technology and low-power, long range radio frequency transceivers has enabled the development of a low-cost, miniature device with sophisticated capabilities.  The complete, self-contained, battery operated system would fit within the volume of the current vacuum gauges only and provide periodic, continuous monitoring of vacuum conditions throughout the entire facility.  Such a system would reduce operations costs and increase vacuum jacket reliability by eliminating the need for human intervention, reduce package, wiring size and weight, and provide constant network reporting and monitoring of the facility from any Internet enabled computer.  Beyond this application for vacuum monitoring, the long-range wireless sensor networking capabilities developed under this program would be applicable to a vast array of other sensor types and control applications throughout Stennis Space Center and other NASA facilities.
The objective of this SBIR effort  was to prove the viability of an Ethernet version of the  MicroSat Systems, Inc. (MSI) modular, plug and play (PnP) spacecraft avionics architecture. This revolutionary architecture provides a near-term solution to modular, plug and play avionics while distributing power and data management functions on a single circuit allowing rapid interfacing to other satellite avionics such as the GSFC Space Cube.  By integrating the MSI protocol converter technology with the ABET Technologies Digital Current System, MSI can provide a network with standardized attachment nodes that carries data and power on an Intelligent Power/Data Ring (IPDR).The IPDR network, which can host a variety of data protocols, currently implements a high speed SPA-S (SpaceWire) core to support the AFRL PnP efforts. It enables full PnP modularity reducing spacecraft integration and test to a few days.  Since the system is implemented with a common set of nodes for every interface instead of custom cards in a card cage, the hardware costs are dramatically lower as well, only 40-60&#37; of comparable centralized systems. Using commercial Ethernet parts integrated into the existing IPDR node processor and interface boards successful proof of concept testing was performed during Phase I.  The transfer of Ethernet data frames was demonstrated into the IPDR ring via a peripheral Ethernet device, from one IPDR node to another, and finally back out of the ring to the external Ethernet device. Figure 1 shows the setup of the final node-to-node Ethernet communication test. Although this testing verified the fundamental functionality of Ethernet communication on the IPDR ring avionics, there is significant effort remaining to mature this into a flight worthy avionics architecture .  The Phase II will investigate flight parts selection for the nodes, firmware development required to improve bandwidth, and flight qualification and delivery of a Ethernet version of an IPDR node.
The innovation of the proposed effort is a unique automated process for the analysis, design, and sizing of CLV/CEV composite and metallic structures. This developed process will permit hundreds of conceptual and preliminary design trade studies to be performed in a matter of only a few days rather than several months. This shorter time is made possible by replacing or reducing currently required experienced analyst interaction (man in the loop) with predefined knowledge based sizing templates for laminate strength and producibility optimization. Innovative virtual structural component definitions that 'float' between automatic HyperSizer to FEA iteration cycles redefine acreage surfaces areas while simultaneously including connecting bonded/bolted joints. The resulting capability will be an open architecture built within the HyperSizer&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt; commercial software suitable for internally integrating NASA or industry developed specialty discipline analysis codes and externally integrating HyperSizer with NASA larger design systems. This new capability will be unique in that no other commercial or non-commercial tool will have the same level of depth, breadth, accuracy, speed, verification &amp; validation, and software robustness for performing weight prediction and reduction, structural integrity margins-of-safety reporting, and reliability prediction and improvement.
This Phase II proposal is presented as the follow on to the Phase I SBIR contract number NNC06CB21C entitled "Ka-band MMIC T/R Module"

For active microwave surveillance of earth surface and atmosphere, radar transceivers perform functions of probing the atmosphere and the surface conditions of the earth.  Radars for such applications operate in various frequency ranges depending on one or more specific needs extending all the way from UHF to millimeter-wave (MMW) frequencies.  Radars today rely on phased-array antenna for beam forming and beam steering, and, in most cases today, the arrays are built with a large number of transmit-receive (T/R) modules made of amplifiers, phase shifters and duplexing switches.  Microwave monolithic integrated circuits (MMIC) technology enables integration of those T/R module functions into a single MMIC chip, which, in turn allows compact implementation of phased array antennas with thousands of radiating elements. A typical T/R module consists of several circuit components that need to be optimized to achieve optimum module level performance.  These components typically include a low noise amplifier (LNA), power amplifier (PA), switch, phase shifter and attenuator. This Phase II program will lead to a development of a 35 GHz T/R MMIC delivering output powers in the transmit path  of 30 dBm with an associated PAE of greater than 40&#37; and at the same time exhibiting a noise figure of less than 2.5 dB in the receive path. While beyond the specific MMIC mentioned, this Phase II SBIR will make significant contributions in MHEMT device characterization and the commercialization of  MHEMT technology.
An important consideration of the use of superconducting magnets in ADR applications is shielding of the other instruments in the vicinity of the superconducting magnets. For example in a telescope application the magnetic field at about 1m away from the magnet may need to be in milli-gauss range. Shielding without proper technology and optimization can add unnecessary weight to the magnet system that can amount to a few times the weight of the superconducting magnet itself. This proposal discusses various approaches in shielding of Nb3Sn ADR magnets and suggests a program to develop the capability required to achieve effective shielding schemes that provide required shielding with minimum weight, and maximum reliability.
The need for radiation protection in humans is critical to the success of the nation's continued presence in space. A new radiation protection system will be developed from the recently defined unique hydrogen uptake properties of polyaniline (PANI) nanotubes.  The PANI nanotubes have preliminarily shown up to 6&#37; uptake of hydrogen yielding 11-12&#37; total hydrogen content with low total density. The polymeric nature of polyaniline also makes for good structural stability and form stability for shielding elements fabricated from the polymer. The effort in this proposal will identify the compositional stability of the hydrogen-rich PANI system, will advance hydrogen uptake in PANI to &gt; 15&#37;, will test PANI nanotubes for radiation stability and radiation shielding, and will develop design scenarios for the integration of the PANI radiation protection material as cloth or molded parts for space suits and flexible/inflatable habitat applications.
VPT proposes an innovative concept whereby complex NASA space power electronic systems can be configured using a small number of qualified hybrid DC-DC converter and EMI filter modules. This significantly reduces nonrecurring engineering in the design of space power converters.  In the SBIR Phase I, VPT configured a space station power converter using a VPT standard product hybrid DC-DC converter and EMI filter.  The system met all Space Station power quality requirements including the very challenging input impedance requirement.  Two engineering units were developed and went through a full battery of space station power quality tests NASA-JSC.  The approach also demonstrated a significant size and weight savings.  The phase II workplan includes: (a) selection of three NASA power system applications across different branches for development of detailed power requirements, (b) design and build engineering units of each of these systems using a modular approach of VPT hybrid converters and subject each to engineering tests, (c) make necessary changes to selected VPT standard product hybrid converters in order to meet NASA requirements for design, parts selection, element evaluation, screening, radiation hardness, and qualification, (d) build a qualification unit for one system and subject it to formal qualification tests.
This SBIR project delivers On-orbit health MoNItoring and repair assessment of THERMal protection systems (OMNI_THERM). OMNI_THERM features impedance-based structural health monitoring (SHM) and uses miniaturized autonomous sensor/actuators to diagnose damage and verify repair efficacy. 

Implications of the innovation
Thermal protection systems (TPS) are crucial for crew safety. New techniques of on-orbit assessment of TPS are needed to accelerate Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) development. An autonomous impedance-based SHM system is one of the few viable solutions; Phase I established that this technique can be configured for on-orbit TPS health monitoring. 

Technical objectives
We will configure OMNI_THERM for on-orbit SHM through iterative hardware refinements combined with environmental testing and demonstrations at CEV contractors. OMNI_THERM deploys autonomous, wireless, self-powered sensor/actuators. Each sensor/actuator is a self-contained SHM system; this computationally distributed framework minimizes single points-of-failure. 

Research description
Phase I produced an advanced prototype and demonstrated SHM on TPS. Phase II includes miniaturization and expands to higher temperature ranges, hybrid structures, and advanced composites. 

Anticipated results
Phase II delivers an OMNI_THERM system configured for on-orbit SHM and repair assessment of TPS and other crucial structures. System development includes ruggedization, scaling to multiple sensors, self-diagnostics, high temperature (&gt;500&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;F) and system validation, and autonomous operation.
This SBIR Phase II project is aimed at the development of an analytical instrument which combines the advantages of fast gas chromatography (GC) and a detector that is capable of sample identification independently from GC retention time. Experiments in the limited-space environment require from a GC system maximum productivity and universality with minimal resource consumption. A combination of a miniature short-column chromatograph with a detector capable of identifying unknown species would be an ideal instrument for flight analysis. A low-resource and power consumption micro-sized GC detector that is proposed for development in Phase II of this project is based on a technology of Penning Ionization Electron Spectroscopy in plasma (PIES). Adding another analytical dimension to the amperometric method that has earlier been employed in the metastable ionization detector (MID), PIES technology relies on the measurement of the energy of electrons liberated by Penning ionization in collisions between analyte molecules and helium metastable atoms in the afterglow of a gas discharge. Since the energy of Penning electrons is specific to the species, the resultant data can be used to identify gas components.  No optics or high vacuum is required, and the spectra in this technique are recorded by using a collector electrode placed into a glow discharge cell. In the Phase I of the project, the technology has been expanded to flowing plasmas with linear gas velocities of up to 9.3 m/s where PIES spectra were recorded in ~1.5 s. Phase II of the project is focused on further increasing the data acquisition rates, realization of PIES detector in a compact design, development of advanced measurement electronics, and testing the prototype detector with a commercial high-speed gas chromatograph.
Meeting the objectives of returning to the moon by 2020 will require NASA to fly a series of telerobotic lunar orbital and surface vehicles to prove the viability of In Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) and assist in precursor human base preparation. A real-time 3D tool that creates plausible simulations of space environments and vehicles can bring an urgently needed rapid prototyping capability to this large vehicle &amp; mission design task. 

Digital Spaces Prototyper (DSS-Prototyper) will allow teams to rapidly prototype vehicle and mission designs week-to-week and tie real-time 3D simulations to teams meetings, teleconferences, web documents, CAD databases and other decision support tools. In Phase I, DigitalSpace modeled Colorado School of Mines' prototype lunar bucket wheel excavator (BWE) to create a plausible design simulation of a lunar surface vehicle. The BWE was chosen as it is one of the only lunar ISRU-oriented prototypes in the world. Phase I features implemented in DSS-Prototyper include:
- Dynamics of a rover operating within a hypothetical lunar base.
- Force feedback joystick interface creating fine operator controls.
- Integrated physics engine creating vehicle/terrain contact models and an approximation of regolith properties.
- Auto-stereo display supporting 3D immersion.

Phase II features:
- Fully synchronized multi-use interface supporting team simulation viewing, recording and playback of simulation sequences.
- A component wrapper and open framework to connect with Windchill, ICE, Nexiom, NASA and contractor design tools.
- Annotation features associating CAD and simulation to text, documents and an asynchronous web site blog for team commentary.
- A half dozen lunar vehicle and mission scenario designs for sharing and iteration by a team of world-class advisors and evaluators.
- Delivery of DSS-Prototyper to NASA in an open source package for use by any team implementing new exploration vision.
The Vision for Space Exploration demands increasing reliance on real-time trace gas monitors onboard spacecraft.  Present grab samples and badges will be inadequate beyond low-Earth-orbit.  New better monitors will be critical components for early detection of fire, release event monitoring, crew habitability, and air revitalization processes.  The danger from fire and toxic releases aboard spacecraft is constant with only moments for detection and contravention.  Spacecraft are unique high-value systems where failure is measured in lives, dollars, time, and public perception.  Space crews have little chance of escaping vessels that cannot continue to support life.  It is imperative to detect danger in these closed-cycle environments at the earliest possible moment.  Present fire detectors onboard spacecraft are inadequate due to fatigue, sensitivity or time response.  Smoke detectors are insufficient for detecting the earliest stages of combustion.  Further, smoke detectors will become increasingly unreliable due to false alarms upon exposure to dust particulates from the Moon and Mars.  Sensors are needed to directly detect the molecular products of combustion.  Vista Photonics proposes to develop rugged, compact prototype optical fire detection and contaminant monitoring instrumentation capable of selectively measuring a critical suite of contaminants at parts-per-million (ppm) or better sensitivities in a few seconds.
This project is to develop versatile, low mass, energy efficient, and easily maintained multipurpose seed processing (MSP) equipment for food processing in space environments.  Phase-1 of the project yielded a conceptual drawing for a MSP.  Phase-II consists of six main tasks. The first model MSP will be manufactured, programmed and tested for ESM, function, and quality of processed product.  The data will be used to refine the model and design multipurpose screws for the extrusion and press components of the MSP to simplify the equipment.  Several models of MSP's will be fabricated and tested for versatility.  The ESM crietia and functional parameters will be used to evaluate the optimum MSP for NASA applications and non-NASA applications.  The final deliverables will be the test database, design drawings and the optimized MSP's for NASA and non-NASA applications.
In this proposal we describe a plan to build a deformable mirror suitable for space-based operation in systems for high-resolution imaging. The prototype DM will be fabricated through a combination of micromachining and wafer bonding steps that were all proven feasible in the Phase I project. The device will rely on single crystal silicon for all structural components, promising unprecedented thermal stability and optical quality. A principal goal of this Phase II SBIR project will be to fabricate a high precision microelectromechanical (MEMS) deformable mirror with a 60mm optical diameter, having surface roughness less than 5nm RMS. The mirror will be supported by 1600 independently controllable electrostatic actuators, each capable of up to 1mm of stroke with sub-nanometer repeatability. The device will become an enabling component for applications including space-based imaging, optical communication, and lithography.
In February 2004 NASA released "The Vision for Space Exploration".  The important goals include extending human presence in the solar system culminating in the exploration of Mars and other remote destinations.  One of the most critical problems facing such space missions is identification of effective methods to control solid waste.  With current waste models, 1300 kg of waste occupying a volume 20 m3 will be generated in a 180-day mission to Mars.  Unprocessed waste poses a biological hazard to the crew and exposure to odors from untreated waste is a threat to crew health and morale.  In Phase I TDA identified a low temperature process that effectively oxidized five model waste compounds to carbon dioxide and water at temperatures up to 220&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C.  In addition the reaction rates we measured are much greater than biological oxidation process currently under development.  In addition, we found that the quantity of NOX formed was very low.  In the Phase II portion of the project, TDA will optimize the reactor configuration, identify the most effective oxidation conditions, and finally design and construct a fully automated pilot scale system for waste treatment that will be delivered to NASA Ames Research Center at the conclusion of the project.
This SBIR Phase I proposal describes a novel method to make optical filters based on mesoporous silicon multilayers, for use at cold temperatures in the far infrared spectral region. This type of filter consists of a lattice of different porosity layers formed in monocrystalline silicon by electrochemical means. Due to the nature of the material, mesoporous silicon filters do not suffer from thermal, mechanical, and environmental instabilities. More over, due to the high transparency of the mesoporous silicon throughout a large part of the far IR range, such filters can be made for wavelengths far longer than those that can be addressed with conventional interference filter technology. They will considerably outperform filters based on metal meshes. Such filters are expected to impact astronomical, commercial, military and scientific communities in many filter applications. In Phase I, the feasibility of the method was demonstrated by fabricating porous multilayers with ultrahigh thicknesses and good long wave pass and bandpass characteristics in the mid-to-far IR. In Phase II, optimized filters will be fabricated and their properties compared with design predictions. Phase III will involve product design, fabricating filter structures to meet customers' physical as well as optical needs, and marketing and sales investments.
Phase I results showed that two surface treatments, oxidative plasma and reactive finishes, are effective means of modifying the surface chemistry of exfoliated graphite nanoflakes.  The surface modifications provide a more compatible surface energy for dispersion in polymers and create well-bonded interfaces with the polymer matrix.  In order to be cost effective for NASA and commercial applications, the surface treatment processes need to be applied on a large scale.  In the Phase II program, both treatment methods will be scaled-up to semi-continuous processes.  Custom equipment will be fabricated to process large quantities of treated nanoflakes.  The resulting treated nanoflakes will be characterized for surface chemistry and morphology and processed into polymer composites and continuous carbon fiber-reinforced polymer composites.  The composites will be characterized for conductivity, thermal and mechanical, and diffusion barrier properties.  It is expected that these composites will find applications as fuel cell bipolar plates, composite cryogenic storage tanks, and in light weight structures for aerospace, military, and transportation.
The measurement of cloud water content is of great importance in understanding the formation of clouds, their structure, and their radiative properties which in turn affect the climate.  While a variety of sensors exist for making these measurements, all of the existing sensors require far too much power or other energy input to be used on small platforms with limited payloads such as UAVs, balloons, and kites.  Anasphere has, in Phase I work, clearly demonstrated the feasibility of an entirely new technique for the in-situ measurement of cloud water content.  The new sensor is lightweight (under 40 g), consumes very little power (the sensor can run for days on one 9-volt battery), and is very inexpensive.

Phase II work will focus on refining the sensor design from both mechanical and electronic perspectives, completing extensive laboratory and field tests of the improved sensors, and delivering several examples to NASA.  Two sequential cycles of design improvement, laboratory testing, and flight testing are envisioned.  Samples of the sensors will be sent to NASA as part of each flight testing cycle.  

The Phase II effort will culminate in the availability of a simple and inexpensive cloud water content sensor for cloud research.  This sensor will be very useful to scientists studying cloud formation and structure.  It will enable such scientists to inexpensively obtain in-situ data that previously was obtained only through the use of an expensive research aircraft flying through the cloud.
Real-time displacement measurement techniques are needed to acquire aerodynamic and structural system characteristics in flight. This proposal describes the development of a new type of position sensor which we have termed a Point Coupled Sensor (PCS). This sensor is able to detect the position of a target, typically a small piece of metal or magnetic material, in one or two dimensions.  The one dimensional (1-D) or linear embodiment of the sensor is similar in function to the well-known linear variable differential transformer (LVDT). In this configuration, it is anticipated that the PCS will provide similar measurement accuracies, but with significant cost, size and weight reduction.  This makes the PCS especially attractive for use in unmanned aerial vehicles (UAV's) and other applications where size and weight are important. The PCS approach can also be implemented as a two-dimensional (2-D) sensor, which may facilitate the measurement of complex surfaces, and holds promise for many new and evolving UAV and aircraft applications such as aeroelastic wings and measuring the position of swept surfaces or moving panels. The PCS two-dimensional concept also offers the potential to introduce novel surface sensor measurement functionality and could conceivably be fabricated within the composite aircraft structure.
The purpose of this program is to develop a compact and efficient
ultraviolet laser system for use in space-based uv-Raman instruments.
The basis for this system will be a modulated diode seed laser followed
by a fiber amplifier which is frequency-quadrupled to generate uv light
at 245nm.  The unique combination of a compact and efficient fiber
amplifier with efficient harmonic generation will provide an ideal
ultraviolet source for NASA missions in the Solar System.
Command and Control (C2) activities abound in the NAS, and significantly influence daily operations and overall NAS efficiency.  Since C2 effects are so prominent, development of new operational concepts, and evaluation of proposed changes, requires simulation and modeling capabilities that include C2 effects.  Metron Aviation leverages its extensive knowledge of the Command and Control (C2) functions of the National Airspace System (NAS) to develop models that enable realistic NAS simulations.  The key innovations of this effort are 1) the implementation of models for NAS ATM C2 processes, and 2) the integration of these models with the NASA Langley Systems Analysis Branch's (SAB) Simulation Environment. The development leverages the following key capabilities: Metron Aviation's extensive experience supporting NAS C2 activities, and Langley's infrastructure for conducting NAS-wide simulations of air traffic. By developing this interaction we enable a system that allows researchers and analysts to evaluate current NAS operations and to investigate future technologies and concepts of operations. These users exploit the system's capabilities to observe NAS behavior and compare the benefits and impacts of operational concepts prior to pursuing implementation in the operational system.
This work proposes to develop a zero boil off (ZBO) dewar using a two-stage pulse-tube cooler together with two innovative, continuous-flow cooling loops and an actively cooled shield. While a number of cryogenic refrigeration systems may be considered for such applications, none offers the same potential for low vibration, high reliability, and high efficiency as the pulse tube. The continuous-flow cooling loops are made possible by the presence of rectifying interfaces that convert the oscillating flow of the pulse-tube cryocooler into a steady flow of cold refrigerant gas that can readily be distributed throughout the volume of the dewar or over the surface of a shield, without need for a separate circulating pump.
The Alternate Propellant Thermal Rocket (APTR) is a novel concept for propulsion of space exploration or orbit transfer vehicles.  APTR propulsion is provided by utilizing a nuclear thermal reactor or solar thermal engine to heat a space storable propellant, preferably consisting of a volatile indigenous to the destination world, to form a high thrust rocket exhaust.  Candidate propellants whose performance, materials compatibility, and ease of acquisition make them worthy of examination for APTR propulsion of exploration vehicles include carbon dioxide, water, methane, and methanol.  An APTR utilizing indigenous CO2 propellant potentially offers high payoff to a robotic or manned Mars mission, both by sharply reducing the initial mission mass required in low Earth orbit, and by providing Mars exploration with unlimited mobility and global access.  Additionally, an APTR could give nearly unlimited mobility to asteroid or outer solar system probes, while one using methane or nitrogen propellant could enable a Titan sample return mission.  The APTR can also be used as the propulsion system for a high performance space storable orbit transfer system moving payloads from LEO to GEO or other orbits of commercial interest.  In this case, leading candidate propellants include methane, ammonia, and methanol.
Whether it be a crew station, the Shuttle Remote Manipulator System (SRMS), an unmanned ground rover (UGV) or air vehicle (UAV), or teams thereof, the controllers for such systems will be complex, multilevel, usually distributed, systems. When a human user desires to switch between automatic and manual control, the transition must occur at all levels of the controller. There exist no well-developed strategies for managing such transitions and no proven methods for guaranteeing overall stability in the classical control-theoretic sense, or even safety and reliability in the general sense. These type of issues will span virtually every shared-control application in future NASA exploration systems. Intelligent Automation, Inc. proposes to use a two-level, distributed robot controller with multimodal user interface (UI) and demonstrate a technique to seamlessly transition between teleoperation and autonomous operation. The technique is based on using Hidden Markov Models to identify the current active state at each level of the controller. The demonstration platform was developed for a previous NASA project for JSC to develop automatic programming methods for astronaut assistants.
Cornerstone Research Group Inc. (CRG) proposes to develop an advanced reflexive structure system to increase the survivability of aerostructures.  This reflexive system will mimic the pain withdrawal reflex on which the human body relies.  The proposed reflexive system will incorporate a continuous health and performance monitoring system via an embedded dielectric film, an adaptive composite structure based on CRG's shape memory composite material (Veritex&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt;), and an intelligence system which will be interfaced with both the health/performance sensors and the adaptive structure. When activated, Veritex&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; will recover its structural integrity via shape recovery and a novel healing process.  These features enable the use of Veritex&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; as an adaptive structure in the proposed reflexive system.  The development of a reflexive system for aerostructures will enable increased safety and security and demonstrate a better understanding of integrated performance systems.  This reflexive technology could find immediate implementation on all current and future UCAV systems and future implementation on platforms such as the International Space Station, Lunar, and Martian habitats.
"CODE (COrps DEvelopment) STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) ? Moon Mars and Beyond; DLESE-Powered On-Line Classroom" shares the excitement of President Bush's vision of space exploration with 8th grade students. Program fulfills standards-based 8th grade curriculum and will be implemented in two diverse Escondido schools (Grant, Rincon). San Diego County Office of Education will ensure relevance and integration into formal curriculum.  Through thematic approach to learning and multi-disciplinary exhibit-centered final project, Program strives to engage broad cross-section of students and teachers.  

Focus is on developing a theme-specific DLESE (Digital Library for Earth System Education) collection and portal. On-line learning communities and inquiry based learning protocols (San Diego State University) will enhance DLESE effectiveness. Implementation culminates with multi-disciplinary student exhibit at participating schools and San Diego Aerospace Museum, sharing excitement of space exploration with general public. In Phase II DLESE collection will be expanded to support additional grade levels (3rd, 5th, 8th, high school), there will be broad implementation in San Diego and Nashville (through Fisk University), and teacher training.
The objective of this project is to develop advanced catalysts for a volatile removal assembly used to purify spacecraft water.  The innovation of the proposed catalysts is improved oxidation activity for organic compounds relative to conventional systems.  Additionally, by minimizing or avoiding noble metals in the compositions, catalyst cost is reduced and the materials are less susceptible to fouling.  These characteristics will translate into lower weight, volume, and power requirements relative to current systems.  Catalysts will be derived from a subset of Eltron-patented materials with demonstrated low-temperature oxidation activity and inherent water resistance.  The technical goals will be to minimize the temperature and pressure requirements for operation, and resist catalyst leaching and hydrothermal sintering.  These goals will be achieved by performing systematic studies that relate fabrication variables and compositions to catalyst characteristics.  Candidate catalysts will be evaluated for destruction of representative organic contaminants, and activity will be determined as a function temperature and pressure.  Coarse optimization of catalyst compositions will be performed, and the most promising compositions will be manufactured into grains with optimal dimensions and porosity.
The hot structures for current space vehicles require an atmospheric entry thermal protection system.  Reusable hot structures that can function without requiring any atmospheric entry thermal protection system for space vehicle would constitute a paradigm.  A high temperature stable fiber reinforcement and a ceramic material that exhibits atmospheric entry thermal stability can be combined into a composite which possess the mechanical properties to serve as a reusable hot structure that can function without any atmospheric entry thermal protection system.  This unique and new ceramic matrix composite (CMC) will be developed and characterized to demonstrate it can meet the requirements of a reusable hot structure for space vehicles which can operate without any atmospheric entry thermal protection system and optimized samples will be delivered for more detailed testing at NASA
The Integrated Mars In-Situ Propellant Production System (IMISPPS) is an end-to-end system that will produce rocket propellant on Mars from CO2 in the Martian atmosphere.  The IMISPPS combines the RWGS and Sabatier reactions in a single reactor to produce a useful high-specific impulse fuel (methane plus carbon monoxide) and water, which is condensed and electrolyzed to produce oxygen and hydrogen.  The hydrogen is recycled back to the Sabatier/RWGS reactor to react with Martian CO2 to produce more fuel, while the oxygen is cryogenically stored to provide oxidizer.  Some of the carbon monoxide is removed by cryogenic separation to increase propellant specific impulse. Carbon dioxide acquisition to feed the fuel reactor is accomplished using a lightweight freezer.  Use of the IMISPPS has the advantage of producing all the oxygen needed to burn the methane with only in a single catalytic reactor required.  In the proposed work, we will build a brassboard core of the IMSIPPS and demonstrate its performance and reliability.
The Mars Gas Hopper Airplane, or "gashopper" is a novel concept for propulsion of a robust Mars flight and surface exploration vehicle that utilizes indigenous CO2 propellant to enable greatly enhanced mobility. The gashopper will first retrieve CO2 gas from the Martian environment to store it in liquid form at a pressure of about 10 bar. When enough CO2 is stored to make a substantial flight to another Mars site, a hot pellet bed is heated to ~1000 K and the CO2 propellant is warmed to ~300 K to pressurize the tank to ~65 bar. A valve is then opened, allowing the liquid CO2 to pass through the hot pellet bed that heats and gasifies the CO2 for propulsion. The hot gas is piped to a set of thrusters beneath the aircraft, allowing vertical takeoff, after which the gas is shunted off to a primary rearward pointing thruster to generate forward flight speed. The hot gas system  is also used for attitude control and main propulsion during landing. The advantage of the gashopper is that it provides Mars exploration with a fully controllable aerial reconnaissance vehicle that can repeatedly land and explore surface sites as well.
The goal of the project is research and development of methods for application of the Hybrid FE-SEA method to aircraft vibro-acoustic problems.  This proposal discusses the development and application of new methods of structural-acoustic analysis in order to address existing problems in aircraft interior noise prediction. The proposed methods are based on a hybrid modeling strategy that combines Finite Element Analysis (FEA) and Statistical Energy Analysis (SEA). Over the past five years, Vibro-Acoustic Sciences has devoted a considerable research effort towards the development of a framework for combining these two analysis methods. Recent research carried out by over the past two years has resulted in the development of a rigorous solution to this problem. The resulting Hybrid approach has been derived in general terms and validated for a number of simple structural-acoustic problems. However, the method has not yet been applied to aircraft interior noise prediction. A number of candidate aircraft interior noise problems have been identified which would benefit greatly from the use of the Hybrid method. The aims of the research described in this proposal are therefore: (i) to demonstrate the application of the Hybrid method to a number of existing aircraft interior noise problems, (ii) to develop the method to ensure it contains sufficient functionality to address practical aircraft interior noise problems and (iii) to demonstrate the value of the method in the prediction and reduction of noise in airframe systems.
Studies of potential space missions have highlighted the need for very small electric power supplies for a variety of applications.  The light weight radioisotope heat unit (RHU) offers a long-life, reliable energy source for such systems which is independent of the surrounding environmental conditions, but a device is needed to convert radioisotope heat into electrical power.  In Phase 1, Sest, Inc. investigated and fully defined a complete energy conversion system utilizing a very small Stirling-based convertor powered by a single RHU. It has conversion efficiencies greater than twice that of proposed thermoelectric convertors. Sest, Inc. proposes to complete the detailed design, fabricate, extensively test, and deliver to NASA a functional prototype of a Milliwatt Radioisotope Stirling Convertor (MRSC) system which will clearly demonstrate the performance characteristics of a low power Stirling-based conversion system. The reference MRSC system is designed to produce a net 100 mW or more of useful electrical power from a single RHU over an operating life of 10 years. The overall size of the prototype MRSC package is approximately 80 mm in diameter by 115 mm in length and has an estimated total mass of 250 g, for a specific power of 0.4 We/kg.
The physical difficulty of designing entry vehicles originates from the large degree of coupling between the various disciplines involved in the design.  Every subsystem design decision has far reaching consequences that must be evaluated in a multidisciplinary fashion in order to assess the impact on the weight and the performance of the entire vehicle.  The disciplines which must be accounted and integrated during the design are: trajectory optimization, guidance, navigation, and control (GN&amp;C) technology, aerodynamics and aerothermodynamics, thermal-structural analysis, and thermal protection system (TPS) development.  Previous efforts in developing a collaborative or a multidisciplinary optimization process never considered how uncertainty in the atmospheric conditions, in the entry parameters of the vehicle, in the condition of the vehicle during entry, and in the performance of the TPS will influence the design and provide a risk assessment for a mission.  The work completed during the Phase I effort demonstrated that it is feasible to develop a tool for multidisciplinary optimization under uncertainty (MDO-U) for entry vehicle design, and the new information which is gained is insightful and meaningful.  The functionality and the value of the new MDO-U design tool were demonstrated through a case study where MDO-U was performed for the HL-20 vehicle under a LEO consideration.  During Phase II a general purpose and user friendly MDO-U product which can be used in entry vehicle design, and in many other engineering areas will be developed.
We propose the development of a maintainable and evolvable real-time control software system for Electromagnetic Formation Flight (EMFF). EMFF systems use high-temperature, superconducting electromagnets to control the relative positions and orientations between two or more formation-flying satellites without using expendable, and possibly contaminating propellant. Eventual applications for EMFF range from X-ray astronomy missions, such as XEUS, MAXIM and Gen-X, to extra-solar planetary science, such as Terrestrial Planet Finder-Interferometer, to vehicle inspection systems for long duration exploration missions.
The current EMFF control software was developed as a laboratory exercise, and is not scalable or appropriate for use in a flight environment. The proposed software effort will use a model-based development approach, using executable models to define the EMFF control algorithms, command and data handling behaviors and other system behaviors, and an elaboration of the software architecture defined during Phase I in the form of model translation tools, scripts and procedures, to produce flight-qualifiable EMFF avionics software.
The developed software products will be extensible and adaptable for future EMFF applications. Initial testing will be on EMFF hardware developed for a related DARPA program and loaned to this effort at no cost to the SBIR program.
Current design concepts for space nuclear reactors are well advanced in core configurations and architectural design. There is need however to determine how such systems will be monitored and instrumented.  In the past, detection systems have been forced to employ different types of detectors for different flux levels.  We propose here an adaptation of a Wide Range Neutron Detector (WRND) system, currently in use at ground-based nuclear research facilities, for its operation in the space environment. This new system, capable of measuring neutron flux and flux rate in the entire operating range of the reactor (from a neutron flux of 100 n/cm2/sec to more than 1010 n/cm2/sec), could be utilized to monitor and control a space-based nuclear power reactor. In this way, a single instrument chain can be used instead of different instrumentation for each of the reactor's operation ranges (start-up, ramping-up, and nominal power). This is a clear advantage for space applications where simplicity, reliability, and size constraints are of premium importance. A WRND would allow for a significant reduction in the complexity of space-based nuclear instrumentation and control systems.  This SBIR Phase II will result in a complete detailed design for a space-based WRND, and will include fabrication and testing of a prototype system at a ground-based research reactor.
The technical objective of the Phase II project is to provide a more complete investigation of the long-term needs of the simulant community based on the updated NASA outline for exploration, including potential landing site designations, the types of technologies currently funded for research, and timelines for future development.  Using this information, a number of prototype simulants will be created and analyzed for their ability to meet individual application requirements. If successful, each prototype simulant could then be produced on a larger scale through a Phase III contract or by a privately funded commercial effort. The current simulants to be addressed by the Phase II include a spherical glass inclusion JSC-1a derivative for improved physical lunar mare characteristics, a terrestrially produced lunar agglutinate inclusion JSC-1a derivative for true chemical and mechanical property simulation, a lunar highlands simulant for simulation of over 80&#37; of the lunar surface, and improved JSC Mars-1a simulant to meet the immediate needs for Martian experimentation and testing. We anticipate that through these four prototypes, the majority of the needs of the scientific and engineering communities can be met with a high degree of fidelity, improving NASA's ability to successfully explore the Moon and Mars.
Phase I has demonstrated the feasibility of the overall objective to develop strong and lightweight polyethylene composites with double-walled nanotubes for radiation shielding applications. Multi-gram quantities of pure DWNTs, hydrogen-containing functional derivatives of DWNTs, highly hydrogenated fullerenes have been synthesized and incorporated in polyethylene matrix to form composite materials of exceptional mechanical strength, thermal stability and enhanced proton radiation shielding efficiency.      
The tensile strength of the low-density polyethylene composites with DWNTs was evaluated to be in excess of 200 MPa, and the Young's modulus exceeds 3500 MPa, while the composite toughness is retained at a very high level of ca. 10 J/cm3. These values compare favorably to the strongest polymer films, including those of aramide polymers. The thermal oxidation degradation point of polyethylene is up-shifted by more than 100 &lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C at 1 wt. &#37; loading of the DWNT filler. A prominent increase in proton radiation shielding efficiency, reaching 35 &#37; in terms of water equivalence thickness was obtained for composites containing DWNTs and fullerene hydrides. Virtually no degradation in properties was observed upon proton irradiation.

In Phase II, the central technological achievement of Phase I effort, the effective lamination of the unique as-produced DWNT films with polyethylene will be further developed for manufacturing practical composite articles for aerospace applications, including advanced components for EVA suits. The DWNTs, fullerene hydrides and appropriate thermoplastic polymers will be explored for composite components.
In an effort to cope with air traffic demand growths and changing demand patterns, FAA, NASA, and industry have developed a number of simulation tools to model future concepts of air traffic management.   Among these is the Systems Analysis Branch (SAB) simulation environment of NASA Langley.  The current tools would greatly benefit from the portrayal of the daily preemptive Command and Control (C&amp;C) activities performed by FAA and air carrier traffic managers.  These actions significantly influence daily operations and overall NAS efficiency.  Development of new operational concepts and evaluation of proposed changes requires simulation and modeling capabilities that include C&amp;C effects.  This understanding is crucial for the evaluation of current or proposed operations.  Metron Aviation uses its extensive experience with and research of C&amp;C to implement a model of NAS-wide ATM (C&amp;C) actions and to integrate the resulting module into NASA Langley's SAB simulation environment.  The final product adds realism to future aircraft movement simulations performed by NASA Langley and admits exploration of new concepts that involve air traffic flow management.
The use of gelled propellants for deep space planetary missions may enable adoption of high performance (Isp-vac&gt;360 sec) propellant combinations that do not require power-intensive heating and stirring cycles before firings, and whose handling and safety characteristics are close to stated goals of "green" propellants.

Phase I focused on the ability to gel both halves of the propellant combination of liquid propane and MON-30 (GLP/GMON-30).  This combination was selected to provide extended low-temperature capability.  Both components were successfully gelled and preliminary rheological data was taken.  To allow system-wide studies of the impact of gelled propellant adoption, non-Newtonian gel rheology models were added to NASA's flow network system analysis code, Generalized Fluid System Simulation Program (GFSSP).  These models were validated with experimental gel data.  Preliminary two-fluid CFD simulations were performed to understand the flow of gelled propellants in microgravity environments.  

Phase II will culminate in a hot-fire demonstration of a GLP/GMON-30 rocket chamber, to be performed at AMRDEC facilities.  To support this, hardware for gelling of the propellants will be fabricated and delivered to NASA.  Suitable quantities of the gelled propellants will be prepared and fundamental data, including rheological and freezing point behavior will be determined.  Expanded system-level assessments will be performed, using both GFSSP and CFD tools.
Communications applications are strategically moving toward Internet Protocol-based architectures and technologies. Despite IP's huge potential, (e.g. cost effectiveness, reduced development and installation times), it has not proved to be appropriate for space communication applications. IP-based space networking links exhibit poor performance induced by narrow bandwidth, long propagation loops, large transmission errors, and/or intermittent connectivity. In Phase I, Broadata Communications, Inc. (BCI) successfully designed a preliminary network protocol technology to overcome these problems. BCI's innovative Universal Space IP Transparent Proxy (USIT) achieves accurate network measurements and reconfigurations, providing a 10 times, on average, improvement in network throughput, as compared to existing state-of-the-art IP solutions. In addition, the USIT solution is transparent (thus independent of any network functions such as compression) and is seamless (i.e., works with non-USIT network hosts/nodes).  Its simplicity will enable it to be placed in a variety of Earth network nodes, ensuring its compatibility with, and ability to improve, network performance in space. In Phase II, BCI will optimize the system's design to develop a full-scale highly optimized system, including two tangible prototypes: a portable space-qualified USIT software package, compatible with existing NASA space network nodes, and, a rack-mountable stand-alone GSSL embedded system, with both hardware and software.
The primary innovation of this work is a novel approach for flexible and safe control of highly capable mobile surface systems, such as long-duration science rovers, crew surface systems, multi-robot and human-robot teams.  The traditional approach of time-based sequence of commands will not be adequate for commanding and coordinating future mobile surface systems because it does not support concurrent tasks and team coordination.  Those future systems will need more expressive executable plans, either uplinked from the ground or generated automatically onboard the spacecraft.  The executive must ensure that the execution of commands and the response to the fault protection system conform to the pre-planned behavior.

A new execution language, called PLEXIL, has been designed specifically for flexible and safe command execution.  The language is portable, lightweight, predictable, and expressive.  The Phase II effort will focus on the development of the PLEXIL Executive System and Plan Editor.  While the role of the Executive is to interpret and execute task plans according to the syntax and semantics of the PLEXIL language and ensures reliable and safe plan execution, the Editor facilitates the creation and editing of PLEXIL task plans.
In our Phase I effort we developed a prototype software-agent based framework to provide for autonomous re-targeting of sensors hosted on satellites in polar orbits, subject to standing requests and dynamic user requests.  Our approach is a distributed and de-centralized, with each satellite maintaining knowledge of its sensor complement and physical capabilities as well as its schedule. Each satellite is capable of entering into negotiations for a viewing opportunity via a Contract Net type protocol; and is capable of optimizing its bid.  As sensor deployment increases and autonomous vehicles become more robust, the need for a framework to support multi-sensor re-targeting in a dynamic environment involving multiple organizations becomes more acute. In our Phase 2 effort, we will extend the framework to include support for multiple types of sensor platforms as well as more sophisticated variants of the Contract Net Protocol. We will define various agent 'templates' specialized to the needs of the multi-sensor re-targeting environment. In Phase 2, the improved framework, AAMSRT, will support policy utilization to govern the sensor re-tasking. As part of the Phase 2 effort, we will engage the Open Geospatial Consortium for applicable standards, including use of SensorML, services, and OGC initiatives regarding sensor planning.
To address the NASA need for innovative, advanced, high-precision micropropulsion technologies to increase the operational capabilities and reduce the cost of Earth Science under-10-kg spacecraft for long-life missions, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Silicon Digital Propulsion (SIDIP) system.  SIDIP will be inexpensive and power efficient, with minimal mass, and will deliver digitally controlled, high-precision attitude control and in-space maneuvering through micropulses of regulated duration and frequency.  The SIDIP system is based on two key innovations:  development of a novel, MEMS-based periodic structure of subminiature microthrusters; and unique implementation of the microelectromechanical systems (MEMS) technology that POC has developed for processing Si wafers for precise micromachining of the hundreds (or more) of subminiature field emission electric microthrusters on a 1 in. x 1 in. Si microthruster plate (MTP).  SIDIP will remarkably increase the precision of in-space maneuvering, and improve attitude and orbit control.  NASA Earth Science missions will benefit from SIDIP, especially for miniatusre satellites in a cluster or constellation.  In Phase I POC will optimize the SIDIP system geometry, develop technology for micromachining silicon MTPs, and demonstrate technologies for fabricating pyrimids and oxidizing matrix channels.  In Phase II POC will demonstrate an engineering prototype SIDIP.
As one of NASA's key motivation, the use of truly autonomous unmanned vehicles (UV) has been hampered by lack of sophisticated and resource efficient obstacle avoidance systems. Solving the obstacle avoidance problem to permit truly autonomous operations in a cluttered and occluded environment has been the subject of considerable research. In Phase I, UtopiaCompression (UC) has developed a layered, intelligent and adaptive system concept that will facilitate UV operations by solving the collision avoidance and path planning problems using inexpensive imaging sensors and modest computational resources. In Phase II, UC shall fully implement this concept. UC's focus is to push the limits of automation in the 3D arena by providing a real-time, end-to-end solution that includes: (i) deriving 3D structures (computing depth) from overlapping (stereo pair) images or video sequence acquired from sensors aboard autonomous agents; (ii) using the derived 3D structure to compute and model a spatio-temporal vector field; and (iii) based on the distance to the moving/stationary objects, plan a navigation strategy that commands the agent to cruise along a safe path from a source to a destination, avoiding the stationary/moving obstacles in the frontal hemisphere. UC's proposed technology provides immediate benefits to NASA and Non-NASA commercial applications.
Combining smart sensor with wireless technology is a compelling addition to structure a large-scale smart sensor networks for real-time data acquisition, distributed detection and estimations. This requires a distributed data acquisition and control system containing edge-sensing devices to interact with different types of sensors, which poses significant challenges to the system architect.  Mobitrum is proposing an innovative solution to fill the gap between sensing devices and data acquisition system by offering an end-to-end architecture and methods to interface with edge devices and to present data that they generated. The effort includes: (1) Object-oriented approach to interfaces with standard-based smart sensors and smart transducer interface modules (STIM), (2) Advanced intelligent data acquisition and control, (3) Sensor health assessment, (4) Data management and intelligent sensor fusion across local and mobile computational platforms. The significance of the innovation is that the new system can significantly lower the cost and increase the capabilities to improve remote testing and safety assurance.
Many wireless technologies are already available for sensor applications. It is inevitable that many non-interoperable wireless technologies between 400 MHz and 5.8 GHz will be deployed for wireless sensor applications. As a result, monitoring across different wireless interfaces will become a challenge for sensor data collection and management due to lack of interoperability between them.  Mobitrum is proposing a dynamically adjust transceiver that uses a waveform-DNA approach similar to a process of DNA (Deoxyribonucleic acid) coding structure used in medical world. This effort addresses important technology gap for interfacing with various wireless sensor networks and transmitting/receiving data over short and long distances. This effort will include: (1) Finding the waveforms of RF signals, (2) Reading/comparing the waveform, and (3) Controlling the waveform.  The waveforms of the interested RF signals are pre-digitized and stored in the transceiver to compare with the one that is actually received through a wideband antenna.  Once the type of a waveform is identified, the intelligent software in the transceiver will configure its RF characteristics to adapt wireless interface dynamically.  The proposed enabling technology will provide NASA an effective wireless device for Earth science, data relay, and other situational awareness.
Busek proposes to continue development of an engineering model radio frequency discharge, gridded micro ion thruster that produces sub-mN to mN thrust precisely adjustable over a wide dynamic thrust range.  Phase I testing proved the feasibility of the concept and estimated performance was exceptional.  Measuring beam current and voltage, a thrust up to 1.6mN, thrust efficiencies up to 40&#37; and propellant utilization up to 80&#37; were estimated.  Specific impulse ranged from 500-3000seconds.  Beam power maximum was 38 watts and the rf power at this maximum was about 30watts total and approximately 20 watts rf deposited into the plasma.  The rf discharge ionizer eliminated any need for an internal cathode.  In Phase II, Busek will measure thrust directly, characterize the thruster over a wide range of operating conditions and predict lifetime.  MIT will advance a numerical simulation of the rf thruster to be used for scaling and design purposes.  For missions with cryogenic sensors, a thruster utilizing non-condensable propellant(s) will be evaluated. In addition, a beam neutralizer will be investigated.  An rf cathode or carbon nanotube field emission cathode are the two most promising neutralizers.
In the proposed Phase II program, Busek Co. will demonstrate an innovative methodology for clustering Hall thrusters into a high performance, very high power propulsion system.  To fulfill the full range of Hall thruster power requirements (100 kW ? 1 MW) envisioned by NASA for orbit insertion, planetary transfers and manned exploration, rather than developing a &gt;500kW system with one or two large thrusters there are clear advantages to reach the very high power by clustering multiple thrusters of lower power.  In the Phase I program, Busek demonstrated a shared magnetics clustering concept that combined the benefits of simple clustering with additional advantages such as the mass savings and power loss reduction of a shared magnetic structure.  In Phase II, Busek will demonstrate an alternative shared magnetics concept of clustering and design, fabricate and test a sub-scale nested thruster.  The nested thruster consists of two concentric discharge cavities that share a portion of the magnetic structure.  Busek will also continue to investigate the shared magnetics concept of the Phase I program and merge the nested concept into the shared magnetics cluster architecture.

Busek is uniquely positioned to implement the proposed program having expertise in both the clustering of Hall thrusters and shared magnetics thruster development.
Micro-resistojets offer an excellent combination of simplicity, performance and wet system mass for small satellites (&lt;100 kg, &lt;50 watts) requiring mN level propulsion and low to moderate delta V (&lt;500 m/sec).  In Phase I, the potential of a unique micro-resistojet concept suited for low power level was established , and "green" methanol, cracked thermally (without a catalyst) was identified as the propellant of choice.  An Isp of 250 seconds is expected.

The overall objective of the Phase II Program is to develop an Engineering Model (EM) of the "green" methanol/water fueled micro-resistojet system.  The system will be as near as possible to a flight system without having specific mission requirements and will utilize off the shelf power processing components and Lab View software to simulate flight system components in order to minimize cost.    Target design specifications for the system are:  Thrust - 5.4*10-3 newtons; Specific Impulse - 250 seconds; Mass flow - 2.2*10-3 grams/second (0.167 ccm liquid); Input Power - Less than 20 watts including losses; and Operating Life ? 1000 hours.

The EM will be delivered to NASA at the conclusion of Phase II following a 100 hour sustained test at Busek.
Cornerstone Research Group Inc. (CRG) will develop an advanced reflexive structure technology system to increase the survivability of future systems constructed of lightweight composite structures. Application of this innovation will apply to a broad selection of high performance systems ranging from aircraft and spacecraft to habitats for space stations and interplanetary exploration.  The control system for the reflexive structures will mimic the pain withdrawal-reflex on which the human body relies. This is important because rapid response is critical to survivability. The proposed reflexive system will incorporate a continuous health and performance monitoring system via embedded piezoelectric sensors, an adaptive composite structure based on CRG's shape memory composite material (Veritex&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt;), and an intelligence system which will be interfaced with both the health/performance sensors and the adaptive structure. When activated, the adaptive composite will recover its structural integrity via shape recovery and a novel healing process.  The development of a reflexive structural system will enable increased safety and security and demonstrate a better understanding of integrated performance systems.
Makel Engineering, Inc. (MEI) supported by Lockheed Martin and the Colorado School of Mines (CSM) propose to develop an integrated hydrogen generator and purifier system for conversion of in-situ produced hydrocarbons to fuel-cell-grade hydrogen.  With increased space exploration activities, mobility on planetary surfaces becomes a vital resource: without mobility on the surface, exploration activities are limited to landing sites.  There are many needs and many solutions to the mobility challenge, depending on the distance and nature of the transportation required.  Rovers provide a range of transportation possibilities, from the very small rovers for site recognition to the large rovers for crew transportation during extra vehicular activities (EVA).  While very small rovers may be powered by photovoltaic cells, fuel-cell based power systems may be the alternative to power mid-size to large rovers.  Due to the various penalties of storing gaseous hydrogen on-board the rover, it is advantageous to carry methane instead of hydrogen and to have an on-board reformer to produce hydrogen on-demand for the fuel cell.  Proton exchange membranes (PEM) are currently the choice on many fuel-cell based power systems.  While other fuel cell technologies are being developed, proton exchange membranes (PEM) are currently the choice on many fuel-cell based power systems.  The proposed system combines microchannel microreformer technology for hydrogen production with palladium membrane technology for hydrogen purification and separation in an integrated hydrogen production system, resulting in optimized size and energy efficiency.
Makel Engineering and BAE Systems propose to develop processes to
manufacture plastics and composites for radiation shielding based on In
Situ Resources Utilization (ISRU).  The production of plastics and
composites will also serve as feedstock for In Situ Manufacturing of a
variety of useful components, such as inflatable structures, replacement
parts, etc.  The direction set to NASA by the President on January 2004
placed high emphasis on a robust space exploration program.  Affordable
planning and execution of prolonged manned space missions depend upon
the utilization of local resources (e.g., soil, atmosphere, etc.) and
the waste products which are formed in manned spacecraft and surface
bases.  The purpose of the investigation is to develop materials and
associated processing technologies for habitat structure on planetary
surfaces to effectively shield humans and sensitive electronics such as
solar arrays and integrated circuits from the harmful effect of deep
space radiation environment.  Unlike Earth, on the Lunar or Martian
surface, there is practically no protection from primary deep space
radiation sources such as Solar Particle Events (SPEs) and Galactic
Cosmic Rays (GCRs).  SPEs produce intermittent and extremely high fluxes
of charged energetic particles associated with major solar flares.
Diamond Data Systems (DDS) proposes the development of a new advanced architecture, algorithms and software to support the end-to-end processing of LIDAR data to derive useful information products such as Digital Elevation Models  (DEM).  The approach is innovative in three ways.  First, it proposes a complete end-to-end system instead of a solution that addresses only a single step of the complex problem of accurately gathering, processing, and reporting of the data.   Second, it proposes a system that is designed to minimize human interaction and manual data entry.  Third (and possibly the most important) is that it proposes both the implementation of multiple algorithms to perform the data processing, as well as an extensible, open software architecture which allows algorithms to be incorporated into the system in the future.  This approach allows for the development of a dynamic system which can be extended not only by DDS, but by third parties as well.  Our proposal is relevant to topic E3.03 in that it provides for the efficient production of a DEM product from an active imaging system (LIDAR).
We propose to implement a constraint-based data integration system for wildfire intelligence, for use during both the pre-planning and event response phases of wildfire fighting.  Our system will automatically integrate online, heterogeneous data sources and hyperspectral imagery.  Current technology tends to focus mostly on the event response phases and supports only limited types of integration, usually between structured databases.  With the emergence of the Internet, there now exists an enormous number of other online information sources that can be combined with local databases and satellite imagery, including NASA MODIS (Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer) products, in order to better assist human analysis.  In this Phase II proposal, we will implement the constraint-based data integration system for wildfire intelligence that we designed in Phase I. The system will allow users  to manage large amounts of data from heterogeneous sources using a single interface, to annotate and extend that data (to add a layer of "knowledge" on top of the data), as well as to quickly identify data updates.  The resulting application will complement existing technologies, and serve as a rich, integrated interface that allows one to more easily and quickly plan for, analyze, and react to wildfires.
A method and device for situational awareness for unmanned air vehicles is presented. This enables integration of UAVs into the national airspace in a safe manner, equivalent to the level of safety of manned aircraft. Phase I results are presented and discussed. Phase II plans are discussed in detail. The Phase II will culminate in flight tests of the proposed gear. Alignment with national initiatives such as Access5 is discussed.
Carbon bonded carbon fiber (CBCF) insulating material is the basis for several highly successful NASA developed thermal protection systems (TPS).  Included among these innovative TPS are: PICA, (phenolic impregnated carbonaceous ablator), TUFROC (Toughened Uni-piece Fibrous Reinforced Oxidation-resistant Composite) and Genesis.  PICA is currently employed on the Stardust Discovery Mission and also under consideration for CEV.  NASA-Ames has a patent pending concerning TUFROC and the technology is planned for transfer to Boeing for fabrication of the X-37 leading edge.
CBCF utilized in the above mentioned TPS systems is an attractive substrate material because of its low density and high porosity, superior thermal performance, and compatibility with other components. In addition, it is low cost because of the commercial market it also serves. However, the current CBCF manufacturing process does not produce materials engineered to the specifications NASA desires to put in place.  These emerging and highly innovative TPS designs require material manufactured to specification.  This Phase II program will demonstrate advanced processes and manufacturing approaches to consistently fabricate CBCF that meets desired technical specifications.  The benefits derived include significantly improved flexibility for the TPS design engineer, as well as, more cost efficient CBCF derived TPS fabrication.
HyPerComp Engineering, Inc. (HEI) proposes to develop well characterized, structurally reliable filament wound composite pressure vessels for use in both cryogenic and radiation environment applications. The intent of the proposed effort is to develop the detailed pressure vessel performance characteristics that will result in "off the shelf' technology for high performance cryogenic/ radiation environment composite pressure vessels. 

This intent will be achieved via empirical characterization of composite raw materials subsequent to exposure to the aforementioned environments.  Phase I of this effort (NASA contract #NNM05AA45C) demonstrated a significant reduction in structural performance subsequent to exposure to cryogenic/radiation environments.  This reduction in structural performance would seriously compromise the structural performance of any composite structure. 

The aerospace and the commercial communities have shown significant interest in using filament wound composite pressure vessels for cryogenic applications.  In addition there is serious consideration for using composite vessels in deep space exploration which would sustain significant radiation exposure. The Phase I investigation has shown that these environments significantly degrade the structural capability of these vessels.  Constituent raw materials and existing pressure vessel designs have not been characterized for these applications and as such the safety margins for these applications are undefined.  Therefore, the reliability of such usage is unknown.  

HEI has recently completed a Phase I SBIR through NASA/MSFC.  This successful effort demonstrated a significant degradation in composite pressure vessel cryogenic/radiation performance.  The effort proposed herein builds upon that knowledge, significantly expands it, and will result in statistically meaningful and, therefore, reliable "off the shelf" technology for composite pressure vessels in cryogenic/radiation applications.
The following background technology is described in Part 5: Run-time Verification (RV), White Box Automatic Test Generation (WBATG). Part 5 also describes how WBATG and RV yield Executable Model Checking (EMC).
This proposal proposes using RV, WBATG and EMC for system level software verification.  Similar techniques are commercially available for component level software (see Part 5 -- StateRover). The proposal suggests enhancing component-level UML-statechart visual modeling, code generation, Formal Specification of Correctness Properties (FS), RV, WBATG, and EMC towards the end of meeting the technology need of the subtopic, as follows:
1. Integrated specification-based and model-based WBATG for UML statechart models enhanced with FS. Having a seamless WBATG is required for system level verification because systems typically consist of a plurality of models and specifications making human driven verification difficult to perform. 
2. Integrated white-box test generation of  (1) with system level modeling using modeling. This integration will enable the use of system level data and models by the WBATG.
3. FS, RV, and WBATG's using the following system FS languages: Message Sequence Charts (MSC's) and Harel's Live Sequence Charts (LCS's).
Items 1, 2 enable system level EMC as well as component-level EMC. Item 3 enables system level FS.
During this Phase II program we propose to build on the key aspects of the nanodroplet encapsulation technology to demonstrate optimized formulation and encapsulation of protein drugs. The ability of the nanodroplet generator to produce nanoscale drug "containers" with designer characteristics provides us with a distinct advantage in targeting protein containing vesicles to diseased cells and organs. We plan to target cancerous cells and tumors using our engineered drug vesicles, with specifically designed lipid outer layers as well as targeted surface functionalization to improve drug uptake by the cells, reduce toxicity, and otherwise improve safety and efficacy. The optimized vesicles will result in improved stability and enhanced control of pharmacokinetics in both cell lines and animal models.The nanodroplet platform will be scaled up to produce gram quantities of engineered vesicles  with a monodisperse size distribution and a target size of 200nm.
The Phase II project will advance innovative, cost effective and reliable nano-phase exothermic RCC joining processes (ExoBraze&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt;) in order to be able to reinforce or repair of space shuttle or other reentry vehicle TPS structures. MRi, Boeing and NASA-Glen Research Center will be partnering to improve exothermic joining process control,  to develop preforms that can bond RCC panels in a variety of configurations, to increase the joint strength and demonstrate process robustness, to test joints to validate expected service performance and to scale the joining process in order to fabricate demonstrator components for test and validation.  The Phase II effort will look at improved WO3-Al exothermic precursors and develop preform based on polymer bound mats that control the amount of exothermics delivered to the RCC joints. MRi and its partners will develop methods to improve bond strengths through the use of joint prelayers, such as NASA-GRC's GRABER materials or other glass formers. After process improvements are made, MRi and Boeing will, using subcomponents, develop and demonstrate RCC panel repairs, stengthener ribs and panel doublers for as part of its robust RCC efforts. Mechanical and thermal tests will then be designed and conducted to develop more realistic test data on ExoBraze RCC joint performance.
Phase I results demonstrated the feasibility of using shape memory polymer composites to deploy, tension and support gossamer antennas.  Cornerstone Research Group, Inc. (CRG) has completed the critical initial development steps for a deployable support structure meeting NASA's requirements for a structure to deploy, tension, and support gossamer antennas.  CRG proposes to further develop this lightweight, self-deploying Veritex&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; strut for use as a supporting structure for gossamer antennas.  Veritex&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; composites are similar to other high-performance composites, except that CRG's shape memory polymer (SMP) resin, Veriflex&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt;, is used as the matrix resin. This allows for easy manipulation of the composite above the activation temperature, making it a unique material for use in dynamic structures and other applications requiring both load strength and "shape-shifting" modulus flexibility. In this Phase I program, CRG has developed and evaluated materials and related fabrication technologies based on Veritex&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt;, and produced a sub-scale working proto-type.  This technical approach fulfills NASA's requirement for a very large, lightweight, on-orbit deployable RF antenna aperture structure by offering a practical, deployable, structural support that will address the short comings of current rigidified inflatables and mechanically deployed structures.
The proposed research is aimed at investigating a procedure verification and validation toolset, which will allow the engineers who are responsible for developing the on-board procedures to validate early, continuously, collaboratively and in real-time. Currently these engineers are limited to the use of big simulators such as the Space Station Training Facility (SSTF) for the ISS, which is costly to run and requires a scheduling of the facility a long time in advance. The targeted tool would fill the gap between the very limited validation done at their desktop (mainly peer review of the procedure) and the simulator run (where the procedures are tested in the very expensive training environment). This project has a number of innovative aspects, which will make the work of procedure developers easier and more consistent. Benefits realized from using a desktop based procedure validation toolset include the increase in safety, reduction of training costs, and improvement in procedure delivery time through early detection and resolution of errors.
Two novel cryogenic couplings will be designed, fabricated and tested. Intended for in-space use at cryogenic propellant depots, the couplings are based on patented Venturi-Offset Technology (VOST) and will provide small fluid and heat leakage at high flows with a low pressure drop. Entirely mechanical, insertion opens the passage, removal closes the passage. Mating force and alignment requirements are small. With only eight major parts, reliability is high and mass is low. Redundant seals, integrated health measurements, and robotic control are possible.
Aircraft encounters with turbulence are the leading cause of injuries in the airline industry and result in significant human, operational, and maintenance costs to the airline community each year.  A large contributor to the above injuries and costs is that flight crews do not have sufficient situational awareness of the location and severity of potential turbulence hazards to their aircraft.  AeroTech will improve pilots' situational awareness of turbulence hazards by developing a cockpit Turbulence Hazard Decision Aid that provides them with integrated, graphical turbulence hazard information scaled to their specific aircraft.  This display will remove the need for inference that is required to interpret current turbulence information.  With better knowledge of turbulence hazards' severity and location, pilots will be able to avoid turbulence encounters or prepare for them by having all occupants seated with seatbelts on, thereby avoiding injuries.  Phase II work will develop a prototype decision aid, based on the Phase I CONOPS and results, and then evaluate the prototype in both a PC simulation and a flight simulator.  By the end of Phase II a meaningful, Integrated Turbulence Hazard Decision Aid will be developed and tested, paving the way for flight evaluations and commercialization in Phase III.
The proposed innovation is a passive, self-regulating, gravity-independent Advanced Product Water Removal (APWR) system for Polymer Electrolyte Membrane (PEM) primary fuel cell power plants that improves power plant efficiency and reliability, reduces reactant consumption, cost, weight and volume and simplifies the supporting system requirements in both near-term and advanced missions. 
 Phase I program single cell test results demonstrated the function and feasibility of the innovation. The APWR power plant study demonstrated reliability, reactant saving, weight and volume saving and scalability improvements relative to both alkaline and conventional PEM power plants. Elimination of the pumps, rotating water separators and other components these conventional systems require saves weight, eliminates parasite power, saves the reactants to produce parasite power and improves reliability. APWR also simplifies the stack saving weight and volume and providing power plant scalability. APWR is based on PEM technology proven in automotive and commercial applications but not applied to space power plants: NASA need not carry the cost burden of developing this technology alone.
The proposed Phase II program will demonstrate the viability of APWR technology at the stack level and establish an Engineering Data Base for power plant and full scale stack designs.
Two novel flight control actuation concepts for UAV applications are proposed for prototype development, both of which incorporate shape memory alloy (SMA) wires as prime movers.  These actuators promise considerable savings in weight, power, and volume over existing electomechanical and hydraulic systems.  Incorporation of these actuators within lifting surface structure, or as trailing edge control devices, would greatly simplify the actuation systems of these aircraft, thereby permitting greater payload fraction, increased range, enhanced robustness, and/or smaller vehicle size, and thus reduce both operational and fixed system costs.  Choice between the two actuation concepts for a particular installation represents a tradeoff in actuation system bandwidth and power availability, and thus the same vehicle may include both systems depending upon the particular functional requirements.  These actuators represent a derivative technology from a previous Army SBIR Phase I/II effort directed at providing in-flight helicopter blade tracking using actively controlled trailing edge tabs, and thus have been designed to have low mass and low power requirements from their inception.  Since they lack any physical hinge joints, they may be embedded directly within aircraft lifting surfaces, eliminating interference drag associated with control deflection.
For NASA deep space science missions, radioisotope thermoelectric generators (RTG) fueled by plutonium-238 are used to provide on-board source of heat, which is then converted to electricity. At present, NASA uses 8&#37; efficient thermoelectric conversion systems.  Compound semiconductor thermophotovoltaic (TPV) cells provide an attractive alternative.  The highest efficiency TPV cell reported is a 23.6&#37; (radiator at 1039?C, cell at 25?C) InGaAs monolithically interconnected module (MIM) on InP.
We proposed an InGaAs TPV cell which incorporates InAs quantum dots to provide sub-gap absorption thus improving its short-circuit current.  This cell could then be integrated into a MIM to achieve a TPV cell whose efficiency would significantly exceed (by about 15&#37; to 20&#37;) the state-of-the-art.  In Phase I we demonstrated the feasibility of growing InAs quantum dots on 0.6 eV InGaAs on lattice-mismatched InP, and that these quantum dots, when inserted into the TPV cell, extend the bandedge, providing sub-bandgap absorption.
In Phase II we propose to optimize the quantum dot structures to improve efficiency of the TPV cells, and integrate them into MIMs to achieve very high conversion efficiencies.  Resulting higher specific power and power density of the overall power systems will be of great benefit to NASA in the form of lower launch costs and increased mission capability.
Advancements in nano-/micro-scale sensor fabrication and molecular recognition surfaces offer promising opportunities to develop miniaturized hybrid fiber optic and MEMS-based sensors for in situ analysis of chemicals and microbial pathogens in spacecraft air and water.  Such sensors have extraordinary dual-use benefits in medical screening for early indication of certain cancers and rapid detection of weaponized chemical and biological agents for homeland defense.     

Returning humans to the moon and "worlds beyond" as directed in the 'Vision for Space Exploration' requires manned missions of increasing duration.  Increased mission duration invariably increases chemical and microbial contamination of spacecraft.  Ensuring crew health and optimal systems performance thus requires sensors to continuously monitor spacecraft advanced life support systems.  Presently, adequate sensors do not exist and crews must rely on labor-intensive techniques to ensure safety of drinking water and breathing air.  

In Phase I we demonstrated feasibility of miniaturized polymer-coated fiber-optic cantilever arrays for monitoring toxic vapors.  In Phase II we will develop next-generation hybrid cantilever and MEMS sensors for detection of various aerosolized chemical and biological contaminants at SMAC-relevant levels.  To facilitate implementation by NASA end-users, sensors will be integrated and demonstrated with existing NASA air sampling devices.  Phase III commercialization efforts are well underway.
The proposed Phase II effort seeks to demonstrate a dramatic reduction of the manufacturing cost and cycle time of lightweight silicon carbide mirrors by substituting a novel reactive atom plasma (RAP) process for traditional hard tool grinding and lapping. We will use the RAP process (a plasma-based non-contact shaping tool) along with conventional steps to shape a series of lightweight optics, culminating in a 12" asphere.  We will finish these optics to final specification using one of several candidate sub-aperture finishing tools.  The avoidance of surface and subsurface damage by the use of this non-contact RAP process is expected to substantially reduce the time and cost of optical finishing of lightweight SiC optics.  We will also demonstrate the scalability of the RAP process for SiC optics and optical segments up to 2 meters.
Current and future programs of near-Earth and deep space exploration require the development of robust serial data transfer electronics within the spacecraft's subsystems while preserving open system architecture. The electronics must be reconfigurable, fault-tolerant, and have the ability to operate effectively for long periods of time in harsh environmental conditions. Existing data transfer systems based on passive backplanes are slow, power hungry, slightly reconfigurable, provide limited expandability, and have low tolerance to radiation effects. One of the most promising approaches to alleviate these system shortcomings is based on  switching fabric (SF) backplane architecture with serial (i.e. Space Wire (SW)) interfaces. In response to the described needs, we propose to develop a novel, radiation-tolerant, SF with a user-selectable standard SW interface or our patent-pending multi-level (ML) interface that features a high frequency range, low power consumption, and advanced functionality. Our ML interconnect technique eliminates the need for the second information channel utilized in the SW data-strobe encoding scheme. Instead the channel can be used as a redundant link for improving the system's fault tolerance specification. Radiation tolerance of the proposed system is achieved through the combination of the state-of-the-art and proprietary hardening-by-technology, hardening-by-design, and hardening-by-architecture techniques.
Future high-dexterity robots promise enormous benefits to many areas of human endeavor performing operations difficult or hazardous for humans such as extra vehicular repairs. However, operating complicated tools and performing intricate repairs requires manipulators of great precision and excellent coordination. Human hands are very complex instruments with capacity for reception of and reaction to tactile stimuli for guidance in their functions. Integration of tactile sensing suites into robotic platforms (presently sensor impoverished) poses major technological challenges. The IFOS team, including well-known robotic experts from Stanford and JPL, proposes smart robotic skin including embedded Fiber Bragg Grating (FBG) sensors, custom-engineered composite skin materials, data interpretation and on-board decision-making. Phase I demonstrated feasibility. Phase II will deliver an FBG sensor-assisted manipulator prototype (hand and arm) based on high-resolution loading and artificial taction. Immune to electromagnetic interference, FBG sensors are easily integrated into robotic structures, highly sensitive and multiplexable allowing many sensors on a single fiber. This will enable robotic manipulators with high-fidelity force control for precise object grasping, positioning and safe operation with astronauts. They will facilitate maximum functionality, minimum weight and size of extra-vehicular robots to extend the life and reduce costs of new generations of space systems.
The proposed innovation involves the concept of using a Superpressure Tow Balloon (STB) with existing NASA high altitude balloon designs to form a tandem balloon system that provides significantly higher performance at a relatively low cost.  Performance improvements include: longer durations, higher altitudes and greater stability, larger payload percentages, improved trajectory control, and more operational flexibility. The STB and related technology specifically addresses the need for balloon design concepts for long duration missions which can provide: reduced material strength requirements; increased reliability; enhanced performance; reduced manufacturing time; reduced manufacturing cost; and improved mission flexibility.  In addition, a STB offers a realistic opportunity for low cost trajectory control by providing effective vertical maneuvering which can strongly influence the horizontal latitude of the balloon's flight path.
Reducing uncertainty in the prediction of limit cycle oscillations (LCO) and other nonlinear aeroservoelastic phenomena is critical to flight safety.  To do so requires nonlinear methods.  First-principles based methods (CFD/CSD) have made considerable progress but still cannot predict LCO from the outset.  NEAR proposes the development of two innovative nonlinear data-based methods to characterize aeroservoelastic systems using flight-test data.  The proposed methods provide a natural extension of existing linear methods, provide uncertainty estimates of the prediction, and are applicable to flight-test data.  Both approaches are formally related.  However, their practical implementations place various limitations on the physics they represent.  The Phase I effort will document, on a benchmark test case, the advantages and disadvantages of each method.  Phase II will further develop the most promising approach and demonstrate its use on flight-test data, such as data from the F18-AAW.  Special emphasis will be placed on the problem of data generalization across flight conditions, which is key to ensuring safe and efficient envelope-expansion flight testing.
Aspen systems proposes to develop an innovative and smart sensors to continuously monitor ambient air compositions by utilizing a resonating tunable micro-cavity technology.  The new device will directly measure the unique vibrational resonance of gas molecules and determine its concentration for each constituent gas species.  In Phase I, we will experimentally demonstrate the proposed concept by monitoring ambient air concentrations using the resonating tunable micro-cavity sensor.  Selectivity and sensitivity of each gas species in air will be determined.  Furthermore, we will determine linear response ranges of the proposed air monitoring system as a function of test gas compositions, including carbon dioxide and ethylene, temperatures and relative humidity.  In Phase II, we will fabricate and test a prototype system for air monitoring in biomass production environments.  

Resulting smart gas sensors will be extremely compact, accurate, reliable, light weighted, low power consumption, no extra supplies required for operation and fully automated microprocessor controllable.  Furthermore, the same gas sensing and monitoring system can be used to measure relative humidity, pressures and temperatures of ambient air by using slightly modified sensor designs.
This proposal seeks to address the topic of developing an on-board propulsion device which will significantly increase capabilities and reduce costs for Earth science spacecraft.  The propulsion device which is proposed here is a microwave powered, electrothermal thruster which will utilized nitrous-oxide as a propellant. The device is referred to a MET-100, a Microwave Electrothermal Thruster which has a nominal power output of 150 W.  The thruster will utilized 300 W of spacecraft power and develop a specific impulse of 300 seconds.
An electron source incorporating long life, high current density cold cathodes inside a microchannel plate for use with ion thrusters is proposed.  Cathode lifetime in the harsh environment of an ion thruster has been a major issue with cold cathode sources.  The anticipated long life with the proposed technology is due to the combination of three design features.  The first feature is the choice of an edge emitter geometry known to be much more robust compared to other geometries such as tip emitters or nanotube configurations.  The second feature is the choice of carbon as the emitter material.  Carbon is well known for resistance to damage from ion bombardment.  The third feature is the deposition of the carbon edge emitter inside one end of a channel plate.  The channel plate provides some shielding from the thruster ion stream.   A further benefit could be realized by using a standard electron multiplying channel plate so as to also greatly increase the electron density of the source.
Voxtel Inc. proposes to optimize the design of a large area, 1.55?m sensitive HgCdTe avalanche photodiode (APD) that achieves high gain with nearly no excess noise. By optimizing the APD device structure and by exploiting the most recent insight into the material?s ionization characteristics, we have engineered the vertical HgCdTe APD for nearly noiseless gain (ultra low k) with high bandwidth and with low dark current.  As large area photodetectors necessarily have high dark current and increased capacitance, we will tradeoff the performance of a large area detector design with that of a pixilated design. A pixilated detector can reduce the amplifier noise and dark current in the local of the amplified events to sufficiently low levels for photon counting. Through the use of our low noise, high unit cell density, amplifier integrated circuits, we will demonstrate nearly ideal receiver performance for space optical communications applications.
Space radiation is the major risk to the astronauts outside the Earth magnetosphere that cannot be eliminated by the existing radioprotectors. The ultimate goal of this proposal is to develop a new class of pharmacological agents for protection against space radiation using a new source of natural products ?potent cell survival factors produced by endosymbiotic and parasitic microorganisms. Induction of programmed cell death (apoptosis) occurring in radiosensitive tissues is one of the major determinants of radiation-induced failure of hematopoietic and digestive systems and other pathologies, including pathological changes in the nervous system. As a part of their survival strategy, endosymbiotic and parasitic microorganisms evolved to produce powerful anti-apoptotic factors suppressing cell death in infected tissues; such factors were found to be effective radioprotectors. CBLB-501 protein isolated from Salmonella belongs to this category; it provides complete rescue of mice from lethal doses of gamma radiation causing hematopoietic and gastrointestinal syndromes. The proposed program is aimed at developing CBLB-501 into a useful radioprotective agent. It includes: a) evaluation of the radioprotective properties of CBLB501 in the animal model system; and optimization of treatment regimens, (b) development of optimized structural derivatives of CBLB-501, and (c) design and evaluation of combinatorial therapies employing CBLB501 together with most efficient conventional radioprotectors.
Seldon Laboratories, LLC, proposes a lightweight, low-pressure water filtration device that harnesses the unique properties of nanoparticles to destroy or remove waterborne pathogens. A 2-inch diameter version of the device is estimated to allow a flux rate of 100 ml/minute at less than 0.05 psi. The device is composed of a conductive material that should limit fouling and promote the efficient recharging of the membrane. The innovation represents a significant advancement in membrane technology as it offers superior filtration effects with significantly reduced operating costs. The device could be incorporated into existing systems or designed as a standalone system for water treatment. It is expected that Phase I would demonstrate of the feasibility (efficacy and cost considerations) of the system and Phase II would result in prototype development.
This proposal outlines planned development for a low-power, low-mass automated urine sample collection and preservation system for small mammals, capable of long-term operation in an isolated environment. It brings together earlier waste management and preservation techniques from NASA and other laboratory research in a novel manner, enabling solid-state storage and chromatographic analysis of urine for periods of up to 8 weeks. Urinary compounds, particularly those indicative of bone metabolism and protein turnover -- such as calcium, sodium, potassium, 3-methylhistidine, creatinine, corticosterone, histidine, n-telopeptide, hydroxyproline, pyridinoline, and deoxypyridinoline -- are one of the most valuable sources of data for studying musculoskeletal changes over time in response to altered stimuli, including loading environment. Since urine collection is non-invasive and provides a wealth of knowledge, including bone loss, muscle atrophy, and general stress, it is an ideal candidate for automated collection and storage. However, in common laboratory practice, urine samples must be collected, then frozen or analyzed within hours. The development of a urine collection and preservation system for common experimental small mammals will enable fundamental space biology research programs to substantially increase data gathered in the long-term studies planned for the International Space Station and other vehicles.
This proposal is specifically written to address the need for improved L and P band T/R modules for use in active microwave surveillance of earth surface and atmosphere.  The solicitation called for investigation and development of core technologies that will significantly improve T/R module performance.  Improvements needed include reduced power consumption, mass, size and increased data rates.  Hittite Microwave Corporation is a fabless semiconductor company that has been developing microwave monolithic integrated circuits (MMIC) for over 19 years.  The T/R module circuit functions are diverse imposing several different process requirements.  For example the key process specification for the LNA is the minimum noise figure (Fmin) of the process, for the control functions the switch cutoff frequency, and for the PA the power added efficiency.  Hittite has focused on developing E/D PHEMT processes and simulations presented in this Phase II proposal are based on models from a new Triquint E/D PHEMT process.  The E/D process is promising as a work horse process offering overall superior performance for LNAs, PAs, and control components.  Hittite will use the Phase II program to design and develop and fabricate an efficient single chip T/R solution for the array application.
This project will develop a much-needed multidisciplinary analysis tool for predicting the impact of aeroelastic effects on the functionality of inflatable aeroassist vehicles in both the continuum and rarefied flow regimes.  In this integrated multi-physics multi-disciplinary computing environment,  high-fidelity modules for continuum and rarefied aerodynamics, stress, heat transfer, and computational grid deformation are coupled. This flexible and extensible approach allows the integration of state-of-the-art, stand-alone NASA and industry leading continuum and rarefied flow solvers and structural analysis codes into a computing environment in which the modules can run concurrently with synchronized data transfer. 

The Phase I study proved the feasibilty of this approach. Tightly coupled fluid-structure continuum flow demonstrations were conducted on a clamped ballute configuration. The feasibility of implementing a DSMC flow solver in the simulation framework was demonstrated, and loosely coupled rarefied flow aeroelastic demonstrations were performed. A NASA and industry technology survey identified several software tools for fluid and structural modeling to be integrated into the environment. Phase II efforts will focus on full implementation of these tools. They include NASA-selected CFD and DSMC codes, and commercial leading structural analysis codes capable of modeling non-linear shape and material response of thin-film inflated aeroshells. Extensive verification and validation studies will be performed, and the software will be applied in ballute technology development.
As the important role of NASA "missions to earth" has been clearly demonstrated in recent years, the need for radar antenna systems that have large fields of coverage has gained increased emphasis. In order to achieve the desired performance from space, the antenna systems must have surface areas that are hundreds of square meters in size. However, to make it affordable to deploy such large-area antennas into space, it is necessary to fabricate these antennas on flexible substrates, which are lightweight, and can be rolled into small volumes. The fabrication of flexible antennas calls for new manufacturing techniques that are capable of addressing the challenges of patterning high-resolution features on very-large area flexible substrates, while achieving precise registration of the antenna features over the entire substrate area. In this Phase II proposal we will develop and demonstrate processes to fabricate large-area antennas on flexible substrates, focusing, in particular, on JPL's 2 x 3 m active membrane phased array radar; and we will fabricate the flexible panels required for JPL's antenna. The fabrication of the array antenna will be performed using Anvik's novel large-area roll-to-roll photolithography technology, which enables high-resolution and micron-level registration on large-area flexible substrates.
The proposed innovation is a passive, self-regulating, gravity-independent Advanced Product Water Removal and management (APWR) system for incorporation into Polymer Electrolyte Membrane  (PEM) primary fuel cell power plants. Passive water removal is incorporated into each cell of the power plant stack. Only pressure differential is required to manage within the cell and to remove and discharge liquid product water from the power plant. The APWR system eliminates the gas circulator, centrifugal separator, heat exchanger (condenser) and controls that comprise the water management system in the conventional aqueous electrolyte fuel cell power plants now in service It also can simplify the reactant supply system by elimination of fuel and oxidant humidifiers. No rotating or active components or gas circulation are required in the APWR system. APWR is based on PEM technology proven in industrial and automotive applications but not applied to space power plants.
Advanced imaging spectrometers for x-ray astronomy will require
significant improvements in the high density interconnects between the
detector arrays and the first stage electronics. These detectors operate
at 50 to 100 mK, while the first stage is held between 1.3-1.5 K.
Interconnects are needed that provide the required signal paths while
imparting a thermal heat load on the detector stage of less than 0.5
microwatts. The innovation proposed to meet this need is a ribbon of
ultra-thin polyimide supporting a high-density array of vacuum deposited
superconducting traces. No such innovative high-density interconnects
are available today.  Phase I will test material properties of
superconducting thin films fundamental to interconnect performance and
prepare prototype devices that demonstrate the feasibility of this approach.
This Phase I proposal will develop a virtual test fixture performing a high caliber 3D dynamic reproduction of an prototype lunar bucket wheel excavator prototype developed at the Colorado School of Mines. This virtual test fixture will support an experimental telerobotics interface through a visual virtual environment built by DigitalSpace and a haptic force feedback interface integrated by DigitalSpace from Stanford University's Spring system. From NASA's Ames Research Center we will employ the Brahms agent technology and SimStation Procedures Module CAD representation and interaction also developed at ARC in collaboration with NASA JSC and Raytheon.

Testing of this telerobotics interface will refine its accuracy vis a vis the physical excavator and its behavior and provide a platform able to evolve to higher Technology Readiness Levels (TRLs) to support NASA's new exploration vision of a human return to the moon within twenty years.
Phoenix Integration's vision is the creation of an intuitive human-in-the-loop  engineering environment called Decision Navigator that leverages recent advances in multi-dimensional visualization technology, state-of-the art optimization algorithms, and parallel processing capability. The visualization displays help designers understand key trends and trade-offs, follow the progress of the optimization algorithm, and interact with and guide the algorithm so as to make decisions regarding promising designs. This tool is fundamentally different from traditional optimization tools because of its interactive nature. Phase I research proved the feasibility of the Decision Navigator concept by integrating an optimization engine with multi-dimensional visualization tools and then integrating the combination into the Phoenix Integration design environment known as ModelCenter. This Phase II proposal builds upon the Phase I proof of feasibility study and completes the concept as a practical commercial decision support tool. Key technical elements added in Phase II include the ability to collaborate with other users, the ability to manage risk and uncertainty, and interactive "wizards" that will help users accomplish common tasks. The Decision Navigator will be a critical link in exercising NASA mission models, trade studies, system and investment analysis, and program and technology planning.
For Adiabatic Demagnetization Refrigerators (ADRs) in space
applications, it is desirable to have very light weight, small diameter,
high current density superconducting wires that can operate at
temperatures in the 10-30 K range, specifically with engineering current
densities in the 50,000-100,000 A/cm2 range, at 15K in 3 tesla fields.
Magnesium diboride, a light-weight superconductor wire, is the ideal
candidate coil material for ADRs in the 10-30 K range.  During the Phase
I we demonstrated that drawing magnesium diboride wires to the needed
diameter range could be achieved.  However to meet the most desired
application requirements we need slight improvement in superconductor
current density, reduction of powder filament size, and higher percent
superconductor fraction at the desired wire diameter range of 0.075 mm -
0.150 mm.  In the Phase II effort we propose a development plan to make
these improvements to small diameter magnesium diboride wire and to
demonstrate conductor performance over long length on small coils.
There is a need to develop electromechanical actuators to improve
performance beyond that of hydraulic devices currently being used in
numerous aerospace and industrial applications. Beginning with NASA-provided performance specifications, this Phase I SBIR effort has employed a systems approach to develop and optimize the design of an electromechanical linear actuator appropriate for demanding launch vehicle thrust vector and control surface applications. The actuator system design consists of a high-efficiency permanent magnet motor with redundant current channels for system fault tolerance, multiple high-bandwidth controllers that are matched to motor characteristics, and a compact roller-screw mechanism, along with housing and supporting elements. A system of innovations was necessary to overcome the inherent limitations of today's electromechanical actuators, which were developed based on the limitations of traditional motors, power electronics, and available actuator hardware. The projected weight of the actuator prototype to be built in Phase II is less than the existing hydraulic systems currently in use by NASA, and half of previous electric prototypes having the same performance specification. Working with a major aerospace company partner, the Phase II Team will deliver a tested prototype actuator system as a basis for future advanced commercial products.
The objective of the proposed Phase II research effort is to develop heterogeneous (HG) blankets for improved sound reduction in aircraft structures.  Phase I successfully demonstrated the use of HG blankets for sound transmission suppression and the applicability of the technology to aircraft interior noise control perpetuating a license agreement with a major U.S. Fortune 100 company to aggressively and expeditiously pursue product commercialization.  The highest performing HG blanket resulted in ~5 dB reduction in radiated power from an aircraft test panel.  Reductions are broadband with an effective frequency range from approximately 100 to 1000 Hz resulting in decreased vibration and radiated acoustic levels across this range.  The small 6-10&#37; weight has acoustic benefits far greater than standard mass law effects.  In Phase II attachment, temperature, and installation effects will be studied.  Additionally, analytical design tools will be developed to automate the design process for practicing engineers making it possible to work from basic concepts and application requirements/specifications to achieve a final product which can be readily manufactured.  Together the proven design concepts of Phase I and those proposed in Phase II represent the future in aircraft insulation in terms of acoustic performance, cost, weight, airframe integration, and passenger safety.
Through this Phase I program, Agiltron has successfully produced an innovative transparent conductive nanocomposite paint that holds the promise of meeting space application requirements.   The paint can be easily applied to many surfaces and forms a clear conductive coating at temperatures as low as 130 &lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C.    These coatings exhibit high visible transparency of ~ 85 &#37; (&gt; 95&#37; with additional AR coating) and good conductive sheet resistance in the range of 106  to 108 ohm/sq.  Agiltron has also performed harsh environmental testing in which the coatings show no degradation after undergoing UV radiation up to 32 J/cm2 irradiation, low temperature cycling down to 77 oK, high vacuum pumping, and collision with fragmented debris. The proposed robust clear conductive coating is therefore well suited for NASA space environment resistant polymer coating related applications.  The high performance paint will also find wide commercial applications, such as in flexible displays.  In Phase II, we will continue these efforts through a concentration on optimization and scale-up of stable ITO/polymer suspensions and the development of low-cost, large-scale deposition and patterning processes for the practical applications of this new class of transparent conductive coatings.
In its mission to understand how galaxies, stars, and planetary systems form, NASA's Origins Technology Program calls for advances in "enabling component and subsystem technology" for large space telescopes and other optical instruments that operate at cryogenic temperatures.  In particular, the precision alignment of optical components that is required for detecting faint signatures from distant light sources presents a formidable challenge within a cryogenic environment.  To meet this challenge, CSA proposes to mature magnetic eddy current vibration damping technology for use at 45 Kelvin and below.  Eddy current technology is the only passive means for damping vibration in a target structure in this temperature range.  Existing test data for CSA's prototype device (Figure 1) indicates that 4-8&#37; of critical damping can be induced at temperatures as low as 17 Kelvin without adding significant weight to a target structure.  The proposed Phase 1 effort would include development of analysis and test methods as well as conceptual design for a family of passive tuned mass vibration damping devices that are suitable for a host of NASA missions, including SIM, TPF, and JWST.  The proposed effort offers a new approach to sub-micron level alignment and pointing control.
Increasingly, critical flight functionality is implemented in software, but traditional (integrated) vehicle health management (IVHM) has primarily addressed hardware faults. All fielded software has residual errors, and the marginal costs to remove errors grow as the target residual error rate decreases. Our innovation is the development of tools, architectural concepts and software development methodologies to extend IVHM systems to detect, isolate and recover from software errors, as a cost effective way to increase the reliability and robustness of flight software. Software fault detection, isolation and recovery (SFDIR) fixes or contains the impact of faults and reduces the possibility of catastrophic loss.  Each phase ? detection, isolation, and recovery ? raises new research challenges. This work addresses automated diagnostics of mission-critical avionics and middleware or software toolkits to lower the cost of developing online health monitoring applications. Our technical objectives are to detect, by code instrumentation, when the software state violates explicated safety constraints; using model-based reasoning and program analysis techniques, to trace from symptom to error source; and to recover from errors in a safe way preserving or replacing as much functionality as possible, and in all cases "to do no harm". This technology may also be applied to monitor potential security threats.
This proposal describes a plan to build a prototype small stroke, high precision deformable mirror suitable for space-based operation in systems for high-resolution imaging. The prototype DM will be fabricated through a novel combination of micromachining and wafer bonding steps, and will rely on single crystal silicon for all structural components, promising unprecedented thermal stability and optical quality. These DMs will have a 65 mm aperture diameter, 4096 of degrees of freedom, 1?m of stroke, and a highly reflective mirror surface that can be adjusted repeatably to within 1nm RMS over the controllable range of spatial frequencies. The device will address all fundamental requirements for DMs to be used in space-based applications, by combining the best features of conventional discretely-assembled macroscale DMs (e.g. large aperture, good optical quality, and high reliability) with the best features of integrated microelectromechanical system (MEMS) DMs fabricated using semiconductor processing techniques (e.g. nanometer-scale repeatability, scalability to &gt;104 actuators, and compactness). By using the full area of a silicon wafer for each mirror, these MEMS DMs will be significantly larger than any previously-reported MEMS DM. The device architecture will parallel that of the highly successful commercial MEMS DMs that were pioneered by Boston Micromachines Corporation.
The many different generations of integrated circuit (IC) technologies
required for new space exploration systems demand designs operate at
multiple and often incompatible voltages.  Extended utilization of
current and development of new space exploration systems require
multiple voltage levels be successfully integrated to interface
technologies.  NASA's micro-satellites and space exploration missions,
like the Space Technology 5 (ST5) Project, are current examples of
systems that employ a variety of voltage levels. Spacecraft have limited
supply voltages and power at their disposal and this encourages the use
of a higher percentage of low voltage microelectronics. [4] To build
complete systems there continues to be a common problem of mixing old
and new equipment operating at different voltages. [3] ASI's Flexfet&lt;!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
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 CMOS rad-hard reconfigurable bi-directional level shifters (ReBiLS)
will allow NASA improved capability to design, develop and implement
multi-level voltage systems.  The ASI ReBiLS Phase II project will
generate prototypes for stand-alone and embedded bidirectional level
shifters. A stand-alone ReBiLS device will allow designers to provide
efficient bi-directional communication between existing or COTS
components operating at different voltages.  An embedded ReBiLS cell
will be demonstrated in a CULPRiT ULP circuit to demonstrate the on-chip
integration of low-voltage, low-power core logic with high-voltage I/O.
The main objective of this Phase II effort is to develop integrated health management  and control reconfiguration algorithms that allow future space systems to respond  autonomously and optimally to subsystem failure or degradation. This will involve developing new techniques for health monitoring and data fusion, as well as those for  identifying, characterizing, and exploiting analytic redundancy. To achieve our goal of demonstrating the features of the proposed technology, Phase II  will focus on  developing an integrated health management system  prototype for   a combined system of   Electrical Power Distribution and Control subsystem and Attitude Control Subsystem  that is present in all space vehicles, including the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV). The prototype will be developed based on an open architecture, and will be tested on hardware facilities maintained by Boeing Phantom Works to ensure the proposed technologies will reach the required maturity level  for transitioning to NASA by the end of the Phase II period.  Our subcontractor Boeing is part of a team selected by NASA to develop preliminary designs for the CEV. The partnership will allow us to transition the Integrated Vehicle Health Management (IVHM) and control reconfiguration  technology developed  under this project to the CEV program aggressively during Phase III.
ORBITEC is developing an innovative Low-energy Planetary Excavator (LPE) to excavate in situ regolith, ice-regolith mixes, and a variety of other geologic materials to support future activities on the Moon and Mars. The LPE utilizes an innovative cutterhead to efficiently excavate a wide range of different planetary surface materials. Current mechanical excavators mount a fixed array of rock cutting tools on a cutterhead that operates efficiently only in a narrow range of material conditions. The LPE would be able to accommodate the different materials that are encountered on planetary surfaces. The LPE will sense geologic changes and respond with changes to achieve the lowest cutting energy possible. The result is a flexible machine with reduced power requirements. A large LPE would be used to mine ice deposits and regolith for processing, and to excavate openings for habitats and shielding. A small LPE would be used for exploration. One LPE would be simpler and easier to maintain than a stable of excavators, each for a specific geology or application. Phase II will further define the properties of the ice-regolith mixtures and then design, develop, test, and deliver a functional prototype LPE unit to NASA.
ORBITEC proposes to develop a unique Advanced Vortex Hybrid Rocket Engine (AVHRE) to achieve a safe, highly-reliable, low-cost and uniquely versatile propulsion system.  The benefits of AVHRE result from the combination of four innovations: (1) the patented vortex injection technique which generates a coaxial vortex pair, driving high solid-fuel regression rates and improved combustion efficiency; (2) high-regression rate paraffin solid fuels; (3) patented regression sensor technology, and (4) a new fuel formulation innovation to control the solid fuel regression characteristics and provide improved structural integrity of the grain. These innovations simplify hybrid rocket design, development, and manufacture both inherently and by providing many practical design degrees of freedom that can be harnessed for a given application.  Specific benefits of the AVHRE technology include: (1) increased propellant mass fractions; (2) the ability to tailor and optimize a hybrid propulsion system for a given application; (3) increased ISP efficiency; (4) a reduction or elimination of residual fuel; (5) improved grain structural integrity and increased thermal properties; and (6) reduced need for thermal insulation.  The Phase II effort will design, develop, and test a 10,000 lbf AVHRE-I chamber and a suite of practical AVHRE engineering design tools that will be delivered to NASA upon completion of the project.
Acellent Technologies, Inc. proposes to develop a SMART TAPE system that
can be used to perform rapid non-destructive evaluation in real time and
provide long-term monitoring of pressure vessels in liquid rocket
engines.  Based on Acellent's existing SMART Layer technology, this
innovative system combines a sensor network, dedicated signal processing
and data analysis software to allow for real-time in-situ monitoring and
long term tracking of structural integrity of pressure vessels (such as
ducts, manifolds and combustion chambers) in rocket engines.
Specifically, the proposed structural health monitoring system will have
the following unique features:  ? Ability to detect cracks and corrosion
? Prevent imminent and catastrophic failures in rocket engines ? Survive
harsh environments and missions ? Inspect inaccessible areas without
disassembly The proposed innovation is important since it will address
the need for safe as well as reliable advanced space exploration
vehicle/propulsion systems as part of the human and robotic technology
(HR&amp;amp;T) objectives of NASA's Space Exploration Initiative.  As part
of the latter objective, approaches to verify and validate the proposed
structural health monitoring system with an integrated propulsion and
vehicle real-time health management system simulator will be defined and evaluated.
Future reentry and hypersonic vehicles require advanced lightweight leading edge thermal protection systems that can provide the dual functionality of thermal/oxidation protection and structural capability. In Phase I, Ultramet demonstrated the feasibility of combining the light weight of carbon/carbon (C/C) with the long-duration oxidation resistance of ceramic matrix composites (CMC) in a unique laminate composite structure. This structure, composed of a C/C body with an integral CMC casing, effectively bridges the gap in weight and performance between coated C/C and bulk CMCs. Fabrication and initial performance of this laminate composite structure was demonstrated through an innovative variant of Ultramet's melt infiltration refractory composite processing technology. In its bulk form, this same CMC has survived &gt;4300&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;F liquid propellant rocket engine testing at NASA GRC and &gt;5200&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;F hot-gas testing at the Air Force LHMEL facility. Application of this reinforced ceramic material to a predominantly C/C structure would create a highly innovative material with the potential to achieve the long-sought goal of long-term, cyclic, high-temperature use of C/C in an oxidizing environment. In Phase II, Ultramet will team with Lockheed Martin and Pratt &amp; Whitney for process optimization and comprehensive testing of this lightweight, high strength, ultrahigh temperature oxidation-resistant material system. The fully developed system will have strength that is comparable to that of C/C, low density comparable to that of C/SiC, and ultrahigh temperature (&gt;4000&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;F) oxidation stability. It will not only be able to withstand the aggressive environments that are encountered by reentry and hypersonic vehicles, but also will have the structural capability required for advanced airframe and engine components.
ITN Energy Systems (ITN) proposes to take the next step in spacecraft solar array development, building upon previous development and new findings to make the definitive light-absorber layer for high-power, lightweight and flexible thin-film photovoltaics (TFPV).  ITN's innovative approach is to alloy CuInSe2 (CIS) with both aluminum and gallium bandgap widening elements in the chalcopyrite matrix to form CuInGaAlSe2 (CIGAS) for simultaneous optimization of the bandgap and material properties. Both Ga and Al will be used to take advantage of the alloy enhancing properties that each offers when used in moderation, while avoiding the detrimental issues when using too much of any one element to achieve the optimum bandgap of about 1.45 eV for a single-junction in the space solar spectrum. Furthermore, a recently available novel lightweight, flexible and transparent substrate will be used that was specifically designed to enable high-temperature CIGAS depositions as needed for the highest efficiency TFPV.  TFPV specific power of over 1500 W/kg at the blanket/module level would be achievable The novel transparent substrates would also enable additional power from bifacial visible light collection and lower temperature operation, from improved infra-red (IR) transmission, in addition to enabling TFPV fabrication by low-cost roll-to-roll processing.
BioWATCH is a modular ambulatory compact wireless biomedical data acquisition system.  More specifically, it is a data acquisition unit for acquiring signals from biomedical sensors using modular acquisition modules attached to a common data and power bus. Several module slots allow the user to configure the unit by inserting sensor specific modules. The data is then sent real time from the unit over any commercially implemented wireless network including 802.11b/g, WCDMA, GSM, or EDGE. BioWATCH is of a distributed computing hierarchy and has a common data controller on each sensor module.  This innovation allows for the modularity of the device along with the tailored ability to control the cards using a relatively small master processor.  The distributed nature of this system affords the modularity, size, and power consumption that betters the current state-of-the-art in medical ambulatory data acquisition. The current state-of-the-art in biomedical data monitoring is limited in its modularity and relies on centralized computing models.
The ADEPT project aims to improve the state-of-the-art with respect to capabilities and costs of scenario-based training in support of future space exploration missions at NASA.  The key features of ADEPT will include: (1) a scenario-based intelligent tutoring system focused on the problem of training systems-operators on how to think through operational contingencies; (2) reliance on explicit representations of target mental models for the systems students are being trained to operate; (3) incorporation of an extensive authoring tool suite to lower costs of training development; and (4) use of multi-modal tutor-student dialog interaction to get at student decision rationale.  Innovations include (a) a new instructional design methodology and supporting tools tuned to the demands of scenario-based contingency response training; (b) application of systems models to training in operations contingency reasoning as opposed to diagnosis or design; (c) development of tools that exploit systems models to support conceptual design of appropriate training scenarios, and development of interactive tutorial dialogs; and (d) attacking cost, quality, flexibility, and longevity issues through an overall training systems design (and project execution plan) emphasizing openness to integration of existing and future components such as simulators, user interfaces, and authoring tools.
Long duration space missions and extended manned missions on the surface of the moon and Mars are key elements of NASA's new Vision. These missions will require utilization of in situ resources and materials to reduce up-mass and up-volume and for fabricating habitable structures from in situ materials. The overall objective of this Phase II is to design and fabricate an in situ materials processing solar furnace system using the flat panel thin film MPRS concentrator technology successfully developed during Phase I. The capability of this system will be demonstrated by realistically processing lunar regolith simulant into useful product specimens such as fiberglass rods for structural reinforcement and bricks for habitat construction. 
	The technology foundation established in Phase I, which demonstrated unprecedented solar concentrator design and performance versatility, combined with UAT's extensive experience in designing and fabricating thin film concentrators and lightweight deployable structures, provides a sound basis to project that this objective can be achieved.
This proposal is for the development of innovative compact, high power and extremely reliable 2 micron seed laser using newly developed Tm3+ doped germanate glass fibers, which exhibit high quantum efficiency. This type of fiber based seed laser is needed for constructing high energy pulsed 2 micron Ho-doped crystal lasers for LIDAR applications. The single frequency fiber laser, which will be developed as part of the seed laser, is needed for building coherent laser Radar for space exploration program. We propose to use highly Tm3+ doped germanate glass fibers with high gain per unit length to form a short linear cavity to generate single frequency fiber laser operation. Germanate glass exhibits lower phonon energy compared to silica glass, increasing the quantum efficiency of 3F4 level of Tm3+ ions. Importantly, Tm3+ can be highly doped into germanate glasses, which results in so called cross-relaxation, dramatically improving the gain per unit length and the quantum efficiency. The single frequency fiber laser will be used to construct seed lasers by integrating with controlling electronics.
The innovation in this project is model-based design (MBD) tools for predicting the performance and useful life of commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) components and COTS-based systems beyond their rated temperature range. Phase I results have shown the feasibility of these tools, which consist of novel modeling tools and advanced system and data analysis capability. The modeling tools differ from all known technologies in that they facilitate the capture of experimental data on COTS devices that get automatically transformed through novel modeling methods into newly created behavioral models with performance degradation and lifetime effects. These tools are relevant and important in providing NASA the means to quantify the reliability and lifetime (i.e., capability and risk) of COTS components and COTS-based systems and provide a trade structure for the assessment of competing technologies. Furthermore, these modeling and design tools provide a means of integrating disparate models, allow agile evolution of models, and encourage MBD reporting mechanisms be used in reviews. Ultimately, these MBD tools will enable lower-cost system development and cost versus lifetime assessment, shorten development time, and extend flight-proven technology to broader applications. Lynguent plans to develop MBD tools based on its Phase I feasibility study and to utilize a high temperature testbed (DC-DC converter) as a case study to demonstrate a calibration methodology for the tools to insure accuracy with respect to accelerated testing results. This calibration methodology will be developed in consultation with leading experts in the field of reliability modeling and high temperature measurements of electronics and packaging.
Scheduling the daily activities of the crew on a human space mission is currently a cumbersome job performed by a large team of operations experts on the ground.  This process is expensive, inflexible, and inconvenient for the crew in the spacecraft.  As mission durations increase, it will become vital to give the crew more autonomy and reduce operations costs.  We propose an Onboard Automated Scheduling Intelligence System (OASIS) that will automate scheduling work, giving the crew more autonomy and drastically reducing operations costs.
Trace species measurement on unmanned atmospheric research craft suitable for interplanetary travel is a demanding application for optical sensing techniques.  Yet optical techniques offer many advantages including high-precision, fast response, and strong species selectivity.  Balloonsonde, kite, unmanned aerial vehicle (UAV), or glider deployment demands that optical sensors meet stringent size, weight and power requirements.  Vista Photonics proposes to develop rugged, compact, battery-powered optical sensor technology capable of selectively determining humidity to 10 parts-per-billion (-100 &lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C frost point).  The enabling technology for meeting stringent NASA mission requirements is a new rugged, compact, and lightweight optical path length enhancement cell that recovers the theoretical sensitivity of established high-performance optical absorption detection techniques.  The proposed spectrometer will be capable of detecting multiple species while incurring little additional weight or power penalties.
In order to execute the President's Vision for Space Exploration, NASA must find ways to reduce spacecraft cost, complexity, and integration and test time while increasing mission. Modular, reconfigurable satellite technologies are being developed at Goddard Space Flight Center for increasingly ambitious missions involving humans and robots. Development is on-going at both GSFC and the Air Force Research Lab investigating high speed spacecraft data network architectures based on commercial Ethernet protocols. The advantages of an Ethernet network protocol include supporting FPGA implementation, broadcast capability, and most importantly extensive support by commercial standards and infrastructure. MicroSat Systems Inc. is proposing development of an Ethernet version of its modular, plug and play Intelligent Power/Data Ring avionics architecture. MSI's revolutionary architecture provides a modular, plug and play network of standardized attachment nodes distributing power and data management functions.  Since the IPDR network implements a common set of standardized nodes for every interface versus customized cards, the system cost and integration time is reduced to 40-60&#37; of comparable centralized systems.  During the Phase 1 MSI proposes to develop a concept and analyze the benefits of Ethernet protocol in the IPDR architecture and quantify those benefits in a breadboard test environment.
The objective of the research proposed herein is to define the coupled
(combined) effect of critical environments on the structural performance
of composite overwrap pressure vessels (COPV).  The three environments
that will be coupled are cryogenic temperature, space irradiation, and
hypervelocity (micrometeoroid/space debris) impact.  HyPerComp
Engineering (HEI) have previously conducted research that studied  the
independent effects of the three environments on COPV structural
performance.  Prior research determined that COPV structural performance
and capabilities were significantly degraded by each of the
environments.  Clearly, a space-based cryogenic fuel storage vessel
would be exposed to all three environments simultaneously.  Therefore,
it is of interest to study the coupled effects of the environments,
determine the coupled effect, and define design allowables that consider
the simultaneous effect.  The result will be a safer and more reliable
COPV design.  Note, the research proposed herein is applicable any
space-based composite structure and earth-based COPV
This proposal addresses Topic X6.02, Space Assembly Maintenance and Servicing. Spacecraft surface attachments, such as handholds, foot-restraints or tether points are often installed prior to flight, to aid planned EVA (Extravehicular Activity) operations. However, such aids are precluded where their pre-installation could compromise aerodynamic, or other important functions, of certain surfaces. Furthermore, unplanned EVA tasks are, at times, required to address in-flight emergencies or other unanticipated circumstances. For these situations, a versatile means of securing essential EVA assist attachments is needed. This study proposes to research and develop an electrostatic attachment system for rapid surface attachment of portable EVA assist devices, almost anywhere on the exterior (or interior) of a space-borne platform. The system will enhance the addressable scope and efficiency of EVA task performance and aid in astronaut (or material) maneuvering and transit, worksite restraint, and tool or equipment tie-down.  The attachment system will incorporate a self-contained power source, capable of operating in a vacuum environment, to produce and maintain a surface conforming electrostatic charge of sufficient magnitude to induce a useful attractive Coulomb holding force between the device and the surface to which it is contacted, without damage or permanent alteration to the surface.
To prevent aircraft accidents due to wake vortex hazards, FAA procedures specify the minimum separation required between different categories of aircraft.  However, a mandate for increased National Airspace System capacity has led to efforts to tighten these time-tested separation constraints.  One of these efforts, NASA's Wake Vortex Advisory System (WakeVAS), is intended to measure, calculate, and display wake vortex information to air traffic controllers.  The controllers will utilize this information to decrease the time and distance between aircraft, thereby increasing capacity while maintaining safety.  To complement this ground-based approach and provide an additional layer of safety, we propose to increase pilot situation awareness (SA) to the wake vortex hazards in the airport vicinity.  In this proposal, our goal is to design a conceptual prototype of a wake vortex display for eventual use on commercial air carrier flight decks.  We have chosen the commercial air carrier domain as the focus of our efforts because this is where the pressure to increase capacity is the greatest and thus, we believe, maintaining safety via pilot SA is more critical.  Further, we will develop human performance models to evaluate the effect of the display on pilot SA, workload, and performance.
There is a very large variation in the difference between scheduled and actual flight arrival and departure times, which results in a high degree of uncertainty in the airport demand.  Consequently, there is a great need for tools that provide awareness of both the current and predicted future situation.  The Surface Management System (SMS) developed by NASA Ames has partially addressed this need; but both its display and its modeling currently assume that the locations of aircraft on the airport surface will be provided by surface surveillance.  In this SBIR, Metron Aviation will study the prediction of airport demand with varying levels of surface surveillance.  The Phase 1 objective is to demonstrate the feasibility of predicting, with limited or no surface surveillance, flight OOOI times accurately enough to enable airport surface automation.  In Phase 2, we will investigate decision support display designs appropriate for the lack of surveillance and evaluate them at Atlanta.
NASA's missions of space exploration require significant power sources both for propulsion and for on-board power. This motivates the development of high temperature structural materials to maximize the thermodynamic efficiency of power conversion systems. Refractory alloys are essential due to their high operating temperature capability that in turn enables high thermal conversion efficiency. The overall objective of the proposed study is to provide NASA with a simulation tool that can be used to improve the performance of current available refractory alloys and accelerate the development of new refractory alloys with desired properties for space nuclear applications. The tool will include:

(1) A thermodynamic database for the multi-component RM-TM-IE system, in which RM represents refractory metals including Nb, Mo, Ta, W, and Re; TM represents transition metals including Ti, Zr, and Hf; and IE represents interstitial elements, such as C, N, and O.  
(2) A mobility database for the multi-component RM-TM-IE system;
(3) A computer software package with needed functions for thermodynamic calculations, kinetic simulations, and user-friendly interface.

In Phase I, the tool will be developed for the Nb-Zr-C sub-system to examine the feasibility. In Phase II, its applications will be extended to multi-component RM-TM-IE refractory alloy systems.
NASA's ability to perform cutting edge space science, including lunar and planetary exploration, requires the use of cryogenically cooled detectors and sensors for advanced scientific instruments and telescopes. For example, to improve the signal-to-noise ratio of cryogenic IR focal plane arrays it is desirable to have on-focal plane, high-resolution, analog-to-digital data converters. Such A/D converters and supporting technology are currently in various stages of development. These and other detectors and sensors will require improvements in cryogenic system technology, including the development of lightweight, low vibration, highly-efficient, long-life cryocoolers if their useful lifetime is to be extended beyond a couple of years. To address these requirements, Atlas Scientific proposes to develop a 4K cryocooler that combines the efficiency of a recuperative, reverse-Brayton, low-temperature stage with the simplicity of a regenerative, pulse-tube, upper stage. The PT/RB hybrid is an innovative cooling system capable of achieving temperatures in the range of 4 to 10 K and is ideally suited to the requirements of many future space-based applications. The hybrid system addresses the issues of cryocooler vibration, reliability, and efficiency, while simultaneously providing an innovative approach to the challenge of interfacing a cryocooler with low-temperature detectors, sensors, and electronics.
Many NASA space and Earth programs in the infrared range 1060-1550 nm are limited by the detector performance that require long exposure time due to their low sensitivity and/or high noise. Efficient, single-photon counting in the infrared providing short exposure time and large area for increased photon utilization at the output aperture of the optical system would enhance the quality of observations in traditional applications such as lidar, imaging, optical communications, and space observations. 

We propose to develop readout circuits of infrared photon-counting detectors that will enable large-area detectors with extremely short integration time, will decrease their noise by one order of magnitude as compared to conventional detectors, and will result in higher detection efficiency for single-photons from 1064 to 1550 nm. 

In Phase 1 we will develop readout integrated circuits (ROIC) and demonstrate the performance enhancement of infrared photon counting detectors. Phase 2 will integrate the detectors and ROICs into a single package to result in large arrays with three-dimensional imaging capability.
Increasing thermal requirements for space-based thermal control systems are straining the capabilities of conventional heat pipes.  Mainstream has experimentally demonstrated a new wick configuration that has been shown to more than  triple the heat transport capacity of  an otherwise identical copper water heat pipe(this proposal contains the experimental data).  This Phase I will seek to extend these heat pipe experiments.  Improved heat pipe technology is relevant and important to meeting thermal technology needs; it is well known that any means to improve heat pipe capacity widens the potential applications for their use. Extending the capability of a simple, highly reliable passive system means more applications where this passive heat pipe approach can be used instead of the more complex, and potentially less-reliable, active systems.  

This Phase I includes heat pipe experiments and limited performance optimization.  Mainstream has already performed the marketing and commercialization studies, and we have secured a commercial aerospace partner (with funding) for a follow-on commercialization effort.  Phase III commercialization would parallel our other SBIR commercialization efforts. Mainstream's prior record of accomplishment has demonstrated that we are very serious about commercialization and our DoD commercialization index is 90&#37;.
&amp;#65279;A novel type of fuel providing high burning rate for hybrid rocket applications is proposed.  This fuel maintains a hydrodynamically rough surface to radically enhance convective heat transfer rate, and hence the fuel burn rate.  This is achieved by incorporating a particulate fuel material dispersed within a continuum phase polymer matrix.  The dispersed fuel material is chosen to transition from solid to gas much more readily than the polymer matrix, and with a particle size scale sufficiently large that the resulting surface voids provide a hydrodynamically rough surface.  Combustion of this fuel system thus creates local pockets in the polymer surface, where the particulate fuel is exposed, and maintains the rough surface structure as the dispersed particles are continually exposed.  Secondary effects include decreased phase change enthalpy of the mixture, relative to a conventional polymer fuel, and the potential for increased specific impulse by inclusion of high energy compounds as the dispersed phase.  This high burn rate fuel will enable increased propellant mass fraction in hybrid rockets, by decreasing the number of ports required to achieve the desired net fuel combustion rate.  It also simplifies the technology and retains the relatively high strength and good storage stability of polymeric fuels.
Magnetoplasmadynamic (MPD) thrusters can provide the high-specific impulse, high-power propulsion required to enable ambitious human and robotic exploration missions to the Moon, Mars, and outer planets. Whereas the thrust and power densities of Hall and Ion thrusters are limited by space charge effects, MPD thrusters can process very high power levels while providing high specific impulse thrust.  MPD thrusters, however, have traditionally been plagued by poor thrust efficiencies.  These inefficiencies are due primarily to power lost into the anode caused by the Hall effect.  TUI proposes to apply innovative techniques for using applied magnetic nozzles to eliminate these anode power losses and dramatically improve the performance of MPD thrusters.  In the proposed Phase I effort, TUI will develop magnetic nozzle designs optimized to maximize the thrust efficiency of MPD thruster systems, minimizing anode fall power losses and maximizing the efficiency of plasma detachment from the magnetic nozzle.  In the Phase II effort, we will build and test prototypes of these magnetic nozzles, and obtain definitive measurements of their enhancement of MPD thruster efficiencies.
The object of this effort is to design a  miniature, low power, angle-angle-range, 3-D flash LADAR receiver that can be implemented using germanium-on-insulator/silicon-on-insulator (GOI/SOI) hybrid wafer stacks. The germanium layer of the wafer stack will be used for photodetection functions, so as to take advantage of its excellent photoabsorption in the visible and NIR, as well as its high carrier mobilities. Low-noise, high-bandwidth amplification and pulse detection circuits will be fabricated in the silicon layer of the wafer stack, using mature complementary metal-oxide-semiconductor (CMOS) technology.

The proposed design is optimized to be both low power and radiation tolerance. The SOI architecture is inherently tolerant of radiation, as the small volumes of device material involved have a correspondingly smaller scattering cross section. Moreover, isolation of the thin device layer from the substrate means that CMOS receiver circuits fabricated on such a wafer will benefit from increased speed, reduced power consumption, and lower noise. Finally, as the proposed design can be manufactured using commercial CMOS foundry lines, no additional cost, development time, or quality control measures relative to a standard CMOS process will be incurred, once the hybrid wafers are procured.

In Phase I, the proposed receiver will be designed, simulated, and optimized using TCAD tools. The design and simulation tasks will be complemented with a short-loop fabrication experiment in which critical receiver components will be fabricated from hybrid GOI/SOI wafer prototypes and characterized.
Development of batteries capable of operational temperatures of 380?C and 486&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C with a specific capacity 200 Wh/kg for use as a power source on the Venusian surface and for planetary probes in similar high temperature atmospheres and where ambient pressures of 90 atmospheres are to be expected.  These conditions are well beyond most conventional battery technologies, except those experienced by thermally activated batteries that use a Li(Si)/FeS?2 couple.  This proposal provides for the novel approach of using proven expertise from thermal batteries to develop high temperature space batteries. 
The approach will be to first determine the optimum cell chemistry from potential candidate systems and test via cells. Next, verification of cell performance at temperatures will be made. Design of a robust battery/cell container using super nickel alloys such as Inconel 718 will be made.  Stress and dynamics analyses will be made on the final mechanical design that will be verified by test.
The complexity of the current launch platforms makes their maintenance and operation very costly. In order to successfully design the next generation platforms, it is necessary to understand the complex, multi-disciplinary environments that exists during a launch sequence. The proposed research and development effort will use state of the art techniques in the various fields involved to compute the virboacoustic environment during launch. The physical insight gained from these models will help guide the design of a new cost-effective launch platform. In particular, the problem of unsteady turbulent flows will be addressed using a newly developed turbulence modeling approach known as partially averaged Navier-Stokes (or PANS). Using PANS nearfield results, the acoustic farfield will be obtained through the use of acoustic analogies. In addition, various passive and active control techniques will be assessed to effectively reduce noise levels in the vicinity of the launch platform.
Financial constraints and the need for improved operational efficiency are requiring airlines to emphasize "on-condition" maintenance over scheduled maintenance where possible.  However, many of the specific conditions and events of interest to airline maintenance are not being monitored by automatic systems.  Some of these events are detected through a subjective determination by the aircrew.  This subjective determination can result in both maintenance being performed unnecessarily and maintenance not being performed when needed.  AeroTech will develop a multi-tier, Quantitative Condition Alerting and Analysis Support (Q-CAAS) system for aircraft that will in real-time, automatically downlink to maintenance personnel, reports on the occurrence of specific conditions and events (e.g. loads exceedance).  The reports will be displayed on a web based, ground station network.  The system will also track individual aircraft's exposure to particular in-flight conditions allowing airline personnel to tailor maintenance programs to individual aircraft.  By providing quantifiable data in real-time, operational decisions can be made to minimize the impact and maximize the benefits of on-condition maintenance.  The Q-CAAS system will be comprised only of software that can be implemented on most current fleet aircraft, keeping costs low, minimizing the time to market, and therefore maximizing the likelihood of industry adoption.
The Nitrous Oxide Paraffin Hybrid engine (N2OP) is a proposed technology designed to provide small launch vehicles with high specific impulse, indefinitely storable propulsion. In the N2OP engine, the combination of liquid nitrous oxide on solid paraffin as a rocket propellant allows for the development of compact lightweight high performance stages using densely packed propellant tankage. This is because N2O/paraffin hybrids have a very high oxidizer/fuel mixture ratio and because paraffin has a much higher regression rate than typical hybrid hydrocarbon fuels. Propellant slumping can be prevented by molding the paraffin into a 3&#37; by volume graphite sponge matrix. Currently, space launch missions require cryogenic or extremely toxic propellants which are limited in their storage times, reducing their capability for rapid response launch. The much more storable solid propellants have higher cost, and lower performance while still being a large explosive hazard. The N2OP propulsion system also is compatible with ocean temperatures, allowing launch by floating in water. The achievable Isp for this propellant combination using autogenous pressurization is about 235 seconds at sea level and over 310 s in vacuum, making its performance fully adequate to support operation of a safe, fully storable, highly-responsive multi-stage launch vehicle.
Hall thrusters can be operated over a wide range of specific impulse while maintaining high efficiency.  However S/C power system constraints on electric propulsion systems often force a choice of maximum power operation over a narrow range of specific impulse and thrust.  Most spacecraft users would desire a continuous selection of thrust and specific impulse at maximum power when possible, but power supply systems currently do not exist with this level of functionality. To provide continuous Hall thruster adjustment, a power supply must be wide ranging in voltage, current, and power.  In addition, the power supply system must be lightweight and efficient. The proposed work addresses these needs through a three-phase resonant power conversion strategy combined with novel frequency selective output-stage circuitry that will allow greater than 8:1 output voltage adjustment at power levels up to and beyond 100-kW.  Three-phase resonant power converters utilize filter components with lower mass and size relative to single-phase converters, and demonstrated efficiencies are greater than 97&#37;.  Additionally, resonant converters operate at higher frequency, which results in extended stability when used in dynamic load situations imposed by Hall thrusters. The proposed Phase I program will develop a prototype power supply and demonstrate its functionality.
The key innovation in this effort is the development of a decision support tool and simulation testbed for Airborne Spacing and Merging (ASM). We focus on concepts related to airports with Super Dense Operations (SDO) where new airport runway configurations, simultaneous operations on runways, simultaneous sequencing, merging de-confliction and spacing are some of the proposed concepts currently being considered.  We focus on modeling and simulating a complementary airborne and ground system for ASM. From a ground systems perspective a scheduler will generate arrival sequences and spacing requirements that will be fed to the ASM system operating on the flight deck. We propose to use and enhance NASAs  ACES software to model and simulate our concept. Our Phase I simulation will include a prototype model of an airport emulating SDO and an implementation of airborne spacing and merging algorithms implemented in the ACES flight agents. Integral to our proposed effort will be the understanding future demand in terminal areas as NAS transitions to NGATS type concepts and operations in 2025 including the impacts of possible VLJ induced traffic. Using the simulations we will evaluate the performance of our approach as air traffic densities increase, evaluate controller workload and investigate extensions needed for totally airborne autonomous operations.
A WiMAX networked UAV Telemetry System (WNUTS) is designed for
net-centric remote sensing and launch range surveillance applications.
WNUTS integrates a MIMO powered and WiMAX networked Tracking Antenna and
Radio Link (TARL) system for UAV telemetry, a net-centric software
package for application support, and a WiMAX groundstation network
infrastructure for range extension and persistent mission automation.
TARL links a remotely deployed UAV/airship sensor platform to a
groundstation network with a 100+ Mbps bandwidth over a 30+ mile range
using our innovative aerial/ground antenna technologies and
carrier-grade WiMAX radio technologies. The WNUTS net-centric software
supports real time remote sensing/telemetry applications. These include
web-enabled graphic user interfaces for visualizing real time UAV
missions in 3D flight through animation, performing real time GPS/IMU
data processing for direct remote sensing data geo-reference, generating
geo-referenced image QuickMosaics, and displaying selective inch-level
high-resolution image contents. WNUTS web-based software tools enable
web-collaborated data processing and information exploitation,
extraction, and dissemination for remote sensing applications. The WiMAX
groundstation network infrastructure flexibly extends UAV telemetry
coverage for either long corridors (e.g. borders) or large block areas
(e.g. launch range, cities) by appropriately configuring and deploying
networked TARL groundstation cells (fixed or mobile). Using WiMAX and
other COTS components, WNUTS is low cost, easy to maintain, and easily upgradeable.
A surface-mounted instrumentation system for measuring rotor blade motions on rotorcraft, for use both in flight and in wind tunnel testing, is proposed for development.  The technology builds upon previous Navy-sponsored SBIR work in the design of a system for measuring rotor blade motion and loads, by combining several separate measurement technologies into a single instrumentation unit.  The device may be applied onto the underside of any rotor system, and has a sufficiently small weight and form factor to minimize any impact on either blade aerodynamic or inertial properties.  Data transfer to and from the unit is performed using optical telemetry, and power for the system is provided from self-contained conformal batteries.  These features eliminate the need for specialized rotor hub hardware for blade angle measurement or sliprings for power or data exchange, thus enabling its use on a wide range of rotor systems of interest to NASA and commercial customers.
This is a Phase I proposal to develop an extremely versatile optical inspection tool for determining the optical figure of aspheric optical components, such as test objects, aspheric mirrors, segment mirrors, and optical components that are not easily inspected with conventional interferometry. Modern optical design and manufacturing procedures have begun using such components more and more in routine applications to improve optical system capability. Since the optical tolerances achieved in the manufacture of such components have an important bearing on the performance capabilities of the systems that employ them, instrumentation and techniques for precision metrology are vital for quality assurance. Inspection tools required for these types of optical components have lagged the capability to manufacture them. The proposed work will demonstrate a technique for full aperture precision metrology of such optical components and is anticipated to yield instrument designs that incorporate an extremely robust, reliable, and accurate wavefront sensor for precision metrology of a transmitted or reflected wavefront, together with a projection system that covers the full aperture. The proposed wavefront sensor comprises a unique combination of digital holographic interferometry, Hartmann wavefront sensing, and adaptive optics that results in an extremely flexible tool. For the Phase I study, we propose to employ an existing wavefront sensor instrument to accelerate progress towards production of useful experimental data from tests conducted on existing optical elements.
Spacecraft generate huge amounts of data.  A significant challenge for
both human operators and autonomous control systems is ensuring that
the right data (and combinations of data) are available at the right
time for control and decision-making and ensuring that the data is at
the right abstraction level.  A key part of this process is data
abstraction -- that is converting low-level analog or digital signals
into higher-level data.  We are proposing a data abstraction
architecture that provides a provides a tool-box of components,
connections and development environment that allow engineers to build
and maintain data abstraction systems.  In addition, having a
well-defined data abstraction architecture allows data displays to be
automatically generated and updated as the architecture develops.
Thus, a data abstraction architecture can support both human
decision-making as well as providing data services to autonomous
control systems.  We are also proposing to build an integrated
development environment in which designers or operators can
graphically build data abstraction architectures from standard
components to accomplish their data tasks.  Together these provide a
data abstraction architecture that is a key component of NASA's
operational infrastructure and provides a building block for deploying
more advanced autonomy architectures in the future.
Long-term exposure to even relatively low levels of acoustic and vibration signals has been shown to be potentially harmful to humans. A new class of piezoelectric materials is proposed to provide acoustic and vibration damping for increased crew comfort and protection for long-duration space flight. The effectiveness for piezoelectric materials to damp the kinetic energy of mechanical stimuli such as vibration, impact or acoustic signals has been previously demonstrated by the applicant and others. The proposed piezoelectric materials can be incorporated into crew clothing, seating and bedding; linings for floor, wall and/or ceilings; and integrated into composite panels for use as structural members in vehicle construction. Due to the novel nature of the materials, Phase I will focus primarily on production and characterization of mechanical and piezoelectric properties for sample materials. While issues such as off-gassing and flammability are not considered problematic for the proposed materials, these will also be evaluated during Phase I.
This proposal describes a system for detecting upset conditions and providing the corresponding control recovery actions to maintain flight integrity for general application to aircraft.  To maintain and improve aircraft safety as air capacity grows as part of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS), it is necessary to address the primary causes leading to in-flight loss of control accidents, including aircraft upsets, degraded flight operations, and environmental disturbance effects.  A model-based upset detection and recovery control architecture is proposed that combines fault detection algorithms to identify the onset of an upset condition with optimal and near-optimal control responses.  On-line parameter identification algorithms are used to adapt the core detection and recovery algorithms for degraded flight operations and/or modeling uncertainties.  Distributed MEMS-based sensing and SMA-driven control effectors are used to augment the installed aircraft state measurements and control capability for rapid detection of and recovery from upset conditions.  During Phase I, preliminary system design and application to a small unmanned aircraft will be performed, including flight test demonstration of the upset detection and control algorithms and hardware.  This work will form the foundation for subsequent development of a family of aircraft upset mitigation systems for both manned and unmanned aircraft.
For over 15 years, FMW Composite Systems has developed Metal Matrix Composite manufacturing methodologies for fabricating silicon-carbide-fiber-reinforced titanium components, also known as Titanium Matrix Composites (TMC), for the aerospace industry.  These efforts have resulted in successfully flight qualifying three TMC components, including a piston rod used in the divergent exhaust nozzle actuator for the Pratt &amp; Whitney F119 engine (F-22), and two exhaust nozzle actuator links for the GE F110 engine (F-16).
    TMC weight savings over the monolithic titanium and steel components being replaced typically varies from 35 to 45&#37; depending upon the application load requirements.  The relatively low density of TMC (10&#37; lower than Titanium) combined with its excellent mechanical behavior, results in significantly higher specific static properties than conventional material systems.  Additionally, creep resistance of TMC is dramatically enhanced over monolithic titanium due to the presence of the SiC fibers, which do not exhibit discernible creep at the temperature regime of interest.
    Currently, FMW is working with closely with the aerospace industry to develop TMC structural components for both Military and Commercial airframe applications.  FMW proposes to use this same technology to work with the Jet Propulsion Lab to develop a TMC pressure vessel for the Venus Lander mission.
Long shelf life food packaging is a critical to maintaining the crew's well being in NASA's manned missions to the mars.  Not only does the packaging have to offer an effective means to preserve the food's nutrition and flavor over a long period of time, but the packaging material itself should be easily managed/recycled inside a confined environment like a space shuttle.    Although metal cans have long been used for long term food storage in daily life, trash management poses a serious problem for NASA.  Recently, biodegradable polymers attracted a lot of attention as an environmentally friendly packaging material. However, they are mainly used for short shelf life products because of poor barrier properties.  To enhance its barrier protection properties to oxygen and water, in this SBIR project, we propose a new composite material of PLA coated with a thin layer of transparent and pin-hole free amorphous Al2O3.  To improve PLA thermal properties and produce retorted polymer structures nanoparticles will be introduced in the polymer matrix. Moreover, to obtain the desired barrier properties for long shelf life food packaging a unique technique will be used to deposit Al2O3 films at substrate temperatures less than 80&amp;#61616;C.  This effort will greatly enhance PLA's barrier properties to provide a unique high barrier packaging material with less mass and, more importantly, totally biodegradable.  This technology is easily scalable and a successful commercialization will definitely benefit NASA's manned missions.  Moreover, as an environmentally friendly packaging material, the technology has the potential to have a broad impact on society.
During Phase I, TLC will demonstrate and deliver a remote mixed-mode adjustable X-band to W-band transceiver chip that can perform well as a FMCW, super-heterodyne or pulse radar that meets space qualification specifications.  This reconfigurable transceiver will serve as the basis for the precipitation &amp; cloud measurement doppler radar system that will be developed, tested and delivered to NASA in Phase II.
NASA has identified the need for the development of lightweight structures technologies to support Lunar Lander and Lunar Habitats programs and for the transfer of relevant technology to Crew Exploration Vehicle and Crew Launch Vehicle programs.  NASA further calls for revolutionary advances in radiation shielding materials and structures technologies to protect humans from the hazards of space radiation during NASA missions.  To address this need and in response to NASA Subtopic X6.01, International Scientific Technologies, Inc. in conjunction with the College of William and Mary, proposes the development of lightweight multifunctional polymeric materials with nanoparticle metallic additives that will provide radiation protection of humans engaged in long-duration space missions.  The Phase I program Technical Objectives include selection and functionalization of metallic nanoparticles for incorporation into polymers, fabrication of nanocomposite films of space-compatible polymers, and measurement of radiation shielding effectiveness.  The anticipated result of the Phase I and Phase II programs is the fabrication of polymeric materials incorporating metallic nanoparticles that will have multifunctional properties of radiation shielding against galactic cosmic radiation and neutrons and electromagnetic radiation, and structural integrity to permit use in flexible and rigid structures and habitats during deep-space missions.
NASA is continuing its development of electric propulsion engines for various applications.  Efforts have been directed toward both large and small thrusters, depending on the end use.  A current program is focused on the development of a miniature thruster.  Development of a Miniature Xenon Ion (MiXI) thruster will enable precision spacecraft positioning and formation maneuvers for formation-flying spacecraft.  The current MiXI thruster prototype will provide 0.5 ? 3 mN thrust at 3000 sec specific impulse and efficiencies around 50&#37; or better.  The MiXI thruster will use Xenon propellant, a noble gas, minimizing spacecraft contamination.   One of the challenges of such a thruster is to be able to accurately control the flow of propellant.  The required flow rates are on the order of 0.1 sccm of Xenon.  To this end Midi proposes to develop a small flow control valve based on piezoelectric technology.  Midi is a world leader in this technology, demonstrated by its existing patented packaged actuator product line and past valve experience.  Aerojet will provide electric propulsion expertise for the duration of the program and serve as a technology integration and transition path.
TPL Inc. proposes to develop a novel, high performance, nanostructured
cathode material for lithium ion (Li-ion) batteries.  The proposed
approach will modify lithium metal oxide cathode materials using
proprietary nanostructured coatings to deliver improved cycle life and
lower internal cell resistance for improved power delivery.  Preliminary
experiments carried out at TPL already indicate the potential of this
approach to deliver the desired improvements.  This Phase I effort will
optimize the materials composition, processing and microstructure to
deliver optimized performance.  The surface-modified cathode materials
(SMCMs) will be utilized to fabricate Li-ion coin cell microbatteries
that show significantly improved performance.  The nanostructured
transition metal oxide particles will also impart faradaic
pseudo-capacitance features to Li-ion batteries for high power and high
energy applications, and structurally stabilize the cathode materials
for longer cycle life.  These novel materials will enhance the
performance of TPL's microbatteries that will provide a small, light
weight power source for sensors in advanced observation platforms.
Turbogizmo, LLC will develop new software technology for Human-System Interaction (HSI) for NASA that increases performance and reduces the risk of conducting manned exploration missions.  This HSI technology combines intelligent software agents, decision support systems and perceptual interfaces to facilitate human collaboration with robotic and autonomous systems while supporting the use of augmented cognition models. This will provide the optimal configuration of multi-modal user interfaces to improve performance and safety during critical mission operations. Future exploration missions will involve greater information availability for crewmembers and enhancements to EVA systems will provide visual information for situational awareness. HSI technology that manages the exchange of information between Human and Robotic or Autonomous systems using augmented cognition models will result in reduced cognitive load caused by inappropriate information while minimizing the effort required when interacting with autonomous systems. Turbogizmo proposes to develop a service-based architecture for configuring a suite of multi-modal HCI technologies based on operational scenarios, evaluation of perceptual interfaces with cost/value propositions for interface configurations. This framework will be validated by experimentation and demonstration This technology will close a critical technology gap by enabling improved interaction for exploration crewmembers performing routine and contingency operations.
Hypersonic aircraft are subjected to extreme conditions with respect to mechanical thermal and acoustic loads. Materials with complex microstructure, such as Functionally Graded (FGM) and honeycomb, are expected to play a key role in such vehicles. Detailed numerical stress and thermal analysis of such materials, with conventional Finite Element Methods (FEM), is extremely difficult. The Fast Multipole Boundary Element Method (FMBEM) is a very promising candidate for carrying out such calculations efficiently and accurately. This is an O(N) method (where N is the size of a problem) with respect to both matrix formulation and solution of linear systems.

It is proposed that two user-friendly software packages based on the FMBEM, to be called AvantFGM and AvantHoneycomb, will be developed in this proposed Phase I project. These packages will be used to carry out mechanical and thermal characterization of these complex materials. The output of these packages will deliver material properties as functions of spatial coordinates, which can then be used to carry out conventional FEM analyses of aircraft components of complex geometrical shape.

Plans for Phase II call for development of fully functioning commercial software capable of analyzing many realistic situations pertaining to hypersonic aircraft. Phase III will be concerned with further development of the software to include damage accumulation (due to, for example, mechanical, creep and thermo-acoustic fatigue) and risk analysis.
The proposed project consists of developing a prototype exciter/igniter unit that can operate to a subset of expected flight performance requirements.  The main focus of this development effort will be the physical integration of a small, compact exciter with a "flight like" igniter or spark plug.  This exciter/igniter prototype will represent the exciter/igniter units used to generate sparks that ignite fuels in engines and propulsion systems.  The development of this prototype unit will follow a phased approach covering design, development, analysis, assembly, test and verification.  This prototype will represent a "stand alone" integrated unit capable of providing ionizing voltage greater than 20 kV for a spark energy of 45 to 50 mJ at a rate of 200-300 sparks per second.  The proposed prototype will integrate both the exciter electronics and an igniter (spark plug) to demonstrate "end-to-end" functionality.  Additionally, the integrated unit will be as compact as possible.  The implications of the proposed project are for space and weight savings in the overall development of green propulsion systems as applicable to research projects in Exploration Systems and specifically applicable to Topic X9 Propulsion and Propellant Storage.
Heat shield technology is a critical component of manned spaceflight.  In particular, the new Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV) requires thermal protection systems (TPS) beyond the current state of the art.  While new TPS shields are under development, a key difficulty is the ability to diagnose TPS performance.  Technology demonstrator missions are being planned, but designing instrumentation capable of surviving the reentry environment is a non-trivial challenge.  We propose the development of a low intrusive fiber optic plug insert for TPS materials that will enable spectrographic measurements of the reentry environment surrounding an ablating TPS.  This would provide benchmark data for fundamental flow, radiation, and materials modeling as well as provide operational correlations between vehicle reentry drag and radiation if implemented in a TPS flight test.  In addition to spectrographic data, the proposed technology will also intrinsically provide a highly reliable measurement of TPS ablation rates.  These fiber-optic plug inserts provide an enabling capability for reentry spacecraft development.  The program proposed here will take the concept, originally encouraged at the request of researchers at NASA Ames, from concept to demonstration, through prototype, to a technology readiness level suitable for inclusion in the design of an ablation shield flight demonstrator mission.
Current science for Mars and lunar exploration demands that fairly small diameter intact rock cores be acquired for geologic evaluation. Tools to acquire these cores must be light weight, draw minimal power, and induce low loads on their robotic platforms. Unfortunately no tools have yet been produced that meet these requirements and produce a viable core. Alliance Spacesystems, LLC produced a rotary percussive drill designed for space use under a NASA-funded Mars Instrument Development Program (MIDP) project ? the Low-force Sample Acquisition System (LSAS) ? that successfully drilled and acquired samples from a variety of rocks and soils including the hardest anticipated Martian rock (basalt) and frozen soil not only in ambient conditions but also in a thermal/vacuum chamber replicating Mars pressure and extreme temperatures. Alliance now proposes to adapt the design approach to rock coring, using the demonstrated performance and advantages of rotary percussive drilling to solve the problems currently being encountered with the state of the art coring approaches.
Cornerstone Research Group Inc. (CRG) will develop new shape memory polymer (SMP) deployment mechanisms for actuating thermal protective systems (TPS) panels to create a deployable large surface area aeroshell.  This innovation will utilize VeriflexTM -- CRG's high performance SMP material -- to create a low mass actuation system for a deployable the aeroshell design.  VeriflexTM-based mechanisms will deploy the aeroshell without the use of motors, springs, or mechanical controls.  These simple, self-deploying, self-aligning mechanisms will reduce the mass and the complexity of the aeroshell design. VeriflexTM-based deployment mechanisms will allow the use of panels made from existing TPS materials to create a large surface area aeroshells that will stow in a highly compact pre-launch and storage configuration and then self-deploy before reentry to the operational configuration.  The TPS panels will deploy outward and increase the diameter of the aeroshell.  For every 10 percent increase in the diameter, there will be a 21 percent increase in the total surface area of the aeroshell.  The relative volume of space needed to stow the reentry vehicle would not increase.
The objective of this proposal is the development of a next-generation computational aeroelasticity code, suitable for real-world complex geometries, and incorporating error-control for superior reliability and efficiency, and sensitivity analysis for aeroelastic design problems.
The principal enabling innovation for achieving these goals involves the development of adjoint methods for time-dependent coupled aeroelastic simulations.                                                                             The use of adjoint techniques has become widespread for steady-state aerodynamic design, and the potential of adjoint methods for controlling spatial error has been well documented. However, the extension of these methods to unsteady problems and coupled aero-structural problems has generally been lacking. Using a consistent and modular adjoint formulation, the proposed project will result in the incorporation of an adjoint methodology into an existing three-dimensional unstructured mesh aeroelastic simulation capability.                                                                             The adjoint methodology will enable revolutionary advances in efficiency and reliability for computational aeroelasticity, by providing the means of controlling temporal error through time-step control for relevant engineering outputs, such as the determination of flutter boundaries.  Sensitivity analysis will also be enabled, providing the means for performing aerodynamic shape optimization, structural modifications, as well as valuable information for guiding the placement, location and properties of flow control devices, actuators, and smart material technologies.
CTD proposes to investigate the deployment repeatability and microdynamic stability of a hinge and demonstration this repeatability in a deployable mirror test article, which incorporates the proposed precision self-locking hinge actuator.  If successful, the proposed device will be substantially lighter, simpler, more robust, and more easily controlled than other state-of-the-art actuators for deployment of optical systems.  More importantly, the proposed device has the potential of dramatically reducing or eliminating post-deployed microdynamic response, by eliminating mechanical latches. During Phase I, CTD and the University of Colorado (CU) will demonstrate the feasibility of the high-precision, self-locking, linear actuator through testing of a prototype actuator on an existing deployable optics testbed structure at CU.  In Phase II, CTD and its partners will develop and test a self-locking linear actuator for application to a flight program of interest to NASA (e.g., Single Aperture Far-IR (SAFIR) telescope).
There is a growing need to develop improved technologies for precise airborne measurements of carbon dioxide, CO2.  CO2 measurements are of great importance to many areas of research, including climate change, global carbon budgets, and geological research in relation to volcanic activity.  At the same time, we are entering a period of time in which Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) are becoming more widely used for atmospheric research.  UAS platforms have already proven themselves as a uniquely capable means for making measurements in remote areas and over oceans.  However, existing CO2 measurement technologies are difficult to adapt to or use in the UAS world.  This proposal describes a simple and inexpensive sensor for the precise determination of atmospheric CO2 that will be small enough for flight on small UAS platforms and sounding balloons.
Phase I will include the fabrication of a proof-of-concept sensor system, laboratory characterization of the sensor, and culminate in a demonstration of the sensor on a UAS.  Phase II will emphasize improving the basic manufacturability of the design, as well as much more extensive laboratory and UAS testing.
The objective of the project is the development of an open architecture, computational toolbox for design and implementation of diagnostic and prognostic algorithms for aircraft electrical power systems. The management of typical failure modes of the electrical system can have substantial returns in the overall availability, safety and operating cost of aircraft. We propose several innovative techniques for monitoring specific components of the power system such as generators, converters, and batteries. The integrated architecture using general purpose symbolic processing, numerical tools and data logging makes this project especially attractive and will bring advances in diagnostics and prognostics to engineering practice. The toolbox will include code generation tools resulting in the ability to seamlessly integrate the designed algorithms by automating several key steps for the implementation phase. In Phase I we will demonstrate the approach using experimental test beds. The successful completion of this phase of the project will provide not only a prototype health monitoring system but establish a framework to integrate new algorithms allowing the rapid packaging of advanced health management techniques for validation and verification, flight certification and final system integration and evaluation.
A fully monolithically integrated L-band T/R module using InGaP/GaAs-based HBTs (heterojunction bipolar transistors) for both the transmit and receive functions is proposed. We plan to improve the efficiency by implementing a DHBT (double heterojunction bipolar transistor) InGaP HBT which is designed reduce the offset voltage. This DHBT design can offer a higher efficiency as well as increasing the safe operation region (SOA), which benefits both the low noise and high power requirements of a T/R module.  The footprint of the device is expected to be reduced by 20-30&#37; by integrating the T/R function using the same device InGaP DHBT platform.   GaAs based devices are critical for the realization of reduced size and reduced power consumption MMIC (monolithic microwave integrated circuits) which provide the fundamental building blocks of T/R modules. InGaP HBT provide the lowest cost technology platform for high frequency devices in comparison to other device technologies such as Si-Ge and InP. In addition, InGaP/GaAs HBTs have been shown to be inherently radiation hard for both proton and g exposure, and are well suited for use in the space environment.
We propose to develop novel FPGA-based algorithmic technology that will
enable unprecedented computational power for the solution of large
sparse linear equation systems. In Phase I, we will develop a prototype
of a non-von-Neumann linear equation solver equipped with our
technology, and demonstrate an intermediate milestone for its
operational speedup and performance gains using at least two of the CFD
problems in the NAS benchmark. Phase I will also deliver a clear
technology roadmap in terms of algorithmic and architectural innovations
needed to bring the project to success by the end of Phase II. Four
mission-critical areas to the success of an FPGA-based non-von-Neuman
system within a von-Neumann-based supercomputing environment are
identified, namely (1) portability; (2) ease of use; (3) algorithmic
speed balance between von-Neumann and non-von-Neumann components; and
(4) communication speed. Innovative architectural and algorithmic
methods aimed at boosting system effectiveness through each one of the
four areas are proposed. In particular, we propose the use of
&amp;quot;portability wrappers&amp;quot; to enable wide portability at both
hardware and software levels, software drivers in the form of an API for
ease of use from a C and/or Fortran environment, innovative
reconfigurable computing algorithms and bit structure optimizations
suited to the LU factorization problem for speed, and a novel
algorithmic technique within the reconfigurable computing paradigm that
effectively eliminates the communication bottleneck, typical of
multi-system distributed algorithms, for the LU factorization problem.
The performance attainable with a single FPGA will be comparable to that
of a 1,000-node commodity cluster, while exhibiting reductions of one to
two orders of magnitude in both cost and power consumption.
Current Multilayer Insulation (MLI) technology is over 50 years old, and
is typically comprised of 10 to 120 layers of metalized polymer films
separated by polyester netting. MLI is the best thermal insulation in a
vacuum, and is the insulation of choice for spacecraft and cryogenic
system insulation, but has problems relating to density control and
performance, application labor, and difficulty covering small and large
scales. An innovative concept for improved cryogenic insulation,
Integrated MLI, is proposed based on a micro-machined or micro-molded
substructure. Thermal conductivity will be lower than conventional MLI,
layers would be inherently attached to each other and support one
another, construction would be easier, and the vacuum shell could be
supported by the IMLI, greatly reducing the mass of the insulation
system with vacuum shells used to insulate cryogenic dewars or tanks.
An improved insulation should provide lower thermal conductivity, lower
specific thermal conductivity, vacuum compatibility, layers inherently
attached to each other that support themselves, efficient assembly and
provide structural reliability. Recent advances in injection molding has
resulted in the ability to mold structures with very small features,
comprised of materials with low thermal conductivity and low outgassing.
Integrated MLI will consist of small micro-machined or micro-molded
structures that support radiation barrier layers, and will offer
significant advantages. Preliminary analysis of several potential
designs indicates IMLI has a theoretical thermal conductivity less than
half that of MLI, allowing improved long term cryogenic propellant
storage and spacecraft thermal performance. It may provide improved
structural assembly, strength and integrity over current MLI. This
proposal is to work on the design, material selection, assembly
processes and preliminary physical property testing of a prototype of
this innovative new thermal insulation.
Princeton Power will develop and deliver three small, lightweight 50 W high-voltage power supplies that have a configurable output voltage range from 500 to 50 kVDC. The baseline 1 kV design will have 85&#37; efficiency, operate from a 20-30 VDC supply, occupy 108 mL (460W/liter), and weigh 200 g. The design will use an innovative resonant DC-DC boost converter with simple controls and a robust passive switching technique.

Our patented AC-link power electronics technology configured in a soft-switching DC-DC design enables the use of a small internal transformer and 100 kHz switching frequency, to make a power-dense, reliable, efficient system. The configurable transformer ratio and modular output section permit a wide range of output voltages.

The project risk is minimal due to our reference prototypes, which have demonstrated high-voltage DC-DC conversion, high-frequency switching, and thermal management in power-dense, sealed packages.

During Phase I we will deliver a prototype unit, including a detailed design analysis and production cost estimate. In Phase II we will optimize the design to become space-qualified for shock, vibration, interface, EMI, form factor, and other relevant specifications. For our Phase III manufacturing efforts, GHO Ventures is interested in providing funding and Transistor Devices (TDI) has expressed interest in providing manufacturing facilities and expertise.
The objective of this proposal is to study and demonstrate novel
GaAsNP/GaP/AlGaP technology for use in extreme photovoltaic (PV) energy
conversion.  NASA and the scientific community are interested in solar
missions that go as far as Saturn or even into near sun conditions.
Such missions present a challenging problem for PV technology.  In
addition to the requisite high efficiency and reduced solar cell payload
mass, these missions require a PV technology that can withstand the
increased solar intensity, radiation and temperature.   We propose
studying two possible solar cell designs:  The first design utilizes
novel, wide gap GaP-based materials to provide bandgaps well suited for
high-temperature operation and to enhance function in high radiation and
near sun missions.  Such an approach will enable solar cells to operate
at and above 450 Celcius with the highest possible efficiency.  As part
of this study we would investigate the deposition of AlGaP on GaP to
provide materials with bandgaps at or above 2.4 eV.  The second design
we will investigate uses more standard materials that EpiWorks has
already developed for different applications.  This design would employ
InAlP (2.4eV bandgap) lattice-matched to GaAs as the key wide gap
material.  We will study the expected temperature dependence and other
key thermal properties of such a design and compare to the GaP-based approach.
Paragon proposes to develop a single-loop, non-toxic, stagnating active pumped loop thermal control design for NASA's Orion or Lunar Surface Access Module (LSAM) program. While this technology was developed in the Apollo era, it has not been used in space since then.  Furthermore, the fluids used in those first-generation units are not compatible with today's human-rated flight requirements as they could be considered toxic and/or flammable.  Though work at JSC by Tuan et al. has targeted modeling and verifying the model of a stagnating radiator with one candidate fluid, Paragon proposes to parallel this effort with an alternative fluid as a back-up to that currently base-lined in the Orion program.  
This technology will be a significant innovation in that stagnating radiator designs provide self regulation of thermal dissipation parameters.  As heat flow to the radiator is reduced, less cooling capacity is required; stagnating radiators incorporate fluids that gradually change properties. If increased heating loads are encountered, the radiator working fluid changes again to increase the heat transfer capability of the radiator. 
This technology is directly relevant to NASA's Orion and LSAM development.  Our plan for Phase I and II is in-line with bringing this technology from a TRL 2 to a TRL 4-6 depending on Phase II assumptions.
Active flow control to prevent or delay boundary layer separation dramatically improves the performance of air vehicles in critical regions of the flight envelope. FlexSys Inc. has designed a compact, efficient, electromechanical High-Frequency Micro-Vortex Generator system (HiMVG) and tested it a subsonic speeds, proving that, when tuned to the boundary layer, it is as effective at promoting flow attachment as that of the best oscillatory pneumatic systems but is light-weight and energy-efficient, consuming a maximum 6 watts of power per actuator. We propose to enhance the HiMVG system by further reducing its power consumption, increasing its maximum oscillating frequency, and demonstrating its effectiveness at transonic speeds. The proposed system will have a tunable natural frequency, so that as the flow velocity changes, we can adjust the HiMVG system's natural frequency to match the optimal vortex generator frequency, allowing us to maintain nearly constant, ultra-low-power consumption. This will allow effective flow control for diverse flight conditions. The system will consume very little power - less than one watt per actuator - allowing large arrays to operate using light-weight, compact power supplies. These improvements will make the HiMVG system feasible for a wide variety of situations where active flow control is necessary, from subsonic through transonic conditions.
This Phase I SBIR program will result in the application and characterization of highly conductive, inexpensive, nanostructured textiles and composites for ultra lightweight, low-volume antenna applications. Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; is a highly successful product for NanoSonic and has tested well for microwave applications; it has now been extended to similar textile based conductive materials. In this effort, these materials would be characterized and assembled into composites. In Phase II and beyond, the materials would be used to construct antennas with applications intended as deployable, conformal antenna systems for NASA platforms. Although this mesh material could be easily incorporated into reflector design, primary emphasis will be on the construction of mesh patch antennas in the L-band. This is convenient for ease of construction but would also serve the NASA by extending the application of larger aperture radar. Additionally, these materials would easily be extended into lower bands for terrestrial and higher bands for spaceborne applications. In order to design the antennas, NanoSonic will work with a major research university that is a world leader in computational electromagnetics. Additionally, NanoSonic will work with a major NASA prime contractor that has direct ties to multiple NASA platforms.
Cornerstone Research Group, Inc. (CRG) proposes to design and develop a space-qualifiable cyanate ester elastomer for application in self-deployable space structures and future aircraft systems.  Having already demonstrated the feasibility of the current cyanate ester shape memory polymer (SMP) as a space-qualifiable material, CRG proposes to refine its existing cyanate ester SMP to provide the flexibility necessary for self-deployable space structures.  Working extensively on deployable structure systems for NASA and DoD projects (see section 5.2), CRG has demonstrated the feasibility of self-deploying structures by using surrogate styrene-based systems.  CRG now proposes to develop new cyanate ester resins, incorporating the siloxane moiety in the monomer or polymer network, to provide NASA with a material combining the flexibility of siloxanes with CRG's space-qualifiable cyanate ester SMP.  CRG's work with DoD and commercial aerospace customers has also helped to identify the proposed material as a durable, lightweight alternative to current state-of-the-art aircraft systems.  CRG's innovative approach to the development of space-qualifiable cyanate ester elastomer will provide NASA with a low-cost, space-durable, and flexible material for application in self-deployable space structures and future aircraft systems.
SpaceWorks Engineering, Inc. (SEI) proposes development of the Integrated Risk and Cost Model I-RaCM, as the innovation to meet the need for integrated cost and risk assessment early in the design of a new system. I-RaCM will integrate a diverse set of new and industry-standard tools used for life cycle cost, operations, reliability modeling, and estimation of technology development costs. The I-RaCM platform will provide seamless integration between tools, perform all data exchange, and interface with the performance disciplines.
The proposed innovation is a robust and user-friendly software environment where NASA researchers can customize the latest HHT technologies for the LISA (and LIGO) application. The proposed technology will include the latest discoveries and inventions not available in the state-of-the-art. Its taxonomy includes gravitational sensors and sources, expert systems, portable data analysis tools, software development environments, and software tools for distributed analysis and simulation. The disturbance caused by the passage of a gravitational wave is expected to be very small and will be measured with laser interferometry. The Hilbert-HuangTransform (HHT)and related analysis technologies developed since the original concept has been used successfully in other applications to extract non-linear and transient signal comonents of very small magnitude with respect to the measured signal. The proposed research and development team has participated in the latest cycle of technology development related to the HHT at the theoretical, implementation, and application levels. Not only will the creation of the proposed software contribute to the data analysis of the gravitational wave signals in the laser interferometry measurements (for both LIGO and LISA data), but also in other applications within and outside NASA's mission.
Future adaptive, smart air vehicles will continually tune themselves using sophisticated on-board health management and on-the-fly optimization of performance parameters.  To support these dynamic, complex/nonlinear, and multidisciplinary optimization tasks requires novel methodologies.  These new methodologies must be capable of assimilating data from disparate (heterogeneous) sources in a potentially high-dimensional parameter space, yet provide robust and updatable predictions.  Recent progress in cumulative metamodel technology suggests new optimization methodologies capable of combining a priori mathematical models, numerical predictions, and noisy experimental data.  The resulting representations can be constructed on-the-fly and are cumulatively enriched as more data become available.  Nielsen Engineering &amp; Research (NEAR) proposes to investigate the use of Cumulative Global Metamodels (CGM) in novel optimization techniques for conceptual design of highly integrated flight vehicle and air space concepts.  The Phase I will investigate the feasibility of an orders-of-magnitude acceleration in nonlinear multidimensional design by combining existing search techniques with adaptive CGMs.  A special emphasis of the work will be to capitalize on NEAR's CGM uncertainty estimation capabilities to monitor the quality of the metamodel and provide confidence estimates which can be used to guide optimization in a rational and systematic way.
NASA has determined that it requires extremely durable, high-performance, low cost engines to meet future multi-use in-space, non-toxic, cryogenic propulsion requirements such as orbit transfer, descent, ascent and pulsing attitude control. Transpiration-cooling technology has long been considered a candidate for long-life thrust chambers but has never been deployed on a domestic rocket engine. In this program WASK Engineering, Inc. demonstrates methane transpiration cooling of an oxygen/methane thrust chamber at 260 psia chamber pressure and a range of mixture ratios up to 3.2 O/F in a 65 lbf engine assembly. Key tasks are the design and fabrication of a transpiration-cooled chamber spool section that integrates into existing hardware from an on-going USAF program and then hot fire testing it in the existing test stand. Post-test data analyses are used to anchor and refine thermal and performance algorithms in transpiration cooling models that then validate, or invalidate, transpiration cooled thrust chambers for this set of requirements.
Toyon proposes to develop a low-power and compact reconfigurable radio
specifically targeted to NASA mission needs. We envision the radio to be
well matched to small satellites, terrestrial ground links, and
autonomous vehicles. The design is based on the latest in field
programmable gate array (FPGA) and general purpose processors (GPP).
Typical software defined radios (SDRs) rely heavily on digital signal
processors (DSPs) due to their ease of software development and ability
to multitask well. Our emphasis will be on performing all baseband
processing inside the FPGA due to its ability to offer over an order of
magnitude increase in computational efficiency. While this approach does
significantly decrease power consumption and associated platform size,
it requires special considerations, particularly in terms of software
development. As such, we will leverage Toyon's ongoing experience in
computationally efficient waveform and associated software development
using the latest in FPGA behavioral design tools. In addition, the
architecture will stress logic component reuse between multiple
waveforms to support rapid reconfiguration as well as reduce development
time. Our RF front-end design will be a direct-conversion architecture
to reduce size and provide frequency agility. The use of open-standards
interfaces will provide for rapid systems integration.
NASA's Integrated Resilient Aircraft Control (IRAC) Project, Preliminary Technical Plan Summary identifies several causal and contributing factors that can lead to loss of aircraft control.  Among these are adverse conditions and uncommanded motions which may be the result of vehicle or propulsion system failures or damage. One possible source of projectile damage is uncontained engine debris.  This proposal focuses on development of a robust methodology for predicting the damage to aircraft structures from uncontained engine debris. The two objectives of this phase of the work proposed are:
 1. Development of rigorous criteria and methodology for determining projectile sizes, shapes, velocities, and weights resulting from uncontained engine debris.
 2. Research and development of techniques to predict realistic damage sizes and shapes resulting from projectile impacts on aircraft structure.

The Phase I SBIR is intended to be a proof of concept and demonstration of the feasibility of interfacing UEDDAM with LSDYNA.  One of the main products of the effort will be to well prepared plan for proceeding to Phase II. Whereas the Phase I product will be a proof of concept, it will not be ready for commercialization.  It will be a prototype that does not have the user-friendly features such as graphical user interface (GUI).  Nor will it have the ability to account for composite materials in the target.  Thus the Phase II effort will focus on these two issues.
Gases trapped in the propellant feed lines of space-based rocket engines due to cryogenic propellant boil-off or pressurant ingestion can result in poor combustion efficiencies, combustion instabilities, or long startup transients.  To assist NASA in the use of the high performing liquid oxygen propellant combinations in space engines, IN Space proposes to investigate the feasibility of an innovative swirl injector design for liquid oxygen and hydrocarbon propellants to achieve high combustion efficiencies, stable operation, and short and smooth startup transients despite potential two-phase oxidizer flow.  Additionally anticipated benefits of the injector include low inert mass and low manufacturing costs.  IN Space plans to carry out the feasibility assessment of the injector design by conducting broad parametric test fire evaluations of a notional LOX/hydrocarbon workhorse thruster based on present NASA needs to assess the effects of several design considerations on the combustion efficiency, static combustion stability, and startup transient duration performance merits.  A preliminary flightweight injector design will also be generated in order to compare the estimated injector mass with similar injector designs.
This Phase 1 proposal addresses the 2006 NASA SBIR Research Topic S8.05 Science Data Management and Visualization (GSFC).  The subtopic we address is Distributed Data Management and Access: Dynamically configurable high speed access to data distributed and shared over wide area high speed network environments.  We propose a novel offload engine NIC, with network connections scaling at n x 10Gbps increments.  The application is for present (10Gbps) and next generation NASA and commercial cluster and grid computing systems requiring ultra high-speed, low-cost offload engines with rates ranging from 10 through future rates of 100 Gbps full-duplex.
Successful completion of this Phase 1 project will prove feasibility of our innovation through architectural models, ultra high-speed logic simulations, and experimental results.  Deliverables include system on chip core IP, initial firmware, and feasibility results showing UDP/IP from 10 - 100 Gbps full-duplex, and the maximum bandwidth for a variant of TCP/IP.  We will also have the system design for our Phase 2 prototype system.  Using a 10 Gbps NPU development system, we conduct a preliminary demonstration of offload engine performance.
ZONA Technology, Inc. (ZONA) proposes a R&amp;D effort to develop a Unified Nonlinear Flight Dynamics and Aeroelastic Simulator (UNFDAS) Tool that will combine proven simulation and visualization techniques to accurately match in-flight recorded dynamic behavior of an air vehicle. 
ZONA proposes to develop the UNFDAS Tool through a blend of state-of-the-art aerodynamic model updating and control-oriented techniques. It blends mathematically sound flight dynamics and aeroelastic modeling approaches with CFD, wind-tunnel or flight-test data. The end product is a nonlinear dynamic tool capable of simulating the key aeroelastic coupling mechanism between structural modes and unsteady aerodynamic effects with classical rigid-body dynamics. Feasibility studies are proposed to validate the UNFDAS Tool using a suite of actual data from flying qualities and flutter flight tests.
This enabling technology will be invaluable to the flight test community by accurately simulating the air vehicle responses to different input commands, and then identifying the critical flying conditions before actual flights are performed.
Marketing the resulting software package will be simplified by taking advantage of ZONA's current extensive customer list. ZONA Technology's reputation and track record in supporting the aerospace industry and government with ZONA codes can assure the success of the commercialization plan.
Rotor blades adapted for vibration control have the added benefit of
extended blade and rotor life, as well as improved passenger comfort.
Approaches that have been explored for on-blade active control or
individual blade control include control surface actuation, such as
trailing edge flaps, and integrated blade manipulation, such as
controllable twist.  For retro-fit and upgrade purposes, the advanced
rotor system needs an actuation scheme with appropriate force,
deflection, and bandwidth, without detrimentally increasing on-blade
mass.  Research in this area has been conducted with potential solutions
employing various conventional active material actuator configurations,
but these systems have typically suffered from inherent disadvantages.
Due to these limitations, Techno-Sciences, Inc. proposes the use of
pneumatic artificial muscles to actuate a trailing edge flap device for
management of rotorcraft vibration.  The proposed actuators are
constructed of passive materials that are very mass efficient and low
cost, while maintaining adequate force, stroke, and bandwidth.  Oriented
along the blade span and located within the airfoil contour near the
blade root, the antagonistic configuration of actuators offers
bi-directional flap deflection and operation under a low centrifugal
field.  A lightweight mechanism accompanies the actuators, running along
the span, to transfer and tailor the mechanical work from the actuators
to the span station of the flap.  The proposed research plan will work
to properly size and scale the actuators and mechanism for the desired
response, and construct a prototype device that demonstrates the
feasibility of the concept on the bench-top and in a rotating
environment at full-scale loading.
The objective of the proposed work is to develop a design model for a CNT cold cathode, low power, passively cooled, and grounded-anode X-ray tube that is compatible with a miniature XRD system designed for future space exploration.  

We propose to develop a miniature X-ray source for instruments for in situ measurements on planetary surfaces.This X-ray source will integrate an X-ray emitting vacuum tube and both low and high-voltage power supply into a compact and lightweight unit.  This X-ray source will enable further miniaturized X-ray instruments to be deployed for surface and subsurface exploration of the solar system. The basis of this innovation is in the application of state of the art materials to produce a low power passively cooled grounded-anode X-ray tube.

These objectives will be achieved with an X-ray source that combines the advantage of easy thermal management and simple control electronics.  The concept relies on the use of state of the art ceramic materials that combines very good electrical insulation properties with good thermal conductivity.   This source will allow using the grounded cathode geometry for simple and compact electronics, and rely on the heatsink properties of the ceramic electrical insulator for heat dissipation to the ground. The most promising material is for this application is Aluminum Nitride (AlN).

Objective specifications for the source to be developed are as follows:

	Accelerating voltage, ???.....25 kV
	Electron Beam current, ??.....200 micro Amps
	X-ray spot size??????.........50 microns, Max.
	X-ray Tube Dimensions, (lxd)?.45 mm x 15 mm
	X-ray tube mass??????.........   grams
	Power conditioner volume??....	 cc
	Power conditioner mass???.....    grams
In this SBIR effort, Los Gatos Research (LGR) proposes to develop a suite of laser-based diagnostics for the study of reactive and non-reactive hypersonic flows.  These sensors will include both in situ and line-of-sight measurements of several critical parameters including gas temperature, velocity, and composition.  Both established near-infrared and emerging mid-infrared laser sources will be utilized to make highly-accurate measurements via tunable diode laser absorption spectrometry.  The SBIR instrument will be the first system capable of providing real-time, rapid quantification of these important combustion parameters in NASA's hypersonic wind tunnels.  Such quantification is essential to the development of improved reactive CFD models and subsequent hypersonic propulsion systems for future aerospace vehicles.
Future space-based observatories imaging in the 4-40 lm spectral regime will be passively cooled. The objective of this research effort is to demonstrate near theoretical performance of bolometer-based infrared focal plane arrays (FPAs) covering the 4-40 lm wavelength region by operating the FPA at reduced temperature. Amorphous silicon-alloy resistive bolomoters exhibit increased temperature coefficient of resistance when cooled below room temperature and are well suited for operation over the 30K-200K detector temperature range. Detector process optimization will allow performance levels close to theoretical limits. The cooled bolometer is compatible with advanced readout technologies, such as switched capacitor integrators, offered by Black Forest Engineering. The amorphous silicon-alloy bolometer process, optimized on Phase I for cryogenic operation, will be a basis for future large formant monolithic 1024x768 format FPAs fabricated on Phase II to support NASA passively cooled  imaging applications and DoD/commercial cryo-cooled systems.
This Small Business Innovation Research project will develop Pressure Controlled Heat Pipes (PCHPs) for precise temperature control (milli-Kelvin level).  Several optical systems, lasers, and detectors require tight temperature control to better than +/-1K.  Some new missions even desire temperature control and thermal gradient control to the milli-Kelvin level.  Typically precision temperature control is achieved by cold biasing the device and using electrical trim heaters.  Variable conductance heat pipes are also used; however, the control band is not precise enough without unusually large reservoir volumes.  The pressure controlled heat pipe has the potential to achieve precise temperature control without energy wasting control heaters and without unfavorable mass and volume reservoirs.  PCHPs are essentially actively controlled VCHPs.  In a PCHP, the control system senses an increase (or decrease) in pressure and actively changes either the gas charge in the reservoir or the volume of the reservoir to maintain the operating temperature precisely at the set point.   The Phase I program will prove the feasibility of the PCHP concept.  A prototype heat pipe will be built and tested.  In Phase II, the integration and implementation of various control strategies will be performed.
Aurora Flight Sciences proposes to develop specialized algorithms and software decision-aiding tools for four-dimensional (4D) vehicle-centric, tactical trajectory management (TTM), derived from algorithms developed at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) to perform similar functions in military scenarios.  These algorithms, based on the concept of receding horizon mixed-integer linear programming (RH-MILP), will be specifically tailored to the problem of optimizing the trades between multiple 4D trajectories (4DTs) in the dynamic airspace environment.  In particular, the innovation that Aurora proposes is to model and address the stochastic nature of weather and associated airspace and resource restrictions in the flight path, respecting the fact that the time horizon over which sufficiently accurate weather estimates are available may be short compared to the overall TTM request-assign-update cycle (as envisioned by planners of the Next Generation Air Transportation System).  The general problem of increasing uncertainty as planning horizons increase will be a central focus of algorithm development.  This innovation addresses the needs for rapidly accommodating dynamic changes in aircraft tactical situations and responding to detected external hazards, for introducing any-time planning algorithms, and for generation and specification of 4D trajectories.  Currently algorithms that directly address these needs in the context of the NGATS concept of operations (CONOPS) are in the early development stages; technology transition from related military approaches as described herein will therefore greatly benefit the state of the art in national airspace system (NA) operational tools.
Recent R&amp;D associated with designing high speed rotorcraft has been greatly hampered by a lack of test data and confidence in predictions for rotors operating above advance ratio 1.0.  This proposal outlines a plan for addressing this situation through a series of rotor tests and analytical enhancements.  The three-pillared approach begins with a model rotor test in Phase I that will obtain essential data on autorotation characteristics of rotors operating at high advance ratio.  The second pillar will involve analytical enhancements for comprehensive rotorcraft analyses featuring an improved yawed flow correction and an improved lifting surface blade model that will properly shed wake off the "leading edge" of blades operating as reverse velocity rotors.  The third pillar will focus on improving grid generation methods for CFD solutions to appropriately model reverse and spanwise flow regions.  Phase II will see additional rotor tests and model improvements followed by incorporation of new technology into a software module suitable for immediate implementation in rotorcraft analysis and flight simulation software.  The new software module will provide a hierarchy of methods capable of modeling high speed rotorcraft blade aerodynamics for a broad spectrum of fidelity/speed requirements ranging from real-time flight simulation to high resolution CFD.
Metron Aviation designs and develops an integrated methodology and supporting algorithms for estimating environmental impacts of increased traffic on the surface and in the terminal airspace, and extends beyond estimation to identify key causes and develop mitigation options.  From previous work, we provide multi-dimensional impact calculation in terms of noise, emissions, and fuel usage, as well as measurement of these impacts with respect to both baseline and alternative future scenarios.  In AMITIE we add the following capabilities critically important to design of the next-generation system within environmental constraints:
?	Automated identification of scenario elements causing the principal environmental impacts;
?	Automated generation of mitigation options; and
?	Quantification of the benefits of the mitigation options.
The specific technical objectives are:
?	Integrated estimation/mitigation methodology that provides the basis for closing the feedback loop from environmental impacts to system design and development. 
?	Develop supporting algorithms that calculate the appropriate metrics, analyze them to identify major causes of impacts, and generate mitigation options that reduce the impacts.  
?	Develop a software prototype that implements the estimation, analysis, and mitigation algorithms.
?	Exercise the prototype against test cases to demonstrate the feasibility and value of the approach
In this program, Agiltron and the groups of Professors Rubner and Cohen at MIT propose a novel nano-porous coating for next generation NASA UV anti-reflection (AR) applications. The collaborative research leverages recent breakthroughs in nano-porous self-assembled low reflective index multilayer structures achieved at MIT, and Agiltron's recently developed mist coating processes. The proposed UV AR coatings consist of inter-connected oxide nanoparticles in the form of a 3D nanoporous network and with a rough surface morphology. This AR coating is intended to have high UV AR performance with broadband and wide acceptance angle, high transparency, long environmental stability, high scratch and abrasion resistance, high mechanical integrity, and that has not previously been attained. More ideally, this coating  can be applied on large area glass and plastic substrates (polycarbonate, PMMA) using industry scale mist coating technology and low annealing temperature, leading to low fabrication cost. The feasibility of the proposed approach will be demonstrated in Phase I. In Phase II, we will test its applicability to plastic optical components, and evaluate AR performance, and scratch and abrasion resistance.
The program aims to demonstrate a new genre of all-magnetic logic circuits which are radiation-tolerant and capable of reliable operation in extreme environmental conditions including low temperatures and wide temperature swings.  The circuits are based on tunneling magnetoresistive technology, and are expected to have a greater single-event latchup immunity than semiconductor-based CMOS logic.  Recent breakthroughs in magnetic tunnel junction technology have resulted in magnetoresistive responses in excess of 200&#37;.  With these developments adequate current gain may now be realized to implement practical multi-stage logic circuits.  This work will seek to prove novel gate designs and explore the magnetic thin-film tunneling structures necessary to realize them.
This research proposes to develop a lightweight approach to achieving the high concentrations of solar energy needed for a solar furnace achieving temperatures of 1000-2000C.  Conventional solar-fired furnaces face significant challenges in fabricating, deploying and pointing the large aperture, high concentration ratio reflectors that power them. The Modular Distributed Concentrator (MDC) is a systems solution comprising an array of identical, modestly sized solar concentrator dishes with a network of optical or thermal transmission links that route the high quality concentrated energy to a centralized receiver.  The approach provides lower mass because of the ability to optimize the scale of the individual reflectors to achieve high concentration ratio without the heavy structure needed to achieve and maintain optical alignment found in large aperture optics.  The minimum deployed height associated with an array of concentrators allows for good packaging efficiency and minimum deployment complexity, and since the dishes are one-piece and identical, tooling and manufacturing costs are significantly reduced.  The proposed program performs system optimization trades and then proceeds to the preliminary design and development of key components such as the optical light guide and thermal heat pipe transmission links that carry the energy to the furnace, as well as the key input and output interfaces.  A proof-of-concept demonstration in Phase I will be used to validate the performance model and guide the detailed design, development and environmental testing of system components in Phase II.
Optical tracking and identification sensors have numerous NASA and non-NASA applications. For example, airborne or spaceborne imaging sensors are used to visualize and track vehicles during launch and landing operations. Existing identification and tracking sensors cannot meet some of the advanced performance requirements including wide field of view (FOV) for panoramic situation awareness, high spatial resolution for detailed object shape discrimination, high spectral resolution for object material signature recognition, and fast response for transit event or moving objects tracking and identification, as well as low weight, volume and power requirements, et al. There is a demand to investigate innovative and unconventional optical or hyperspectral imaging systems to enhance the ability of today's tracking and identification systems for NASA as well as non-NASA applications. New Span Opto-Technology Inc. proposes herein a novel optical configuration that is capable of simultaneously providing wide FOV hyperspectral imaging for object detection and high spatial resolution in areas of interest without mechanical scanning for precise object recognition, positioning and tracking. In Phase I we will establish the model, demonstrate the feasibility, and recognize challenging issues of the proposed concept.
To enhance aerodynamic design capabilities, Desktop Aeronautics proposes to combine a new sweep/taper integrated-boundary-layer (IBL) code that includes transition prediction with a Cartesian Euler solver developed at NASA. This combined solver will play an important role in the preliminary design of both conventional and unconventional aerospace vehicles traveling at subsonic, transonic, and supersonic speeds.  Complex aircraft configurations may be easily analyzed with the practically automated surface intersection and Cartesian mesh generation of the Euler solver.  The proposed design-oriented approach to transition prediction will permit rapid assessment of aircraft that exploit natural laminar flow to reduce drag. To facilitate design and numerical optimization using the new aerodynamic analysis, a parameterized geometry engine that can quickly model complex aircraft configurations will be interfaced with the Euler/IBL solver. Desktop Aeronautics will also develop a set of optimization tools well-suited to use with the geometry engine and aerodynamic analysis.  This set of tools will permit aerodynamic shape optimization and multidisciplinary design at earlier stages in the vehicle development process.
The NASA commitment to a human presence in space exploration results in the interaction of humans with challenging environments in space, on lunar, and on planetary bodies.   Meeting these challenges requires the development of technologies that will support human system interaction by integrating monitoring, feedback and situational awareness across all types of mission parameters and observables. A successful human system interaction (HSI) system could extend based on existing agent frameworks and software architectures in which NASA is interested. Our proposed approach enables the design of embedded protocols for human-agent interactions to support crew health, safety, and cognitive load modeling in the context of supporting plan execution as well as overall mission goals and activities. Particularly, our proposed HSI framework consists of various types of agents (including sensing and situational awareness abilities, etc.), a suite of HSI protocols for delegation, adjustable autonomy, situational awareness, HSI and mission-oriented coordination, and the integration of the proposed framework with existing systems to assist mission task operations by providing previously hard to observe, yet vital dynamic information, e.g. human health conditions. Our innovation is an agent-based integrated framework for modeling, simulation and implementation of context and mission aware human-system interaction protocols and interfaces.
Advancements in sensors/detectors are needed to support future NASA mission concepts including polarimetry, large format imaging arrays, and high-sensitivity spectroscopy. The corresponding data acquisition systems must employ high-speed, extra low power, linear analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) featuring a wide input bandwidth and reasonable effective number of bits, followed by a digital signal processor usually implemented inside a field-programmable gate array with a relatively low-speed data interface. In addition, radiation tolerance represents one of the main requirements for the space-oriented electronics. Commercially available ADCs feature high power consumption, high latency, poor linearity, and low radiation tolerance at high input bandwidths above 1GHz. To address the described needs, we propose a novel, low-power, high input bandwidth, radiation-tolerant, under sampling ADC with an output digital demultiplexer that enables direct data loading into a standard FPGA. Wide input bandwidth, low input return loss, 6-bit accuracy, low distortion and power consumption will be achieved through utilization of a proprietary adaptive matching filter and dual-output sample-and-hold amplifier followed by two reduced-rate ADCs. The digitized signals are delivered to the proprietary low-power LVDS output buffers after rate adjustment and realignment to the selected clock signal. Advanced technology featuring heterojunction bipolar transistors will provide the required radiation tolerance.
In response to the need for motors and actuators that can operate in the harsh venusian environment for extended periods of time, on the order of several hours to days, Honeybee Robotics proposes continued development of an extreme temperature brushless motor and a position feedback device (resolver or tachometer) and a demonstration of both in simulated Venus surface conditions.  During Phase I a first-generation prototype motor/resolver will be designed, built, and tested in Venus-like conditions (486&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C temperature and mostly CO2 gas environment). Phase I testing will verify the feasibility of the designs and confirm that the motor/resolver combination can operate at 486&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C for an extended period of time.  Fully developed and optimized versions of this motor/resolver could be used to actuate drills, robotic arms, and other devices outside of an environment-controlled landed platform on the surface of Venus. The device's ability to survive for hours (and potentially longer) in that environment is a major benefit to future Venus science missions. It would permit time for communication ground loops to optimize sampling and drilling target selection as well as allow for multiple samples to be acquired from the subsurface.  In a potential Phase II effort, an extreme environment brushless motor/resolver combination will be developed to TRL 6.
Validating software is a critical step in developing high confidence
systems.  Typical software development practices are not acceptable in
systems where failure leads to loss of life or other high costs.  New
software development tools are needed to radically reduce defect rates
and enable the high levels of confidence required for safety- and
security-critical systems.  Lightweight verification techniques have
proven themselves effective in finding defects in large software systems
by balancing rigor with scalability and usability.  Lightweight
verification techniques do not exhaustively check software, but they can
find defects in systems that are too large for more rigorous analysis
techniques, and are fast becoming an essential tool for software
developers.  The techniques generally fail to address key sources of
problems specific to embedded systems: paths due to asynchronous
transfer of control or context switches between tasks are not
considered; assembly language components are ignored; it is hard to
detect violations of domain-specific rules.  We propose to extend and
adapt our static analysis technology to make it capable of addressing
these problems.  We will exploit our existing connections with NASA
facilities to gain help validating our approach and to ensure that the
solution we propose is responsive to NASA's unique needs.
MagiQ proposes to develop a compact tunable high-efficiency low-power-consumption entangled photon source.  The source, based on inter-Fabry-Perot-cavity Spontaneous Parametric Down Conversion (SPDC) of pump light in periodically polled non-linear waveguides (PPLN or PPKTP) is expected to provide high spectral density flux of entangled photon pairs.  The output wavelength will be within the C-band (1529 to 1563 nm) permitting usage of plethora of components developed for classical communication links.  The Fabry-Perot setup will provide for the narrow frequency output ? an attractive feature for low power communications in presence of the ambient light.  Waveguide-based inter-cavity SPDC is the main proposed innovation.  The entangled output wavelength tuning will be achieved by changing the wavelength of the pump light.  The wavelength agility will facilitate device usage in the reconfigurable communications links ? a feature that can be very important in the planetary exploration systems involving small robotic explorers.  Breadboard demonstration of the time-bin entanglement setup will be completed during Phase I of the project; delivery of a fully functional device producing both, time-bin and polarization entanglement is expected at the end of Phase II.
The key innovation proposed in this effort is the development of a model composition toolkit that will enable NASA Airspace Concept Evaluation System (ACES) users to design and compose agents, activities, and models to meet specific design requirements. Our technical approach builds on recent advances in formal agent specification, role composition and model composers. The toolkit will allow end-users to use a graphical editor and templates/property sheets to load, create, configure and interconnect agents, activities and domain models.. In addition to composing agent and models, a key feature provided by this toolkit is a family of "physical language specific adaptors" that will allow users to import domain models written Matlab&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt;. The toolkit will also provide capabilities to export ACED LDC data to tools such as Matlab for post analysis and graphing.  The primary focus of the Phase I effort will focus on demonstrating the feasibility and capability of this toolkit for the ACES Terminal Area Plant. We propose to demonstrate this capability by developing showing how an end-user, not experienced with Java, can easily add a C2 agent  to perform runway balancing and replace the current timer-based Terminal Area Link transit models with 4-D trajectory models.
The proposed SBIR project will develop OZ, an innovative primary flight display for aircraft.  The OZ display, designed from "first principles" of vision science, cognition, and Human-Centered Computing, brings all cockpit information required for flight together into a single, unified display that uses a common frame of reference employing both the focal and ambient channels of human visual processing.  

This proposal addresses Topic A1.05 Crew Systems Technologies for Improved Aviation Safety.  It specifically addresses the goals of ensuring appropriate situation awareness and facilitating and extending human perception, information interpretation, and response planning and selection.  Its primary focus is in the SBIR topical areas of interest in Data fusion technologies for real-time integration and integrity checking of single source information streams of varying spatial and temporal resolution; and Human-centered technologies to improve the access and performance of less-experienced operators and pilots from special population groups.

Previous experimentation has shown that OZ provides significantly better performance for pilots than conventional flight instrumentation.  The proposal will test the feasibility of using OZ to provide situational awareness superior to that provided by both conventional instrumentation and commercially available electronic primary flight displays.  Phase I will show that OZ is also superior to existing electronic primary flight displays that display conventional flight instrumentation on an electronic display and will develop and demonstrate a prototype OZ system in a general aviation aircraft.  In Phase II the prototype system will be flight tested against competing electronic flight information systems and a DO-178B compliant OZ system will be developed and flight tested to determine its suitability for FAA certification for general aviation aircraft.
Future NASA planetary exploration missions require secondary (rechargeable) batteries that can operate at extreme temperatures (-60&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C to 60&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C) yet deliver high specific energies (&gt; 180 W7hr/kg) and long cycle life (&gt;2,000 cycles). Functional organic materials are a promising technology for use as the cathode in Li-Ion batteries due to their high specific energy density. It is also expected that the use of polymeric cathodes instead of lithium metal oxides will make Li-Ion batteries thinner, lighter and less environmentally hazardous. This Phase I proposal is based on demonstrating the feasibility of fully packaged Li-Ion batteries that have a superior specific energy (&gt;200 W7hr/kg) through the use of novel polymeric cathodes (composite conducting polymer/disulfide materials) when coupled with room temperature ionic liquid (RTIL) electrolyte. Compared to traditional organic electrolyte systems (e.g. (e.g. lithium salts dissolved in alkyl carbonates), RTIL electrolytes have favorable electrochemical windows (&gt; 5 V) and high ionic conductivity over a wide range of temperatures from ?60?C to 250?C and are known to prolong the lifetime of conducting polymer electrochemical devices.  Besides these highly desirable characteristics for use in these novel Li-ion batteries, RTILs have inherent safety characteristics by virtue of their thermal stability, non-flammability, non-volatility and low heat of reaction with active materials.
Microcosm has developed and qualified strong, all-composite LOX tanks for launch vehicles. Our new 42-inch diameter tank design weighs 486 lbs and burst without leaking at 2,125 psi, within 3.5&#37; of the predicted burst pressure. This SBIR will analyze, design, build, and test much lighter weight all composite cryogenic tanks and examine, develop, and test alternative insulation techniques to minimize boil-off. This SBIR will also examine the reuse of propellant tanks as crew and storage habitats. During Phase I, we will design and fabricate 12 10-inch diameter and 2 25-inch diameter cryogenic tanks with a design burst pressure of approximately 850 psi.  Eight of the 10-inch tanks and one 25-inch tank will be thermally cycled and burst tested using liquid nitrogen to obtain statistical data.  The remaining 4 10-inch tanks will first be thermally cycled, then flushed out and re-pressurized with gaseous helium to simulate reuse as a crew habitat. The remaining 25-inch tank will be delivered to NASA for further testing.  Phase II will fabricate, build, and test larger tanks and tanks specifically intended to meet the needs of future NASA programs, and alternative insulation approaches will be evaluated to minimize boil-off.
This SBIR project will achieve trusted, reconfigurable, intelligent autonomy through system-level validation. The goal is to design and develop a representation and reasoning system for system-level verification and validation (V&amp;V) of high-level autonomous control for complex systems operating in dynamic environments.  Starting from  component-level behavioral guarantees, the System-Level Autonomy Trust Enabler (SLATE) will reason about composition, abstraction, and embedding of system components, resulting in high-confidence guarantees of behavior for high-level autonomous control systems relevant to a wide range of NASA applications, including manned and unmanned spacecraft, rovers, and habitats. SLATE will support incremental computation of guarantees and the assumptions required, vastly simplifying the reconfiguration, upgrading, or retargeting of autonomous control systems.  Phase I will provide a feasibility demonstration and evaluation of SLATE's representation and inference through application to a multi-level robotic control system, and identify the key features needed in an application-ready version of SLATE. Phase II will develop an application-specific version and provide a user interface, address performance and reasoning issues, and demonstrate operation on a representative NASA application.
Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI), in collaboration with the Lockheed Martin
Space Systems Company (LMSSC) and Orbital Technologies Corporation
(Orbitec), proposes to develop the multi-use solar thermal system for
oxygen production from lunar regolith. In this system solar radiation is
collected by the concentrator array which transfers the concentrated
solar radiation to the optical waveguide (OW) transmission line made of
low loss optical fibers. The OW transmission line directs the solar
radiation to the thermal receiver for thermochemical processing of
in-situ resources or for manufacturing of materials and components on
the planetary surface. Key features of the proposed system are: 1.
Highly concentrated solar radiation (10^3 ~ 10^4 suns) can be
transmitted via the flexible OW transmission line directly to the
thermal receiver for thermochemical or manufacturing;  2.  Power
scale-up of the system can be achieved by incremental increase of the
number of concentrator units; 3.  The system can be autonomous,
stationary or mobile, and easily transported and deployed on the lunar
surface; and 4. The system can be applied to a variety of ISRU processes.
We propose to develop a Multi-Element Lean Direct Injection, ME-LDI, Combustion concept with the following innovative features:
1.	Independent, mini burning zones created by containing the flame in a cylinder downstream of each fuel injector/swirler element in a multiple fuel injector array, see figure 1.  The independent burning zones will enable fuel staging the fuel injectors (turning off fuel to selected fuel injectors) to cover the operating cycle, such that at each point of the operating cycle the combustor will have high combustion efficiency (&gt;99&#37;) and low NOx emissions. At high power conditions the combustion efficiency should be greater than 99.9&#37;.
2.	A low flow number, "Butterfly" fuel injector will be incorporated into ME-LDI that is low cost and simple to manufacture but a highly effective atomizer.  The term "Butterfly" derives from the butterfly shape of the spray.  The shape of the spray is formed by two diametrically opposed slots cut through a closed end fuel tube, see figure 2.  The fuel flow through each slot forms a fan spray.  The slot width can be varied to control drop-sizes within the spray.
NextGen is proposing a simple yet powerful damage identification technique for advanced composite structures.  We propose to develop a damage index based on vibration signature comparison with original signatures of the structure. Our approach is to autonomously perform damage detection as well as identification of non-service loading events by minimum number of sensors. We will start with the preliminary work done by Dr. Mal at UCLA and improve upon it to achieve the objective of cradle-to-grave degradation monitoring. The overall goal of the program is to develop an accurate, rapid, inexpensive method for detection of composite internal damage including bonds strength in built-up structures. The objective of the Phase I program is to develop and demonstrate that the proposed technique is accurate and reliable.  We will achieve TRL of 2 in Phase I and subsequent technology transition to TRL of 4 in Phase II. NextGen's strength lies in related prior work, an in-depth understanding of damage modes in advanced composite structures, and comprehensive knowledge of damage detection techniques.  Dr. Ajit Mal of the Mechanical Engineering Department at UCLA has an exceptional background in structural health monitoring built on decades of cutting edge research in NDE
TRS Technologies proposes novel single crystal piezomotors for large torque, high precision, and cryogenic actuation with capability of position set-hold with power-off for passive optics platforms.  The proposed concept will advance the state-of-art cryogenic rotary motors considering the excellent cryogenic properties of single crystal piezoelectric. This material exhibits d33 and d31 at 30K similar or higher than that of PZT at room temperature and it has a very high electromechanical coupling.  These properties result in an excellent figure of merit for resonant devices. TRS and Va. Tech. will use single crystals to fabricate "wobbling mode" and "flexural traveling wave"  piezomotors with "33 mode" single ring stacks and plate stacks instead of the conventional "31" mode plates for excitation. In the Phase I project, FEA modeling considering the special properties of single crystals will be conducted and novel piezomotors with "33" mode single crystal ring and plate stacks will be built and characterized at temperatures from 300K to 80K. By the conclusion of Phase I program the feasibility of single crystal piezomotor for cryogenic rotary motion control requiring large torque and high angular resolution  will be demonstrated. The optimum single crystal piezomotor design and the precise cryogenic rotary motion control system development will take place in Phase II.
With the expected extension of duration of the space missions outlined in NASA's Vision of Space Exploration, such as a manned mission to Mars or the establishment of a lunar base, the need to produce potable water from onboard wastewater streams in a closed-loop system becomes critical for life support and health of crew members. Reverse osmosis (RO) is a compact process that has proven its ability to remove inorganic and organic contaminants from space mission wastewater. The objective of this Phase I study is to ascertain whether composite hollow fiber membrane elements are a more efficient alternative to the current generation of spiral wound membrane elements for the reclamation of space mission wastewater. In particular, the use of low-energy composite hollow fiber membrane elements being developed at SFST for treating multi-component (both inorganic and organic contaminants) wastewater streams found aboard spacecraft will be investigated. The higher membrane surface area of these composite hollow fiber membrane elements enables the RO membrane element to have 30&#37; higher water productivity at substantially higher single-pass recoveries (60-75&#37; vs 10-20&#37; for spiral wound elements). Furthermore, we will also investigate possible solutions to minimize fouling of these hollow fiber membranes by increasing the hydrophilicity of the membrane surface using a variety of surface modification techniques. Such hollow fiber membranes are expected to show better resistance to fouling by hydrophobic compounds, and thus these membranes will be less likely to be clogged by potential foulants. These improvements to the RO membrane element have the potential to decrease the mass, size and power requirements of the RO subsystem, and also decrease the size of the pre-treatment unit.
The purpose of this NASA SBIR Phase I proposal is to develop the
prototype of a compact single-frequency mode   one longitudinal and one
transverse mode  laser oscillator (SFM) using a pulse pumped Er-doped
multimode fiber as an active element inserted in the external cavity.
The main feature of the proposed design is the use of volume
transmitting or reflecting Bragg gratings for longitudinal and
transverse mode selection in an external laser resonator. The technical
approach for the development such a laser is based on application a new
type of robust optical element as one of the cavity mirrors, a volume
Bragg grating recorded in photo-thermo-refractive (PTR) glass. The
selectivity of volume Bragg gratings to wavelengths, angles of incidence
and at certain conditions to the state of incident polarization could be
successfully applied in design of a novel type of a laser resonator. The
use of volume Bragg gratings for mode selection instead of conventional
fiber Bragg gratings will result in decreasing of power density by
several orders of magnitude and, therefore, will increase threshold of
laser damage and other nonlinear processes dramatically.
The innovation in this proposed effort is the development of
lightweight, non-eroding nozzle materials for use in propulsion systems.
Lightweight structures are desirable for space transportation vehicle
systems in order to reduce launch costs, increase mission
flexibility/efficiency, and add robustness with respect to the ability
to add weight or additional materials to the mission with minimum
sacrifice in performance.  The use of non-eroding materials, coupled
with lightweight materials, as rocket nozzles can further increase
mission flexibility by allowing an increase in performance, higher
maximum temperatures, greater speeds, greater range, bigger payloads,
and longer lifetimes.  The higher maximum temperatures may eliminate the
need for cooling air, while simultaneously increasing engine efficiency.
Higher maximum use temperature additionally allows for increased
stagnation temperatures and pressures, increasing the propellant
enthalpy, which, in return, can significantly increase the velocity and
performance of the projectile.  These benefits result in increased fuel
savings.  The advanced materials study will include monolithic ceramics,
refractory metals, and high temperature ceramic matrix composite (CMC)
materials.  The manufacturing processes for the monolithic ceramics and
refractory metal materials will include hot isostatic processing (HIP),
vacuum plasma spraying (VPS), electrodeposition.  The CMC fabrication
processes will include braiding, filament winding, tape wrapping, and
involute layup.
Honeybee Robotics proposes to build upon technology we have previously developed with Goddard Space Flight Center and redesign specifically for the lunar environment a "gear bearing" transmission.  We intend to bring this technology to a higher Technology Readiness Level (TRL) for the number of applications imagined for future missions to the lunar poles requiring motors and drive trains ranging from mobility systems, in situ resource utilization (ISRU) machinery, and robotic systems mechanisms. The advantages of this design lend themselves well to spaceflight mechanisms in general and specifically to the extreme conditions at the lunar poles.  The high gear reductions possible within a single stage, coupled with the already compact size make gear bearing transmissions ideal for spaceflight hardware where size and weight are at a premium.  The relative simplicity, the elimination of traditional bearings in the transmission, and the avoidance of sliding friction altogether have significant advantages in cryogenic and hard vacuum environments where material and lubricant selection are limited.
Li-ion batteries with  specific energy &gt;180 Wh/kg, calendar life (&gt;15years), and a wide operating temperature range (-60&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C to 60&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C) are crucial for the deployment of exploration vehicles such as rovers, landers, and penetraters as well as for low temperature burst power communication. The sub-ambient conductivity and liquid range of present rechargeable Li-ion battery electrolytes severely limit low temperature use. Co-solvents freezing as low as -132oC and Li salts with highly delocalized anions, enabling high degree of ionic dissociation in low dielectric environments provide us with a unique opportunity to develop non aqueous electrolytes for the low temperature with ionic conductivities well above 10-4 Scm-1.  Our aim is to use these novel electrolytes as a direct substitute for the present electrolytes without affecting Li-ion battery performance or life during normal operation and access as least half the rated capacity at  -60&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C and 1/2C discharge rate. Working in collaboration with a leading developer of Li-ion batteries in Phase I, our low temperature electrolyte formulations will be evaluated in Li test cells containing anodes and cathodes used in commercial scale battery manufacture. In Phase II, electrolyte composition  will be further optimized and prototype batteries will be fabricated and tested for performance.
Florida Turbine Technologies (FTT) proposes to conduct research necessary to develop a physics-based pneumatic hammer instability model for hydrostatic bearings operating in a compressible fluid.  The innovation of the resulting model is to account for the extreme density, compressibility, and non-uniform pressure variations found in highly turbulent rocket engine liquid hydrogen turbopump hydrostatic bearings as well as the variations resulting from 3-D effects such as tangential and/or axial injection, which are ignored in the pneumatic hammer instability criteria currently used throughout industry.  The ability to accurately predict the stability of highly turbulent, highly compressible liquid hydrogen hydrostatic bearings incorporating 3-D effects is essential for NASA to achieve IHPRPT objectives through the use of smaller, faster turbopumps.  This project will enable the accurate prediction of bearing stability, resulting in higher performing bearings that enable smaller operating clearances for improved turbopump and system-level performance.
Payload Systems Inc. and the MIT Space Systems Laboratory propose Self-assembling, Wireless, Autonomous, Reconfigurable Modules (SWARM) as an innovative approach to modular fabrication and in-space robotic assembly of large scale systems.  Fabrication of modular components yields fabrication savings associated with large production volume and automated integration and test.  In-space assembly permits staged deployment on an as-needed, as-afforded basis.  It also decouples stowed launch geometry from deployed operational geometry.  The SWARM concept uses formation flown spacecraft, containing multiple universal docking ports, to dock with modular elements and maneuver them to dock with other, similar elements.  In the process, systems can be assembled that are much larger than what can be fit or folded into a launch vehicle fairing, or what can be launched on a single vehicle.  Furthermore, such modularity will allow jettison of failed components, upgrade of obsolete technology, and amortization of design costs across multiple missions.
Exploration of planetary surfaces will require a communication architecture that supports operational capabilities in which fixed and mobile assets on the planetary surface can communicate seamlessly and securely.  
Aeronix understands the issues and believes that the solution lies in the development of radiation tolerant wireless devices that employ the benefits of FPGA technology as an underlying architecture feature.   Aeronix is currently developing two technologies that will be directly leveraged.
?	A FPGA/DSP based enhanced 802.16-2004 wireless LAN air-to-ground solution targeted for DoD applications with peak throughput of  65.5 Mbps. 
?	A Radiation Tolerant FPGA based, NSA Crypto Mod compliant  cryptographic module for space.  
The specific problem addressed by this Aeronix Phase I SBIR effort is to identify enhancements to the 802.16-Terrestrial architecture and design required to meet the harsh environmental and radiation conditions expected in space and on planetary exploration missions.  The new radiation tolerant communications solution will be identified as 802.16 RadT and will have operational capabilities of 65.5 Mbps / 70 miles.   Additionally, this SBIR will address the unique requirements for Information Assurance and Type 1 crypto for classified command, control, and data requirements via integration of radiation tolerant crypto.
Tools for extracting resources from the moon are needed to support future space missions. Of particular interest is the production of raw materials for in-space fabrication.  In addition, oxygen and water for habitat and propulsion purposes is needed.  The only practical source for these materials is the decomposition of lunar soil, regolith. Proposed herein is an innovative hydrogen plasma reduction technique for the production of nanosize metal powders and water from lunar regolith. This technique is characterized by its high temperatures and rapid quenching. Due to the extremely high temperatures involved, material injected into the plasma flame can be vaporized and dissociated very rapidly into elemental form. Rapid quenching of the vapor prevents the growth of nucleated products while providing insufficient time for them to recombine with the oxygen. This allows the possibility of producing nanosize metal powders and the generation of water vapor. The result of this program will be the development of a lunar regolith hydrogen plasma reduction method for producing nanosize metal powders for in-space fabrication and water vapor for life-support, habitat, and propulsion use.
We propose an innovative pulsed laser vibrometer technology for the monitoring of interior noise inside an aircraft. The optical speckle-tolerant nature of the pulsed laser vibrometer, coupled with its high sensitivity and bandwidth in surface vibration monitoring, makes the proposed technology ideal for the monitoring of aircraft interior vibrations from surfaces with widely varying colors and degrees of optical speckle inducing power. The highly sensitive pulsed laser vibrometer allows handheld, portable operation, even in places difficult to access, thanks to its remote and non-contact nature for surface vibration monitoring. Other advantages enabled by the proposed technology include the compactness and low optical power requirement, which make it ideal for deployment in situations where the availability of space and power can be significantly restricted, for example, spaceborne applications. The feasibility of using the proposed photo-EMF pulsed laser vibrometer to monitoring surface vibrations of samples with widely varying surface characteristics will be demonstrated during the Phase I program. A working prototype pulsed laser vibrometer system for aircraft interior noise monitoring will be developed during the Phase II research program.
The objective of the proposed program is to develop lightweight and highly elastic electrically conducting interconnects and strain sensor arrays for next generation adaptive aerospace vehicles and structures.  The systems-level problem this would solve is the inability of currently available materials to undergo the large strains and displacements associated with shape changes of morphing structures.  NanoSonic will demonstrate the feasibility of the Metal RubberTM family of freestanding nanocomposite materials to serve as 1) electrically conductive, low modulus electrodes for large displacement mechanical actuators required to affect large shape changes, and 2) an integrated network of strain sensors to allow mapping of strain and determination of shape in adaptive structural components.  Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; is fabricated via layer-by-layer, molecular self-assembly, which enables thickness and placement control over multiple molecular constituents for true nanostructured multifunctionality.  As an electrode material, new, ultra-low modulus Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; can be strained to 1000&#37; elongation while remaining electrically conductive; it returns to its original shape and nominal conductivity when released.  As a strain sensor, strains up to 1000&#37; have been measured in very highly flexible structures.  During Phase I the feasibility of using such electrodes and strain sensors would be demonstrated in cooperation with a large aerospace company.
High performance silicone coatings are desired for flexible fabrics used in several space and consumer applications.  For instance, the total weight of silicone coatings that are used on Mars Exploration Rovers (MER) airbags can be reduced by improving their thermal stability and mechanical properties.  The proposed program focuses on developing advanced silicone coatings by working with a manufacturer of coated and laminated fabrics for industrial and general-purpose applications.  In Phase I, we will develop coating formulations, deposit coatings on a few different types of fabrics, and characterize the coatings for various properties that are required for airbag applications.  Additionally, plans for commercialization and scale-up will be developed during Phase I for implementation in Phase II, so that the product can be manufactured and marketed in Phase III.
DARPA recently initiated the XNAV program to undertake development of GPS independent, precision navigation and time determination based on observations of certain extremely stable millisecond X-ray pulsars for near Earth military applications. The groundwork for this effort comes from more than a decade of high-energy astrophysics research at NRL and data from space-based surveys of galactic X-ray sources (e.g., ARGOS/USA, Chandra).  These signals can be exploited as a "natural GPS" to provide position information and an extremely stable time reference.
Anticipated NASA Applications:
	1. Accurate clock synchronization (solar system wide)
	2. Fully autonomous, precision navigation (solar system wide)
	3. DSN Augmentation
	4. Planetary GPS enabler
	5. LEO GPS backup
Microcosm has worked with NRL on exploitation of this technology for 2.5 years, and we anticipate continued access to their work during Phase I which will examine the utility, and feasibility of developing X-ray pulsar based navigation and time determination technology for candidate NASA applications.  Requirements will be determined, approaches developed, and performance potential projected.
The Phase II study will develop the most promising applications.  Detailed designs will be created, performance simulations developed, utility assessed, a technology roadmap developed, and a mission planning guide developed.
NASA's latest generation of superpressure, ultra long duration balloons (ULDB) extend the flight time for stratospheric experiments to levels previously unattainable with zero-pressure balloons, while maintaining established load and altitude capabilities.  However, the co-extruded polyethylene film structure of these balloon gores must sustain pressure differentials of 240 Pa without loss of structural integrity for 100 days or more.  At present, there is no in-situ means for monitoring the strain in balloon gores to determine if a failure is imminent or if corrective action is necessary.  Lynntech proposes an optical device which utilizes the birefringence of balloon film, the natural linear polarization of scattered sunlight, and a new technology for producing hyperspectral images to monitor all balloon strain continuously, in-flight, from a single point of reference.  The Hyperspectral Polarimeter (HP) will generate real-time strain maps of the balloon by monitoring the birefringence of the gore material, which is linearly proportional to the film strain.  An interference spectrum is measured for each pixel of a detection CCD array, enabling the construction of a two-dimensional map of the overall balloon strain.  This new, light, and compact technology will enable unprecedented capability for NASA to continuously monitor balloon film strain throughout flights.
In situ oxygen production is of immense importance to NASA in the support of the NASA initiative to sustain man's permanent presence in space.  The oxygen produced can be used as breathable oxygen, as a source of fuel for Moon or Mars based vehicles (for either return to Earth or as a basis for further space exploration), or as a source of oxygen for fuel cell or other power generating devices.  Lynntech proposes to use plasma technology to liberate the oxygen bound in the oxides of regolith to produce oxygen in situ on either the moon or Mars.  Lynntech's innovative solid feedstock plasma reformer is simple, robust and unaffected by variations in the composition or particle size of the regolith.  Lynntech has previously demonstrated the principle of plasma reformation on a variety of projects and has preliminary results demonstrating the technology proposed here.  Lynntech is currently developing plasma reformers for the US Air Force capable of producing several SCFM of hydrogen from JP-8 as well as multi-fuel (gas/liquid) capable reformers.  A small (&lt; 10W) plasma reformer has also been demonstrated for the production of hydrogen on Titan for NASA.
ITN Energy Systems, Inc., in collaboration with the Center for Composite Materials (CCM) at the University of Delaware, proposes to design and develop multifunctional structure-battery panels for next generation space structures than can be integrated into exploration vehicles or space habitats. The multifunctional panels significantly reduce parasitic mass and volume thereby significantly increasing mission capability for future space missions.

In its on-going pursuit of lightweight, low-cost systems, the space industry has made significant investments in "high payoff" technologies such as composite structures and high energy-density batteries.  These individual technologies are now "mature", and are "standard" for most new space designs.  Additional investment in these areas would yield only a few percent improvements over current performance.  Faced with these "diminishing returns", it is clear that future progress demands revolutionary new concepts for space subsystems.

ITN believes that this challenge can best be met using Multifunctional Structures (MFS). Structure and electrical power are the two heaviest subsystems on space platforms.  In addition, batteries often represent the most voluminous component of the spacecraft bus.  Therefore, structure and batteries have been the subject of intense R&amp;D in efforts to reduce mass and improve performance.
ITN Energy Systems, Inc., in collaboration with Hamilton Sundstrand, proposes to design and develop multifunctional fibers for use in energy generation, energy storage, and thermal control controls for extravehicular mobility units (EMU). Next generation spacesuit concepts, such as the Chameleon Suit , offer the ability to dramatically extend extravehicular activity (EVA) mission time and space beyond anything currently available today. Revolutionary advances in technologies, including energy generation and storage as well as climate controls, are required to eliminate the reliance on expendables that currently limit missions with today's EVA.
Wireless optical communication systems have gone through considerable development in the past few years, as optical components have experiences important technologic advances and price decreases. Thus data communications are increasingly using wireless optical systems at higher speeds. These systems are being used as an alternative to cabled media, mainly due to their simpler deployment and reconfiguration. The high data rate and large information throughput available with laser communication are many times greater than in RF systems, furthermore WDM technology can also be used in free space laser communication system. To provide optical wireless communication between crew and the base of NASA advanced extravehicular activity (EVA) systems, Boston Applied Technologies Incorporated (BATI) proposes an innovative laser communication system based on our recent breakthrough of high performance light intensity and polarization management devices. The laser communication devices developed at BATI have the advantage of significantly reduced size and complexity, small power consumption, high extinction ratio, and solid-state ruggedness. Rather than using two laser transmitters, the proposed laser communication system can establish a two-way optical link using a single conventional laser transmitter.
Large-scale agent systems have become key tools in modeling and simulation tools such as NASA's Airspace Concept Evaluation System (ACES), an agent-based simulation of the National Airspace System (NAS).  However, existing tools for single host debugging and analysis do not address the problem of understanding large distributed systems consisting of thousands of autonomous and independent agents. In this Phase I effort, we propose a distributed debugging and event tracing capability for multi-agent systems advancing the state of the art in development tools for distributed systems.  This capability will dramatically reduce the time and effort required to understand and diagnose the behavior of complex, distributed applications.  With the proposed innovation, the build and test development cycle for ACES will be dramatically reduced, enabling more functionality to be added in the form of toolboxes with less time spent in expensive system level testing.  This will allow more future concepts to be evaluated with ACES in a shorter time ? meeting a critical need for customers such as the Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) in their development and analysis of the Next Generation Air Transportation System (NGATS) concepts using ACES.
Los Gatos Research, Inc. proposes to develop a lightweight, compact, rugged, near-infrared gas-sensing spectroscopy instrument to accurately measure the abundance of various gases indicative of the presence of life.  These gases include carbon dioxide, ammonia, and methane.  This instrument will be the first low-cost, remotely operable all fiber-based Integrated Cavity Output Spectroscopy sensor capable of measuring gases such as carbon dioxide, oxygen, and methane with sufficient precision to indicate the presence of biological activity on non-Earth bodies, particularly Mars and Europa.  The proposed prototype sensor includes the novel use of hollow photonic crystal fibers, which further enables accurate measurement of even small samples of gas (approximately 1 microliter).  The project will also leverage Los Gatos Research's prior work developing rugged, autonomous gas sensors for extreme environments that NASA is currently using.
The Dense Medium Plasma Water Purification Reactor offers significant improvements over existing water purification technologies used in Advanced Life Support systems such as bioreactors, catalysts, and membrane based systems. Evaluation of water contaminated with bacteria and plasma-treated indicates that, prior to any optimization of the DMP reactor, contamination levels can be reduced by up to 99.9&#37;. Organic contaminant concentrations (benzene, toluene, ethyl benzene, xylene) can be reduced below the detectable range. The DMP reactor is more energy efficient than other Advanced Oxidation Techniques and does not contain expendable materials or produce toxic side products. The atmospheric-pressure plasma is initiated and sustained through a large number of micro-discharges between a rotating pin-array electrode and a stationary electrode. The plasma breaks down organic compounds via the generation of OH? and H? free radicals through interaction at the gas-liquid boundary.
The DMP reactor uses non-equilibrium, low temperature, atmospheric-pressure plasmas for the volume-plasma-processing of liquid-phase compounds (water-based solutions). This Partial Discharge (PD) plasma is considered a highly localized electrical discharge produced across an insulating medium, typically between two electrodes. Characteristics of a PD are highly dependent upon electrode geometry and operational parameters and, therefore, require significant research for optimization into a NASA ALS setting.
Radio frequency (RF) spectral density, instrument mass, and power considerations drive developments in construction of nanoscale features and terahertz, even petahertz frequencies.  Tunable resonant nanostructures, capable of measurable interactions such as attenuation, polarizability, or re-radiation properties are necessary to investigate IR or optical wavelengths applications.  Carbon nanotubes (CNT's) have material properties and dimensions that allow it to operate in the optical, and IR regimes.  Ion flux molding (IFM) fabrication techniques enable assembly of conductive CNT structures with tunable EM response. The CNT structures are designed specifically to test the performance potential of nanoscale "thin-wire" antenna applications.  Antenna performance metrics can be addressed by using IFM fabrication techniques on carbon nanotubes and nanotube arrays creating narrow band resonant dipole antennas.  IFM fabrication techniques provide the ability to bend, mold, and configure an individual CNT or an array of CNTs to measure antenna properties such as the antenna length effect and the polarization effect. This will be accomplished through use of carbon nanotube (CNT) growth technology and microfabrication techniques combined with IFM molding processes to fabricate CNT antennas and antenna arrays.  Ion Flux Molding (IFM) technology is the crucial element required to bend and mold the CNT into antenna morphologies.
The focus of the proposed effort is maximizing the brightness of fiber coupled laser diode pump sources at a minimum cost. The specific innovation proposed is to challenge the industry standard design of laser bars used in fiber coupled pump packages and to demonstrate that an alternative designs can offer higher brightness and lower cost than the current state of the art. We intend to show that the specific bar and packages designs can have a dramatic effect on both brightness and cost. We propose to demonstrate the capability for a 10X improvement in pump brightness and a 3X reduction in laser diode cost through this investigation. This innovation will allow for the design and fabrication of ultra high brightness, low cost fiber coupled laser pump packages operating at any wavelength over the span of 635nm to 2000nm. This innovation is relevant for any laser system which uses fiber coupled pump sources, specifically .Novel, high-power laser diodes capable suitable for pumping Holmium-based solid-state lasers. as described in Subtopic S6.02 Lidar Remote Sensing
It is proposed to study and develop an innovative Turbo-block coded modulation scheme suitable for Orthogonal Frequency Division Modulation (OFDM) system. The new approach not only is capable of reaching the Shannon limit capacity, but it can also reduce the peak to envelope power ratio (PMEPR) of the OFDM symbols. This approach is unique since the design of high performance capacity achieving codes where all the OFDM signals produced by the codewords with low peak to average power ratio remains an extremely important, albeit a very difficult problem to solve, because a physical layer based on such codes can significantly reduce the cost of base stations. Typically, about 45&#37; of the total cost of OFDM base stations corresponds to that of power amplifiers. This is due to the large linear region requirement of power amplifiers in these systems. OFDM transmission requires a large power amplifier linear region because of its relatively high peak to average power ratio signals. Thus OFDM power amplifiers are particularly expensive.   Furthermore, reduction of PMEPR will reduce cost and power consumption for mobile units, enabling wider deployments and longer battery life.
nLight proposes to develop high-power, high-efficiency laser diodes emitting at 1907nm. Performance is expected to improve from the current state-of-the-art technology at 15C of 20&#37; electrical-to-optical (E/O) conversion efficiency and 11.5W continuous-wave power (CW) to 25&#37; E/O efficiency and 18W of CW power at the conclusion of Phase I.  At the conclusion of Phase II, these values are expected to improve to 38&#37; E/O efficiency and greater than 35W CW power.  Quasi-CW power will be &gt;&gt;100W per laser bar. Such lasers meet the brightness and power requirements for the direct pumping of the quasi 4-level 5I7 to 5I8 transition in singly-doped Ho:YAG lasers.  Compared to the diode-pumping of Thulium-sensitized Ho:YAG, direct diode pumping of Ho:YAG takes advantage of Holmium's much larger emission cross section, the absence of Ho:Tm up conversion, and Ho:YAG's large energy storage lifetime.  Direct diode pumping of Ho:YAG also results in decreased system size, weight and complexity and an improvement in overall system efficiency when compared to pumping with a diode-pumped Th:YAG laser, all critical metrics for space and airborne platforms.   This work could be extended to 18xxnm and 20xxnm quite readily with comparable power and efficiency performance.
NASA is seeking means to increase surveillance efficiency during mission launch operations. Launch delays are expensive, so any incremental increase in efficiency of launch range surveillance should produce large cost savings. To meet this requirement, Broadata Communications, Inc. (BCI) proposes to develop a new combined hardware and software sensor package for early intrusion detection called Multi-Sensor Aerial Intrusion Identifier that will be suitable for mounting in small UAVs of 10 feet wing span or less.  The proposed intrusion detection system will be based on combining the output from three separate sensor systems: IR, Doppler Motion, and Stereo Video, to increase the reliability and sensor detection range compared to using any of these sensor systems on its own. The combined systems will have a 3-5 nautical mile forward detection range, compared to 1 nautical mile detection range for each individual sensor.  It will produce a reduction of at least a factor of 3 in the number of small UAVs needed for launch range surveillance, and consequently, a dramatic reduction in the cost of surveillance.  The UAVs will be equipped with warning sirens and warning lights to issue warnings to intruders, further automating launch range safety operations.
This proposal explains procedures of using regional and local geoid undulations to improve and convert the global positioning system (GPS) elevations (ellipsoidal heights) into orthometric heights.  The Geoid Undulation Model (Geoid 2003) for the North America has reached the centimeter level accuracy. Although the GPS accuracy has reached to millimeter level, the elevation component (converted to orthometric height) has not been optimized to the same level of accuracy as X and Y. This research will select a test site in North Georgia covering a 2&amp;#61616; x 2&amp;#61616; of hilly as well as plain area. The test site will also include an urban area such as the City of Atlanta, and a large water body such as the Lake Lanier. The 2&amp;#61616; x 2&amp;#61616; area is divided into 1&amp;#61616; x 1&amp;#61616;, 5' x 5', and 1' x 1' grid elements to compute global, regional, and local geoid undulations. Gravity data will be observed and compared against the gravity data obtained from the GRACE program. Also, the accuracy of existing geoid undulation in Georgia will be compared with the developed geoid undulation model, which will incorporate local and regional level gravity anomalies.
As the need for thermal control technology becomes more demanding Micro-Channel Embedded Pulsating Heat Pipes (ME-PHPs) represents a sophisticated and enabling solution.  Currently laboratory tests indicate that a magnitude jump in thermal conductivity can be expected with ME-PHPs over conventional materials like aluminum and copper.  ME-PHPs will give NASA and the spacecraft community a powerful tool for the thermal control of instruments, detectors, lasers, communication systems, MEMS and power systems.  Especially those requiring tight thermal control to the micro Kelvin levels.  By embedding heat pipes within a plane of a sheet or plate the heat exchanging media can be placed as close as physically possible to the warm source thus maintaining the narrowest possible temperature gradient.  The thermal energy can then be easily transported to any other area within the plane of the sheet for dissipation purposes.  ME-PHPs are stackable and scalable to any thermal load requirement.
The new Presidential directive to place humans on Mars and establish bases on the moon will require advances in nuclear thermal propulsion and power generation. Nuclear thermal propulsion has a combined advantage in power density, ISP and low fuel/mass ratio over other propulsion means for these missions. To meet the needs of reactor safety, health monitoring and performance, light-weight, real-time, in-core neutron and gamma monitoring sensors need to be developed. Luna is proposing to develop a real-time miniature gamma and neutron dosimeter. This hybrid sensor will measure gamma and neutron dose independently, as well as temperature, along a single optical fiber at the same location. The transducer will be less than 5mm long and 1mg in mass. This dosimeter will enable real-time determination of reactor power level, health and remaining fuel as well as shielding effectiveness.  The design will be based on EFPI measurement techniques developed by Luna and demonstrated in high-radiation and temperature environments. During the Phase I, Luna will demonstrate feasibility of the proposed dosimeter in a nuclear reactor.  Phase II will optimize the sensors and demodulation system for performance and cost, considering space hardening constraints, and demonstrate the system in high radiation and high temperature environments.
This Phase I research proposal is aimed at demonstrating the feasibility of an innovative architecture comprising control augmentation and on-line health monitoring system. This architecture integrats Flush Air Data System (FADS) with Reconfigurable Generalized Predictive Control (RGPC) technologies.  The Phase 1 effort includes identification and description of all supporting modules, their functionality and associated algorithm structures, connectivity, and final simulations using a specific aircraft for system performance evaluations.  Proof-of-concept study will include demonstrating the capability using selected aircraft health degradation and/or failure situations.  The concept innovation is derived from the prognostic nature of the system feedback used by the controller for applying corrective aircraft control.  In traditional controllers the errant transients possessing loss of control potential are detected after the fact and corrective actions for recovery are commanded by controller posteriori. The proposed system performs a real-time autonomous monitoring of aircraft surface pressure fields that contain precursor information for prediction of incipient errant transient motions.  The proposed system will enable reconfiguration of control based on measured pressure field anomalies that indicate standard control system equipment malfunctions.
This SBIR Phase I project will develop the Spacecraft Power Monitor (SPM) which will use non-intrusive electrical monitoring (NEMO).  NEMO transforms the power distribution network in an spacecraft into a multiple-use service, providing not only power distribution but also a diagnostic monitoring capability based on careful measurement and analysis of power usage and start up and shut down transients.   In depth analysis of this data enables real time assessment of system and component functioning and identifies potential system and component faults and failutes.  We will use NEMO's ability to track load operation to verify that the systems and components of a spacecraft are operating properly   This "spacecraft power monitor" or SPM, based on  NEMO, will notify astronauts or ground support personnel when unexpected sequences occur.  It can also generally track the health and diagnostic condition of key loads on the system.  The system is light weight, small and inexpensive because the system requires only a sensor at the mains power input and uses existing power wiring to carry data.  Phase I will involve ground measurements of spacecraft components.   Phase II will involve measurements and analysis of an integrated system.
NASA has numerous requirements for in-space repair capabilities to aid future missions beyond earth orbit.  A subset of these requirements is adhesive patch materials that provide permanent or temporary repair of a wide variety of surfaces with minimal surface preparation.  Prior work on light (UV and visible) curing composite matrix resins for rigidizing inflatable spacecraft shows that there is an opportunity to use similar technology for in-space repair kits.  Light curing provides a controlled, clean, low power rigidization technology to harden repair patches.  Rapid cure at low temperatures (-20?aC) has been demonstrated with these specialty resins.  They are also low outgassing, 100 percent solids materials with no hazardous ingredients.   Repair kits for light-curing tape can be tailored for a wide range of applications.  This concept for !?structural duct tape!? provides a means of producing glass fabric repair patches impregnated with safe, visible light-curing resins that cure rapidly with low power using hand held light emitting diode (LED) arrays or similar light sources.  The tape will be housed in a light and radiation resistant, easy to use dispenser.  A companion battery powered LED array will complete the kit.  Surface cleaning materials can also be included.
Andrews Space, Inc. proposes an innovative transpiration cooled aerobrake TPS design that is thermally protective, structurally flexible, and lightweight.  This innovative design will also meet launch volume constraints and satisfy terminal aerobraking requirements. The approach will focus on transpiration cooling of a flexible material and will consider ablative and insulative technologies as key features of the TPS design.  The application of aerobraking to reduce velocity for planetary capture and landing has long been assumed for use on Mars missions and has been suggested for Earth reentry.  The major hurdle to inflatable aerobrakes becoming reality is the development of a lightweight and structurally flexible Thermal Protection System (TPS).  By combining well understood insulative and ablative TPS with an innovative flexible transpiration cooled  TPS, a realizable inflatable aerobrake system can be developed.
NovaSol proposes to develop an advanced hyperspectral imaging system for earth science missions named BRASS (Broadband Advanced Spectral System). BRASS combines state-of-the-art, existing NASA detector technology and proven electronics with a novel spectrometer design to provide a compact instrument that covers the full wavelength range from 0.4 to 5 ?m. Applications for such an instrument range from vegetation characterization and environmental assessment to mineral mapping and measurements of trace gases and aerosols, fully supporting important research goals of NASA's Science Mission Directorate (SMD).
Noise has become a primary consideration in the design and development of many products, particulary in aerospace, automotive and consumer product industries. Communities near airports are often exposed to high noise levels due to low flying aircraft in the takeoff and landing phases of fligh and the major contribution to the overall noise is comming from the propulsion source noise. It is proposed to develop solutions based on integrated generalized acoustical holography and active noise control technologies that will enable the identification and reduction of turbomachinery noise. In this development, generalized acoustical holography will be used for noise source identification and active noise control together with passive control will be used for the noise reduction.
This proposal is specifically written to address the need for improved Ka-band T/R modules.  The solicitation calls for investigation and development of core technologies that will significantly improve T/R module performance.  Improvements needed include reduced power consumption, mass, and size.  Hittite Microwave Corporation is a fabless semiconductor company that has been developing microwave monolithic integrated circuits (MMICs) for over 19 years.  Hittite proposes three possible areas of focus for the SBIR program, transmitter power amplifiers, receiver integration or complete T/R functionality.  By far the largest contributor to the size and weight of a T/R module is the power amplifier.  Both GaN and MHEMT are new technologies that have the potential for substantial improvement over incumbent PHEMT technology.  MHEMT is most suited to power levels below 4 Watts reverting to the higher power density GaN technology at higher power levels.  Both MHEMT and advanced SiGeBiCMOS technologies such as IBM 8HP can be consider for receiver functions.  Finally MHEMT strikes a good balance as a single technology platform for a moderate power level (&lt;2 Watt transmit) T/R MMIC/module at 35 GHz.  The proposal includes a technology summary as well as basic design considerations and examples of LNAs, PAs and phase shifters.
There is a need for lightweight high-density (4000+ lines/mm) novel diffraction grating elements in modern telescopes to advance EUV and X-ray astrophysics.  Current grating technologies (ruling and holographic beam interference) do not provide optimal solution for all grating requirements.  In response to NASA request, we propose to apply state-of-the art DUV reduction photolithographic tools developed for modern semiconductor industry and LightSmyth's proven design expertise in the application of this technology to the development of grating devices with constant and varying line spacing (VLS).  The proposal will focus on four major areas:  
(i) Development and demonstration of constant and VLS reflective diffraction grating elements for EUV and X-ray spectroscopy at glazing angle of incidence with straight lines. 
(ii) Development and demonstration of VLS reflective diffraction grating elements for EUV and X-ray spectroscopy at glazing angle of incidence with curved lines to produce focusing diffraction grating elements on a plane substrate. 
(iii) Design of in-plane and off-plane reflective diffraction grating elements for NASA's Constellation-X.  
(iv) Design of VLS blazed near-normal incidence focusing diffraction grating elements on plane substrate for EUV imaging spectroscopy to replace diffraction grating on toroidal substrate for Goddard Space Flight Center's NEXUS project.
Solar sails are an attractive means for propulsion of future spacecraft. One potential device for deploying and supporting very large solar sails is the CoilAble boom made by ATK Space Systems - Goleta (formally AEC-Able Engineering). CoilAble's have a long and reliable track record in space. KaZaK Composites is a major developer and supplier of pultruded composite structural members used in CoilAble booms. For solar sail applications, it is important to develop advanced technologies that create the lightest possible booms. KaZaK is already pultruding advanced solar sail test hardware made with IM-9 carbon fiber as a first step toward improving solar sails. This SBIR proposal will identify a replacement for the recently out-of-production IM-9 baseline carbon fiber, and pursue three additional lines of investigation aimed at creating significant improvements in next generation solar sail structures. Specifically, we will investigate methods for making 1) near-zero CTE pultruded members of unlimited length via materials hybridization, 2) very lightweight tubular structures, with and without cores, to reduce the weight of solar sail longerons, and 3) passively damped structures achieved by additives to the matrix of pultruded composite sail materials. Mast structural elements made with least one and possibly several of these technologies will be prototyped and tested in Phase I.
A Hypersonic Gun Tunnel and laser based high speed imaging systems will be used to generate a unique, free flight, aerodynamic data base of potential Mars aeroshell configurations.  These experiments will provide reliable bench mark data for CFD code validation and help aerocapture modeling and optimize aeroshell payload and design.  The experiments will be conducted at hypersonic Mach numbers in air and in simulated Martian atmospheric test gases and will cover the hypersonic continuum flow regime. The innovative test results will help improve aerocapture analysis and prediction techniques that will lead to reduced deceleration propellant launch weight, increased payload, and improved delivery accuracy.  These improved measurement capabilities will greatly enhance U.S. commercial and military competitiveness in aerospace vehicle design and production, and help regain and stimulate a viable customer-testing base, which will help preserve and improve our national wind tunnel testing infrastructure. These new capabilities will provide significant test data improvements, which will greatly enhance our ability to understand the physical flow phenomena associated complex flows over advanced aerospace vehicles.
Terahertz sources based on lower frequency oscillators and amplifiers plus a chain of frequency multipliers are the workhorse technology for NASA's terahertz missions. The design and optimization of individual multipliers is fairly well understood. However, the complex interactions within a chain of nonlinear multipliers often limit the system performance. Specific manifestations of these interactions include rapid variations in power as the frequency or input power are tuned, including nulls and power surges that can damage individual components. These effects limit the useful bandwidth of terahertz sources, degrade system reliability and greatly increase the time and cost of developing systems for a particular application. Today, these problems are mitigated through the use of mechanical tuning or bias adjustments at each frequency, the laborious tweaking of each component in the chain until acceptable system performance is achieved, or reduction of the system bandwidth and/or power specifications. This proposal concerns the first systematic study of the complex interactions between cascaded nonlinear multiplier stages, with the goal of developing new multiplier and system designs that reduce these unwanted effects. The resulting terahertz sources will achieve greater efficiency, bandwidth, reliability and ease-of-use, as well as shortened system design cycles and greatly enhanced manufacturability.
A novel, single-chip, multiple-frequency platform for RF/IF filtering and clock reference based on contour-mode aluminum nitride (AlN) MEMS piezoelectric resonators is proposed. This system is the first of its class to implement multiple frequency filtering and clock functions on the same silicon die.  The AlN MEMS piezoelectric resonators proposed in this work have their fundamental frequency defined by the lateral, in-plane dimensions of the structure and therefore can be fabricated at the same time.  This feature enables the definition of different frequencies directly at the CAD-layout level without the need of any extra etching or deposition steps as required by commercially available thickness-mode resonators such as thin-film bulk acoustic wave resonators (FBARs) or quartz crystals.  MEMS AlN piezoelectric resonators characterized by low motional resistance and high quality factors in ambient conditions constitute the most economical and sole solution for reconfigurable, multi-band and multi-functional wireless networks.  This RF multiple-frequency (100 MHz to 3 GHz) platform will provide new levels of component miniaturization, integration and performance for wireless communication devices, enabling smaller form factors and lower costs while opening the door for longer battery life.
This innovation uses photochemical cyclopolymerization of polyimides to manufacture ultraviolet rigidizable composites for use in RIS (ridgidizing inflatable) structures. Sunlight initiated polymerization (UV polymerization) has been identified as a promising method for ridgidizing composites for inflatable space structures. The use of in-situ polymerized polyimides will provide superior dimensional and dynamic properties to enhance the performance characteristics of RIS deployed space based structures such as antennas, solar arrays and sunshields. As a class, polyimide polymers are known to possess excellent physical and chemical properties superior to conventional thermoset resins. But polyimides are typically produced at very high temperatures, making their use as RIS materials impractical. By utilizing a unique chemistry and polymerizing in-situ with sunlight, a new ridgidizable composite will be fabricated. The resulting polyimide impregnated composite can be rigidized in space and provide mechanical properties superior to those achieved with previous radiation cured composites. Stability of the polyimide precursors will permit long term storage of RIS prior to deployment. When produced in scale the composite will provide a cost competitive method of fabricating RIS and meet the growing demand for this type of space architecture. Terrestrial applications also exist in the homeland security and disaster response sectors.
Ongoing work under NASA sponsorship is defining promising High Altitude Long Endurance (HALE) demonstration vehicle designs for remote sensing, communication relay, environmental monitoring, and other critical missions.  Continuing challenges in preparing these vehicles for flight test include issues that will also be critical in the development of operational HALE vehicles: time-accurate simulation of aeroelastic effects; simulation-based design of flight control and propulsion systems for high efficiency, structural stability, and adequate control at all flight conditions; and effective, validated, full-vehicle dynamics analyses for aeroservoelastic applications.  The proposed effort will address these needs by making available modular, state of the art modeling tools for use in full aircraft simulations to support vehicle assessment and control system design throughout the HALE flight test and development process.  These tools will be operable in a range of modes with up to real-time turnaround and will feature a unique ability to support hardware-coupled ("hardware in the loop") simulation in conjunction with finite element-based aeroelastic modeling.   This capability will support both near term flight demonstrations of prospective HALE vehicles and long-term design and analysis tasks for NASA HALE platforms.
The ability to precisely control the position of satellites is a critical enabling technology for space missions involving interferometric arrays.  One proposed mission, LISA (Laser Interferometer Space Antenna), would use an array of 3 satellites whose relative position is monitored and controlled to an accuracy of 10 nm.  Precise station-keeping such as this demands precise, high stability thrusters supplied with propellant flows on the order of microliters/min and producing micro-newtons of thrust.  These requirements are difficult or impossible to meet with traditional thrusters and feed systems such as cold-gas thrusters or monopropellants.  The proposed program will evaluate the use of electro-osmosis to supply and control the flow of ionic liquid propellants to micronewton colloid thrusters.  In addition, the use of a gate electrode to control the surface charge and therefore the magnitude and direction of flow will be examined as will the use of AC fields to limit electrolysis effects.  Phase I will provide basic information on the electro-osmotic behavior of ionic liquids using simple test devices and electrospray emitters.  Phase II will involve detailed design work to fabricate a practical propellant feed system using electro-osmotic pumps.
Long-duration space missions such as the upcoming Moon and Mars missions require reliable systems for the preparation of potable water through efficient recycling, and prevention of biofilm growth on reverse osmosis (RO) membranes and water lines.  Lynntech, Inc. proposes a novel technology to simultaneously reduce the total organic carbon (TOC) content of biological water processor (BWP) processed water, and control biofilm formation on water lines, surfaces and membranes within the water reclamation unit utilized on board spacecraft and within future planetary habitats.  This technology is based on Lynntech's proprietary electrochemical on demand oxidizer generator, which does not require consumable chemicals. The on-demand produced oxidizer can be added to the primary processed water from the BWP unit.  Using this innovative approach in the form of a compact TOC and microbial count (MC) reduction module which will be situated in line with the BWP unit, Lynntech aims to achieve an order of magnitude reduction in the TOC content within the BWP processed water.  The residual oxidizer/disinfectant and reduced TOC will prevent the formation of biofilms on the RO membrane and water lines and will reduce the equivalent system mass by lowering the load on equipment downstream to the BWP, enabling a reduction in their size and weight.  Phase I work will concentrate on providing proof-of-concept for the technology while Phase II will involve the fabrication of a prototype TOC and MC reduction module and its integration with the Integrated Advanced Water Recovery Test System operational at NASA-JSC.
The NASA-developed Surface Management System (SMS) is currently being used by several air carriers on a daily basis.  Although SMS was intended to create shared awareness between FAA and National Airspace System (NAS) user stakeholders in airport traffic management, it was not designed to address the specific needs of air carriers or airport authorities.  This suggests a market for an airport automation tool aimed directly at the decisions that air carriers must make every day and which can significantly impact their business efficiency.  This project will design and build a tool to improve the efficiency with which airport ground resources are used.  Substantial re-designing of the displays relative to those available in SMS will improve the system's usability.  Moreover, the complexity of the problem of optimizing resource assignment in the presence of the uncertainties involved suggest that automation may be able to improve efficiency and reduce the planner's workload.  The Airport Ground Resource Planning (AGRP) tool will include both appropriate graphical user interfaces for visualizing resource allocations and making manual entries as well as advanced planning algorithms to recommend efficient allocation decisions.  Phase 1 will study a single resource ? the off-load crews for a cargo operation.
NASA's software-intensive extraterrestrial exploration and observation systems are raising performance and reliability bars to unprecedented levels.  Exaggerating the complexity, in order for such systems to be robust and responsive they must have the ability to use intelligent processes to self-detect and heal, or literally create new programs in response to new situations.  Validating the readiness of such complex automated software for long term remote deployment demands not just covering code or branches, or even inputs and outputs, but rather to cover algorithms, rule bases, and states within the system.  Even when reducing the order of the problem through traceable model extraction and abstraction we are left with state explosion that drives the test of mission-critical software to unacceptable cost and time extremes. Yet it must be done. This has been a matter of active research at EDAptive Computing, Inc. (ECI), NASA, and elsewhere.  Modern specification and software modeling techniques combined with formal methods have yielded promising results.  We have demonstrated parts of the solution with smaller scale flight-critical [USAF] software and [MDA] satellite systems.  ECI is now uniquely poised to merge and bring the needed technology to fruition at the scale necessary for NASA Exploration Systems.
Future missions to study astrophysical sources at millimeter and submillimeter wavelengths require focal planes of 1000's of detectors that must operate at the background limit from cooled telescopes in space, couple efficiently to optical systems spanning wavelengths from 1 cm to 0.1 mm, allow precise measurements of polarization, and interface with a suitable readout technology. These properties are critical, for example, for missions to decode completely the temperature and polarization of the 2.7 K cosmic microwave background radiation, such as the Einstein Inflation Probe (EIP, or CMBPol). Achieving these goals will require a revolution in detector technology, and scalable approaches that are compatible with planar microlithographic fabrication are therefore essential. The most promising schemes include antenna-coupled bolometers cooled to ~100 mK. We propose to develop the superconducting transition-edge hot-electron microbolometer (THM), which overcomes many of the limitations of current bolometer technology. Using superconducting transmission-line circuitry for focal-plane processing of the RF signal, we propose to integrate these detectors into a polarimeter on a single, monolithic circuit. The innovation directly addresses Topic 4 "Exploration of the Universe Beyond Our Solar System," subtopic S4.01 "Infrared and Sub-mm Sensors and Detectors."
The goal of this SBIR is to adapt an initial prototype ultra-miniature high-performance brushless-DC-motor controller, code named 'Puck', for use by NASA across a wide range of motor drives.  The Puck was recently developed by Barrett for terrestrial mobile-manipulation uses where efficiency, low mass, and robustness are critical factors.  While quite small (&lt;50 grams), the controller can pump from milliamps to several amps continuous.  Several features of this controller make it a candidate for NASA's wide range of needs for servomotor control in the demanding environments of extra-terrestrial and interplanetary exploration.  One of the key enabling design strategies that led to the Puck is elimination of transmission lines through total integration of power conditioning, rotor-position optics, and commutation into a single tiny module.  The module is small and energy efficient enough to make casting within high-heat-conduction plastic feasible.  Pure conduction cooling, a distinct advantage for NASA applications, is unusual for motor amplifiers which are generally cooled by natural convection or forced air.  The hermetically-sealed packaging also excludes lunar or Martian dust from affecting robustness.  The primary strategy for this technology to avail for NASA will be to minimize the effects of radiation while enabling self-diagnosis, self-repair, and ultimately easy change-out.
It is proposed to develop a process for producing arrays of hexagonal mirror segments with deviation from flatness smaller than 1nm RMS over a 600?m segment span, using novel microfabrication techniques. Each segment will be rigid enough to withstand actuation (piston, tip, and tilt) by a triad of flexure-based electrostatic actuators that have already been demonstrated by the project team. The base for the mirror will be a conventionally surface micromachined silicon film, augmented by a thick epitaxial layer of silicon. Subsequently, this layer will be polished, annealed to relieve stresses, and then coated with a thin film of protected silver. The combined result of thickening, polishing, and annealing will produce segments that are flatter, by more than an order of magnitude, than any micromachined mirror segments that are available today. Preliminary data demonstrate some promise that these processes can be combined effectively. Such an array of mirror segments would constitute a significant technological milestone and an essential component for the visible nulling coronagraph instruments planned for the terrestrial planet finding (TPF) mission. The project team has considerable experience in fabricating micromirror arrays for laser communication, astronomical imaging and visions science applications and BMC is a world leader in the production of commercial  high resolution wavefront controllers. The project leverages a existing successful relationship between BMC and JPL.
During the next decade, NASA intends to send robotic exploration missions to Mars and other planets.  Missions are planned to obtain samples from Mars and return them to earth for studies and to other planets to gather evidence for the existence of life. An important goal of NASA in these missions is to ensure that technologies are in place to safeguard against terrestrial microbial contaminations of the planets from robotic space vehicles and also to prevent nonterrestrial microbial or other foreign compound contaminations of the Earth from collected samples and returned space vehicles.  Thus, each mission will require that space vehicles (landers and orbiters) be sterilized and sanitized for microbial and organic contaminations before launching to space and when returned to Earth.  Sensitive detection techniques are thus needed to validate the effectiveness of the sterilization process.  We propose to develop a handheld surface-monitoring instrument based on constant-energy synchronous fluorescence (CESF) spectroscopy. Like conventional fluorescence, CESF has excellent sensitivity but with the added feature of narrower spectral bandwidth resulting in improved selectivity.   The instrument that will be developed in this program will have the unique capabilities of in situ quantification and identification of microbial and organic contaminations of surfaces.
The integrity of rotor disks in engine turbines or fans is vital to aviation safety. Cumulative cracks at critical loading and high stress areas, if not detected and repaired in time, can lead to a catastrophic failure. Traditional inspection methods such as Fluorescent Penetrant Inspection (FPI) and Eddy current are point-by-point methods and very time consuming. Disassembly of the engine is needed for each inspection, which may generate more problems. 

We propose a wireless in-situ ultrasonic guided wave health monitoring approach that can eliminate all the disadvantages of conventional methods. It applies light, thin ultrasonic guided wave circumferential patch transducers around the root of the disk. Guided waves travel in the radial direction and can inspect the whole disk area. The electrical signal is coupled wirelessly to the circumferential patch through a pair of RF antennas mounted on the rotor shaft and a stationary fixture around the shaft, respectively. The inspection can be done even when the disk is rotating. The envisioned system has minimal impact to the rotor performance, can instantaneously provide reliable and quantitative data such as crack location and severity level, can minimize and eventually eliminate the need for structural disassembly, and is able to communicate wirelessly for in-situ engine health monitoring.
This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project seeks to prove the feasibility of creating high-temperature silicon-carbide (SiC) based motor drives for extreme environment exploratory robotic missions (such as Venus landers). SiC digital control ICs will be developed for controlling power electronics systems (such as motor drives) and integrated with SiC power switches into a multichip power module (MCPM) capable of reliably operating within extreme environments such as the surface of Venus without shielding. Avoiding complicated advanced active thermal management strategies not only improves reliability, but significantly reduces the complexity, weight, and volume of the overall electronics systems. SiC power electronics offer other potential advantages over silicon as well, including 1/10th the switching losses, 10? the power density, 10? the breakdown voltage, and switching frequencies into the 10s of GHz range. All of these advantages offer the potential to develop highly miniaturized, highly reliable, low weight extreme environment power electronics drive systems that can be integrated directly with DC motors or actuators.
In this SBIR Phase I proposal (Topic X9.01), NexTech Materials, Ltd. proposes to develop a high efficiency ceramic oxygen generation system which will separate O2 from the CO2-rich (95&#37;) Martian atmosphere through a solid-oxide electrolysis process at 750-850?aC.  The CO2 electrolysis process will produce O2 and CO.  The O2 may be used for life support and as an oxidant (for a fuel cell power system), and CO may be collected and used directly as fuel (or converted to methane for use as a fuel).  The electrolysis system is based on the Tubular Monolithic Ceramic Oxygen Generator (TM-COG) platform, whereby multiple oxygen separation cells are connected in series across both faces of a porous, flat-tube support. The design allows for simplified gas manifolding, sealing, and current collection and permits a high degree of cell stacking efficiency.  In Phase I of the project, a prototype TM-COG module will be fabricated and the performance will be evaluated.  The Phase I work will establish a foundation for work in Phase II, where a breadboard prototype TM-COG system will be produced and delivered to NASA that will be capable of producing 125 grams per hour of oxygen (or 1 kg per eight-hour day).
Development of a toolkit for optimization and virtual flight test of HALE vehicles is proposed based on extensions of the IHAT system for integrated multidisciplinary analysis/optimization of high speed weapons.
The innovation addressed in this proposal is Sprayable Thermal Insulation for Cryogenic Tanks, or STICT.  This novel system could be applied in either an automated or manual spraying process, with much less sensitivity to process chemistry and environmental parameters than cur-rent spray-on foam insulation (SOFI) products like BX-265, while providing better insulation performance.  The resulting material would form an aerodynamically smooth, uniform coating with better cohesion and significantly lower thermal conductivity.  This would allow thinner layers of insulation which, when combined with greater material strain-to-failure, will eliminate the generation of in-flight debris.  In this way, the proposed CryoGel insulation can render future space transportation systems safer and more reliable.
Space deployable and rigidizable structures that are ultra-lightweight, and have gas barrier property, space durability, and high impact resistance are desirable to improve the reliability and launching cost of space habitat structures. Some of the components currently in use such as shelters or habitats use double-wall thick films with high internal pressure.  All these hollow components are vulnerable in space because of the debris and meteorites that can strike them.  They will lose their functions if hit and damaged by foreign objects. These structures typically rely upon electro-mechanical mechanisms and devices for deployment and maintaining them in space for operation, which occupy over 90&#37; of the total mass budget in many cases. In this Phase I project, we propose to develop ultra-lightweight, self-deployable microcellular foamed sandwich structures from nanocomposite shape memory polymers (SMP) and CHEM deployed technique as structural components of space habitats.   Such a structural module can be compacted into a very small volume to facilitate launching.   The deployment energy is the heat from the sun.  This concept greatly simplifies the entire operation, reduction in weight and cost, and improves reliability.  They also feature great impact resistant.  Foams processed by the conventional chemical-blowing agent have toxicity problems. Our microcellular SMP foamed sandwich structures do not involve any toxicity and will have higher mechanical properties than those processed by the conventional techniques.  They can be used to replace or supplement to the inflatable technology.
Laser induced breakdown spectroscopy (LIBS) is a versatile tool for in situ substance characterization. Existing LIBS instruments are not compact enough for space applications. Major obstructs for miniaturization are from: high voltage Q-switch based pulse laser, inefficient light collection system and bulky high sensitive array-detection. Based on a revolutionary low-voltage Q-switch technology and high efficient laser delivery and light collection scheme, Boston Applied Technologies proposes to develop an ultra-compact high sensitive LIBS instrument for NASA application. The laser featured fast and dual-pulse Q-switch with low switching voltage, ultra reliable fiber-ring cavity design, and high efficient laser-diode pumping. The low switching voltage also brings the advantage of reducing the complexity of the electronic driver design, which is a big chunk in existing electro-optical or acoustic-optic Q-switching lasers. The required ablation energy can be significantly reduced due to high efficiency of the proposed system. The resultant LIBS instrument will be compact, cost-effective and reliable. It will be capable of withstanding operation in space and planetary environmental extremes, which include temperature, pressure, radiation, and impact stresses.
The proposed innovation will utilize a small network of remote sensors to perform Radio Interferometry (RI) and Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) techniques to survey, identify and locate Radio Frequency (RF) energy signatures within a given geographic area such as a launch range or other strategic area.  The survey mission will use radio interferometry techniques to create RF "images" of the surveyed area.  These images will show the locations of all RF activity within an area.  While an area is secure, a set of images will be captured and averaged to establish the nominal RF baseline for that area.  Once the baseline is established, real-time RF surveys will be instantly compared to the nominal baseline to detect the existence of RF spectral anomalies.  The TDOA and RI techniques used to establish the RF images will determine the precise location of any spectral anomaly source so that it can be quickly and cost effectively identified and mitigated.
This proposed Phase I program will address NASA's need for large diameter high radio frequency (Ka band 27- 40 GHz) apertures that provide greater gain and resolution for communications and remote sensing systems. This will be accomplished by developing a new high accuracy electro-textile antenna surface as well as investigating a novel involute wrapped rib deployable support structure for large aperture antennas that is light weight and deploys out of a very small volume. The combination of light weight composite components will provide a new set of solutions for this growing need, both at NASA and the Air Force.
 
Successful completion of the phase I program will demonstrate feasibility of the innovative electro-textile mesh and begin to quantify the potential benefits of Infoscitex's novel involute rib backing structure for deployable antennae. The phase I program will show that the new electro-textile mesh composite mesh has the necessary reflectivity and low PIM performance required of Ka Band antennae. A Phase II program would further refine the new electro-textile composite and permit the fabrication of an antenna demonstration article for deployment and RF testing with our aerospace industry partners.
Pollution of the environment is a world wide concern and is the subject of broadly based R&amp;D into means of prevention and remediation.  The innovation proposed here is the design of and electron beam source for clensing air.Bombardment by electrons has proven to be effective in destroying a wide spectrum of chemical and biological pollutants.  Maintaining air purity becomes particularly critical in densely populated closed spaces. Such as occupied buildings, passenger transport vehicles, orbiting space vehicles and lunar or planetary exploration stations. The work proposed here is to appraise the feasibility of down sizing this effective technology to meet the much more restrictive cost, weight and reliability requirements attendant to commercial passenger transportation and manned space exploration. Key to meeting those requirements are carbon nanotube (CNT) field emitters to replace the thermal electron sources as was done, by MPT, in developing the cold cathode x-ray tubes subsequently produced by Oxford X-ray Technology. MPT, working with Valence Corporation and others, have developed systems for eliminating odors and chemical components from air streams exhausted from sewerage treatment, large scale painting and food processing plants and environmental remediation installations.
The proposed innovation is a 6DOF controllable mirror mount with high dynamic range and fast tip/tilt capability for space based applications.  It will enable the actuation of large (~1m) mirrors over centimeter stroke with low bandwidth to correct deployment errors, provide sub-micron correction of thermal distorsion with picometer precision, and enable nanometer/nanoradian tip/tilt wavefront correction up to tens of Hz. The actuator will be designed to decouple the mirror from support resonances so that the mirror control system can suppress the system dynamic response.  The mount will be optimized from a systems perspective, including thermal effects, total mass including the amplifiers and induced mechanical noise.
Applied Technology Associates (ATA) proposes to develop a new inertial sensor by combining two sensing phenomena in a single device.  ATA has patented an advanced inertial sensing technology based on magnetohydrodynamics (MHD).  Numerous researchers have patented and developed micro-electromechanical sensors (MEMS) that measures inertial angular motions.  We believe that a composite sensor based on the best characteristics of both of these technologies is a promising new advancement.  Our innovation is denoted the Hybrid Sensor (HYSENS) owing to its origins in two distinct inertial angle rate sensing principles.   The MHD technology offers wide bandwidth, high sensitivity, with reasonable size and power.  The MEMS offers small size and power.   Initial analysis done by ATA and our MEMS technology partners indicates that it is possible to achieve performance goals that are at or near the state-of-the-art for inertial reference sensors.  The proposed composite sensor fulfills the need for lightweight, compact, high-precision, high-bandwidth (0-2KHz) inertial reference sensors for use onboard spacecraft with optical communications payloads.  The predicted noise performance for HYSENS is less than 0.1 microrad.  Volume for this advanced sensor is expected to be under 2 cubic in; its weight under 150 grams; and its power draw under 200 mW.
In order to support systems such as the Momentum Exchange/Electrodynamic Reboost (MXER) Tether, NASA has identified the need for advanced electrodynamic-tether materials. A recently identified concern with present tether materials, particularly illustrated by the arcing after the tether break during the TSS-1R mission,  is the need for arc suppression in the event that the insulation is breached by orbital debris and/or micrometeoroids.  This concern applies to any high voltage application, including solar arrays, electric thruster components, and various scientific instruments. A significant hazard in and of itself to the tether application, the impact of the debris may release ionized and neutral particles which can instigate electrical arcing to the surrounding plasma, further weakening or severing the tether. The research program proposed here will identify, develop, and test advanced coatings for electrodynamic tethers that will suppress arc generation should the coating be breached. The proposed mechanism for suppressing the arc is including in the coating an encapsulated or entrapped electronegative gas that is released during the insulation breach and arcing event.
One of NASA's primary goals for the next decade is the design, development and launch of a spacecraft aimed at the in-situ exploration of the deep atmosphere and surface of Venus.  The success of this mis-sion, called VISE (Venus In-Situ Explorer), is reliant on the development of effective thermal insulation solutions capable of protecting spacecraft for extended periods of time from the extreme heat and pressure associated with the lower atmosphere of Venus.  Materials intended for exterior application must also be inert towards the sulfuric, hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acid present.  Aspen Aerogels, Inc. proposes to develop a revolutionary aerogel composite intended to provide unprecedented thermal and chemical pro-tection to a Venus spacecraft.  This unique material is expected to be thermally stable to 2000oC under inert conditions, enabling the possibility for use as a high-temperature heat shield in a Venus deceleration module.  This flexible and conformable material will also find use as a thin lightweight thermal protection solution for a Venus pressure vessel.  The remarkable thermal properties and ultra low density will afford a significant mass savings over conventional MLI insulation, increasing the operation lifetime and volume of the scientific payload significantly.  These materials will also be inert towards the corrosive environ-ment of the Venus atmosphere at high temperatures and pressures, allowing these materials to be utilized in both exterior and interior applications.
High peak power, high efficiency, high reliability lightweight, low cost QCW laser diode pump modules with up to 1000W of QCW output become possible with nLight's new laser diode package methodology.  Following the design principles from our Phase I results, we propose an innovative packaging architecture to provide NASA with highly reliable 808nm laser diode pump sources for space based LADAR systems or other uses. nLight proposes a package development program to demonstrate up to 1000W of QCW pump power, with greater than 100E8 laser shot reliability.
Honeybee Robotics proposes to:
?Derive and document the functional and technical requirements for Aerobot surface sampling and sample handling across a range of aerial platforms, mission applications and exploration targets, like Mars and Titan.
?Create a preliminary design for a tether or boom deployed, reusable, low mass &amp; volume surface and subsurface sample acquisition and handling system that can acquire ice and icy regolith samples and perform automated sample transfer. We will focus on designs relevant to environments and sample types on Mars and Titan.
?Demonstrate proof-of-concept, subsystem-level hardware that can acquire a subsurface ice or icy regolith sample deployed from a platform capable of simulating the horizontal and vertical motion of an Aerobot vehicle.

The proposed innovations primary significance would be to:
?Provide mission planners with the performance specifications, necessary accommodations, concept of operations and the functional requirement information needed to develop new concepts and exploration applications for Aerobot platforms that have sampling and handling capabilities.
?Identify and address the critical challenges surrounding tether or boom deployed, very low-preload sampling systems targeted toward consolidated materials (e.g. ice or rock).
?Test and characterize the effectiveness of a variety of sample methods, relevant to Aerobot platforms, to acquire ice cores, chips, icy regolith and even liquid samples with integrity and volatiles retained.
?Demonstrate sampling at a safe distance and in a safe manner from the aerial platform.
?Demonstrate, with analysis and hardware, the basic feasibility of an Aerobot sampling and handling system.
?Provide requirement information and test data about an existing system, Honeybee's Touch and Go Sample System (TGSS), capability to acquire ice, icy regolith and even liquid samples from a platform with both horizontal and vertical motion during sampling operations.
Mainstream Engineering Corporation completed the design of a high-speed pump for International Space Station (ISS) Environmental Control and Life Support Systems and future spacecraft and extraterrestrial outpost applications.  Specifications for this pump were derived from an existing pump currently operating as part of the thermal control loop on the ISS.  The design includes magnetic bearings so that a vibration-reducing control algorithm can be implemented.  A digital controller was designed, which measured and reduced vibration-causing fluctuations in shaft displacement due to rotor unbalance in multiple axes.  The controller was tested over an operating speed range of 600 to 7200 rpm with excellent results.  The controller reduced mean shaft displacement by 71&#37; over the entire operating range, and reduced it by more than 80&#37; at higher operating speeds where synchronous vibration was dominant.  In Phase II the magnetic bearing equipped cooling loop pump designed in Phase I will be fabricated and tested.  Mainstream will demonstrate the added efficiency, reliability, and low vibration of the system as compared with the existing pump.  The pump assembly will undergo vibration characterization testing with support from Marshall Space Flight Center.
One of the critical issues for NASA missions requiring high contrast astrophysical imaging such as Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) is wavefront control.  Without use of appropriate adaptive optics technology, it is impossible to obtain high quality imaging.  Normal adaptive optics systems utilize a series of discreet components to satisfy the correction requirements.  These consist of tip/tilt mirror and deformable mirrors.  Xinetics has engaged in developing series of deformable mirrors and integrated adaptive optical components that will improve the optical quality of traditional wavefront control systems while simultaneously reducing system volume, weight and cost.  Our innovative integrated wavefront corrector will combine new types of deformable mirror, Photonex Meniscus, with tip/tilt stage with Xinetics co-fired ceramic actuators.  The proposed effort is the result of a strategic vision to develop small robust wavefront corrector designed to be employed in space based optical systems.
The completed Phase I work was directed at the application of nanotechnology to graphite/epoxy composites.  A novel approach to the application of the nanotubes onto the carbon fiber surface was investigated.  As a result, a very significant increase in compressive strength of 120&#37; was attained, compared with 20&#37; reported in the literature.

The Phase II builds on the success of the Phase I.  It will address the key issues of scale-up, reproducibility and component fabrication.  The batch fiber coating process employed in the Phase I will be replaced with a continuous fiber coating process.  Manual pre-pregging of the Phase I will be replaced with a continuous pre-pregging process.  Specific CEV type composite applications will be identified.  Subsequently, a cost/benefit ratio for CEV will be provided.
The development of an Eulerian model based en route traffic flow management agent for the ACES software is proposed. The proposed research will use a recently-developed automatic modeling technique, together with a predictive air traffic flow control approach. Performance of the traffic flow management agent will be evaluated in several traffic flow control situations. The sensitivity of the traffic flow management system to variations in traffic patterns and weather will be investigated.

Phase I research will demonstrate the feasibility of developing the traffic flow management agent.  A complete version of the proposed software agent will be developed during the Phase II work. It will be fully integrated with the ACES software and commercialized during the Phase III work.
Triton Systems, Inc. (Triton) proposes to develop a cost-effective manufacturing approach to fabricate combustion chambers for a rocket technology demonstrator engine.  The proposed manufacturing process combines Triton's success in fabricating high strength, ductile, discontinuous fiber reinforced aluminum (FRA) composites and rapid prototyping techniques used in the aluminum casting industry.  The ability to insert Triton's FRA technology into boost and orbit transfer components supports critical propulsion goals by improving the thrust-to-weight ratio and reducing hardware costs.  Significant weight savings will be achieved with Triton's lightweight FRA technology compared to the current nickel superalloy.  Hardware costs savings are anticipated with the use of a proven, affordable and high quality casting process to fabricate FRA materials.  An added benefit is the ability to incorporate design changes for improved efficiency and/or research and development efforts.
This project is focusing on the strategic, routine incorporation of medium-resolution satellite imagery into operational agricultural assessments for the global crop market. Automated algorithms for rapid extraction of field-level crop area statistics from Landsat and Landsat-class imagery (including Landsat 5 TM, Landsat 7 ETM+, AWiFS, ASTER, SPOT, LDCM, etc.) are under development. For prototype development, the project is collaborating with the Production Estimates and Crop Assessment Division of the USDA Foreign Agricultural Service. The Phase I prototype algorithms, based on Bayesian Probability Theory, incorporate multiple lines of evidence in the form of prior and conditional probabilities and implement an innovative approach to supervised image classification allowing for automated class delineation. The knowledge-based expert classifiers prototyped during Phase I were tested and validated at selected pilot sites across the globe. The results of the Phase I work have clearly demonstrated the technical feasibility of the GDA approach to automated crop area assessment with medium resolution imagery. Development undertaken during Phase I resulted in a robust, fully functional set of modules that are capable of processing large volumes of data and allow for accurate crop detection, area estimation, and crop acreage change assessment with minimal user intervention. The prototype algorithms were tested on a range of test sites, sensors, crop types, and crop conditions. A non-rigorous validation study proved the reliability and accuracy of the prototype algorithms. The overall results of the project will enhance global agricultural production estimates by improving the timeliness and accuracy of field-level crop area estimates.
The Sprayable Thermal Insulation for Cryogenic Tanks (STICT) is a thermal management system applied by either an automated or manual spraying process with less sensitivity to process chemistry and environmental parameters than current spray-on foam insulations (SOFI) like BX-265, while providing better insulation performance.  The sprayable insulation based on aerogel forms an aerodynamically smooth, uniform coating with better cohesion and lower thermal conductivity.  Aerogel sprayed insulation has shown in Phase I better thermal performance than polyurethane spray-on foam insulation at similar or lower areal densities. Application of thinner layers of insulation combined with greater material resistance to cracking and debonding will eliminate the generation of in-flight debris. Minimization of volatile gas blowing agents and organic components will reduce gas expansion through intracellular pressures and reduces the risk posed by shedding events during ascent.  The proposed sprayable insulation can render future space transportation systems safer and more reliable.  Addressing lower temperature requirements of the thermal protection system, lightweight hybrid aerogel sprayable compositions will be developed. Hybrid aerogels with various dopants will be synthesized for better compatibility with the binders or organic foams.  For the most stringent thermal and mechanical loads silica aerogel? silica foams will be developed as sprayable insulation.
NASA's programs to send manned and unmanned missions to Moon, Mars and the planets beyond will require structural materials that can protect the crew and the spacecraft from Galactic Cosmic Rays (GCR), Solar Energy Particles (SEP) and micrometeroid impact. In this Phase I effort, MMI proposes to reinforce high hydrogen content epoxies with nanotubes to obtain high performance composites with 20-25&#37; higher primary load-bearing properties
Automated Rendezvous and Capture (AR&amp;C) is a critical United States technology gap. AR&amp;C is identified as a critical enabling technology for future NASA Exploration and DoD missions including NASA's CEV, operation and commercial cargo re-supply to ISS, lunar transfer vehicle assembly and MARS missions. Multiple sensors that provide relative measurements of range, bearing and pose are the key to meeting the safety related issues with implementation of this technology.

This Phase II effort will provide a real-time hardware-in-the-loop demonstration using the robotic arm to autonomously capture a target spacecraft. The baseline demonstration uses a ground-based variant of the Space Shuttle robotic arm to grapple an uncooperative target. In Phase II, AOS will build an HGS prototype and demonstrate its performance in a hardware-in-the-loop scenario. The prototype employs a modular design approach to the integrated sensor suite. Initially, only the sensor subset addressing passive range and pose estimation will be implemented. Additional sensor modalities will be added as determined in the requirements development. 

The demonstration baseline employs a robotic arm supported on an air bearing floor and a free floating robot operating as the target vehicle. An air bearing floor allows the arm and target to move freely in three relative degrees of freedom. HGS provides an error signal and possibly associated rates along the axes. These signals drive the arm guidance with sufficient accuracy to successfully grapple the target.
A multi-roller "oil free" traction drive is under development for use on vehicles used in hostile environments like those that will be encountered on planetary surfaces.  The drive has been designed to meet the operating requirements of for an Apollo?class Lunar Rover. A drive geometry optimization study was conducted establishing that a 30-to-1, two-row, four planet multi-roller drive offers the best balance between size, weight, simplicity, motor operating speed and operational life. The drive can function without the use of liquid lubricants and will be able to operate at very cold temperatures and over a wide range of temperatures by using low wear, high friction solid lubricant materials.  Liquid lubricants currently used in gear drives tend to become too viscous to flow at low temperature and too thin to lubricate at high temperatures.  Because these drives use no liquids, "oil free" traction drives will not encounter the problems associated with the changing oil viscosities of liquid lubricants which will enable them to operate reliably over a wide range of temperatures.  Also contamination of the lunar soil will not be a problem because there is no liquid to vaporize or leak.
Micron-thin surface hot-film gages are used to develop flow-angle and airspeed sensor system (FASS). Unlike Pitot-static and other pressure-based devices, which experience serious limitations in accuracy, pneumatic lags, and frequency response in thin upper atmospheres and at low speeds, FASS will measure airspeed all the way to zero knots and flow angularity to a fraction of a degree with practically zero-lag. It will perform equally well at sea level as well at high altitudes and even in the thin Martian atmosphere with relative immunity to EMI and RFI. Calibrated hot-film gages could also be used to simultaneously obtain total temperature. FASS addresses important flight-operation and flight research problems that have crucial impact on vehicle performance, stability &amp; control, structural loads, and pilot action. FASS will permit direct integration with aircraft avionics systems including conventional instruments used for pressure, temperature, and density measurements. Hot-film gages are coated to withstand harsh environment and for protection from rain and ice. FASS is developed both as a stand-alone probe and as an embedded, non-intrusive system. Applications include aerospace and ground vehicles, submarines, ships, and measurements in the atmosphere, ocean, and in internal flows.
NASA has numerous requirements for in-space repair capabilities to aid future missions beyond earth orbit.  A subset of these requirements is adhesive patch materials that provide permanent or temporary repair of a wide variety of surfaces with minimal surface preparation and that can operate in the space environment.  This work will result in the production of a repair kit for in-space applications that forms structural composite patches rapidly and safely with low power.  The proposed kit will consist of glass fabric impregnated with a UV light-curing resin stored in a protective dispenser.  Cure will be accomplished using a portable, robust light-emitting diode (LED) array.  Surface cleaning materials may also be included in the kit.  The proposed material will adhere to a variety of surfaces and cure under a variety of environmental conditions including vacuum.  Such a repair kit will provide a versatile repair technology for a wide variety of applications, which eliminates having redundant repair approaches in many cases.  This work will extend the knowledge base previously attained with the development of similar light-curing materials for rigidization of inflatable spacecraft.  That prior work will greatly benefit the development of the proposed repair kit and reduce programmatic risk.
This proposal describes a Phase II SBIR project to develop high-resolution, ultraflat micromirror array devices using advanced silicon surface micromachining technology and building on process innovations demonstrated in a successful Phase I research effort.
 
Each device will be comprised of 331 close-packed hexagonal mirror segments. Each segment will be controlled to nanometer-scale  tolerances in rotation (tilt) and surface normal translation (piston) using electrostatic actuators. The architecture used in the micromirror design and fabrication processes used, are scaleable to array sizes up to 1027 mirror segments with 3081 independent control points. The completed device will be delivered to the Jet Propulsion Laboratory for evaluation in the High Contrast Imaging Testbed.
 
If successful, this project will result in enabling hardware for wavefront control, as needed for starlight canceling coronagraphic instruments. The Phase I project demonstrated actuator designs and mirror segment manufacturing processes that were capable of meeting the unprecedented demands of such instruments with regard to  segment optical quality, segment planarity during actuation, and actuation precision and range. In the Phase II effort, these designs and processes will be used to produce a functional, packaged micromirror array that will meet the immediate wavefront control needs for visible nulling coronagraphic testbed instrument. The device is being designed and fabricated to be suitable for space-based operation as part of a future observatory mission.
Wide-bandgap SiC semiconductors have been recently investigated for use in power devices, because of their potential capabilities of operating at high power densities, high temperatures and at high frequencies and thus offering advantages such as high efficiency, small size and light weight.  Currently a few power devices based on SiC technology have been demonstrated and commercialized. Therefore, an opportunity exists to develop and demonstrate a SiC power inverter, showing the system-level impacts of using commercially available SiC power devices compared with an Si-based inverter, and addressing the related technical issues/risks of implementing SiC technology. Following a successful demonstration of the concept feasibility in Phase I, Phase II research will fully develop, demonstrate, model, and characterize a three-phase all SiC inverter. The inverter will be constructed through the integration of several supporting technologies including circuit design and device paralleling, high temperature packaging and thermal management, high temperature gate based on SOI technology, and other passive components. In the Phase II, the underlying technical issues that govern the fabrication and performance of this SiC inverter will be addressed, and its technical/economical benefits will be analyzed.  By implementing technology developed, a high-efficiency, compact SiC inverter technology can be anticipated for potential NASA and other applications.
The proposed innovation will utilize a small network of remote sensors (Figure 2.1) to perform Radio Interferometry (RI) and Time Difference of Arrival (TDOA) techniques to survey, identify and locate Radio Frequency (RF) energy signatures within a given geographic area such as a launch range or other strategic area.  The survey mission will use radio interferometry techniques to create RF "images" of the surveyed area.  These images will show the locations of all RF activity within an area.  While an area is secure, a set of images will be captured and averaged to establish the nominal RF baseline for that area.  Once the baseline is established, real-time RF surveys will be instantly compared to the nominal baseline to detect the existence of RF spectral anomalies.  The TDOA and RI techniques used to establish the RF images will determine the precise location of any spectral anomaly source so that it can be quickly and cost effectively identified and mitigated.
Many NASA space and Earth programs in the infrared range 1060-1550 nm are limited by the detector performance that require long exposure time due to their low sensitivity and/or high noise. Large format infrared photon counting arrays with ranging capability would provide a valuable tool to many space missions. Current state of the art fabrication of photon counting infrared detector arrays on non-silicon semiconductors is not mature enough to monolithically integrate complex readout circuitry at pixel level and large format array multiplexing. We proposed to develop novel fast readout integrated circuits (ROIC) to be integrated with large photon-counting infrared detector arrays into 3D imaging cameras with photon-counting sensitivity. These new cameras would support NASA missions in applications such as space docking, landing, remote mapping, and robotic vision.
The goal of this program is to develop smart-pixel ROIC arrays in silicon with enhanced radiation tolerance, ready for hybrid integration with large infrared photon-counting avalanche photodiode arrays, that will enable large-area detectors with short integration time, sub-nanosecond timing resolution, and on-pixel logic.

In Phase I, we have simulated, implemented, and successfully validated all the blocks of a ROIC array specifically developed for operation with infrared photon-counting arrays.

In Phase II, we will improve, fabricate and qualify ROIC arrays with integrated timing functions at pixel level and capable of integration in flip-chip technology with large infrared photon counting detector arrays.
In Phase Sunpower looked at Thermoacoustic Stirling Heat Engines (TASHEs).  These ranged from a TASHE which was sized for the heat from a single General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS), to a larger unit sized for a Venus mission.  We also looked at different types of cooler to produce both electrical power and sensor cooling for the Venus application.  Computer projected performance and layout drawing were created for all the machines investigated.   In Phase II we plan to fabricate, test, and develop the single-GPHS sized coaxial. TASHE designed in Phase I.
The need for higher performance fiber optic telecommunications receivers has provided the impetus for substantial progress during the last decade in the understanding and performance of InP-based linear mode avalanche photodiodes (APDs) for the wavelength range from 1.0 to 1.7 um.  However, these advances have not been paralleled in the performance and availability of single photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) based on similar design and materials platforms.  Moreover, the limited work that has been done to date has been focused on optimizing devices for telecommunications wavelengths in the vicinity of 1550 nm, and there has been even less effort towards devices for use at 1064 nm.  For this SBIR program, we propose to apply innovative design concepts for the development of high performance SPADs optimized for 1064 nm applications.  In particular, we will implement novel bandgap and electric-field engineering approaches to tailor the SPAD avalanche gain properties to realize higher single photon detection efficiency while maintaining the very low dark count rates that are made possible by optimizing the absorption region design for the detection of 1064 nm photons.  We will apply design concepts that we have innovated during Phase I of this program (as well as in the course of developing state-of-the-art 1550 nm SPADs) that involve optimization of the device electric profile for photon counting as well as epitaxial layer compositions.  These efforts will culminate in 1064 nm large area detectors (with active area diameters up to 500 um) that demonstrate feasibility in meeting NASA performance targets including 50&#37; detection efficiency, bandwidth of 500 MHz, saturation levels of 50 Mcounts/s, and non-gated operation.  We will also use the detectors developed to deliver linear SPAD arrays for use as photon-counting line-scan imagers.
In the proposed SBIR Phase I program LGR will develop and deploy a novel instrument ("Optical Thermometer") that provides real-time, in situ, non-contact measurements of substrate temperature in optical coating reactors. The instrument will employ an inexpensive diode laser, fiber optic components, and established laser interferometry methods to determine substrate temperature at multiple locations with a replicate precision of better than 0.01 degrees C in a measurement time of less than 0.01 seconds. The precision may be improved with increasing measurement time, if desired. The "Optical Thermometer" will be demonstrated on optical substrates made of a variety of materials in state-of-the-art industrial reactors specializing in UV, visible, near-IR and mid-IR optical coatings. The fast response of the sensor will enable coaters to use, for the first time, precise measurements of bulk substrate temperature to identify temperature nonuniformities during the coating process, refine and improve coating processes in real time, and minimize interwafer and batch-to-batch variations through closed-loop process control.
Membrane Optical Shell Technology (MOST) is an innovative combination of 1) very low areal density (40 to 200g/m2) optically smooth (&lt;20 nm rms), metallic coated reflective membrane thin films, 2) advanced fabrication techniques that transform the films into self supporting shells through the introduction of permanent optically relevant double curvature, and 3) discrete active boundary control to enable rigid body alignment and maintainment of surface figure in face of environmental disturbances.  Areal densities of better than 2 kg/m2 (including actuators) are projected.  Current measured surface figure is  &amp;#8776;1 to 10 microns rms at up to the 15 cm size, and we are poised for further improvements.  Demonstrated material and fabrication techniques are scaleable to at least the 2m+ diameter single surface apertures and larger apertures are possible through segmentation techniques.  Proven stowage and deployment techniques enable space flight application.  We propose advancing 1) the basic fabrication technology and 2) the TRL level of MOST apertures for ground and space based apertures.  The key resulting innovation is implementation of low areal density, compact roll stowable approaches to realize low mass, low cost reflective apertures for RF/Microwave to LIDAR.  Other NASA and DOD applications are expected as precision and aperture size increase.
Communities near airports are often exposed to high noise levels due to low flying aircraft in the takeoff and landing phases of flight. Propulsion source noise is the major contributor to the overall noise level. The noise generation mechanisms for a typical turbofan engine are complicated, which makes it a significant challenge to identify the noise sources. Each engine component, such as fan, compressor and turbine, can generate both broadband and narrowband noise. Particularly, the fan noise, more specifically the interaction of the rotor with the downstream stator, is important due to the trend towards the development of civil aircraft turbofan engines with higher and higher by pass ratios. 
Nearfield acoustical holography (NAH) refers to a process by which the noise sources and the resulting sound field can be reconstructed based on sound pressure measurements taken on a surface in the neighborhood of these sources. Thus, the development and application of appropriate generalized acoustical holography (GAH) system by extending NAH to handle arbitrary geometry and complex noise sources, novel measurement and data processing methods, and innovative inversion and regularization techniques will conceptually allow the identification and ranking of complex turbomachinery noise sources that are otherwise difficult to characterize. This system will also enable the use of more effective active and/or passive noise control measures by providing useful information that is impossible to obtain by direct measurements.
Los Gatos Research proposes to develop a new automated vehicle health monitoring sensor system capable of measuring loads and detecting crack, corrosion, and disbonding in advanced aerospace structures using a novel lock-in laser interrogation technique combined with a Bragg grating array (BGA) technology for strain and guided Lamb wave (GLW) sensing.  Los Gatos Research's novel sensor instrumentation offers a number of advantages including sensor compactness (0.2mm x 0.2mm x 10mm), lightweight (few grams), remote data acquisition capability, low-cost, and low power consumption. The inherently reliable lock-in laser demodulation technique permit simultaneous measurements of strain, temperature, and acoustic fields with high resolution and high sensitivity.  In Phase I, we have demonstrated feasibility by building a prototype instrument  capable of measuring static and dynamic strain, temperature, and ultrasonic waves using a lock-in laser demodulation technique and a fiber Bragg grating array sensor network.  In Phase II, LGR will deliver to NASA a rugged, compact, multi-channel instrument optimized for vehicle health monitoring studies including strain, temperature, and crack monitoring with high precision, high resolution, and high sensitivity.  This dedicated prototype will include an integrated microcontroller, operate unattended, and address the power and stability requirements unique to in-flight studies.
The nature of human exploration missions to the Moon and Mars demands a frequency-agile, reconfigurable, durable digital radio delivering telemetry, ranging, voice, video, and data, with low Size, Weight, and Power (SWAP), and easy operation in the demanding space environment of Extra Vehicular Activity (EVA). AeroAstro and Virginia Tech propose to continue development of the EVA radio, building upon work accomplished in Phase I, combining AeroAstro's history of creating efficient space technology solutions and Virginia Tech's experience and expertise in Software Defined Radio (SDR) technology. AeroAstro will design and fabricate a prototype demonstrating the key requirements of the EVA radio?reconfigurability and frequency agility. The prototype will incorporate an adaptable modular RF front end for frequency agility, and a transmultiplexer-based digital back end, capable of a full range of sophisticated wireless waveforms, through software-defined reconfiguration of the same physical hardware.  The prototype will also exhibit innovative solutions to extending SDR architecture standards to the demands of space applications.  The proposed innovations fill critical technological gaps and mesh with other promising technological developments, such as micromachined passive RF components and fault-tolerant reconfigurable electronics, not only assuring the safety and success of human space exploration missions, applicable to space applications in general.
Modern electronic systems tolerate only as many point failures as there are redundant system copies, using mere macro-scale redundancy.  Fault Tolerant Electronics Supporting Space Exploration (FTESSE) creates an electronic design paradigm using reprogrammable FPGAs to create swappable Circuit Object Blocks (COBs) ? analogous to software objects ? for the first time enabling redundancy on a micro-scale. The result is an increased tolerance of point failures by several orders of magnitude over traditional approaches. In the FTESSE approach, FPGAs are partitioned into COBs (groups of gates), each performing a specific function. Bad areas can be mapped like the bad sector data on a disk drive, enabling COBs to be placed in areas of working gates to recover system performance. Hardware tested during Phase I verified point failures could be introduced into an example circuit and corrected. As in the Phase I model, circuits to be monitored reside on a Slave FPGA, and a Master FPGA monitors outputs of all COBs, sensing faults and mapping non-working gates on the Slave FPGA. The Master is a rad-hard, triple mode redundancy (TMR) FPGA, but the Slaves need not be, opening the doors to higher performance applications while maintaining high levels of fault tolerance.
Financial constraints, government recommendations, and the need for improved operational efficiency are requiring airlines to review their "on-condition" maintenance practices.  Many of the specific conditions and events of interest to airline maintenance are not being monitored by automatic systems, and some events are being identified through a subjective determination by the aircrew.  This subjective determination can result in both maintenance being performed unnecessarily and maintenance not being performed when needed.  AeroTech will develop a multi-tier, Quantitative Condition Alerting and Analysis Support (QCAAS) system for aircraft that will in real-time, automatically downlink to maintenance personnel, reports on the occurrence of specific conditions and events (e.g. loads exceedance).  The reports will be displayed on a web based, ground station network.  The system will also track individual aircraft's exposure to particular in-flight conditions allowing airline personnel to tailor maintenance programs to individual aircraft.  By providing quantifiable data in real-time, operational decisions can be made to minimize the impact and maximize the benefits of on-condition maintenance.  The QCAAS system will be comprised only of software that can be implemented on most current fleet aircraft, keeping costs low, minimizing the time to market, and therefore maximizing the likelihood of industry adoption.
In response to RFP S8.04 Spacecraft Propulsion, innovations in propulsion technologies are needed to increase the capabilities of the Science Mission Directorate (SMD) spacecraft.  Towards this need, MicroPhase Coatings, Inc. (MPCI) proposes tank bladders compatible with advanced monopropellants.  MPCI is well underway in development of polymer liners for lightweight propulsion tanks for containment of gelled inhibited red fuming nitric acid (IRFNA) and monomethylhydrazine (MMH) under an Army Redstone Arsenal contract in collaboration with partner Northrop Grumman Space Technology (NGST).  Most MPCI bladders are composed of FEP thermoplastic fluoropolymer into which glass flake is compounded for additional barrier properties.  Glass flakes within the polymer matrix overlap to yield tortuous paths to chemicals that might otherwise migrate through a polymer matrix. When needed, we also incorporate auxiliary fluorinated silicate coating or even pure gold plate within the bladder interior.  Fluoropolymers, glass, gold and silicate coatings are all materials well known for chemical inertness.  MPCI's innovation is to combine the materials in a form that yields a flexible bladder which serves as an inert barrier for monopropellant containment and stability.  The time is ripe to expand compatibility testing of MPCI's bladder technology to advanced monopropellants for SMD needs.
Valcor Engineering Corporation proposes to develop an advanced On Board Inert Gas Generation System, OBIGGS, for aircraft fuel tank inerting to prevent hazardous in-flight conditions and to mitigate their effect when they do occur. Aircraft fires represent a small number of actual accident causes, but the number of fatalities due to in-flight, post-crash, and on-ground fires is large. The novel OBIGGS system will inert aircraft fuel tanks with nitrogen generated by a hollow fiber membrane module. The system will provide a cost effective method for fuel tank inerting, will be robust and resistant to chemical contamination. An OBIGGS system that is based on nitrogen generation is environmentally friendly and does not require hazardous chemicals for fire suppression. In addition to improving aircraft safety by mitigating hazardous in-flight and on the ground conditions the OBIGGS systems will also contribute to aircraft security and will mitigate aircraft damage from hostile attacks.
The proposed effort will result in a design of a 30 kWe dual opposed alpha free-piston Stirling engine power conversion system for space applications, and provide proof of concept by the operation of a practical alpha engine. The stepped piston three-cylinder alpha FPSE has shown the highest efficiency and excellent specific power among various engines studied in Phase I. In addition, the three phase electric output of a three-cylinder machine is naturally better in the system context. Thus a high efficiency 15 kWe stepped three-cylinder alpha FPSE will be designed for a 30 kWe dual opposed operation by having two engines connected for perfect balancing in all harmonics. The program minimizes the development risks by combining proven technologies of Sunpower and Global Cooling Manufacturing Inc. (GCM). GCM has achieved the successful operation of a four-cylinder alpha free-piston Stirling cooler.
In this proposal a new carbide-based fuel is introduced with outstanding potential to eliminate the loss of uranium, minimizes the loss of uranium, and retains fission products for many hours of operation in hydrogen environment at temperatures in excess of 3,200K. The proposed fuel is a ceramic-ceramic (CerCer) composite of mixed uranium-refractory carbides such as (U, Zr)C or (U, Zr, Nb)C in a matrix of refractory carbides that mostly include transition metal carbides such as ZrC, NbC, TaC, and HfC. Due to its low neutron absorption cross-section, ZrC is the primary refractory carbide of choice. Replacing ZrC with higher temperature refractory carbides such as TaC and HfC could further improves the high temperature performance of CerCer fuels. However, higher neutron absorption cross-section penalty for Ta and Hf could potentially offset the performance enhancement gain. Due to complete containment and encapsulation of mixed uranium carbide in zirconium carbide matrix, the proposed CerCer fuel could be conveniently fabricated to different geometrical shapes such as solid block prismatic, twisted ribbon, pebbles, wafer, or square lattice honeycomb. Considering the operational parameters for the NT/BP systems, it is reasonable to argue that the proposed CerCer fuel concept could set the upper material performance limits while providing more flexibility in the geometrical design of the fuel.
Formation flying enables new capabilities in distributed sensing, surveillance in Earth orbit and for interferometer imaging in deep space as envisioned by the Terrestrial Plant Finder-Interferometer (TPF-I) mission.  Specifically, formation flying spacecraft refer to a set of spatially distributed spacecraft interacting and cooperating with one another. Our objective in Phase II is to develop and implement highly reliable fault detection, identification, and reconstruction algorithms that take into account the high analytic redundancy of the spacecraft and the distributed spacecraft system. In the Phase I our analytic redundancy management methodology was developed and demonstrated on a small distributed and collaborative set of simulated spacecraft. These results are to be generalized and applied to realistic spacecraft systems in Phase II.   Faults in spacecraft sensors and actuators of a cluster of spacecraft are to be detected, identified, and reconstructed using abstractions from high-fidelity models such as found in FAST (Formation Algorithms and Simulation Testbed). From these analytical redundancy algorithms a fault-tolerant state estimator is constructed which is not corrupted by system faults. These techniques will be implemented and tested in FAST. These algorithms will be transferred to the Formation Control Testbed (FCT) robots and tested and verified in FCT.
This project addresses the need for a framework and domain architecture suitable for reconfigurable transceivers and associated component technologies. The goal of this effort is to provide flexible, reconfigurable communications capability while minimizing on-board resources and cost.  WW Technology Group's (WWTG) approach provides a formalized structure for: (1) the design and implementation of reconfigurable computing (RC) using FPGAs for high performance parallel processing and (2) algorithm updates over the life cycle of the platform.  In addition, this RC-Enabled approach can replace manual, ad-hoc development methods and support Runtime Reconfiguration (RTR) activities that allow the dynamic modification of the functional configuration of the RC hardware and adaptive computing.   Specifically, WWTG's approach offers reconfigurable software and firmware that provides access control, and reconfiguration process including partial reconfiguration.

The WW Technology Group (WWTG) presents a novel approach for reconfigurable, reprogrammable communication systems that provide high performance within the constraints of power consumption, reliability, size, and weight.  By combining the system on a chip (SoC) technologies in a distributed platform supported by a flexible software infrastructure, our system strikes the optimal balance between size, power consumption, and functionality.
The intent of the proposed effort is to investigate the detailed
composite overwrapped pressure vessel (COPV) performance characteristics
after being subject to irradiation, hypervelocity micro-meteor impact,
and cryogenic environments. This will result in a safer, more reliable
design for high performance COPVs. This intent will be achieved via
empirical characterization of composite raw materials subsequent to
exposure of the aforementioned environments. Phase I of this effort
(NASA contract #NNM06AA56C) demonstrated a significant reduction in
structural performance following exposure to various combinations of the
aforementioned environments. This reduction in structural performance
would seriously compromise the structural performance of any composite
structure to be utilized in deep space applications. The data proposed
in this effort would be extremely useful to NASA in what might be used
in the upcoming CEV and CONSTELLATION missions. The aerospace and the
commercial communities have shown significant interest in using filament
wound COPVs for cryogenic applications. In addition there is serious
consideration for using COPVs in deep space exploration which would
sustain significant radiation exposure and possible impact damage.
Constituent raw materials and existing COPV designs have not been
characterized for the coupled effects of these applications and as such
the safety margins for these applications are undefined. Therefore, the
reliability of such usage is unknown.
The purpose of this project is to develop a storyboard tool to assist with the generation, verification, and refinement of storyboard information and its subsequent translation into model data for systems analysis and design tools.  The most important contribution is an improved communication of the concept of operation between prospective customers and system developers.  It addresses the difficulty of communicating highly technical information among specialized engineering groups so that the concept of operations illustrated by the storyboard accommodates the consideration of context of use, user task performance, and effective application of new technologies.  This difficulty is especially pronounced when the user's tasks are unusual (space operations) and the technology to support the task is novel (autonomous software with which humans interact and monitor).  Communication is enhanced by focusing on the common language of storyboard sketches and related categories of information describing them.  The storyboard tool will help authors manage versions of storyboards to track alternate approaches for human task support and to maintain libraries of storyboards from previous systems.  After assisting with the creation of storyboards and refining them in concurrent engineering sessions, the tool will assist in translating the storyboard information into data forms importable by analysis tools used by NASA systems engineers.
Los Gatos Research, Inc. proposes to develop a lightweight, compact, rugged, near and mid-infrared gas-sensing spectroscopy instrument to accurately measure the abundance of various gases on Mars and other extra-terrestrial bodies.  These gases include methane, water vapor, carbon dioxide, and ammonia.  This instrument will be a fully autonomous, stand-alone, remotely operable all fiber-based spectroscopy sensor capable of measuring gases in a Martian environment.  The proposed prototype sensor includes the novel use of hollow photonic crystal fibers, which further enables accurate measurement of even small samples of gas.  The project will also leverage Los Gatos Research's prior work developing rugged, autonomous gas sensors for extreme environments that NASA is currently using.
Leveraging the successful Phase I SBIR program, a 24-month effort is proposed to optimize and demonstrate a high thermoelectric Figure-of-Merit (ZT) nanocrystal quantum dot (NQD) thermoelectric (TE) material, which will  have thermal efficiency properties far better than traditional bulk thermoelectric materials. In the proposed work, a series of TE devices will be fabricated from solidified NQD films formed from colloidally synthesized NQDs using consolidation and second phase precipitation. The increase of ZT, is dependent on quantum confinement of electrons and holes, as well as the phonon dynamics and transport of the materials. If the size of a semiconductor is smaller than the mean free path of phonons and larger than that of electrons or holes, one can reduce thermal conductivity by boundary scattering without affecting electrical transport. Although charge transport in thermoelectricity is almost monoenergetic (energy levels within a few kT around the Fermi energy), heat transport by phonons is broadband over the Brillouin zone. The significance of the opportunity is the ability to colloidally-manufacture, high performance, conformal, thin film TE materials, free from the lattice and other constraints of MBE growth.
One of NASA's primary goals for the next decade is the design, development and launch of a spacecraft aimed at the in-situ exploration of the deep atmosphere and surface of Venus.  The success of this mission, called VISE (Venus In-Situ Explorer), is reliant on the development of effective thermal insulation solutions capable of protecting spacecraft for extended periods of time from the extreme heat and pressure associated with the lower atmosphere of Venus.  Materials intended for exterior application must also be inert towards the sulfuric, hydrochloric and hydrofluoric acid present.  Aspen Aerogels, Inc. proposes to continue its development of aerogel composites intended for thermal and chemical protection to a Venus spacecraft.  During the Phase I program, we fabricated several aerogels with inherent thermal conductivities below 40 mW/m-K.  In Phase II, we propose to optimize the synthesis through systematic changes in gelation, extraction, and pyrolysis conditions.  Furthermore, we will demonstrate thermal conductivities of 100 mW/m-K at 500 C under 90 bars of CO2 pressure.  Lastly, methods for fabricating aerogel composites into complex shapes will be investigated along with system level design including attachment to the Venus spacecraft.
Recycling of water using biological processes is a primary goal of NASA's advanced life support programs. This proposal concerns a technology to simultaneously reduce the microbial count (MC) and total organic carbon (TOC) content of biological water processor (BWP) effluent. This technology is based on an advanced oxidation process using an on-demand oxidizer generator, which does not require consumable chemicals. Phase I feasibility studies successfully demonstrated the efficacy of the process for the reduction of both TOC and MC of the BWP processed water. Independent evaluation of the technology at a well known technological university successfully demonstrated the efficacy of the process for minimizing the RO membrane fouling. The residual disinfectant and reduced TOC in the treated effluent minimize fouling the RO membrane and water lines. In addition, reduced TOC lowers the load on equipment downstream to the BWP, enabling a reduction in the equivalent system mass. In the Phase II project, a prototype will be fabricated and evaluated for its ability to reduce TOC, MC and extend RO membrane life in a technological university having a small scale water reclamation system similar to that at NASA-JSC. The GEN I unit developed will be delivered to NASA-JSC.
Dust, especially lunar dust, has been identified as a significant and present challenge in future exploration missions. In addition to posing contamination and health risks for human explorers, the interlocking, angular nature of lunar dust and its broad grain size distribution make it particularly detrimental to mechanisms with which it may come into contact. All Apollo lunar missions experienced some degree of equipment failure due to dust, and it appears that dust accumulation on exposed material is unavoidable and difficult to reverse. However, experience also indicates that material selection, location, and crew action can mitigate the detrimental effects of dust. It remains the case that significant development is called for in the area of devices and structures that tolerate or mitigate the presence of lunar dust. Thus, Honeybee Robotics proposes to develop both active and passive methods for tolerating and mitigating dust accumulation on reusable connection mechanism interfaces. Techniques such as baffles, brushes, and fluid-washing will be explored more thoroughly as they relate to mechanical connections. Dust-tolerant connection strategies will be an enabling step for much of the technology that Honeybee is currently developing for lunar drilling and sample and instrument manipulation in particular, and as a necessary precursor to interfaces for transferring electricity, fluids, and other utilities in general.
This SBIR Phase I effort examines the feasibility of an innovative fabrication technology incorporating sand casting and friction stir processing (FSP) for producing affordable near net shape components made from high performance Ni-based superalloys. Sand casting is a relatively inexpensive casting method not traditionally used to manufacture superalloy castings. Instead of invested ceramic shells, the molds are produced from a mixture of fine sand and/or rammed graphite powder. Friction stir processing is an emerging microstructural modification technique based on friction stir welding (FSW). It can be applied to enhance the microstructure-properties of the cast material thus improve the damage tolerance capabilities. This step is needed to allow cast superalloy rocket propulsion components to be used without a casting factor.
This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will demonstrate a vapor compressor driven hybrid two-phase loop technology. The hybrid two-phase loop technology incorporates an advanced evaporator design that is capable of passive separation of liquid and vapor phases at high heat flux conditions. Combining the hybrid two-phase loop technology with a vapor compressor increases the technology's operating range. The integral phase separation feature in the evaporator greatly improves the vapor compressor performance and reliability by preventing two-phase flows in the compressor. The proposed technology is particularly suited for the lunar surface systems where the cooling system size, mass, reliability and operation under widely varying environmental conditions are critically important.
We propose to develop a compact handheld longwave infrared camera based on quantum well infrared photodetector (QWIP) focal plane array (FPA) technology.  Based on the photoexcitation of electrons out of quantum wells of GaAs sandwiched between AlGaAs barriers, QWIP FPAs have emerged as a promising new candidate for longwave infrared imaging and spectroscopy, offering superb sensitivity, pixel operability and uniformity, adjustable spectral response (3-20 microns), and extension to large formats.  We will DELIVER a prototype camera at the end of Phase 1 so that NASA can test it in the field for its applications.  In Phase 2, we will tailor the spectral response of the detector array to 8-12 microns, expand its format to 1Kx1K, and package and deliver the resulting wideband camera to NASA for spectroscopic/imaging studies in this spectral range.
Axis Engineering Technologies proposes a revolutionary new technology that can provide performance levels, in terms of output power, bandwidth and mass, previously unmet in current commercially available actuation platforms.  The approach features a new hybrid pump, which is powered by active material stacks, and produces fluidic power to directly power hydraulic actuators. The compact, sealed unit eliminates external hydraulic components, such as accumulators, reservoirs, and, especially, long hydraulic tubing runs. By increasing system efficiency, reducing system mass and exploiting the unique characteristics of active materials, we expect to get a significant performance improvement in representative applications.  This is in contrast with many commercially available actuation systems, composed of either traditional hydraulic or electromechanical mechanisms.  Each of these systems is limited due to either excessive mass or limited bandwidth, or both.  And yet these technologies have been adopted across a wide spectrum of applications, including Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs), high performance fighter aircraft, active automotive suspension systems and mobile robotic systems.  Each of these applications would benefit greatly from the introduction of an actuation system that can provide mass-savings and bandwidth improvements, simultaneously.
nLight developed high-power, high-efficiency laser diodes emitting at 1907nm for the pumping of solid-state lasers during the Phase I. The innovation brought to bear at 19-xxnm wavelengths nLight's design knowledge and experience from its highly successful 9xx-nm and 14xx-nm, high-efficiency and high-power laser diode programs.  The expected performance for the laser at the conclusion of the phase I was 25&#37; electrical-to-optical (E/O) conversion efficiency and 18 W continuous-wave power (CW) - both measured at 15C.  The program was highly successful in achieving performance of 25W and 23&#37; efficiency at 20C (5C warmer than projection). Such lasers meet the brightness and power requirements for the direct pumping of the quasi 4-level 5I7 to 5I8 transition in singly-doped Ho:YAG lasers.  This work can readily be extended to 18xx-nm and 20xx-nm with comparable performance for application to the pumping of other solid-state lasers.
This SBIR project will develop and deliver to NASA revolutionary laser diode driver technology with intelligent fault protection for driving high power laser diode arrays (LDAs). A key goal of the project is to increase the lifetime of LDAs operating under long-pulse (&gt;2 msec), quasi-CW conditions by a factor-of-10, to at least 1 billion shot lifetime, in order to meet NASA mission requirements. A critical issue with operating LDAs for long pulses is localized diode heating leads to current and optical instabilities, which damages emitters resulting in LDA failure. SRL has demonstrated that diode instabilities can be detected and eliminated, and SRL's fault protected drivers increase laser diode lifetimes by more than a factor-of-10. A key technical step that will be implemented in Phase 2 is to develop and integrate SRL fault protection with laser diode stacks. This will also include NASA-developed temperature/voltage diagnostic to provide additional information on laser diode performance and lifetime. In Phase 2 SRL will develop multiple laser diode protection technologies, and deliver to NASA an integrated fault protection module for test and evaluation. This fault protected driver package for laser diode stacks will support scale up designs for flight hardware in Phase 3.
The proposed effort addresses a need for accurate computational models to support aeroassist and entry vehicle system design over a broad range of flight conditions including direct entry and aerocapture trajectories for manned and unmanned earth return and planetary exploration.  These models are critical for assessing aerodynamic characteristics including reaction control systems (RCS) influences and for designing thermal protection systems involving both ablating and non-ablating materials.  A hybrid approach unifying continuum CFD and rarefied DSMC flow solvers will be developed that can handle both higher altitude continuum flows, i.e. 60~85km, with embedded rarefied zones such as the base/near-wake region as well as higher altitude rarefied flows with embedded continuum zones such as RCS jet plumes. The proposed model will automatically separate continuum and rarefied regions into distinct computational domains employing a unique methodology demonstrated in Phase I to construct hybrid interface surfaces for complex three-dimensional geometries.  The model will incorporate RCS jet and advanced ablative models and will provide consistent nonequilibrium thermochemical modeling between the CFD and DSMC solutions.  This methodology provides a more efficient and accurate tool than provided by continuum CFD or DSMC alone and provides the flexibility to address a wide range of vehicle and system designs.
The proposed effort addresses a current need for high fidelity simulation tools to support the design and analysis of combustion devices for the Constellation program and Exploration Mission that includes earth-to-orbit,  upper stage, as well as in-space propulsion systems.  Injector designs are a critical component of robust thrust chamber assembly designs since they impact combustion chamber instability and its transient response.  Inadequate injector designs have been the cause of major failures during engine development of all earlier liquid rocket systems including the SSME; the root cause for this may be attributed to the use of relatively simple empirically based, one-dimensional tools in the design process that are incapable of identifying localized failures driven by three-dimensional geometry and physics effects. The proposed three-dimensional, CFD tool will focus on rigorous modeling of the mixing and combustion processes in cryogenic liquid-gas injectors that operate in the trans-critical and sub-critical regime and exhibit strong non-linear sensitivities to real fluid thermodynamics, as well as turbulent mixing effects.  The advanced models developed will permit improved predictions of combustion chamber mean heat flux and localized peaks, as well as lay the foundation for predicting unsteady response of the injector and its coupling to the feed system dynamics.
In Phase I research, Iris AO developed enhanced electromechanical models and calibration techniques for MEMS-based segmented deformable mirrors (DMs) applicable to a variety of high contrast astrophysical imagers. High-precision DMs with 1,000-1,000,000 actuators are critical for high-contrast systems.  Non-MEMS DMs meet some NASA requirements, but require high actuation voltages, have low actuator densities, and do not scale readily beyond a few thousand actuators. MEMS DMs offer natural scalability, but do not yet meet the stringent precision and stability requirements for space telescopes.  Prior to this Phase I work, very few researchers have focused on extremely precise characterization of MEMS DMs.  Technical advances achieved in this Phase I improved open-loop positioning accuracy from nearly 100 nm rms to an impressive 8 nm rms. Stability measurements showed performance as good as 0.21-1.17 nm rms in an uncontrolled open-access laboratory over a 15-minute span. Including high-frequency noise sources not captured by Phase I optical measurement techniques but known to be present on the DM segments, this rises to 5.6 nm rms. Noise source analysis conducted in Phase I shows that stability to &lt;0.2 nm rms is feasible. Phase II will implement the improvements necessary to attain &lt;0.3 nm rms stability and resolution. These improvements include: 1) reducing known noise and drift sources identified in Phase I and tracking remaining measured but unknown noise sources; 2) increasing resolution to 0.14 nm rms through enhancements in drive electronics initiated in Phase I and optimizing the DM design to utilize the full dynamic range of the electronics; 3) improving optical quality of the Iris AO DM segments to 1-3 nm rms;  4) testing resolution and stability of the prototypes; 5) expanding reliability testing that started in Phase I and 6) investigate the effects of operating in vacuum.
The scope of this project is to provide a digital auto-correlation spectrometer fabricated on a single integrated circuit for NASA's future Earth-Sun System missions in order to enable the rapid development of small, ultra low-power, low-cost microwave remote sensing instruments for the analysis of chemical and  physical properties of planetary atmospheres. The  technical risk associated with the proposed Phase II project is low because all Phase I technical objectives were achieved using an innovative approach that consists of a synergistic combination of parallel architecture and differential circuits; based on the results obtained in Phase I,  it is anticipated that the power consumption of  a 4096-lag, 1 GHz bandwidth, 2-bit/4-level  digital auto-correlation spectrometer chip fabricated with IBM's 90 nm will be less than 4 W. The overall benefits of the proposed project, if successful, consist of the availability of a new class of high-bandwidth and ultra-low power digital auto-correlation spectrometer chip that will facilitate the construction of NASA's spaceborne microwave remote sensing instruments with substantially lower life-cycle costs,  power consumption,  and mass relative to that of existing filter-bank and acousto-optical spectrometers.
Recent work has developed a number of architectures and algorithms for accurately estimating spacecraft and formation states. The estimation accuracy achievable during spacecraft operation depends not only on the algorithm, but also on its implementation. Typically, the algorithm will be implemented on a real-time multi-tasking processor that allocates on-board computational resources to multiple tasks and functions according to some scheduling policy. The processor's task scheduler  may induce delays that were unaccounted for at design-time and may sometimes preempt estimation tasks in favor of other tasks. Hence, estimation accuracy and in general the performance of any embedded algorithm can be significantly lower than expected during execution. The goal of this project is to develop distributed spacecraft state estimation algorithms that account for real-time multi-tasking processor and other implementation related resource constraints. We bring together modeling techniques from multi-class queuing, well-known Kalman filtering techniques and recent advances in embedded systems to develop an innovative co-design framework for the design of embedded state estimation algorithms and software. During the proposed effort, we will design, implement and evaluate estimation algorithms on a network of real-time processors or hardware emulations of processors on-board formation spacecraft.
Advanced Scientific Concepts, Inc. (ASC) has developed a 128 x 128 frame, 3D Flash LADAR video camera capable of a 30 Hz frame rate. Because Flash LADAR captures an entire frame of data from a single pulse of light, platform motion and vibration will not affect the measurements.  This is not true for any other laser-ranging system, such as scanning LIDAR.  Additionally, with no moving parts, the system is smaller, lighter, and requires less power than traditional approaches. The proposed project will use an ASC camera in a flight test. Hazard identification, and Entry Decent and Landing applications will be investigated. Multiple data sets will be generated at various resolutions and frame rates. This data will be analyzed, and together with inputs from JPL scientists, will be used to breadboard the camera design for NASA applications. Industry inputs will define a pathway for space qualification. An optimized breadboard camera will be fabricated and delivered in Phase II.
Next generation air traffic management systems will be based to a greater degree on predicted trajectories of aircraft.  Due to the iterative nature of future air traffic management computations, the success of these systems will depend strongly on the ability to rapidly generate trajectory predictions. This proposal advances the development of a computational appliance for rapid prediction of aircraft trajectories (CARPAT) that combines the capabilities of the NASA-FACET software with the fast computing capabilities of the emerging field programmable gate array technology.  By integrating the FACET software components on commercial, off-the-shelf high-speed computing technology, the proposed research will demonstrate high trajectory prediction speeds at modest cost.
	Phase I research will demonstrate the feasibility of developing the trajectory prediction appliance using off-the-shelf hardware. High-speed trajectory predictions will be demonstrated under realistic traffic scenarios. A complete version of the system will be developed and provided to NASA during the Phase II work. The trajectory prediction appliance will commercialized during the Phase III work.
Mainstream is proposing a methodology to reduce the development time and cost, and improve the reliability of future thermal control systems for the next decade of deep space missions by utilizing a Plug-and-Play (PnP)  thermal control strategy.  A unique modular thermal control approach is described in the proposal as well as discussions why such an approach is ideally suited to reducing the development time and cost of deep space satellite thermal control systems as well as power conversion systems.  Phase I will experimentally demonstrate that the proposed PnP  approach can be configured to provide design flexibility, long life and extremely high reliability.  With potential missions to Europa, Venus, and Titan, as well as primitive bodies, the PnP approach can simplify thermal control design while utilizing very compact, reliable, two-phase thermal control bus architecture.
In this Phase I effort, Mainstream will demonstrate a unique PnP Tool-Box approach where the thermal control system is easily built-up into a complete integrated system, as well as being integrated into the power conversion components.  Highly integrated systems will reduce cost, reduce system size, improve reliability, and tighten the thermal control.
Routine installation and use of high-temperature optical sensors for characterization of advanced materials critical to NASA hypersonic programs are difficult due to the fundamental difficulties of integrating very diverse materials into a reliable, manufacturable sensor.  Sensors based on high-temperature optical fibers (including sapphire fibers) have been developed through extensive research; however, little advancement has been made with regard to achieving cost-effective sensors that can be employed in large numbers.  Currently, the materials of the mounting site, the materials of the sensor coupon, the fiber itself, sensor assembly methods and the optical interrogation methods have limited compatibility, resulting in each application becoming a custom installation.  Recent demonstrations at Virginia Tech, under NASA hypersonic program funding, of advanced Fracture-Release coupon structures, novel connectorization techniques, and improved assembly methods have enabled more rapid fabrication of high-temperature sapphire fiber sensors well-suited to instrumentation of advance materials in hypersonic research.  Prime Research, teaming with Virginia Tech, proposes to leverage these previous demonstrations to improve the manufacturability and ease-of-use of sapphire fiber strain gages, and to modify the assembly methods to permit their use with Prime Research's patented spinel-clad sapphire fibers, which have improved optical properties over unclad sapphire fibers.
Communications security (COMSEC) is essential to satellite communications.  Its role continues to grow as the available bandwidth expands to meet the ever increasing strategic and tactical data requirements of the 21st century. NASA's exploration of planetary surfaces will require a communication architecture that supports operational capabilities in which assets can communicate seamlessly and securely to coordinate exploration as well as communicate back to Earth. 

The flexibility and pervasiveness of the internet, including the transition to IPV6, is already being extended to military space assets ? e.g. the global grid. NASAs adoption of these same standards appears likely. The specific problem addressed by the Aeronix Phase I SBIR is to identify and develop modifications to our existing High Assurance Advanced Security Module (ASM) solution that satisfy the NASA networking requirements. 

The innovation of the proposed solution is the development of an unclassified IP based network encryptor that is compatible with commercially available ground based HAIPE equipment operating with Suite B algorithms and the ability to operate in the presence of failures caused by the harsh environment of space.
Thorleaf Research, Inc. has demonstrated feasibility in Phase 1 and now proposes a Phase 2 effort to develop a miniature, low power cryogenic inlet system with sampling probes for Titan. This addresses a key technology gap for planetary studies, mainly how to acquire and prepare complex cryogenic samples of astrobiology interest for in situ analysis while meeting challenging mass, volume and power constraints. The proposed sampling system is designed to collect surface samples at Titan's 94K (-179C) cryogenic temperatures using two different miniature probe designs, one for collecting atmospheric aerosols, dust or particles, and another for surface penetration. The samples, which are presumed to include hydrocarbons, nitriles, tholins and other materials, can then be thermally processed by vaporization, thermal desorption or pyrolysis to prepare them for chemical analysis by GC/MS, GC/IMS or other techniques.  Our Phase 1 results have demonstrated feasibility for developing a miniaturized cryogenic sampling inlet system with sampling probes weighing on the order of 100g with a peak power consumption of 20 watts or less. Because vaporization, thermal desorption or pyrolysis heating would only be required for a few seconds during each chemical analysis duty cycle, we project average power usage at a fraction of a watt.
NanoSonic has developed revolutionary nanostructured, yet macroscale, multifunctional Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; films.  In support of NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, low cost Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; freestanding or conformal skins are being optimized as protective coatings for human and robotic space exploration.  Specifically, ultra-lightweight, nanostructured coatings with protection against electrostatic charging, abrasion and radiation over a wide range of mechanical and thermal fluctuations are offered.  Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; is fabricated via layer-by-layer, molecular self-assembly, which enables thickness and placement control over multiple constituents for true nanostructured multifunctionality (nm scale), although advanced polymers have allowed scale-up to free-standing thick films (several mm thick, at less than 1 g/cc).  Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; is not a conducting polymer or a sputter coated polymer film, rather a freestanding nanocomposite formed in situ, due to chemically reacting monolayers of nanosized components, eliminates residual stress between each component.  Novel, ultra-low modulus Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; can be strained to &gt; 1000&#37; elongation while remaining electrically conductive; and returns to its original shape and nominal conductivity when released.  Bulk resistivity (as low as 10-5 &amp;#937;&amp;#8729;cm), shielding (up to -70dB), and mechanical moduli (0.1 MPa to 500 MPa) have been demonstrated.  Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; requires less than 1 vol&#37; of metal, allowing the manufacturing a cost effective, advanced material.
Spire Corporation is developing a key component for thermophotovoltaic (TPV) power technology for deep space missions. We are developing InGaAs monolithically interconnected modules (MIMs) that convert thermal photons from the ~1100C General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) into electrical power. The innovation is that these MIMs are designed to operate at higher cell temperatures (150C) and be more radiation-hard than current MIMs to better match the cell environment on missions. In Phase 1, we developed a model that predicts an optimum InGaAs bandgap (adjustable during epigrowth) for the operating temperature and 1100C blackbody GPHS spectrum of ~0.7eV, made sample devices, and tested temperature coefficients to confirm the model and measured data agree (e.g. model predicts ?1.7mV/C for Voc vs. ?1.8mV/C for data). In Phase 2, we will perform five iterations of a model, design, epitaxially grow, process, and test cycle. Data from each cycle will be used to improve the next design. Testing will include both radiation, temperature stability and accelerated life testing. Before program completion, we will survey NASA and commercial space power contractors for needs and make samples of the best design to distribute among space power contractors as a step toward generating interest and commercial sales.
NASA's vision of Space Exploration will require advancements in communication systems to maintain flexibility and adaptability to changing needs and requirements. The research outlined in this project will develop a hardware/software design environment that will allow NASA engineers to automatically develop flexible, reconfigurable communications systems.   We will develop automated compiler algorithms to translate software code available in a variety of high level languages (C/C++/SIMULINK) and assembly of various general purpose processors into Register Transfer Level VHDL code to be mapped onto FPGA-based hardware.  We further plan to study techniques for performing hardware/software co-design on integrated systems-on-a-chip platforms consisting of embedded processors, memories and FPGAs.   We will demonstrate our concepts using a prototype compiler that will translate software implementations of communications applications into a hardware/software implementation on a Xilinx Virtex II Pro Platform FPGA and a Digilent XUP FPGA board. The proposed work is revolutionary and addresses NASA's Space Exploration needs as follows: (1) it will develop a system level tool for designing hardware systems which will reduce design times from months to days (2) it will enable the use of cost-efficient, high-performance FPGAs (3) it will allow engineers to reuse of millions of lines of software developed in the past for general purpose processors, and migrate them painlessly to newer SOC platforms.
Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are attractive candidates for use as power sources in aerospace applications because they have high specific energy, energy density and long cycle life. Yardney/Lithion Inc has become the leader in cutting edge Lithium Ion batteries. At the present moment, two of the Lithion batteries are operating on the surface of Mars with great success. In a conventional Li-ion battery when the rate is higher than C, their charge/discharge performance is severely degraded and loss its capacity permanently. Now we are focusing our interest to develop Li-ion batteries that can rapidly charge/discharge at high current rates. Yardney in collaboration with researchers at Worcester Polytechnic Institute, MA, proposes to investigate a new non-toxic nano-engineered electrode that significantly shortens the Li+ diffusion length within the electrode materials and increases the rate capability of Li-ion batteries. The goal of Phase I of this project will be to develop new nano-architectured anode that has rapid Li+ recharge characteristics. Emphasis will be placed upon the construct of Fe3O4 based nano-engineered electrodes with Cu nanorods as current collectors. The high-rate capabilities change with the change in the diameter, packing density and aspect ratio of the Cu nanorods will be studied.
Integran Technologies USA Inc.(Pittsburgh, PA) is pleased to provide
this proposal in response to the Small Business Innovation Research
(SBIR) Request for Proposal (RFP) (#A1.03), &amp;quot;Aircraft Aging and
Durability&amp;quot;. A material characterization technology is proposed
that is based on grain boundary structure-property relationship to
improve prediction of component life for nickel based superalloys. Since
it has been well documented that the resistance to intergranular
degradation is a function of the special (i.e., structurally ordered
low- grain boundaries) grain boundary content in the material, the
improvement in bulk material performance can be achieved through careful
manipulation of the processing parameters to increase the presence of
these special interfaces.  The proposed program builds upon results of
previous proprietary developments by the applicant in the areas of the
microstructural optimization via metallurgical thermo-mechanical
processing and the developed modeling concept based on grain boundary
structure assessment. The program will involve material synthesis,
testing and characterization activities with a specific emphasis on
correlating the materials performance with respect to the grain boundary
microstructure. The objective for this phase I program is to establish
the inter-relationship amongst material processing, grain boundary
character distribution, corrosion and deformation behaviour of the
material.  As a result of significant advances already made in the
development of grain boundary engineering, the program proposed herein
is expected to have a high probability of success and can potentially
lead to a cost-effective technology for mitigating the susceptibility to
microstructural instability and corrosion associated with Ni-based
superalloys. This program is expected to require six (6) months for
completion at a total cost of $100,000.
A linear mode HgCdT electron-initiated avalanche photodiode (EAPD) capable of 1570nm photon detection efficiency (PDE) at &gt;10 MHz will be developed. The Phase I design, is based on vertical-charge-transport HgCdTe EAPDs recently fabricated using a 3.8-micron wavelength cutoff HgCdTe alloys, which showed excellent 1570nm response, nearly noiseless gain, &gt;650, and GHz bandwidth operation at thermoelectric temperatures.
During Phase I, we will perform tradeoff analysis to determine the optimal HgCdTe alloy composition for the application. As example, shortening the cutoff wavelength (e.g. 2-microns) will result in a HgCdTe alloy with reduce dark current and/or higher temperature operation, but will result in a concomitant gain reduction and thereby compromise PDE.
In Phase I, we will develop the optimal HgCdTe LPE alloy and we will also modifying our low noise amplifiers (LNA) to match the higher capacitance of the HgCdTe APD, so optimal PDE is achieved. We will deliver at least one packaged part to NASA. During Phase II, we will further optimize the detector, integrate it with the LNA, and deliver a fully-functional, single photon counting module to NASA.
The overall program objective is to develop a high temperature variable conductance heat pipe (VCHP) backup radiator, and integrate it into a Stirling radioisotope power system. A VCHP is similar to a heat pipe, but has a reservoir and a controlled amount of non-condensable gas (NCG) inside the reservoir.  At low power, most of the condenser is blocked by the NCG.  As the power increases, more and more of the condenser becomes active.  This allows a VCHP to passively control the temperature while the power varies.  Aluminum/ammonia VCHPs are commonly used in spacecraft thermal control.  The proposed program will extend this concept to the alkali metal heat pipes that will be required for a Stirling system.  During normal operation, the VCHP will be inactive.  If the Stirling engine stops working for any reason, the VCHP will passively remove the heat from the General Purpose Heat Source (GPHS) preventing the GPHS from overheating.  The benefits of the VCHP radiator include increased safety and reliability, and the ability to design an optimum Stirling engine.
Andrews Space, Inc. proposes an innovative transpiration cooled aerobrake TPS design that is thermally protective, structurally flexible, and lightweight.  This innovative design will meet launch volume constraints and satisfy terminal aerobraking requirements. The approach will focus on transpiration cooling of a flexible material and employs preceramic polymers and active filler technologies as key features of the TPS design. The major hurdle to inflatable aerobrakes becoming reality is the development of a lightweight and structurally flexible TPS. Alternative designs have focused on complex multilayering to increase the effective emissivity of the material, whereas Andrews Space will focus on reducing the thickness, thus decreasing the overall system mass. By combining well understood materials with an innovative, flexible, transpiration cooled TPS, a realizable inflatable aerobrake system has been developed which shows up to 56&#37; mass savings over traditional, rigid aeroshells and 23&#37; over other leading designs.
The PI has developed a miniature time-of-flight mass spectrometer (TOF-MS), which can be op-timized for space and extraterrestrial applications, by using a revolutionary ion-focusing scheme. The instrument is optimized for a matrix assisted laser desorption/ionization ion source. The design is compact and the device that will be built under a Phase II grant will have a mass of less than 1 kg, a volume of less than one liter and draw approximately 3.5 Watts, exclusive of vac-uum generation, laser and sample-handling equipment. The proposed device will include a sam-ple-handling component, which will slightly increase the mass, volume and power requirements. Although there are several miniature TOF-MS systems currently available (NASA has a design available for licensing) the proposed innovation will out-perform all of the miniature designs currently available by 1 to 2 orders of magnitude (resolution and sensitivity) and has mass resolution comparable to current full-size research instruments. For commercial applications where volume, mass and power requirements are not so stringent, a device that performs better than current full-sized instruments can be designed.
SciberQuest, Inc. proposes to develop a state-of-the-art data mining engine that extends the functionality of Virtual Observatories (VO) from data portal to science analysis resource.  Our solution consists of two integrated products, IDDat and RemoteMiner:

 (1) IDDat is an advanced grid-based computing infrastructure which acts as an add-on to VOs and supports processing and remote data analysis of widely distributed data in space sciences.  IDDat middleware design is such as to reduce undue network traffic on the VO.

(2)  RemoteMiner is a novel data mining engine that connects to the VO via the IDDat.  It supports multi-users, has autonomous operation for automated systematic identification while enabling the advanced users to do their own mining and can be used by data centers for pre-mining.  In addition, our data mining algorithms have reverse engineering capabilities which enable analytical derivation of models from time series data.


These innovations will significantly enhance the science return from NASA missions by providing data centers and individual researchers alike an unprecedented capability to mine vast quantities of data.  Phase II work will encompass the building of a full commercial product with associated production quality technical and user documentation.
The innovations proposed are twofold: 1) a robust unstructured mesh movement method able to handle isotropic (Euler), anisotropic (viscous), mixed element (hybrid) and generalized polyhedral unstructured grids for CFD applications, particularly, CFD-based design optimization, and 2) a robust method to automatically insert high quality anisotropic prismatic (viscous boundary layer) cells into any existing CFD mesh. All objectives in Phase I were met and all tasks were completed as proposed. The methods worked very well for both 2D and 3D geometries, for tetrahedral, hexahedral, and general polyhedral element types, and for the simple viscous meshes. In Phase II, we will extend the software into a general purpose package for use by NASA, other Government agencies, and commercial customers.  We will implement our 3D viscous mesh generation method including a general solution-adaptive meshing capability. We will develop the software necessary to compute sensitivity derivatives of the mesh operations. Two important software design goals for our final Phase II software are ease-of-use and convenient access to its functionality. We will develop two types of user interfaces: graphical access (for the end-user) and programming access (for integration with flow solvers). We will assemble all of the methods developed in Phase II into a single, coherent, design-oriented, product-version code with extensive focus on incorporating a parallel processing capability into the software.  The verification &amp; validation plan will follow the industry-standard approach now used by commercial software houses and will include an extensive set of NASA-relevant test cases.  The software will be documented and delivered to NASA. The Phase II software has significant potential for commercialization and sales in the non-Government sector.
The Integrated Mars In-Situ Propellant Production System (IMISPPS) is an end-to-end system that will produce rocket propellant on Mars from CO2 in the Martian atmosphere.  The IMISPPS conducts both the Reverse Water Gas Shift (RWGS) and Sabatier (S/RWGS) reactions in a single reactor to produce a useful high-specific impulse fuel (methane plus carbon monoxide) and water, which is condensed and electrolyzed to produce oxygen and hydrogen.  The hydrogen is recycled back to the S/RWGS reactor to react with fresh Martian CO2 to produce more fuel, while the oxygen is stored to provide oxidizer. Some of the carbon monoxide is removed by cryogenic separation to increase propellant specific impulse. The IMISPPS system produces the correct amount of oxygen to burn the methane produced, almost doubling the leverage of a Sabatier/Electrolysis system alone.
Zyvex in cooperation with Prairie View A&amp;M (CARR) and Boeing will develop a space radiation shielding multi-functional material that will provide high energy radiation shielding required to protect astronauts on extended missions, strong enough to be used as an integral structural material and tough enough to survive micro-meteor impacts, provide EMI shielding, and enhanced thermal conductivity. The team will also develop an improved protocol for testing radiation shielding material. This effort will entail developing a composite material which uses proven radiation shielding material Polyethylene(PE), as its primary constituent in the form of very strong/tough Spectra fibers woven into a 3D fabric. In Phase 1 we demonstrated that, compared to bulk PE, this composite approach has significantly improved mechanical properties, excellent electrical conductivity, good Electro Magnetic Interference (EMI) shielding properties, and maintains excellent space radiation shielding properties of PE. We also demonstrated exposure to large doses of high energy actually improved the mechanical properties. In Phase II, the epoxy matrix used in Phase I will be considered along with Cyanate Esters, and Polyimides, As in Phase I, coating the PE fabric and reinforcing the matrix material will be ultra-high strength, highly conductive carbon nanotubes (CNTs). Zyvex's unique and commercially successful CNT processing technology will be adapted to maximize the transfer of the extraordinary mechanical, electrical, and thermal properties of CNTs to the composite structures. The work plan includes approaches to overcome CNT processing and delamination issues discovered in Phase I. CARR will carryout more extensive radiation testing with several ions at different energies. Boeing which has significant interest in developing long term space exploration will guide the development of the material to meet specifications for planned applications.
Drop-in heat transfer fluids replacements for ITCS and EVA suits were down-selected and characterized in Phase I for various metrics including density, heat capacity, viscosity, freezing point, freezing expansion, toxicity, NFPA rating, flash point, materials compatibility, heat transfer coefficients, and several Figures of Merit related to heat transfer, pressure drop, and pump work.   Optimized solutions had freezing points of about -30 C and freezing volume expansions 50&#37;-75&#37; less than water.  The toxicity of the fluids is predicted to be "low" and also compatible with SS, BNi-2, PTFE and pEVA.  The heat transfer Figures of Merit were 75-100 relative to water ("100"), and better than propylene glycol and organic heat transfer fluids.  The pump work metric was only about 60&#37; higher than water.  We also identified a superior pH buffering agent to compensate for CO2 absorption and demonstrated a biocide "package" to prevent any microbial growth.  The Phase II effort will optimize and comprehensively characterize these fluids (including toxicity), perform life testing, and deliver fluids to NASA at the end of the project.
Previous high temperature magnetic bearings employed electromagnets only. The work proposed in this SBIR program seeks to utilize High Temperature Permanent Magnets (HTPM) developed by EEC. This will improve efficiency since the majority of the static load on any bearing can be suspended by the magnetic field of the HTPM. 

The end product will be a high speed/high temperature/high load test platform for the future development of bearing, motor, generator, and seal components.  This capability will be of special benefit to the aerospace and process machinery industries. In addition the component demonstrations from this SBIR will provide designers with the confidence needed to integrate similar components in their high performance machinery.
NASA is seeking a high performance thermal insulation material for cryogenic applications in space launch development. Many of the components in cryogenic distribution systems at the launch site can be complex and require an insulation that can be formed to irregular shapes to minimize heat leak. Aerogel beads are configurable to virtually any shape and offer a lightweight insulation solution with substantial improvements over conventional insulations. Success in the commercialization of high performance insulating aerogel beads has relied on the effectiveness of converting loose beads into functional insulation components. This type of insulation component requires reasonable mechanical strength and should be able to withstand a certain degree of compression, tensile, and flexural loads.  Aspen Aerogels' solution entails the use of mechanically resistant aerogel beads and a binder that does not penetrate the surface of the beads.  Preliminary investigation into composite development in the Phase I effort has resulted in a net shape insulation component having excellent thermal and mechanical properties.  This type of insulation component is able to fill areas that are currently inaccessible with existing insulation products. A high-performance thermal insulation composite, such as that described in this proposal, will have a significant impact in insulation technology advancement.
This Phase II program builds from the successful Phase I efforts to demonstrate that Quantum Logic Devices' nanoelectronic platform for biological detection could detect binding of Epo, TNF-alpha, IL-6, and IGF-1 in saline and serum without labels. The creation of an electronic "direct detection" platform for proteomics, enables rapid point of care monitoring of metabolic analytes in microgravity. This Phase II proposal will build working prototypes based on PDA-style electronic data capture with disposable assay cartridges for the analytes demonstrated in Phase I.
Autonomous and semi-autonomous robotic systems require information about their surroundings in order to navigate properly. A video camera machine vision system can supply position information of external objects, but no range information. Ideally, a system that, in one package, provides 3-dimensional relative information about external objects is needed. To this end, Nanohmics will develop a lightweight, compact, low power, low cost, modular sensor system that produces a depth map of the surroundings. By combining a color optical camera, a multi-element range finding system, and digital processing electronics, a single low cost sensor system can be designed to provide relative position and anti-collision information i.e. a 3-Dimensional Vehicle Imaging Sensor for Incident Obstacle Navigation (3D VISION Mapper&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt;). The proposed system could, for example, be mounted on the long-neck mast near the PANCAMs and NAVCAMs on Martian robotic rovers.
Several solid waste management systems currently under development result in the production of gas-phase organic contaminants which, due to the periodic and unpredictable nature of solid wastes and contaminants produced by these systems, cannot be treated by the Trace Contaminant Control System.  Two examples of these are the Heat Melt Compaction System under development at NASA - Ames Research Center and the Microwave Powered Solid Waste Stabilization and Water Recovery System under development at UMPQUA Research Company (URC). During the Phase I effort, we demonstrated the gas-phase catalytic oxidation of a variety of toxic organic compounds and carbon monoxide, with very high rates of conversion to innocuous gases, primarily CO2 and H2O, at relatively low temperatures. In the proposed Phase II effort both process and materials will be further refined to optimize the utility of the catalytic technology with respect to solid waste management goals.   The Phase II research and development will result in the design, assembly, rigorous testing, and delivery to NASA of a prototype system, sized to operate in conjunction with both the NASA developed heat melt compaction system and the URC developed microwave waste stabilization and water recovery system.
Development of a microgravity and hypogravity compatible catalytic methane pyrolysis reactor is proposed to recover hydrogen which is lost as methane in the conversion of carbon dioxide to water via the Sabatier process.  This will close the hydrogen loop which currently requires 50&#37; resupply and also produce carbon nanotubes, a high value product which may be employed as an adsorbent or catalyst for removal of atmospheric trace contaminants, thus further lowering the resupply burden for manned spacecraft.  Microgravity compatibility of Gradient Magnetically Assisted Fluidized Beds (GMAFB) has been demonstrated through a series of KC135 flight experiments.  Metallic cobalt, which has been fluidized in microgravity using the GMAFB method, is an excellent catalyst for promotion of methane pyrolysis.  Recently, fluidized bed catalytic methods have been shown to efficiently recover hydrogen, and produce single walled carbon nanotubes.  Using the GMAFB method, this process can be rendered totally compatible with operation in the microgravity of spaceflight or the reduced gravity of planetary environments.  By recovering all of the hydrogen which is lost as methane in the Sabatier reactor, the requirement for production or resupply of hydrogen is reduced to the absolute minimum.
Noise mitigation for subsonic transports is a continuing high priority, and recent work has identified successful exhaust mixing enhancement devices (chevrons) that have demonstrated substantial capability for reducing aircraft engine noise in critical takeoff and landing conditions.  Existing fixed-geometry chevrons, however, are inherently limited to optimal noise mitigation in a single operating condition and also can impose significant performance penalties in cruise flight.  An adaptive geometry chevron using embedded smart structures technology offers the possibility of maximizing engine performance while retaining and possibly enhancing the favorable noise characteristics of current designs.  Phase I identified a promising candidate for a variable geometry chevron using high force Shape Memory Alloy (SMA) actuators.  Building on coupled CFD/finite element modeling predicting successful performance, subscale demonstration-level actuated chevrons were constructed that yielded the required deflections in both benchtop and low speed wind tunnel tests.  Phase I also identified and tested new high temperature SMA (HTSMA) materials technology to enable the devices to operate in both low temperature (fan) and high temperature (core) exhaust flows.  The proposed Phase II effort will continue development of this technology and demonstrate extension of this concept to operation at full-scale stiffness levels and at realistic dynamic pressure and temperature conditions.
To address the NASA need for a miniature pressure-leak sensor, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Microelectromechanical System-based Internally Unpowered Sensor (MEMIUS).  Fabrication of MEMIUS involves integration of a small MEMS piezoresistive sensor with proprietary miniature electronics and a novel wireless power transfer mechanism for device power-up and data read-out for a miniature footprint (2 cm x 2 cm x 1 cm, &lt; 20 g weight).  MEMIUS can be applied to both nonshielding and metal alloy shielding containers by utilizing inductive coupling with a small, efficient antenna, or a dual-band sensor antenna mounted on metal with a feed-through capacitor.  MEMIUS represents an accurate pressure-leak sensor (~0.01 mbar) with no-battery on board electronics.  It operates at low-temperatures with remote and efficient wireless power transfer capabilities at variable distances (1-10 m).  These specifications are critical to the NASA search for an extremely rugged power efficient pressure sensor less than 5 cu. cm operating from -70 deg. C to +20 deg. C.  The proposed MEMIUS thus solves the problems of weight, size, power efficiency, shielding, and electro-magnetic interference.  The Phase I effort will demonstrate MEMIUS feasibility, and confirm its ruggedness and sensitivity.  In Phase II POC will develop an advanced MEMIUS prototype.
This project develops Web based distributed image analysis system processing the Moderate Resolution Imaging Spectroradiometer (MODIS) data to provide decision makers or non-specialists with high-quality, environmental scientific information and coastal predictive tools. The system provides the underpinnings for ecosystem-based environmental awareness and management in coastal regions, such as, sea surface temperature, sea surface height and ecological forecasts, etc. The Web Service Oriented Architecture (SOA) is utilized to build remote intelligent components in advanced applications server (JBoss), which implement MODIS image processing to extract useful features to identify events of interest. The AGNC innovative neural network is employed as internal knowledge representation and classification engine to map image feature vector to internal numerical presentation. The initial prototype of the system is given as example demonstration.
Diagnostic and prognostic algorithms for many aircraft subsystems are steadily maturing. Unfortunately there is little experience integrating these technologies into a complete and practical on-board prognosis system, and integration often proceeds in an ad-hoc manner. Sentient Corporation proposes to develop a general-purpose architecture and set of reusable algorithms for integrating diagnostics and predictive models into an efficient and highly accurate prognostic system. The architecture is based on a flexible and powerful model updating algorithm that provides optimal fusion of diagnostics with model-based state indications and minimization of uncertainty in remaining life predictions. This project will focus on development of several key features of that algorithm, including automatic recognition of a failure that is not progressing according to the physical model, and practical considerations for on-board use such as minimizing computational and memory requirements. By the end of Phase II, Sentient will demonstrate a working prototype of an on-board prognostic system developed using the proposed architecture and tools. This demonstration will use diagnostic and model algorithms developed under the DARPA Prognosis Program, and will be compared to a large set of fault data for turbine engine and subscale bearings.
High temperature permanent magnet materials play an important role in NASA's space missions in electric propulsion, energy generation and storage and other applications.  We propose to devise accelerated testing methods to test and predict the service life of SmCo based ultra high temperature permanent magnets in a high vacuum environment at high temperatures in excess of 400 degrees C.  The proposed research will enable designers to appropriately design and use high temperature permanent magnets to optimize their performance. 
The proposed efforts will measure outgassing rates through total mass loss methods based on ASTM standards at temperatures from 300 to 700 degrees C at vacuum levels of 10 exp-5 Torr or higher.  The microstructure and chemical composition variations at the near-interface region after exposure to high vacuum and high temperatures will be analyzed with scanning electron microscopy and auger electron spectroscopy or energy dispersive X-ray spectroscopy.  Magnetic properties will be measured and modeled with finite element analysis.  These methods will enable prediction of reliability and performance of high temperature magnets over long space missions through short-term test methods.
Precise location information is critical for crewmembers for safe EVA Moon and Mars exploration.  Current inertial navigation systems are too bulky, fragile, and expensive for this purpose and therefore cannot meet NASA requirements.  To address these requirements, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes a novel Time and Relative Distance Inertial Navigation System (TARDIS), a compact, cost-effective solution providing EVA crewmembers and monitoring personnel with location and orientation to home base. With this information, TARDIS will generate a 3D navigation track of the astronaut's movement, which the astronaut can compare to a preplanned path, as well as key reference points, such as the base camp, rover, and destination.  TARDIS builds on POC's smart inertial sensor cluster technology, integrating compact dedicated microprocessors with inertial microelectromechanical systems in a purely digital six-degree-of-freedom inertial navigation system in an extremely small volume.  This is coupled with a Kalman filter for optimal position estimation.  Spatial operator analysis (SOA) derives the relative orientation of an EVA crewmember's arms and legs to specify current activity (bending, walking, sitting, climbing). In Phase I POC will prove the concept by demonstrating a scaled-down working model with a limited number of sensors.  In Phase II POC will demonstrate a complete working prototype.
identified needs for the thermal control and ESD functions of the Prometheus Program's hardware for the heat rejection system for the planned nuclear system. These efforts can also serve uniquely the (CEV) radiator systems needs. The TCMS for the radiators of the both CEV and Prometheus missions need to operate at higher temperatures and provide the space environment stable low ratio of (&amp;#945;s/&amp;#949;T) performance in high radiation orbits involving intense UV, electrons and protons. The CEV application also needs it to withstand typical launch environments. None of the state-of-an-art material systems that are currently in use are designed for the needs of the space environment stable operation at elevated temperatures, and hence, can not meet the same. This proposal identifies the next generation solid state chemistries and processing requirements that can provide the multifunctional space stable performance at higher temperatures and also provide the required unique ESD performance when these very large thermal control areas get exposed to very low temperatures. The proposed efforts will synthesize the candidate new nano engineered passivated pigments and evaluate its space environment stability with use of recently developed next generation dielectrically engineered binders that can employ nano-cluster chemistry to cure into interconnecting percolation paths along with abilities to tailor CTE, thermal shock and thermal cycling performance. Based on results in the phase I study, the candidate solid-state chemistries based products and their processing will be scaled up in Phase II efforts to provide the next generation "robust" validated TCMS products. The primary aim of this SBIR will focus on evaluating the feasibility of new solid state chemistries that can deliver space environment stable (&amp;#945;s/&amp;#949;T) while being exposed to the elevated temperatures of the order of 600 C.
We propose to develop a novel thermal interface material (TIM) that is based on an array of vertical carbon nanotubes (CNTs) for high heat flux applications.  For high precision, spaceborne lasers and other high power devices critical to NASA's Science Mission Directorate, heat flux levels are projected to reach 100 W/cm2.  The state-of-the-art in space-compatible thermal interface materials (TIMs) is limited to a maximum achievable thermal conductance of approximately 5 W/cm2&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C.  Preliminary testing of our innovative TIM approach has demonstrated thermal conductance values of 
33 W/cm2&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C, a nearly seven-fold increase.  For an incident heat flux of 100 W/cm2, this corresponds to a temperature drop of only 3&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C, compared with 20&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C for current technology.  Thus, the use of our innovative CNT-based TIM will enable increased reliability, decreased size, and increased performance of spaceborne thermal management systems for the SMD.
Smart sensor combining with embedded metadata and wireless technology presents real opportunities for significant improvements in reliability, cost-benefits, and safety for remote testing and measurement. Adding robust and self-construct network protocol for routing will further simplify testing installation process and increase test network reliability.  The realization of a practical smart sensor system requires the synthesis of several technologies. One must bring together knowledge in the fields of sensors, data processing, distributed systems, and networks. The IEEE 1451 standard provides a basic communications link for sensor nodes, but provides no methods specific to programming a node's data processing resources. An interface must be defined for dynamic programming of sensor nodes. Mobitrum is proposing a virtual sensor test instrumentation for characterization and measurement of ground testing of propulsion systems.  The tool includes: (1) common sensor interface, (2) microprocessor, (3) wireless interface, (4) signal conditioning and ADC/DAC, and (5) on-board EEPROM for metadata storage and executable software to create powerful, scalable, re-configurable, and reliable embedded and distributed test instrument. Virtual sensor is built upon an open-system architecture with standardized protocol modules/stacks easily to interface with industry standards and commonly used software such as IEEE 1451, TEDS, Java, TinyOS, TinyDB, MATLAB, and LabVIEW.
Range surveillance is a critical component of space exploration because of its implications on safety, cost, and overall mission timeline.  However, launch delays, due to the difficulty of verifying a cleared range, are common and will increase as spaceports are developed in new areas.   In order to expedite range clearance, it is vital to see "through" the atmosphere.  Unfortunately, the quality of the images taken with long-range optical systems is severely degraded by atmospheric movements in the path between the region under observation and the imaging system.  We therefore propose the use of custom hardware, specifically designed to compensate for atmospheric disturbances in long range imaging.  Furthermore, we propose the use of a reconfigurable hardware platform, specifically field-programmable gate arrays (FPGAs), to reduce costs and development time, as well as increase flexibility and reusability.  Alternative hardware platforms are not well suited for this particular application.  Our unique approach would allow a single device, with the computational power of a computer cluster, to be used for not only atmospheric compensation, but also encrypted communications, audio and video encoding/decoding and transmission, neural network implementations, etc.  The applications of such a technology are virtually limitless!
NASA requires accurate numerical simulation of high bypass nacelle acoustics and the development of advanced nacelle absorption techniques to reduce engine noise levels. Thus, this Phase I effort will expand current Transient Finite Difference (TFD) nacelle algorithms to include
?	Simulation of active and passive nacelle exhaust splitters,   
?	3D simulation of passive and active absorbing radial struts,
?	Optimization of multiple segment wall, splitter and strut absorbers for maximum noise reduction.
The exceptional performance and accuracy of the TFD method has already been documented for passive and active noise reductions in 2D aircraft nacelles.  Recent experimental data have show promise for significant noise reduction for active noise treated struts as well as classic exhaust splitters.  Therefore, this Phase I study will extend the current TFD nacelle algorithms to optimize splitter rings usage in exit nacelle ducts and 3D active and passive treatment of exhaust duct struts.  The Phase II effort will include the capability of analyzing more complex 3D ducts with circumferential-segmented absorbing liners as well as external cowling and airframe noise sources.  The numerical algorithms of this TFD Phase I study will provide NASA Glen and industry an innovative tool for acoustic nacelle design.
To address the NASA need for robotic platform-mounted instruments that can chemically analyze extraterrestrial surfaces, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new integrated standoff Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) and Raman Spectroscopic (LIBRA) system to perform rapid material analysis from a distance of &gt;20 m.  Dual LIBS and Raman measurements ensure high specificity in chemical analysis.  While LIBS identifies trace elements, Raman spectroscopy enables the robotic rover to distinguish complex materials such as hydrous and anhydrous gypsum that indicate the presence of water on a planet.  This system features embedded chemical fingerprinting software for real-time analysis of material signatures, and has a software interface to NASA robotic platforms.  Through POC's compact excitation laser and high-resolution spectral detection subassemblies, LIBRA has unprecedented specificity of material identification in an energy efficient (&lt;10 W), compact (&lt;0.03 cubic meter volume), light (&lt;2 kg) hermetically sealed package that is ruggedized (no moving parts) and optimized for robotic exploration.  In Phase I, POC will demonstrate LIBRA system feasibility by assembling and testing a proof-of-concept laboratory prototype, and investigate issues of space qualification.  In Phase II a fully functional prototype system will be developed and its standoff detection capability from robotic platforms will be demonstrated.
Latest advances in semiconductor optoelectronics makes it possible to develop compact light weight robust sources of coherent optical pulses, demanded for numerous applications such as lidars. Recent improvements in heterostructure growth and processing technology, as well as new approaches in waveguide design make it possible to integrate single frequency laser diode, saturable absorber, and semiconductor amplifier in one compact device with high wallplug efficiency and long lifetime. In this Phase I project we will design a prototype device, fabricate it and study its basic parameters.
Many UV photon-counting and imaging applications, including space-borne astronomy, missile tracking and guidance, UV spectroscopy for chemical/biological identification, and UV medical imaging, demand very high performance in detector sensitivity, speed, resolution, and background noise. This proposal is directed toward the development of innovative high-efficiency UV photocathodes based on the wide bandgap III-nitride semiconductors for reliable operation in space missions.
The concept of a smart device capable of communicating and making its own local decisions for wireless sensing, monitoring control, data acquisition, tracking, and identification has already been implemented and tested by military and commercial world in recent years.  Methods for improving wireless transmission efficiency, data rate, power consumption, security, flexibility, scalability, and availability have also been proposed and some are implemented and tested.  However, the usage trends for wireless sensors are changing from a single sensing purpose to a wide range of multipurpose services such as geo-location, first response, identification, security, and multimedia. This is making the limited quantity of radio frequency spectra a scarce resource (expensive) and is forcing an optimization shift to software programmable capability that provides control of a variety of modulation technologies for wideband or narrowband applications, emergency, and security functions. Mobitrum is proposing an innovative Software Defined RF Transceiver targeted for emerging wireless sensor with multiple capabilities from real-time data acquisition and monitoring to emergency response, geo-location via GPS, security, images, and RFID applications. The device will be designed to be low power, reliable, secure, high speed, low cost, and highly portable in a small self-contained form factor for easy plug-and-play.
This proposed SBIR Phase I addresses the development of catalysts and technology for the ignition of advanced monopropellants consisting of mixtures of hydroxylammonium nitrate (HAN) and a combustible component.  The catalysts will possess intrinsic activity for ignition and will also possess requisite thermal stability and erosion resistance.  Minimal delay times will be achieved by the catalyst composition and enhanced surface area, which will accelerate rate limiting steps of ignition.  Phase I will consist of the synthesis and physical characterization of catalysts, evaluation of catalyst activity, initial optimization of composition and preparation of catalysts, and testing in a combustion chamber.  In Phase II, the preferred catalyst(s) will be optimized, synthesized in larger quantities, and subjected to more rigorous and extensive testing in a device.  The goal of the proposed program will be to develop a catalyst exhibiting a low ignition temperature, but also possessing the favorable attributes described above.  Successful development of such catalyst technology will lead to applications in a number of propulsion-related devices.
This proposed Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Phase I addresses development of a compact reformer system based on a cyclic partial oxidation (POx) technology for the purpose of generating hydrogen for fuel cell systems.  The need for improved reformers arises from:  1) the tendency of hydrocarbon fuels to deposit carbon on surfaces; 2) requirement of large quantities of steam; 3) a massive and voluminous fuel desulfurization stage; 4) substantial size and power consumption requirements; and 5) the lack of efficient, robust, and compact hydrogen separation technology.  These issues will be addressed by employment of a fixed bed cyclic redox system utilizing a metal oxide oxygen carrier for partial oxidation of fuel.  The reformer will consist of a small heated bed of sulfur tolerant partial oxidation catalyst and will operate by alternate exposure to air and vaporized fuel.  Carbon deposition and steam requirements and, possibly, the need for a  prereformer will be reduced or eliminated by this cyclic mode.  This cyclic operation will also eliminate the need for an expensive air separation unit or for H2/N2 separation.  Phase I will consist of identification of catalysts, testing under cyclic conditions with real fuel, and integration of reformer and hydrogen separation modules.  On the basis of Phase I data, a prototype system will be designed, fabricated, and tested during Phase II.
To address NASA needs for quiet crew volumes in a space habitat, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Adaptive Intelligent Ventilation Noise Control (AIVNC) system to reduce acoustic noise and vibration inside the crew living quarters.  The proposed AIVNC is based on multifrequency active patches as a thin-skin-type actuator inside the ventilation system, and an intelligent adapting module instantly and continuously suppresses broadband noise in crew rest areas.  The AIVNC active adapting module provides actuation signals to the multifrequency active patches by means of real-time intelligent adaptation to time-varying noise sources.  The AIVNC multiple-modal actuation array targeting different frequency ranges enables users to perform fast active adaptation for acoustic noise suppression in a space habitat with an easy retrofit capability.  In Phase I POC will demonstrate both the feasibility of AIVNC by testing active actuation patches, and an intelligent adapting model including an optimized system configuration and methodology.  In Phase II POC plans to implement AIVNC into a fast, compact, standalone board with a complete actuator subsystem for precise acoustical control.
The unique stresses in the spacecraft environment including isolation, containment, weightlessness, increased radiation exposure, and enhanced microbial contamination have resulted in a compromise of the immune system in every human or animal that has ever flown in space.  Identifying and monitoring the microbial population in the spacecraft environment has therefore been identified as a key maintaining crew health on extended missions.  While molecular methods are rapidly supplanting phenotypic identification of micro-organisms, the most successful rapid approaches have employed organism-specific nucleic acid "probes" or primers for PCR amplification.  Identification by nucleic acid hybridization therefore implies a priori knowledge (or at least suspicion) of a putative organism.  Such assays (including DNA microarrays) are therefore limited in generality by the number of probes or primers on hand.  Sequencing of DNA is more general but time consuming and problematic in microgravity.  This project describes an "open" or exploratory system with no such limitation which is also superior in speed to DNA sequencing.  By leveraging the wealth of publicly available ribosomal RNA sequences for thousands of bacterial strains, and rapid mass spectrometry of novel, mass-modified RNA fragments, the system can identify bacterial species in complex organism mixtures and report their relative abundances.  The technology is amenable to high-throughput automated analysis of over 200 samples in less than 2 hours and is compatible with any sample type from which total DNA can be isolated.
A robotic sample management device and system for the exposure of biological and material specimens to heavy ion beams of the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) and other irradiation venues is proposed by SHOT, Inc.  Full and efficient utilization of NSRL requires the automation of precise sample positioning and sample exchange that is otherwise performed manually at the cost of hours of beam time and risk of personnel.  The device and system will consist of a multiplicity of sample holders providing an environmentally controlled enclosure.  Samples to be irradiated will be translated into the ion beam, one at a time, within the controlled environment.  Samples to be accommodated include, but are not limited to, cell cultures, small animal (flies, worms, fish) cultures, mice, rats and small samples of shielding or electronic materials.  Operating software will be compatible with that in use at the irradiation venues, specifically NSRL, and will be used to establish environmental control settings, to record environmental conditions, and to control and record the insertion of samples into the ion beam.  Three objectives will be met in Phase I research: (1) user requirements and engineering requirements will be established in detail, (2) a preliminary design including assembly and component 3-D renderings will be completed, and (3) this design will be subjected to design review by internal and external advisers and potential users.  An optional objective, if matching funding is available from the State of Indiana, is the production and testing of a Specimen Holder Assembly prototype.  Phase II research will consist of (1) finalizing requirements and design documents for official preliminary review, (2) building and testing prototypes of components for final overall design approval, and (3) assembling and testing a first system at SHOT and assembling, installing and testing a final product at NSRL and placing it into use for the benefit of the user community.
NASA's future Earth-Sun System missions require the rapid development of small, low-cost remote sensing instruments for the analysis of chemical and  physical properties of planetary atmospheres. The objective of the proposed project (Phases I and II) is to research, develop, and demonstrate the first space-qualifiable digital correlation spectrometer on a single chip which, if successful, will reduce the risk, cost, size, and development time of microwave spectrometers and will enable space-science observations measurements that were not previously possible. The innovative approach proposed for achieving the objective consists of a synergistic combination of the following: (a) a unique parallel architecture that will reduce the operating clock frequency,  relative to a single-stream architecture, by a factor of 2 and consequently will lower significantly the power consumption,  (b) novel differential analog and digital circuits that will improve robustness while operating in the presence of total dose natural radiation found in the space environment, and (c) an advanced 0.13 um CMOS fabrication process  with cooper interconnect, available at relatively low-cost through the MOSIS fabrication facility from IBM, for  manufacturing high-performance, low-power, reliable,  and robust (total dose radiation and latch-up resistant) space-qualifiable chips.
NASA requires advanced high power primary lithium batteries for ultra
low temperature applications.  The key component that limits the
performance at low temperature is the battery electrolyte.
Proof-of-concept experiments have shown that Covalent's new non-aqueous
electrolyte formulations greatly enhance low temperature primary battery
performance while preserving its long shelf life. At temperatures as low
as -100&lt;!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
                      "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"&gt;
&lt;sup&gt;o&lt;/sup&gt;
C, our new electrolyte demonstrates superior transport properties due to
minimal triple ion formation.  Accelerated storage tests revealed no
voltage delay indicative of a stable passive film formed on the lithium
anode. When coupled with a high energy density cathode material such as
carbon monofluoride (CFx), our new electrolyte formulations will enable
primary lithium primary performance over a broad spectrum of ultra low
temperature applications.  Specifically, Li/CFx batteries incorporating
the new Covalent electrolytes will deliver more than 30&amp;#37; of their room
temperature capacity at temperatures as low as -100&lt;sup&gt;o&lt;/sup&gt;
C at practical discharge rates.
Current interests within the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) foresee extension of exploratory space missions to the Moon, Mars, and beyond.  Realization of these targets will require development of a range of advanced technologies including life support systems.  Food represents one of the most crucial components of life support, as the ability to supply safe, nutritious and organoleptically pleasing meals to space flight personnel for the duration of their mission will be of paramount importance in maintaining  crew functionality and morale.  In this Phase I Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, Infoscitex Corporation will develop an advanced barrier film, ElastiGlass, which will enable 3-to-5 year shelf life, with the added benefit of reducing the logistic burdens associated with waste handling, and minimizing package weight and storage space requirements.  Follow-on efforts will focus on the development of food preparation and packaging processes that will ensure near zero oxygen content within the sealed food pouch.  Specific benefits of ElastiGlass thermostabilized food pouches will include: increased shelf-life (3 to 5 years), reduced weight, reduced waste, zero metal content, and optical transparency.
Metis Design Corporation (MDC) proposes the development of a strain-based power replenishment technology to harvest energy for recharging remote sensors.  MDC has been working to development of a structural health monitoring (SHM) device, which essentially evolves the embedding of sets of sensors into a structure to allow continuous remote monitoring.  MDC's work is aimed at developing a robust infrastructure package to support a variety of sensor types and detection methods for aerospace structures.  Components have been developed to acquire data, excite transducers, store and wirelessly transmit data, as well as a thin-film battery and packaging to protect the electronics from moisture, EMI and impact.  During the course of this SBIR, MDC will work to develop a power replenishment patch that uses piezoelectric technology coupled with an innovative circuit design to "top-off" SHM system batteries.  These thin patches would be intimately bonded to the structure in order to harvest strain energy to recharge a thin-film Lithium battery slowly over time.  This concept is unique since it takes advantage of the low duty cycle of SHM electronics, instead of attempting to harvest energy for continuous system operation.  MDC will demonstrate the ability to performing structural integrity testing using only harvested power.
Reliable on-orbit dosimetry is necessary for understanding effects of space radiation environments on spacecraft microelectronics performance and comparison of on-orbit results to ground-based testing and modeling.  Understanding dosimetry at the micro-level is becoming increasingly necessary as microelectronic devices become more complex.  Several innovative dosimetry approaches are under development by various groups to meet these needs.  Spot shielding is commonly used to increase survivability of unhardened microelectronics in spacecraft design.  The efficacy of spot shielding to reduce the TID effects has recently come into question, with spot shielded FPGA devices degrading faster than unshielded devices on an MPTB space experiment.  A study is underway to understand this anomalous result and one product of the study will be a prototype space experiment board focused on testing spot shielding.  Both the dosimetry issue and the spot shielding issue are critical to use of COTS microelectronics in space system design.  We propose to combine the spot shielding experiment with emerging dosimetry approaches and develop hardware and software for a space experiment that provides real-time dosimetry from multiple dosimetry types.  The experiment will be designed using an innovative low power experiment card with plans for integration on the Space Environment Testbed (SET) Carrier.
CFD codes used to simulate upper stage expander cycle engines are not adequately mature to support design efforts.  Rapid and accurate simulations require more versatile grid frameworks to handle complex geometries of multi-element injector configurations. Turbulence models require upgrades to better predict fuel/air mixing with swirl and to predict heat flux. The innovation proposed initiates work towards developing a mature, high-fidelity simulation tool.  Geometry complexity and numerical accuracy problems are addressed via a multi-element UNS grid adaptation strategy that builds upon techniques developed for valving problems and scramjet injectors.  Turbulent mixing and heat transfer are upgraded by including PDE's that solve for temperature and species variance (yielding local values of Prandtl and Schmidt number), as well as swirl corrections.  Finally generalized preconditioning that accounts for stiffness resulting from a large range of Mach numbers, and generalized thermodynamic formulations for real fluids will be matured to yield robust numerics with improved solution convergence.  The tools and technology to be developed here would directly impact design efforts for future long duration lunar and Mars missions that require more durable long-life, light weight system components, and address methodology to operate with novel hydrocarbon fuels that may be harvested in-situ.
Recent advances in ontology development support a rich description of entities that are modeled within a domain and how these entities relate to each other. However, even with ontology information, interoperability of a (sub-) system with other systems remains a serious issue. Interoperability issues may arise when two sub-systems that had not been designed as a unit must now work together. Interoperability issues also arise when extensions to a sub-system result in conflicts with the remainder of the system. In this work, we target (sub-) systems pertinent to advanced life support that are developed using software agent technology. Our innovation is to develop an ontology-aware meta-model to support designers and developers in exposing the information that must be captured in order to achieve the goal of 'designing for interoperability, extensibility, and re-use'. Additionally, the meta-model will be integrated into the agent-oriented software engineering (AOSE) design process. Even beyond development of the meta-model and methodology for coupling into the design process, we propose to develop tool support so that the meta-model can be easily utilized within the design process. The success of this innovative meta-model, process, and tool, will support agent-based software re-use and rapid, trouble-free integration of upgraded sub-system components.
Planning and scheduling (P&amp;S) is an essential task for managing current and future NASA missions.  P&amp;S systems are used in many areas of spacecraft operations including science planning, flight dynamics operations, and space and ground network scheduling.  Typically, different tools are used by different users, possibly in different locations, for each of these functions because current tools are not suited to addressing all of a mission's P&amp;S needs.  There is thus an additional need to integrate the results of all these scheduling efforts, which increases mission cost, complexity, and risk.  To address these issues, Emergent Space Technologies (Emergent) is proposing to develop a prototype plug-and-play P&amp;S system that allows for heterogeneous, distributed scheduling of activities to occur simultaneously without conflict.  The unique qualities of the proposed P&amp;S system that will make it an innovative solution are the nature of how newly developed resources, tasks, and scheduling algorithms can easily be added to the system, how it will have an openly available and well-defined application programming interface (API) for developers to use, and how it will operate in a distributed environment as a resilient peer-to-peer architecture with no single points of failure.  With these innovations in place, P&amp;S implementations for flight dynamics, automation and autonomy, system monitoring, science planning, or any other activity can be developed and operated in remote locations and still be a fully-integrated solution.
NASA faces many systems engineering challenges as it seeks to conduct exploration and science missions concurrently.  One such challenge is implementing a repeatable systems engineering process to missions that vary greatly in scale and complexity.  The same process applied to lunar and Mars exploration missions, for example, do not necessarily scale well to Earth science missions.  Existing systems engineering tools do not adequately address this problem.  They tend to be inflexible implementations of a "one size fits all" approach to process, and provide little or no interoperability with other tools used in the system engineer's workflow.  Emergent Space Technologies, Inc. proposes to develop the Systems Engineering Process Realization Toolkit (SE-PRO).  SE-PRO will broaden the capabilities for capturing, communicating, and implementing the systems engineering process, regardless of the size of the mission based on the ability to customize the Capability Maturity Model Integration (CMMI) approach to process implementation.  The innovation lies in the intuitive graphical user interface that allows systems engineers to combine processes like CMMI, NASA Procedural Requirements (NPR's), and Goddard Procedural Requirements (GPR's), into a single process that is modifiable by the missions to specify the workflows, team assignments, and output products according to their needs.
Future long-duration manned space flights will rely upon onboard production facilities to grow and produce food throughout the mission.  Because the lives of the mission participants will depend upon successful agricultural and horticultural practices, it is imperative to provide them with sophisticated diagnostic tools with which to assure success.  Continuous real-time monitoring of gaseous species in the ambient environment is required.  There are several gases vital to this application including ethylene, oxygen, and carbon dioxide.  Vista Photonics proposes to develop a rugged, real-time, 15 parts-per-billion (ppb) gaseous ethylene analyzer, ultimately compatible with space flight.  The sensor technology developed on this project will be further capable of high-performance detection of additional trace gases including moisture and plant respiratory oxygen and carbon dioxide.
We propose the development and space-qualification of a 1.06 micron ultrastable fiber laser source that fully satisfies the requirements of this SBIR opportunity (Laser Technologies for Gravitational Wave Detection).  Our recommended approach builds on extensive experience developing and using single-frequency laser sources in the near infrared, both for aerospace and commercial applications. Our technical approach is based on emerging technology, spawned by the telecom industry that is only now reaching the maturity level where space qualification can be undertaken.    NASA requires ultrastable laser sources for a variety of ongoing and planned missions including LISA and GRACE.
NASA's program for Solar System Exploration will augment the current remote sensing approach to solar system exploration with a robust program that includes in situ measurements at key places. This requires robotic explorers capable of operation and survivability in high-temperature/high-pressure environment to service the needs of the future in situ exploration of Venus as well as atmospheric probes for giant planets. This program will design a Venus probe thermal management system capable of sustaining operation for 20 hours or more. To support the design, new thermal management technologies will be evaluated and considered for use the harsh Venusian environment.
All electronic systems are prone to wear-out and eventual failure and this has direct implications for Vehicle Health Management for NASA with its long space missions.  The accurate prediction of an impending failure can provide significant savings in functionality and mission success.[1]  Accurate and timely failure prediction can support the mitigation of catastrophic faults in spacecraft systems as well as autonomous control and dynamic repairs to faults.  Electronic prognostics provide advanced warnings of impending electronic module failures.  
 
The specific innovation proposed will provide tools for setting and determining the advanced warning time for prognostic-enabled electronic systems, also referred to as defining the remaining useful life (RUL).  The testbed will be a high efficiency, DC-to-DC Power Converter commonly found in advanced power systems. Such power converters are commonly found in a wide range of electronic systems to adjust power levels, yet are subject to failures.  
 
The innovation would help prevent data loss and support uninterrupted operation.  The reason for funding is that NASA has a stated requirement for autonomous and automated solutions to systems health management systems and electronic prognostics are required to support this objective.
AeroAstro proposes to develop a low-power, low-volume and lightweight, state-of-the-art digital radio capable of operating in a wide variety of bands, from VHF through Ka microwave, with data transceive capabilities of voice, telemetry, and high-resolution video.  This device is intended for use in manned extra-vehicular activities (EVAs) in deep-space environments, on lunar and planetary surfaces, and in the links and networks involved in end-to-end data flow.  This radio is innovative in several aspects: in its size and power, in its modularity that allows the ability to handle different bands, in its use of software radio technologies, in its automatic adaptability to varying transmission environments, and in its reliability and fault-tolerant performance.  This technology is paramount to the safety and success of manned missions in space, where unpredictable environments are present and where reliability is absolutely critical.
Miniaturization of mass spectrometers is restricted almost exclusively by the ability of small vacuum pumps to remove gas loads during operation of the instrument.  Our answer to this dilemma is a specialized interface that focuses a parallel beam of ionized gas molecules through an orifice that is at least 10 times smaller than ever before achieved in a mass spectrometer inlet.  Our recent patent application describes this interface.  Not only can we use this interface to radically reduce the pumping requirements within the mass spectrometer, but it should also enable an unprecedented cooling and focusing of the ion beam.   This in turn will enable attaining mass resolutions of  over ten thousand in a phase I instrument which uses a linear time of flight tube of only 10 cm.  A small overall instrumental footprint (probably 1.5 cubic feet including pumping and electronics) should be attainable in a phase II effort.
AeroAstro proposes decomposing nitrous oxide (N2O) as an alternative propellant to existing spacecraft propellants.  Decomposing N2O can be used as either a high Isp, hot-gas monopropellant or as a low Isp, cold gas for ACS thrusters.  AeroAstro further proposes to use an innovative technique to achieve N2O decomposition: gasdynamic resonance.  Gasdynamic resonance will elevate the N2O to the activation temperatures required for exothermic decomposition, allowing monopropellant operation without the difficulties of a catalyst.  One of the challenges of long-duration space exploration systems is finding a propellant for microspacecraft that is safe, reliable, robust, and performs better than current propulsion systems.  N2O can replace both hot-gas propellants such as hydrazine and cold-gas ACS systems such as nitrogen or isobutane.  N2O is non-toxic, has a low freezing point (-91&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C), and stores as a liquid.  N2O is also a byproduct of the catalysis of ammonia, a main effluent of waste-water recycling systems for long-duration manned space missions.  The anticipated results of this effort are data demonstrating the operating parameters of resonating N2O, and a dual-mode thruster design capable of both hot-gas and cold-gas operation.  Phase II activity will evolve the design of the dual-mode thruster and demonstrate operation over a range of conditions.
AeroAstro's innovative design approach for implementing reconfigurable electronics frees the spacecraft designer to concentrate on the mission at hand with significant assurance that single-point failures can be automatically corrected.  It also uses dynamic reconfiguration to change circuit functions which will create the opportunity to conserve mass, volume, and power while providing capabilities that may have been valuable, but deemed to be less important or infrequently needed so that they could not justify dedicated hardware.  The system operates at a much finer level of granularity than with other reconfigurable approaches, which increases not the only adaptability and versatility, but also reduces the redundancy required to assure the success of the mission.  Unlike traditional approaches that employ redundant systems, there are no mass penalties, and affordability is achievable.  Significant benefits include dramatic orders of magnitude reduction in mass, volume, and cost.
Every day, turbulence has an adverse effect on aircraft operations and capacity of the NAS, costing the airline industry at least $100 million annually in operational inefficiencies, unscheduled maintenance, and injuries.  A contributor to these costs is that controllers' and dispatchers' current tactical knowledge of turbulence hazards relies heavily on verbal pilot reports of turbulence, which are often inconsistent, late, and subjective.  AeroTech will develop a turbulence hazard decision support tool (TurbDST) that will enhance controllers' and dispatchers' situational awareness of the location and severity of turbulence; by providing real-time quantitative turbulence information down-linked from aircraft.  TurbDST will enhance tactical and strategic decision making with regard to airspace usage and aircraft routing by enabling users to predict the effect of the reported/detected turbulence on aircraft whose route may take them through that location.  With enhanced turbulence knowledge, collaboration with pilots regarding route changes can be improved and cost savings to the airlines can be gained through more efficient and safer aircraft routing.  Phase I will prove technical feasibility of integrating the turbulence information and will develop, using controller and dispatcher inputs, CONOPS and requirements for the TurbDST.  By Phase III, a meaningful controller/dispatcher TurbDST will be developed, tested, and evaluated.
This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project will develop titanium Loop Heat Pipes (LHPs) that can be used in low-mass space nuclear radiators, such as the radiators currently being designed for Project Prometheus, as well as radiators for the lunar and Mars surfaces.  LHPs are two phase heat transfer devices that can be embedded in radiator panels.  Advanced Cooling Technologies, Inc. (ACT) has completed a radiator trade study that showed that radiators with titanium LHPs have the highest specific power in the temperature range from 300 to 550 K, increasing the specific power over heat pipe radiators by more than 1/3.  The Phase I program will develop titanium/water LHPs that can operate in the low to intermediate temperature range (300 to 500K), as well as the lower portion of the intermediate temperature range (450 to 550 K).  The Phase II program will develop alkali metal LHPs that can operate in the intermediate to high temperature ranges (700 to 1000 K and higher).
NVE Corporation will design and build an innovative, low cost, flexible, configurable, radiation hardened, galvanically isolated, interface ASIC chip set that will reduce power consumption, enable high efficiency power conversion management, highly integrate existing discrete solutions, enable precision isolated data conversion and communication, save weight and footprint and be more immune to radiation than the existing optocoupler technology solution.  The proposed chip set configurations will interface with many communication protocols and data signaling applications.  This flexible configuration enables variant uses of the silicon, increases circuit and application flexibility, allows protected, isolated interfaces between systems, and increases overall system speed and reliability while reducing complexity. A key challenge is to successfully integrate NVE's commercialized Giant Magneto-Resistive (GMR) based post processing IsoLoop&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt; technology with radiation hardened or radiation tolerant under-layer circuits.  NVE has shipped millions CMOS-based commercial units using this concept.  GMR material, configured into magnetically sensitive resistors, is inherently radiation hard.  Customers have tested the basic sense element to a dose rate of 1.1E+12 rads(Si)/sec. without failure.  NASA Goddard (Robert Reed) tested commercial IsoLoop products to a fluence of 1x107 ions/cm2.and observed no upsets. James Lyke of AFRL/VSEE  will advise and assist NVE on the program.
This SBIR project will develop and deliver revolutionary driver technology with intelligent fault protection for driving long-pulse (&gt; 2msec), quasi-CW laser diode arrays (LDAs) at high power with improved performance and lifetime. A critical issue with operating LDAs for long discharge pulses is localized diode heating leads to current and optical instabilities, which irrevocably damage emitters resulting in LDA failure. SRL has demonstrated that diode instabilities can be detected and eliminated. As a result, integrating SRL's proprietary fault diagnostics into diode drivers increases laser diode lifetimes by more than a factor-of-40 over unprotected drivers. In addition, in Phase 1, SRL will acquire data demonstrating that our fault-mode circuitry can be used as a diagnostic to a priory determine which LDA's will have long lifetimes. In Phase 2 we will deliver a fully engineered compact driver for powering NASA LDAs and screening their suitability for use in flight hardware. The Phase 2 driver will have specific power ratings up to 7 kW/liter, which is 4 times higher than existing laser diode drivers. The combination of fault diagnostics for increased laser diode performance and lifetime and compact packaging, makes the SRL driver an important technology for powering LDAs for NASA flight systems.
NASA seeks highly efficient, long life solar dynamic power conversion systems. The requirements for these missions emphasize low mass and high conversion efficiencies. A reliable and highly efficient Stirling convertor would provide mission planners with less costly spacecraft power options than currently exist. Current Stirling technologies have demonstrated a beginning of life specific power level of 4.2 W/kg, and a useful life greater than 10 years. The proposed effort will result in the preliminary design for an innovative multiple-cylinder alpha free-piston Stirling engine (AFPSE) for high power applications. The program approach minimizes development risk by combining proven technologies, experiences and innovative concepts of Sunpower Inc. and Global Cooling BV (GCBV) with AFPSE. The proposed system is a compact, highly efficient, long life, low mass Stirling machine for a high power conversion system. This configuration having multi-pistons in separate cylinders connected by rejector and acceptor is not only very simple due to one moving part in one cylinder with no displacer, but also highly adaptable due to its versatile shape. This machine is very innovative because it is anticipated to achieve a specific power greater than 100W/kg as well as a heat input to electrical output conversion efficiency greater than 30&#37;.
The Methane and Carbon Monoxide/LOX rocket (MCLOX) is a technology for accomplishing ascent from Mars. Current Mars in-situ propellant production (ISPP) technologies produce methane and carbon monoxide in various combinations, but with neither generally produced in pure form. While separation and purification of methane fuel is possible, it adds complexity to the propellant production process and discards an otherwise useful fuel product. The MCLOX makes such complex and wasteful processes unnecessary by burning the methane/CO mixtures produced by Mars ISPP systems without further refinement. Despite the decrease in rocket specific impulse caused by CO admixture, the improvement offered by concomitant increased propellant density provides a net improvement in stage performance, and this mission advantage is amplified further by the increase of the total amount of propellant produced and the decrease in mass and complexity of the required ISPP plant. For these reasons the development of the MCLOX rocket is important to achieve maximum benefit from Mars ISPP systems.
Development of a microgravity and hypogravity compatible Electron Cyclotron Resonance (ECR) Plasma Methane Pyrolysis Reactor is proposed to recover hydrogen which is lost as methane in the conversion of carbon dioxide to water via the Sabatier process.  This will close the hydrogen loop which currently requires 50&#37; resupply. This technology will also produce elemental carbon as a secondary product, which may be employed as an adsorbent or catalyst carrier for removal of atmospheric trace contaminants, thus further lowering the resupply burden for manned spacecraft. ECR plasmas produce extremely high temperatures confined within relatively small spatial dimensions and can be generated under low power (10-150 W) conditions.  The plasma is heated by the resonant absorption of electromagnetic energy, a much more efficient way to achieve plasma conditions, compared to traditional methods. The ECR method of plasma generation confines the plasma using magnetic force, and therefore, can be employed in microgravity, hypogravity, and Earth gravity. The primary problem associated with conventional fixed bed catalytic methane pyrolysis reactors is severe catalyst fouling and bed plugging due to the deposition of the carbon product.  The proposed ECR Plasma based process will circumvent these problems.
NASA's Future Air traffic management Concepts Evaluation Tool (FACET) is a simulation tool to evaluate next generation air traffic management (ATM) systems.  FACET has been gaining popularity with ATM researchers in research years due to its well-designed user interface and robust capabilities for simulating the interaction between the National Airspace System (NAS) and new ATM concepts. Since controller task load and performance is a critical aspect of any future ATM concept, we propose to integrate human performance metrics into FACET.  Currently, the only representation of human performance in FACET is through calculation of dynamic density, which estimates controller task load at the sector level through regression analysis of subjective controller ratings for current operations.  However, the applicability of dynamic density in its current form for predicting controller task load of future ATM operations is unknown.  By integrating human performance metrics directly into FACET, preliminary task load implications and predictions of workload-constrained sector capacity of any future ATM concept would be immediately available to researchers.  This would be particularly useful to future ATM tradeoff studies and could be used in lieu of subjective controller ratings for preliminary recalibration of dynamic density for future ATM operations.
In Topic X1.03 NASA (JPL) is seeking to extend and implement long distance exploratory surface rover missions to gain knowledge of surface topology and roughness.  The benefit is to identify suitable sites for future landings of human or robotic missions and to aid in pinpoint landings.  High resolution millimeter wave radar sensors provide a low cost, reliable way for a Moon or Mars Rover to detect hazards and negative obstacles (i.e. holes and drop-offs) while moving or stationary.  A radar sensor is effective as a stand-alone sensor, or as a complement to the stereo vision based and laser line systems used on previous successful rover missions.  The low computer overhead and inherently rapid response of a radar sensor enables a rover to rapidly traverse extremely rugged terrain without risk of falling into a hole or being otherwise trapped.  The rapid traverse speed provides a wider area for collection of science data, and reduces the fraction of limited mission time spent on moving, as opposed to measurement.  The overall objective of the proposed program is to develop a practical rover radar sensor for negative and positive obstacle detection.
Proposed for development is a proof-of-concept prototype for the final stage of a multistage cryocooler.  This final stage comprises a high frequency pulse tube cold head that cools from an intermediate temperature of 10?20 K down to below the critical temperature of helium (5.2 K) using an alternate approach compared to conventional technology.  This approach offers unique advantages that have never before been explored and will allow us to achieve high thermodynamic efficiency with compact size, using ordinary helium as the working fluid. The first and second stages that will eventually pre-cool the third stage cold head can be either existing commercial Sunpower Stirling cryocoolers or pulse tube technology now under development.  If the third stage cold head proves successful all the pieces will be in place for developing a compact, efficient and reliable cryocooler.
We are proposing a new extreme environment electronics (EEE) technology based on silicon-on-insulator (SOI) metal-semiconductor field-effect transistors (MESFETs). Our technology allows MESFETs to be fabricated using commercial SOI CMOS foundries with no expensive changes to the process flow. The MESFETs are radiation tolerant and the use of SOI substrates makes them SEU immune. They offer unique advantages compared to equivalent geometry MOSFETs including: i) higher operating frequencies in the ultra-low power regime; (ii) 10 ? 100X lower 1/f noise; (iii) high voltage operation (&gt;20V). The MESFETs show excellent performance up to 200C, as do simulations down to ? 185C. The low-noise, high-speed (GHz) and ultra-low power capability of the SOI MESFETs makes them ideally suited for a variety of EEE mixed-signal circuits including analog-to-digital converters, low-noise amplifiers and voltage/current references for advanced sensor applications. The high voltage capability also suggests MESFET applications in power amplifier communication modules, as well as DC-DC converters in power management systems. 

During Phase 1 we shall develop device models that describe MESFET operation over the temperature range ?180 to + 130C. The models will be calibrated against data taken from our existing MESFETs, and will operate within industry standard CAD tools. The models will be used to design and simulate an operational amplifier, a voltage controlled oscillator, a power amplifier and a low noise amplifier. The layout of the simulated designs will be completed during Phase 1, for fabrication during Phase 2 in partnership with a commercial foundry.
Large scale numerical simulations, as typified by climate models, space weather models, and the like, typically involve non-linear governing equations in discretized form, subject to initial and/or boundary conditions. Large scale simulations may be employed in a coupled manner, with the output of one simulation providing input data to another. Simulation execution may require significant 'wall clock' time to complete, resources such as memory and CPU, and may involve components that are networked and the need for resources such as input data files or temporary local storage of intermediate data products. With collaboratories and the increase in interdisciplinary and multi-investigator scientific projects, there is an increase in distributed, networked, and coupled scientific simulations. Moreover, problem complexity may require that multiple sets of parameters in the problem space be investigated, thus necessitating multiple simulation runs. With simulation runs extending in time, involving networked components, and networked resource usage, setting-up and monitoring these runs is non-trivial and increasingly time intensive. Such activity can waste a researcher's time; yet the simulation runs must be set-up and then monitored, as crashes, missing components, permission problems, network problems, etc., do occur. Our innovation is a self-regulating, autonomic, agent-based framework that can manage simulation runs.
NASA needs a cryogenic refrigerator for the 15-25K range for receiving arrays of ground-based antennas that will serve the telecommunications needs of future space exploration.  We propose to develop a 15-25K Static-Helium Regenerator/Double Pulse Tube Cooler for receiving arrays.  Our SHR/DPTC combines two of our technologies that have potential to enable pulse-tube coolers to operate efficiently in the 15-25K range: (1) our Static-Helium Regenerator (SHR) technology, which uses static helium for the regenerator's thermal mass; and (2) our Double Pulse Tube Cooler (DPTC) technology, which uses a recuperator (instead of regenerators) to transfer heat between two pulse-tube sub-cycles that operate in parallel and out-of-phase.  In Phase I, we will perform system trades and generate a preliminary design of a 15-25K SHR/DPTC that minimizes life-cycle costs for receiving arrays.  In Phase II, we will: develop and test SHR/DPTC components; integrate the SHR/DPTC components with cooler components we have already developed; and test the integrated cooler.  In Phase III, we will build and sell SHR/DPTCs to the government and private sector.
NASA's vision of Space Exploration will require advancements in communication systems to maintain flexibility and adaptability to changing needs and requirements. The research outlined in this project will develop a hardware/software design environment that will allow NASA engineers to automatically develop flexible, reconfigurable communications systems.   We will develop automated compiler algorithms to translate software code available in a variety of high level languages (C/C++/SIMULINK) and assembly of various general purpose processors into Register Transfer Level VHDL code to be mapped onto FPGA-based hardware.  We further plan to study techniques for performing hardware/software co-design on integrated systems-on-a-chip platforms consisting of embedded processors, memories and FPGAs.   We will demonstrate our concepts using a prototype compiler that will translate software implementations of communications applications into a hardware/software implementation on a Xilinx Virtex II Pro Platform FPGA and a DINI DN2000k10 board. The proposed work is revolutionary and addresses NASA's Space Exploration needs as follows: (1) it will develop a system level tool for designing hardware systems which will reduce design times from months to days (2) it will enable the use of cost-efficient, high-performance FPGAs (3) it will allow engineers to reuse of millions of lines of software developed in the past for general purpose processors, and migrate them painlessly to newer SOC platforms.
The fabrication of very large optical telescopes for space astronomy can be prohibitively costly due to the immense weight and size of monolithic primary mirrors.  The cost of these telescopes can be reduced by the use of a segmented primary mirror.   The next generation of large segmented mirrors must have little or no edge exclusion.  The Zeeko Precessions polishing is a sub-aperture process that has been developed for the control of form and texture in the production of aspheric and other optical surfaces.  The Precessions process is deterministic and provides dramatic reductions in production time due to its high removal rate and repeatability.  Similar to other processes, the Precessions process can produce an edge effect due to the polishing spot changing when in extends beyond the edge of a part.  Currently, the control software assumes no change in the spot size or shape when it moves beyond the edge.  The primary goal of this Phase I project is to understand process differences at the edge and develop an approach to minimize them.  Results from Phase I will provide better understanding of the polishing influence function which will serve as a foundation for a Phase II study on power spectral density (PSD) control and production of prototype optics that demonstrate advancement of the state-of-the-art in minimizing edge exclusion.
Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) proposes to develop a plant lighting system which collects, transmits and distributes photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) for biomass production in planetary and transit missions.  In this system, solar light or electric lamp light is collected by reflector optics and focused at the end of an optical fiber cable.  The light is filtered by a selective wavelength filter to reject the non-PAR spectra to minimize heat generation within the plant growth chamber.  The PAR spectra are transmitted to the plant growth chamber where the light is uniformly distributed over the plant growth area at optimum intensities.
	
Key features of the proposed system are: (1) the PAR can be transmitted via a flexible optical fiber cable to plants away from the light source; (2) only the PAR will be transmitted to the plant, minimizing the thermal loading in the plant growth chamber, while the non-PAR spectra can be converted to electricity by means of low band-gap PV cells; (3) the low profile light diffuser makes more volume available for plant growth; and (4) the electric light source can be chosen for the best system efficiency and can be placed at the location best suited for thermal control.
Significant improvements in photovoltaic materials and systems are required to enable future exploration missions. This SBIR project, involving two innovative organizations: CFD Research Corporation (CFDRC) and University of California Riverside (UCR), has two major objectives: 1) develop and provide reliable, validated computational tools for assessment, design, and optimization of novel nanostructures based on Quantum Dots (QD) for future nano-devices for space applications; 2) investigate, design, and demonstrate new photovoltaic (PV) structures based on QD nanotechnology, with improved efficiency and radiation hardness. The inherently radiation tolerant quantum dots of variable sizes maximize absorption of different light wavelengths ("multicolor" cell), which dramatically improves PV efficiency and diminishes the radiation-induced degradation. 
Phase I includes development of numerical tools for modeling electron-phonon transport in QD superlattices for photovoltaic applications, using experimental data from UCR Nano-Device Laboratory for validation and calibration of the new tools, and computational proof-of-concept. In Phase II, the new QD models will be integrated into CFDRC's advanced photonic-electronic device simulator. Novel QD photovoltaic nano-engineered materials and designs will be down-selected for further development to the point of testable prototypes. They will be fabricated and provided to NASA for electrical characterization and radiation testing.
To advance the state-of-the-art uplink laser communication technology, new adaptive optic beam compensation techniques are needed for removing various time-varying atmospheric disturbances on an uplink laser beam.  The net effect of atmospheric wavefront turbulence produces degraded laser beam quality and limited data transfer rates and communication range.  Crystal Research, Inc. proposes to develop a new type miniaturized adaptive optic device that is capable of removing all significant atmospheric turbulence distortions.  The proposed device is based on electro-optic phase modulation in a single crystal substrate through electro-optic effect.  By avoiding actuator systems associated with moving mirrors, the proposed innovation not only significantly reduces cost, size, weight, and power consumption, but also greatly enhances the system performance and reliability.  The superior parameters of the proposed device could enable meeting the stated NASA mission goals of boosting data transfer rates in optical communication by a factor of 10-100 relative to the current state of the art. The new capabilities of the proposed adaptive optic device could lead to important advances in deep space and other optical communication systems.   In Phase I, we will fully exploit the advantages and feasibility of the proposed concept by demonstrating critical component technologies in laboratory breadboard experiments.
By examining the occurrence rates and types of actual on-orbit failures, a failure servicing industry can be projected.  Similarly, by examining the lifetimes of working or recently retired spacecraft, a lifetime extension servicing market can be characterized.  By examining actual historic servicing opportunities and combining this information with consideration of operational uncertainties, it is possible to define a set of servicers that range from low to high in mass, required servicing capability, lifetime risk to the serviced spacecraft, and potential economic return.  This knowledge in turn will show how a set of increasingly capable servicers can establish an economically viable on-orbit telerobotic satellite servicing industry.  Development of servicer design requirements will serve to identify key technologies.  The applicability of these commercial capabilities to Exploration related assets and missions will also be examined.
For detecting leakage of cryogenic fluids in spaceport facilities and in spacebound vehicles, this project proposes to demonstrate the feasibility of an all-optical sensor that can be fitted into narrow orifices around plumbing junctions. Fast response time and complete reversibility in the detection range of 1 ppm to 100&#37; for hydrogen will be demonstrated in Phase I.  This technology will support NASA goal of reducing vehicle and payload cost, and increase safety of ground and flight operations by measuring hydrogen in real-time and in situ.  The sensor's thermal shock resistance when exposed to cryogenic fluids will also be tested in Phase I.  A prototype device will be engineered, field-tested and delivered to NASA in Phase II.  Successful discussions have been conducted with industrial partners for commercialization support including Phase III follow-on funding for this project.  One major U.S. aerospace company has expressed strong interest in the proposed technology by providing a letter of support.  A technical team having 70 years of cumulative experience in developing commercially viable products has been assembled for this project.
This project will develop a sensitive and specific biosensor worthy of field deployment for autonomous operations.  The underlying technology will enable in situ detection of terror agents in the cargo space of an aircraft or in airports and thereby reduce vulnerability of the Air Transportation system.  There is a critical need for sensitive, rugged biosensors capable of performing assays under harsh conditions with minimal crew attention for decreasing the time and cost of analyses.  Toward that goal, tasks have been designed in this Phase I proposal to develop a biosensor using molecularly imprinted polymers - a class of synthetic receptors that can be tailored to selectively interact with analytes for which recognition molecules of biological origin may not be available. The feasibility of a sensor array will be demonstrated by using nerve agent simulants. A prototype sensor array device, and smart signal processing algorithm will be developed in Phase II.  For Phase III manufacturing engineering and Phase III follow-on funding, discussions have been held with two potential partners. A highly proficient engineering team, with a cumulative 70 person-years of experience in materials science and optical sensors, is in place to develop the biosensor.
Future manned spacecraft will require thermal management systems that effectively and safely control the temperature in inhabited modules.  Interface heat exchangers will be required that isolate the heat transfer fluid in the spacecraft thermal bus from the circulating water used to cool inhabited modules.  We propose to develop an innovative heat exchanger that provides two completely independent physical barriers between the two fluids in the interface heat exchanger.  This isolated flow path heat exchanger incorporates two key innovations: (1) an innovative and simple core construction that separates the two fluids while providing a large heat transfer area, and (2) innovative materials that enable efficient heat transfer between the two fluid streams.  The proposed heat exchanger is lightweight, efficient, and simple to fabricate.  Phase I proves the feasibility of our approach through laboratory demonstrations of the key technologies.  In Phase II we will design, build, and demonstrate performance of a full-scale interface heat exchanger sized for a specific NASA application.
Iris AO will develop electromechanical models and actuator calibration methods to enable open-loop control of MEMS deformable mirrors (DMs) with unprecedented precision. Error budget analysis will establish feasibility of open-loop operation with nanometer-scale positioning accuracy and sub-nanometer resolution and stability. Although a number of MEMS based DMs have been demonstrated for adaptive optics applications, little work has been carried out to characterize their wavefront correction ability to precisions required by NASA space telescope missions. This proposal directly addresses this issue for a class of electrostatically actuated DMs with extremely high optical quality and low voltage-to-stroke ratios. High-precision, large actuator count DMs are critical for high-contrast astrophysical imagers, including the Terrestrial Planet Finder program. Existing non-MEMS DMs that approach NASA requirements feature high actuation voltages, low actuator densities and uncertain scalability beyond a few thousand actuators. MEMS DMs offer natural scalability, but do not yet meet the stringent precision and stability requirements for space telescopes applications. Better understanding of the electromechanical behavior, positioning error sources and calibration methods for these devices is essential to understand and improve performance, bringing MEMS DMs to mission readiness.
Our objective is to develop a compact scanning Fabry-Perot spectrometer, for satellite far-infrared astronomy and Earth remote sensing, that operates at wavelengths of 100 ?m and longer, with a resolving power of 10,000 and free spectral range of ~50 cm-1.  The novelty of this innovation lies in obtaining this very large free spectral range simultaneously with a resolution equivalent to the state of the art for laboratory far-infrared spectrophotometers in a volume less than a liter and directly suitable for airborne and satellite instrumentation. The critical innovation lies in providing far-infrared Fabry-Perot mirrors of &gt;99.99&#37; reflectance to enable unprecedented system finesse.  This mirror development and proof testing, and a systems analysis of an F-P spectrometer subsystem for satellite and aerial imaging are the subject of Phase I;  Phase II includes design, fabrication and testing of the miniature spectrometer.
Cooling electronic components in the space environment still remains a challenge for thermal engineers. In the current
design practice, copper straps are used to transfer the waste heat from various high-power dissipating components to
the side walls of the electronic box. Another heat transport device then collects the waste heat from the box mounting
plate and carries it the space radiators for rejection. As the heat load of next generation electronics increases at a very
fast rate, a more efficient heat transfer mechanism at the box level must be developed. Loop Heat Pipes (LHP) become
popular heat transport devices for space-based thermal control systems for they are highly reliable and maintenancefree.
Almost all LHPs in service at the present time contain one capillary pump. Thus one LHP provides only a "single
point" heat acquisition. In addition, when redundancy is required for the mission long lifetime, many LHPs are
therefore needed to provide adequate cooling for the electronic components. Miniature LHPs with multiple evaporators
and multiple condensers will solve the aforementioned cooling problem without complicating the integration process.
Various Earth Science fields require well-calibrated field radiometers whose calibrations must be tracked and verified in the field.  NASA has long recognized the need to monitor and maintain calibrations of in-situ radiometric instruments.  However, the light sources that have been developed for calibration monitoring typically require high power, are bulky and difficult to use in the field, and do not work with all types of radiometers.
	We propose a next-generation portable, ultra-stable, lightweight and highly versatile light source based on light-emitting diodes (LEDs).  Recent advances in LEDs include higher power, efficiency, and a wider range of wavelengths (from UV to IR).  These advances, coupled with LEDs' inherent suitability for electronic feedback stabilization, make them excellent candidates for more compact and power-efficient calibration sources.
	During Phase I we will identify and test LED devices, measurement and stabilization techniques, and physical configurations for use in one or more calibration sources.  In Phase II we will build prototypes and implement a program for test and evaluation in cooperation with recognized calibration laboratories.  At the conclusion of Phase II we will be ready to produce and sell a commercial version.
This proposal addresses Item #2 of Topic X7.04 Aeroassist Systems and proposes innovative heat shield thermal protection systems (TPS) designs for human-rated aeroassist vehicles returning to Earth from the Moon and Mars.  The proposed designs 1) utilize concepts with and without outer ablator materials, 2) employ outer refractory composite material rib-stiffened aeroshells with low emissivity foils on their internal structure to trap the heat and act like a high thermal resistance material, similar to multi-layer insulation but which have the potential to be less complex and less dense, and 3) make use of re-usable refractory composite materials that will be non-parasitic and structurally functional within the heat shield, thereby offering the promise of significantly reducing TPS mass fraction.  The following will briefly describe the base heat shield used in Apollo Command Module and discuss the two alternative concepts and why they are advantageous.
Valcor Engineering Corporation proposes to develop an advanced On Board Inert Gas Generation System, OBIGGS, for aircraft fuel tank inerting to prevent hazardous in-flight conditions and to mitigate their effect when they do occur. Aircraft fires represent a small number of actual accident causes, but the number of fatalities due to in-flight, post-crash, and on-ground fires is large.  The novel OBIGGS system will inert aircraft fuel tanks with nitrogen generated by a hollow fiber membrane module.  The system will provide a cost effective method for fuel tank inerting, will be robust and resistant to chemical contamination.  An OBIGGS system that is based on nitrogen generation is environmentally friendly and does not require hazardous chemicals for fire suppression.  In addition to improving aircraft safety by mitigating hazardous in-flight and on the ground conditions the OBIGGS systems will also contribute to aircraft security and will mitigate aircraft damage from hostile attacks.
NanoSonic has fabricated revolutionary nanostructured, yet macroscale, multifunctional Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; films via layer-by-layer, molecular self-assembly, which enables thickness and placement control over multiple constituents for true nanostructured multifunctionality and homogeneity (surface roughness +/- 5 nm).  NanoSonic has recently transitioned this innovative approach into a method to produce flexible, super lightweight, conductive fabrics for inflatable spacecraft.  In support of NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, low cost Metal Rubber Fabric&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; would be optimized as high performance textiles and sensors for the Exploration Systems Mission Directorate.  Specifically, nanostructured fabrics with ultra-low mass density (0.0011 g/cc), offer electromagnetic interference (EMI) shielding and the elastomeric variants exhibit a novel approach to large area sensors.    Metal Rubber Fabric&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; is not fabricated from conducting polymers or sputter coated fibers.  NanoSonic's in situ approach involves chemically reacting monolayers of nanosized components, eliminating residual stress between each constituent.  Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; technology has led to advanced electrically conductive (as low as 10-5 &amp;#937;&amp;#8729;cm) inorganic/organic hybrid nanocomposites that can be strained to &gt; 1000&#37; elongation that return to the original shape and nominal conductivity when released, even at cryogenic temperatures (-80&amp;#61616;C).  Metal Rubber Fabric&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; requires less than 1 vol&#37; of metal, allowing the manufacturing a cost effective, advanced textiles.
NanoSonic has developed revolutionary nanostructured, yet macroscale, multifunctional Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; films.  In support of NASA's Vision for Space Exploration, low cost Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; freestanding or conformal skins would be optimized as protective coatings for human and robotic space exploration.  Specifically, ultra-lightweight, nanostructured coatings with protection against electrostatic charging, abrasion and radiation over a wide range of mechanical and thermal fluctuations are offered.  Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; is fabricated via layer-by-layer, molecular self-assembly, which enables thickness and placement control over multiple constituents for true nanostructured multifunctionality (nm scale); while advanced polymers have allowed scale-up to free-standing thick films (several mm thick, at &lt; 1 g/cc).  Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; is not a conducting polymer or a sputter-coated polymer film.  It is a freestanding nanocomposite formed in situ by chemically bonding each monolayer of nanostructured constituent, thereby eliminating residual stress between each component.  New, ultra-low modulus Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; can be strained to &gt; 1000&#37; elongation while remaining electrically conductive; and returns to its original shape and nominal conductivity when released.  Bulk resistivity (as low as 10-5 &amp;#937;&amp;#8729;cm), and mechanical moduli (0.1 MPa to 500 MPa) have been demonstrated.  Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; requires less than 1 vol&#37; of metal, allowing the manufacturing a cost effective, advanced material
This SBIR Phase I proposal addresses the need for explosion proof, sensitive and reliable hydrogen sensors for NASA and commercial hydrogen fuel systems.  It also addresses the need for multiple sensing points with minimum tank or bulkhead feedthroughs. The proposed innovations will increase the response speed of reported hydrogen sensors by a factor of 5 and the sensitivity by a factor of 10. In the Phase I feasibility work, it is proposed to demonstrate these attributes for single sensors.  In Phase II, the multiplexing, detection reliability and special packaging necessary to make the sensors practical for NASA and other applications will be demonstrated in preparation for commercialization in Phase III.
Significant cost and weight savings of a space mission can be achieved by improving the cryogenic storage technology.  Added cryogen mass due to the cryogen boil-off, the oversized tanks and storage systems make the planetary missions prohibitive.  The recently proposed Zero-Boil-Off (ZBO) strategy for cryogen tanks, which combines both thermal insulation and "cryocooling" technologies to manage the heat leaks.  It is a straightforward concept that could lead to a significant weight/cost reduction for long-duration missions.  However, several issues must be resolved before the ZBO benefits can be realized.  One of which is the management of the through-the-tank-wall "heat leaks".  Loop Heat Pipe (LHP) is a passive two-phase heat transport device that utilizes solely capillary action to circulate the working fluid in a closed loop to transfer heat from one location to another.  LHPs do not contain mechanical moving parts and therefore are highly reliable and durable for space applications.  A novel cryogenic LHP system is proposed for the ZBO cryocooling.  It is capable of acquiring heat from a large area of the cryo-tank wall, transporting it to a cryocooler for heat rejection, and meeting other design requirements of cryogen storage systems for space missions.
The cyclogyro, an aircraft propulsion concept with the potential for VTOL to the lower bounds of transonic flight, is conceptually simple but structurally and aerodynamically complex. To our knowledge no cyclogyro has ever flown. We propose to demonstrate through simulation and rotor testing that with appropriately designed cyclogyro rotors and propulsion algorithms, aircraft can transition smoothly from low-speed and vertical flight to near-transonic forward flight. We posit that lift and propulsion can be achieved while increasing the aircraft critical mach number above that of conventional subsonic airplanes with fixed wings. We will show that thrust and lift can be maintained across all speeds, and attainable thrust increases with increasing airspeed for constant rotor speed. Gliding and vertical autorotation can be performed safely with rotors stopped or rotating, respectively.
Timely processing of raw Earth science data for calibration and validation in a highly distributed and networked environment, and its storage at Distributed Active Archive Centers (DAACs) for presentation to the global scientific community is critical in NASA's mission for Earth Sciences. Here we propose to develop a stream processing engine approach to earth science data processing. Our innovation is based leveraging the emerging stream processing engine technology. Traditionally stream processing applications have been built using customized DBMS., which tend to be costly, and hard to change by non-specialist end-users. Our proposed architecture offers several significant benefits. First, an SPE developed application enables the refinement of stream filtering, the rapid development of new stream filtering capability faster than any other database or middleware based solution using StreamSQL , thus improving the maintainability and adaptivity of the system especially by non-specialist end-users. Second, by design, SPE technology offers inherent fault tolerance against asynchronous data input with attendant drop-outs.
Fiber Bragg Grating had been identified as very important elements, especially for strain measurements in smart structures. In many applications, arrays of FBG sensors along a single fiber at multiple locations are required to collect data samples at high speed with microstrain resolution. However, the traditional approaches based spectrum scanning and Wavelength Division Multiplexing are either lacking in sampling rates due to scanning and processing speed or cost prohibiting, respectively, as the number of optical sensors increased. The technique IFOS is proposing is based on the combination of Wavelength Division Multiplexing (WDM) and Frequency Modulation (FM) techniques. In addition, IFOS will implement multi-fiber multiplexability to the present high-speed WDM systems with Space Division Multiplexing scheme to increase the number of sensor array based on fast optical switch.  These approaches will have advantages over scanning systems as well as WDM based in terms of speed and the capability of multiplexing FBG sensors at lower cost. Potential implementation of proposed technique and high-speed FBG sensors in structure health monitoring and intelligent sensing will be demonstrated, in collaboration with the research team at the University of Akron.
Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are attractive candidates for use as power sources in aerospace applications because they have high specific energy ( up to 200 Wh/kg) and energy density (~ 500 Wh/L) and long cycle life (1,000 ? 30,000 cycles currently depending on the depth of cycling). However, at temperatures below about ?10&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C, their charge/discharge performance is severely degraded which hinders their use in deep space and planetary missions. This decrease in performance may be due to the precipitation of ethylene carbonate (EC) at low temperatures, which may prevent the migration of Li+ ions between the electrodes during charge and discharge. We propose to determine the cause of the EC precipitation. Appropriate electrolyte systems will be designed to prevent phase separation of the electrolyte at low temperatures during charge and discharge.
SSCI proposes to develop innovative algorithms for the integration of Health Monitoring (HM) subsystem with the existing FLARE (Fast on-Line Actuator Reconfiguration Enhancement) system that achieves rapid stabilization of the closed-loop flight control system in the presence of flight-critical failures. While both systems generate on-line estimates of the failure-related paramaters, the HM system can generate false failure information, while the FLARE system may result in poor performance in subsequent flight regimes if its parameter estimates are far from their true values. The main idea is to combine the failure parameter estimates from the HM and FLARE systems to assure robustness to false alarms, missed detections and detection delays in the HM system, and to use the combined estimate in the adaptive reconfigurable control law to assure the desired closed-loop performance. In order to achieve the project objectives, we plan to carry out the following tasks in Phase I: (i) Modify F/A-18 aircraft simulation to test the feasibility of the proposed approach; (ii) Develop the IHM-FLARE architecture and algorithms; and (iii) Evaluate the performance of the flight control system under false failure information. Phase II will result in algorithm enhancements, and implementation and testing using high-fidelity and piloted F/A-18 simulations. Boeing Phantom Works (Mr. James Urnes, Sr.) will provide technical and commercialization support throughout the project.
This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I effort will establish the feasibility of developing a fiber coupled, high power, electro-optically controlled, space qualified, phase modulator for the NASA Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). Specific to the LISA project is the use of three spacecraft, spanned by vast distances, to make gravitational wave measurements. A central aspect in maintaining system performance is inter-spacecraft communications which require the use of frequency modulated, high power 1.06 mm light. AdvR's proposed approach offers phase modulation of a high power continuous wave 1.06mm laser signal with modulation capability of 1.9 to 2.1 GHz and 10&#37; modulation depth. The key innovation is the use of a waveguide embedded in a non-linear optical material suitable for high optical power handling combined with patented micro-electrode technology for high speed modulation. To operate properly in space, the phase modulators used for LISA must be rugged to survive the journey to space and must perform optimally in a radiation environment. To achieve this goal, the proposed phase modulator development will include a fiber-in-fiber-out design that meets the space qualification requirements for mechanical stability of the package and radiation damage resistance of the non-linear optical material.
En'Urga Inc. will evaluate the feasibility of utilizing reflected, multi-wavelength, near infrared radiation for detecting fires in inaccessible areas within aircraft.  The two key issues that will be addressed during the proposed work are: (1) the feasibility of obtaining near infrared radiation signatures from inaccessible areas through multiple internal reflections within the enclosure, and (2) the feasibility of decoding the signatures with sufficient fidelity so as to eliminate false alarms.

     Three Phase I tasks are planned to address the feasibility of the proposed project.  The first task is to design and fabricate a system for obtaining near infrared radiation signatures within an instrument rack, representative of the inaccessible areas in aircrafts.  The second task is to develop a fire detection system that readily discriminates between real fires and false alarms.  The final task is to evaluate the system in a laboratory.  It is anticipated that at the end of the Phase I work, the feasibility of utilizing reflected near infrared radiation for uniquely distinguishing fires would have been demonstrated.  For Phase II work, a prototype, low cost and low weight system will be fabricated and evaluated both at En'Urga Inc. and at the microgravity facilities at the NASA Glenn Research Center.
The objective of the proposed SBIR Phase I program is to develop an instrument that provides real-time, in situ measurements of substrate temperature in optical coating reactors. The instrument will employ an inexpensive diode laser, fiber optic components, and established laser interferometry methods to determine substrate temperature at multiple locations with a replicate precision of better than 0.1 degrees C in a measurement time of less than 0.2 seconds. The precision may be improved with increasing measurement time, if desired. The instrument (an "optical thermometer") will be demonstrated on optical substrates made of a variety of materials in state-of-the-art industrial reactors specializing in UV, visible, near-IR and IR optical coatings.  The fast response of the sensor will enable coaters to use, for the first time, precise measurements of bulk substrate temperature to identify temperature nonuniformities during the coating process, refine and improve coating processes in real time, and minimize batch-to-batch variations through closed-loop process control.
In this SBIR Phase I project, Vega Wave Systems, Inc. will develop and demonstrate a novel InGaP-GaAs heterojunction bipolar transistor power amplifier for long-range X-band communications. The Phase I objective is to design and fabricate a new type of heterojunction bipolar transistor in order to achieve high device performance for power amplifiers (PAs).  In addition, monolithic power combiners suitable for combining the output power of several HBTs will be designed and simulated. The transistor design is expected to result in a new approach capable of achieving high performance in an inherently low-cost device process. Prototype InGaP heterojunction bipolar transistors that have been optimized for communications applications at X-band frequencies will be designed, fabricated and delivered in Phase I.  The devices will be characterized and modeling parameters will be extracted from the characterization results.  Preliminary power amplifier and power combiner designs will be evaluated using the models obtained for the transistors.  In Phase II the technology will be optimized for performance and extended to higher levels of integration by combining the outputs of several power transistors to deliver a monolithically-integrated amplifier that can achieve power output levels in excess of 10 watts.
We propose to develop and demonstrate a small, gravity independent, vapor compression refrigeration system using a linear motor compressor which effectively addresses the efficiency, lubrication, scalability, and/or longevity issues limiting current space flight refrigeration systems.  Unlike previous and currently used thermoelectric, Stirling, oil-free reciprocating and diaphragm compressor systems, the linear compressor will provide very high efficiency, excellent capacity modulation, nearly unlimited scalability, and very long life all due to the hydrostatic bearing of the linear compressor and use of the reverse-Rankine cycle.  The linear can also readily be developed as a single unit two-stage compressor for higher lift applications.
The overall objective of the proposed project is to develop a generalized lattice Boltzmann (GLB) approach as a potential computational aeroacoustics (CAA) tool for noise prediction thus contributing to NASA's goal of reducing noise levels of subsonic aircraft. Lattice Boltzmann equation (LBE) based simulations are attractive for CAA as they can handle very complex geometries and parallelize with excellent scalability. This enables efficient simulation of very large problems, such as airframe systems. The innovativeness of the proposed GLB method lies in employing multiple relaxation times to capture different hydrodynamic/acoustic modes accurately, in contrast to usual LBE solution methods using a single relaxation time for all modes. The GLB approach would enable higher fidelity CAA simulations as well as exhibit stability at higher Reynolds numbers. Multiple relaxation times can also enable represent turbulence better for large eddy simulation. In phase I, the feasibility of the GLB method will be evaluated by coding a 3D solver, including a subgrid scale turbulence model and multiblock grid refinement algorithms, with testing against several CAA benchmark problems. If successful, a validated package based on the GLB method interfaced to NASA pre/post processors, like CART3D, for complex geometries would be developed in Phase II.
The proposed work extends Probability Bounds Analysis to model epistemic and aleatory uncertainty during early design of engineered systems in an Integrated Concurrent Engineering environment.  This method uses efficient analytic and semi-analytic calculations, is more rigorous than probabilistic Monte Carlo simulation, and provides comprehensive and (often) best possible bounds on mission-level risk as a function of uncertainty in each parameter.  Phase I will demonstrate the capability to robustly model variability (aleatory uncertainty) and incertitude (epistemic uncertainty) during early design.  The demonstrated methods will (1) allow rapid, rigorous, and more complete exploration of alternate designs in the mission- and engineering-constrained trade space; (2) provide a rigorous rationale for risk-based margin determination that is robust to surprise; (3) facilitate the incorporation of qualitatively described risks in quantitative risk analysis; (4) support the integration of physics and non-physics based risks in mission-wide risk analysis; and (5) permit sensitivity analysis at the mission, system, subsystem, and component levels that identifies the importance of specific uncertainties to uncertainty at higher levels and allows the rapid exploration of alternate strategies and designs.  This suite of capabilities is not currently available to systems engineers and cannot be provided by more traditional probabilistic risk assessment methods.
An innovative microgravity and hypogravity compatible Gas-Liquid Separator (GLS) is proposed.  This novel GLS consists of an ordered array of variable sized water repellant granular particles that result in a spatial surface energy density gradient within the GLS.  The resultant capillary pressure causes gas and water to flow toward different outlet GLS positions.  The device contains no moving parts and is compatible with deployment in a variety of NASA ALS and ECLSS applications.  Preliminary experiments, conducted in a vertically oriented quasi two-dimensional system, separated an air-water mixture using the proposed technology.  The capillary pressure gradient within the GLS caused a flowing gas-water mixture to separate into a gas-enriched stream and a water stream.  The gas-enriched stream exited at the bottom of the GLS, counter to the buoyancy force, and the water stream exited at the top of the GLS.  This flow response clearly demonstrates microgravity compatibility. The Phase I project will demonstrate the feasibility of this innovative GLS technology. The Phase II program will deliver to NASA a full-scale GLS with test documentation that will allow evaluation of the technology for specific ALS or ECLSS applications.  This technology demonstrator will also form the basis for multiple commercial applications.
Orion Propulsion, Inc. proposes to develop an Oxygen and Methane RCS Thruster to advance the technology of alternate fuels. A successful Oxygen/CH4 RCS Thruster will also be new reaction control engine that integrates readily with integrates readily with primary propulsion by using the same propellants. Orion has a developed a preliminary design of an Oxygen / Methane (O/M) RCS Thruster, and our purpose is to contribute to NASA Space Exploration goals by increasing the technology readiness of oxygen/methane rocket systems. Orion has demonstrated the current development status of our thruster with some 40 firings at sea level. The objective of the Phase 1 R&amp;D would be to improve credibility of its design by testing another prototype test article, which is equipped with a flight type nozzle and propellant valves. These tests would be performed in a environmental chamber at reduced pressure to simulate space vacuum conditions. Although, the O/M Thruster test article would be constructed of stainless steel, its interior would be coated with a refractory metal alloy. This treatment enables the test article to sustain higher temperatures and enables longer tests. The expected result of a Phase 2 effort would be a flight-ready prototype thruster for delivery to NASA.
This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project concerns the novel application of cavity-enhanced absorption spectroscopy to quantify biogenic gases (CH4, CO2, and NH3) and their isotopes (13C/12C and 18O/16O) on Mars and other future planetary missions.  These species and their isotope ratios are of critical importance to NASA, because they have been implicating in biological activity and can provide decisive evidence for a biosphere on other planets.  In Phase I, we will demonstrate technical feasibility by building a miniature, lightweight Off-Axis ICOS spectrometer and employing it to accurately quantify biogenic gases and their associated isotopes at concentrations approximating the expected Martian atmosphere.  The prototype will be tested under both mechanical vibrations and thermal fluctuations to validate its robustness.  Final Phase I work will entail developing a gas sampling strategy suitable for Mars and designing a complete analyzer system.  In Phase II, Los Gatos Research will build and deliver this analyzer with a fully-integrated electronics package that satisfies NASA's size, weight, and power requirements for Mars deployment.  The proposed instrument will be the first sensor capable of measuring the concentrations and isotopes ratios of critical biogenic gases in a compact, lightweight, and low-power package.
This SBIR Phase I project will develop the Flight System Monitor which will use non-intrusive electrical monitoring (NEMO).  The electronic system health of components and systems will be measured and tracked by carefully monitoring and analyzing of power usage and start up and shut down transients.   In depth analysis of this data enables real time assessment of system and component functioning and identifies potential system and component faults and failutes.  The system is light weight, small and inexpensive because the system requires only a sensor at the mains power input and uses existing power wiring to carry data.  Phase I will involve ground measurements on the control and power systems of a small UAV.   Phase II will involve measurements and analysis of a system in flight.
NASA science and exploration missions will continue to require observation and sensing platforms with enhanced guidance, navigation and control (GN&amp;C) subsystems.  In fact, GN&amp;C technology improvements have the potential to enable new and revolutionary missions that will accelerate the exploration and scientific understanding of the solar system.  Since, attitude determination and inertial rate measurement systems are a significant fraction of the spacecraft or platform resources there are opportunities to exploit recent technology advances in imaging and computing to produce an inertial measurement system (IMS) that has lower mass and power.  A novel approach for high speed estimation of spacecraft attitude and rates from celestial observations has been conceived that could revolutionize the performance of platforms in many challenging environments including highly elliptical Earth orbits, libration point orbits, and lunar and planetary orbits.
We propose to develop a Cell/Tissue Culture Radiation Exposure Facility (CTC-REF) to enable radiobiologists to investigate the real-time radiation effects on cells/tissues at the NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) at Brookhaven National Laboratory.  Up to 18 bioreactors with various types of cells/tissues can be placed in the radiation target area for either short- or long-term radiation exposure.  Samples can be taken and fixed automatically at desired time points on site during exposure to the ion beam.  Specimens within the bioreactors can also be moved from the target area to nearby biology laboratories for investigation of delayed radiation effects using a culture transport system that maintains the proper culture environment during specimen transport.  The concept for CTC-REF is an evolution and extension of the hardware already developed by Payload Systems for other space life sciences applications.  The main advantages of CTC-REF over currently available hardware are:  higher sample throughput, automatic sampling and fixation during and after radiation exposure, and accommodation of long-duration, low dose radiation experiments.
We propose to investigate the feasibility of developing a two-dimensional far infrared photoconductor array with the following key design features:

1- A top-illuminated, 2D germanium array (32x32 single or 64x64 mosaic) with the possibility of extension to very large formats. The quantum efficiency is enhanced by metalizing the bottom surface for a second pass.

2- A 2-side buttable 32x32 (64x64 mosaic) CTIA readout multiplexer using advanced cryo-CMOS process. The unit-cell design is optimized for far IR detectors, eliminates detector debiasing, and improves pixel uniformity. The readout is operational down to at least 2.0K.

3- A novel, direct hybrid design using indium-bump technology. This integrated design offers superior noise performance and effectively addresses the readout glow, detector heating, and thermal mismatch  between the detector and the readout. This is the key discriminator of this project.

The projected sensitivity of this array as well as &gt;1 kpixel (64x64 mosaic) format meets the stated  requirements of future NASA instruments. This effort fits well within the scope of the SBIR Subtopic S4.01 and will be a benefit to many large and small NASA projects such as SOFIA and SAFIR.
An innovative structures concept has been developed that uses space qualified flexible thin film polyimide to produce ultra-lightweight inflation deployed self-rigidizing structural components with very small packaging volume and extremely high buckling/bending strength to accurately deploy and provide precision assembly of modular space systems. This membrane material can be thermally formed to virtually any shape to produce booms, elbows, tees, flanges, and flat or curved panels to support or connect space structure components and facilitate in-space assembly. Tube and panel specimens with various stiffener cross section geometries have been produced that demonstrated precision modular assembly and impressive stiffness.  This Phase I  effort is proposed to design and fabricate a representative sub-scale structure subassembly comprised of flat or curved structural panels, support tubes/struts, and associated connector/interface components to demonstrate the structural integrity and modularity of the technology and scalability of the manufacturing process. Phase II can produce and demonstrate a full-scale mission applicable inflatable space structure or habitat assembly that can be compactly packaged for launch, pressurized for deployment, and rigidized after deployment/assembly with no internal pressure required to maintain structural stiffness and shape. Emphasis will be placed on deployability, providing for modular assembly, and scalability of the manufacturing technology.
Precision membrane optical shell (PMOS) technology is an innovative combination of 1) ultra lightweight optically smooth membrane thin films, 2) advanced mold based fabrication techniques that transform the films into single surface load bearing structures through the introduction of optically relevant permanent curvature, and 3) discrete active boundary control that enables rigid body alignment and maintainment of optical prescriptions in face of environmental disturbances.  Reflector areal densities of better than 2 kg/m2 (including alignment and figure control actuators) are projected.  Current, measured surface figure is better than 1 to 3 microns rms at the 0.2m size, and we are poised for further improvements.  Basic demonstrated manufacturing techniques are scaleable to 1.4m+ diameter single surface apertures.  Materials are space proven, and stowage and deployment techniques exist that support eventual transition to space flight application. Mevicon Inc. and its team members, UAT, thus proposes the required further improvements of basic technology and the demonstration of applicability of Precision Membrane Optical Shell (PMOS) technology for ground and space based LIDAR receivers.  The key resulting innovation is implementation of improved formation approaches to realize very low mass, low cost LIDAR apertures.  Other NASA and DOD applications are expected as precision and aperture size increase.
In response to NASA Topic S7.01, Visual Learning Systems, Inc. (VLS) will develop a novel hyperspectral plug-in toolkit for its award winning Feature Analyst&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt; software that will (a) leverage VLS' proven algorithms to provide a new, simple, and long-awaited approach to materials classification from hyperspectral imagery (HSI), and (b) improve state-of-the-art Feature Analyst's automated feature extraction (AFE) capabilities by effectively incorporating detailed spectral information into its extraction process.  HSI techniques, such as spectral end-member classification, can provide effective materials classification; however, current methods are slow (or manual), cumbersome, complex for analysts, and are limited to materials classification only. Feature Analyst, on the other hand has a simple workflow of (a) an analyst providing a few examples (e.g., pixels of a certain material) and (b) an advanced software agent classifying the rest of the imagery based on the examples.  This simple yet powerful approach will be used as a new paradigm for materials classification.  In addition, Feature Analyst uses, along with spectral information, feature characteristics such as spatial association, size, shape, texture, pattern, and shadow in its generic AFE process.   Incorporating the best spectral classifier techniques with the best AFE approach promises to greatly increase the usefulness and applicability of HSI
A hybrid continuum/noncontinuum computational model will be developed for analyzing the aerodynamics and heating on aeroassist vehicles.  Unique features of this model include (1) the ability to model rarefied flows with localized continuum features at high altitudes, (2) the ability to model both ablative and non-ablative thermal protection systems, and (3) the ability to model multiple firings of reaction control jets.  The model will permit analyzing high-speed, nonequilibrium flows about entry and aeroassist vehicles based on extensions to three-dimensional Navier-Stokes and Direct Simulation Monte Carlo (DSMC) codes.  Extension will include effects of liquid and solid particulates along with gaseous species, which should significantly enhance the ability to analyze complex ablation effects.  The coupling of these tools to include modeling of multiple reaction-control-jet firings will provide essential data for assessing the aerothermodynamic performance for a wide range of vehicle designs over a wide range of vehicle altitudes and flight conditions.  The improved accuracy offered by our proposed hybrid modeling approach offers significant benefits in the design of vehicles for both unmanned planetary missions and manned missions to the Moon and Mars.
A method of extracting volatile resources from the Lunar regolith is proposed to reduce the launch mass and cost of bringing such resources from the Earth to enable sustainable human space exploration. Thermal energy is applied to excavated soil releasing the solar wind volatiles and any water resources believed to exist in the Moon's polar regions. The in-situ resource extraction and separation system will be designed to integrate with TAI's planned in-situ collection and purification system to complete an end-to-end facility for producing high density fluids for propulsion, life support, and power generation. Regolith excavation and subsequent volatile production rates are derived from the baseline consumption of resources given in the point of departure mission information for proposals. A method of extracting volatiles in a fluidized, vacuum-isolated chamber will provide an energy-efficient process through effective recuperation of thermal energy. Several hundreds of times the excavation and extraction system mass in volatile product will be processed in the proposed concept per year of operation. The system design will be scalable for initial testing on the Moon and eventual operation on Mars.
The primary power systems for Space Shuttles and future space vehicles are based on fuel cells.  Due to inherent fundamental performance, safety and reliability, NASA is interested in replacing the present alkaline fuel cell system with PEM systems. However, the conventional use by PEM systems of O2 reactant gas recirculation to remove product water, enhance cell uniformity, and control humidity could pose a serious safety concern.  A fundamentally new PEM fuel cell design concept is proposed that removes liquid product water by controlled convection and wicking through layered porous structures that are integrated into each cell separator plate. This unique integrated flow field (IFF) concept also automatically and passively clears channels blocked by droplets.  Furthermore, the same design includes transport of product water back to the entire flow field for humidification and greater cell performance. The IFF design enables high pressure and high voltage operation resulting in higher efficiency.

            For removal of product water vapor from the cell, the design concept includes ejectors to passively generate a modest gas circulation.  

            In conclusion, this design innovation will significantly simplify the PEM operating system while generating higher performance and foster greater long-term safety in zero-g as well as ordinary gravity applications.
Low power, robust communications protocols such as IEEE 802.15.4/Zigbee have made the concept of smart sensor networks attractive across many applications. These systems promise portable, networked, wireless, sensor suites capable of monitoring and controlling environments as needed. Theseus Logic and MachineTalker will provide NASA with a rapidly deployable, wireless, intelligent, sensor system based on their proprietary enabling technologies, and their experience in wireless sensor systems for enhanced shipping container security.
1.	Communications based on MachineTalkers&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt; that providing self
        configuring, self-healing ad hoc networks with minimum
        intervention.
2.	Low power radio protocols such as the IEEE 802.15.4/Zigbee
        standard. Gateways to reach a central monitoring/decision
        authority.
3.	Secure communications with personal identification numbers (PIN)
        assigned to each sensor node to ensure data security.
4.	Signal processing based on clockless logic providing on demand,
        ultra low power, data driven, processing and low noise/EMI that
        maintains performance of sensors and on-chip RF/analog circuitry.
5.	A Simple Machine Management Protocol&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt; (SMMP&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt;) controlling both
        sensors and communications. This also manages power consumption
        of the system. 
6.	Multi-sensor data fusion to reduce false alarm rates.
7.	A modular architecture allowing optimization of the sensor suite,
        and including features such as GPS location, and biometric
        identification.
HyPerspectives, Inc. and its researchers propose to use remote sensing technologies to answer specific scientific questions for researchers and decision-makers in the natural hazards community.  We will employ both current and innovative data fusion techniques to fill key deficiency gaps limiting progress in the natural hazards discipline.  By fusing high-resolution hyperspectral imagery and LiDAR (Light Detection And Ranging) data sets from the 2003 Yellowstone Optical and SAR Ground Imaging (YOGI) data collect, we will substantially improve methodologies for natural hazard decision support systems.  This imagery fusion is considered innovative because it will further refine the identification and mapping of past events, such as landslides, while also providing quicker and simpler processes for forecasting and mitigating future hazards. Furthermore, the algorithms developed in Phase 2 will satisfy the needs of decision makers by including tools for fault detection, deformation, and geothermal monitoring. The proposed study is directly relevant to the NASA SBIR S7.01 solicitation because we will create automated tools utilizing innovative algorithms to speed up the processing of data that has known relevance to natural hazard planners and researchers.  To achieve this, we will build on successful landslide detection techniques and incorporate new algorithms previously developed by HyPerspectives scientists.
IAI proposes an innovative solution to enable unrestricted flight in low-altitude airspace for small aircrafts This solution includes an L-band RF transceiver-sensor package, which continuously transmit Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) compatible beacons to alert other cooperative aircrafts and ATC ground stations about the UAV's position and intent.  In addition, it uses the reflected beacon signal as a radar signal to detect and track any non-cooperative targets within its effective range.  A multifunctional RF transceiver serves as both the primary radar and secondary surveillance radar (SSR).  The advantage of the proposed sensor package is low-cost, low-power (estimated power consumption &lt; 50 watt) and compatibility with current aviation technologies. This sensor package is coupled with on-board collision avoidance logic and situation awareness display concepts for a remote ground control station.  Simulation-based demonstration ? leveraging IAI's CybelePro&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; agent infrastructure ? is also proposed to exercise the system "end-to-end" and allow for nearly seamless transition to human-in-the-loop evaluation of display concepts.
NASA's vision of data exchange between space and ground nodes would
involve the space network accessing public infrastructure such as the
internet. Hence, advanced security measures have to be developed to
ensure information integrity and authentication. The proposed
innovations in this work are 1) A hierachical security model, where each
level has a different security requirement and varying capabilities
(such as power and ad hoc measure), 2) An adaptive key management
protocol suite that would cater to the security needs of the network at
the various levels, and 3) A novel key management scheme that uses
threshold cryptography and group key management concepts. The
significance of our approach is to provide a key management solution
that provides strong authentication and data integrity, a solution that
is flexible and can be adapted according to different security
requirements and capabilities of the network and a scheme that considers
the performance capabilities of the participating nodes and provides
solutions accordingly.
The innovations proposed by ResearchSouth are: 1) a robust method to automatically insert high quality anisotropic prismatic (viscous boundary layer) cells into any existing CFD mesh; and 2) a robust unstructured mesh movement method able to handle isotropic (Euler), anisotropic (viscous), and mixed element grids for CFD applications, particularly, CFD-based design optimization. ResearchSouth is proposing to develop efficient, design-oriented application software that will significantly impact the current practice of computational design and analysis of aerospace vehicles. The most overlooked?and arguably the most enabling?technical aspect associated with the rapidly maturing CFD-based design optimization is mesh movement, especially for high Reynolds number viscous flow applications. CFD analysis based on unstructured grid technology is becoming the preferred approach for flow analysis of geometrically complex configurations. However, in the area of mesh movement and viscous mesh generation, the unstructured grid arena has experienced near paralysis for several years. We are proposing research that will provide robust solutions to both of these challenges and, thus, will provide air vehicle designers access to the full potential of unstructured grid technologies for performing design optimization as well as highly efficient "what-if-and-reanalyze" geometric modifications.
The objective of this proposal is to provide a demonstration of a nanodroplet synthesis of multifunctional liposomes for drug delivery based on immiscible microfluidics processing.  In this initial study, the functionality of the liposomes will include (1) the surface functionalized particles for targeting specific cells and (2) the protected packaging of protein therapeutics that may be released upon specific binding of the liposome to a targeted cell.  This goal will be accomplished using nanodroplet technology that exploits the properties of immiscible fluids to transform continuous fluid streams into highly monodispersed, isolated droplets with tight control of droplet size and generation rate.  The nanoparticles are formed at room temperature with low pressure and shear forces to prevent the denaturation of protein drugs, which will be important for the treatment of major diseases such as heart disease and cancer.  Since cells rapidly uptake nanoparticles with sizes less than 500 nm, the major objective for this proposal is demonstrate highly monodisperse particles in this regime.  Furthermore, we anticipate that producing such particles in a microgravity environment will lead to an improved fundamental understanding of droplet formation itself and to the production of homogeneously distributed therapeutics in a perfectly spherical nano-particle.
Using a revolutionary ion-focusing scheme developed at Mississippi State University (provisional patent filed) we will be able to design and build a compact laser based time-of-flight mass spectrometer that is capable of detecting a wide range of masses. Mass resolution of above 104 can be achieved from 300 to c.a. 70,000 Daltons and above 3000 from 20 to 1.5'105 Daltons, making it possible to analyze the majority of molecules of biological interest at high resolution and high sensitivity. Our current estimates for the proposed design results in a volume of less than 0.75 liters, a mass of less than 2 kilograms and requires less than 5 watts of power. This includes the pulse forming electronics for ion extraction. We expect that both the mass and power requirements will actually be lower in the completed device. The device will allow the detection of biologically important molecules in an extraterrestrial or space application. The usable mass range will be from 1 to 1.5'105 Daltons; the design requires minimal tuning over this mass range. This will allow for the detection of most biologically important molecules.
This SBIR project delivers On-orbit health MoNItoring and repair
assessment of THERMal protection systems (OMNI_THERM). OMNI_THERM
features impedance-based structural health monitoring (SHM) and uses
miniaturized autonomous sensor/actuators to diagnose damage and verify
repair efficacy.  Implications of the innovation Thermal protection
systems are crucial for crew safety. New techniques of on-orbit
monitoring and assessment of thermal protection structures are needed
for space exploration. An autonomous impedance-based SHM system is one
of the few viable solutions; however, this technique has not been
applied to thermal protection systems.  Technical objectives OMNI_THERM
deploys autonomous, wireless, self-powered sensor/actuators that harvest
energy from vibration and thermal gradients. Each sensor/actuator is a
complete SHM system and reports independently; this computationally
distributed framework minimizes single points-of-failure. We have built
a prototype, performed SHM on launch support structures, and
demonstrated repair assessment.  Research description Phase I
demonstrates OMNI_THERM SHM on reinforced carbon-carbon (RCC) and other
model structures. Phase II includes miniaturization and expands
OMNI_THERM capabilities to additional thermal materials, hybrid
structures, and advanced composites.  Anticipated results Phase I
establishes feasibility by detecting cracks, gouges, and stress-induced
defects in RCC and other model structures and verifying repairs. Phase
II delivers an OMNI_THERM system tailored to on-orbit SHM and repair assessment.
Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a 3D cockpit display (3D-COD) system for improved pilot situational awareness and safety in 3D airspace by overcoming the inherent limitations of 2D information presentation.  The proposed display will be automultiscopic and will be based on a projector, a stationary holographic optical element screen integrated with a high-speed electro-optical scanner and high-speed electronics with a software interface to NASA systems.  This minimum 8-in. diagonal drop-down head-up display with no moving parts will present six or more perspective views to air crew members, forming integrated virtual volumetric 3D images viewable over a 60 degree horizontal field of view.  In Phase I POC designed a laboratory prototype and successfully demonstrated the feasibility of the proposed system by assembling a single-user monochrome 3D-COD prototype.  In Phase II POC will further develop the true 3D display technology and construct a fully functional system that will project distortion-free, 400-600 lumen, full-color, virtual volumetric 3D images at a 30-60 Hz video rate for real-time user interaction with the images, each from his or her own perspective.
Multichannel virtual reality visualization is the future of complex simulation with a large number of visual channels rendered and transmitted over high-speed networks like National LambdaRail (NLR).  POC proposed to develop a next generation "true" 3D visualization system that works without headwear and to link it through the NLR with a remote computing center.  To accomplish this goal we have developed in Phase I a fully functional 3D Multichannel Networked (3DMCN) system based on stereoscopic principles and compatible with the NLR network.  One of the enabling technologies that is being developed in this project is multicorrelated channel video compression, which takes advantage of spatial redundancy in multiscopic channels.  The Phase I demonstration included stereoscopic 3DMCN system linked to live real-time high definition (1080i) dual-channel video.  In Phase II we will continue the development of a new compression scheme that can offer 200-300&#37; improvement in compression ratios for multiscopic channels versus independent channel compression used in other state-of-the-art compression approaches.  We will also concentrate on the improvement of the existing true 3D visualization system in terms of higher resolution, lower channel-to-channel crosstalk, and wider field-of-view.
This NASA SBIR Phase II project will produce a flight suitable test bench based on a modular spray-cooled assembly that considers NASA power and mass budgets and can be scaled to cool multiple heat sources producing high heat fluxes under gravity and microgravity conditions.  Thermal management solutions for certain NASA applications like laser diodes are not all that suitable with a need for a better solution.  

PELS in a NASA SBIR Phase I project developed a modular assembly based on spray cooling under phase change achieving heat fluxes approaching 100 W/cm2 per evaporator using Fluorinert&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt;(FC-72) as the cooling liquid.  This was possible because of PELS novel fluid removal approach.

This Phase II project builds upon the improvements in spray cooling performance by bringing improvements in the packaging to achieve volume and weight gains at the system level so spray cooling can become the standard thermal management solution.

The terminal objectives of this SBIR Phase II project are (a) To optimize the design of the modular spray-cooled assembly demonstrated in the SBIR Phase I project, and (b) To extend this design to cool multiple heat sources subjected to heat fluxes approaching 200 W/cm2 under microgravity conditions.
There is a need for electronically-steerable, space-deployable SAR antenna arrays which impose minimal weight burden on the vehicles that place them into orbit.  SAR arrays may be several tens to hundreds of meters long in at least one dimension, necessitating their assembly from many smaller subarrays. However, suitable technologies for manufacturing T/R modules directly on even these smaller (albeit still large-area), flexible subarrays have been lacking, hindering development of space-based arrays.  SI2 Technologies' innovation is to apply its Direct Write techniques to fabricating flexible T/R modules that can be integrated with each array element.  The novelty of SI2's Direct Write manufacturing approach is that no tooling, masks, or harsh etchants are required.  SI2's "printing" technology lends itself to any number of applications that require flexible antenna systems (e.g., earth science, military asset tracking, civilian communications, etc.).  For the proposed Phase II program, SI2 will design and fabricate chipless T/R modules for a membrane SAR antenna array using Direct Write manufacturing processes.
Visidyne's Phase I effort has established through modeling and analysis that a unique concept for an active optical 3-D Imager (or Imaging LADAR) has high potential for successful application as a hazard avoidance sensor for use by NASA spacecraft during landing on planetary surfaces.  The Landing Hazard Sensor promises to be highly cost-effective, utilizing efficient high-power laser diode technology and a gateable array of detectors to implement a sensor that provides range images to passive targets at relatively long range and over wide fields-of-regard.  Further image processing determines terrain relief and gradients (identifying rocks and steep slopes) that may present impediments to landing.  The spacecraft Guidance and Navigation Computer will guide the spacecraft to an obstacle free landing area by directing the engine thrust vector based upon Hazard Sensor data (as well as data from other sensors).  During Phase II, a hardware and software prototype of the Landing Hazard Sensor will be designed, constructed and evaluated.
The Carbon Monoxide Silicate Reduction System (COSRS) is a novel technology for producing large quantities of oxygen on the Moon. Oxygen yields of 15 kilograms per 100 kilograms of feed soil were demonstrated during Phase I using both lunar and Mars soil simulants. This is about five times the oxygen yield achievable by hydrogen reduction. Up to 30 kilograms of oxygen per 100 kilograms of feed soil are recoverable by adjustment of the carbon-silicon ratio.

Soils are sequentially subjected to iron oxide reduction by carbon monoxide, in-situ deposition of carbon throughout the soil by carbon monoxide disproportionation, and finally high-temperature carbothermal reduction of silicates by the deposited carbon.

COSRS operates in a closed system. An inventory of carbon is maintained in the form of carbon monoxide, carbon dioxide, and solid carbon. Most of the oxygen recovered from soil is in the form of carbon monoxide, which is converted to carbon dioxide. Carbon dioxide is then reacted with hydrogen in a reverse water gas shift reactor. The RWGS system regenerates carbon monoxide for use in the COSRS process and produces water, which is electrolyzed. Hydrogen from electrolysis is recycled within the RWGS system. Oxygen from electrolysis is the COSRS product.
Radio Frequency Interference (RFI) can render microwave radiometer measurements useless. We have proposed a method and an architecture that can be used to identify sources of RFI and identify an optimal scheme for the mitigation of RFI. The system consists of a fully functional digital radiometer that can collect data in the field and pipe the pre-detected signal into, for example, a spectrum analyzer for in-situ analysis or into removable flash memory for later analysis. The digital radiometer employs a Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGA) for employing flexible mitigation strategies. It will also use a programmable noise source for generation of artificial RFI in the laboratory setting, allowing for efficient mitigation algorithm development in a laboratory setting, independent of actual RFI, which may be intermittent. Thus the proposed instrument can be used to identify RFI, develop mitigation approaches for RFI, and validate the mitigation strategy. The Phase II effort will fabricate and test an L-band version of the proposed system.
NASA has expressed a need to identify and develop breakthrough technologies that have potential to provide increased scientific return at lower cost, and to enable missions and capabilities beyond current horizons.  To make these missions feasible, advanced thermal materials are needed as thermal protection system (TPS) materials for reentry.  For this Phase II SBIR project, Aspen Aerogels Inc. proposes to develop particularly innovative, lightweight silicon oxycarbide aerogels (SiCxO2-2x) that will advance the state-of-the-art for thermal protection systems (TPS) for reentry vehicles. 

Aerogels are lightweight materials with exceptional insulating capabilities.  Because of their low thermal conductivities and lightweight, the inclusion of aerogel based insulation materials in TPS will result in significant weight savings over the current baseline construction.  During the proposed effort we will optimize the aerogel composites developed during the Phase I effort for use as high temperature insulation for reusable launce vehicles.  The Phase II program will focus on complete characterization and testing so that aerogels can be qualified for use as insulation materials on reentry vehicles.  The mechanical, and thermal properties of the silicon oxycarbide aerogels will be fully characterized, and a low-cost, environmentally benign manufacturing process will be used.
This Small Business Innovation Research Phase II proposal offers to develop a comprehensive computer simulation methodology based on the finite element method for the simulation of the electron beam freeform fabrication process.  It will utilize the successful accomplishments of Phase I project. The following major tasks are proposed for Phase II;  (1) a user subroutine to model Gaussian distribution of the heat input, (3) a new highly sophisticated thermal model of material deposition, (4) a user subroutine for the prediction of microstructure with graphical representation of the output, (5) study of convection in the melt pool to determine its shape,  (6) fabrication of three different types of samples and measurements of microstructure, residual stresses and distortions, and (7) computer simulation of the samples using all models developed under the program for their verification.  A thermo-mechanical code ABAQUS will be the primary simulation tool.  A computational fluid dynamics code, FLUENT, will be used for the study of the melt pool shape.  These models will be applicable to ground-based as well as space-based EB systems.  They will also be applicable to laser, TIG and other deposition processes.  A strategy for the commercialization of the methodology and products is discussed.
Embedded wireless sensors of the future will enable flight vehicle systems to be "highly aware" of onboard health and performance parameters, as well as the external flow field and potential threat environments.  Because there will be no opportunity to replace batteries on a regular basis, these systems will have to rely on energy harvesting strategies to convert ambient energy into electrical energy to provide long-lived power.  TPL proposes to develop a micropower system that will combine TPL's patented microbatteries and microsupercapacitors with vibrational energy harvesting for use with wireless structural health monitoring (SHM) systems.  The solution proposed will include all components required for a complete power supply for wireless SHM sensors, including proprietary power regulation and conditioning circuitry that draws very low power.  
TPL is a leader in designing and manufacturing power for light weight, minimum volume, minimum footprint, wireless systems.  TPL's effort has been supported by Goodrich Fuel and Utility Systems whose expertise with Structural Health Monitoring will provide guidance on sensor requirements, integration and packaging.  These relationships will facilitate realizing devices that will meet end-user requirements, and provide a commercialization pathway for Phase III.
The work proposed herein would develop a set of analytic methodologies and a computer tool suite enabling aerospace hardware designers to rapidly determine optimum risk-constrained designs subject to multiple physics-based uncertainties in applied loads, material properties, and manufacturing processes. This means that the design process no longer would consist of a sequence of separate code invocations to: (1) obtain the geometry model, (2) determine the various loads, (3) determine performance, (4) perform a structural analysis, (5) perform design optimization, and (6) perform a probabilistic risk assessment. Instead, all of these functions would be automatically incorporated into a single framework using existing physics-based deterministic modeling codes and a set of computer-generated data transfer interfaces.  Thus, a design engineer would be able to rapidly explore the design space to identify the minimum weight design that meets a given reliability constraint ? thereby avoiding both an overly conservative design and an excessively risky design. 

Moreover, the methodology would also rollup component-level uncertainties to the system level for multiple components -- thereby enabling a system level reliability constraint to be imposed at the component level. Advanced techniques will be developed including methods to: (a) determine confidence bounds on reliability predictions, (b) efficiently determine response surfaces, and (c) use physics-based progressive failure modeling. The software tool could be used, for example, to determine the wall thickness of a launch vehicle's external cryogenic propellant tanks exposed to high but uncertain thermal and aerodynamic loads with a reliability of 0.99999.
Based on the success of the phase I effort, Advanced Technologies Group, Inc. proposes the development of a Cryogenic Flow Sensor (CFS)  for determining mass flow of cryogens in spacecraft propellant management. Current point sensor technology is incapable of determining high pressure, high flow rate cryogenic fluid quality and mass flow rate, and has proven to be inaccurate in attempting to rapidly measure cryogen depletion.  If there is an abrupt change in fluid quality, turbo-machinery can over-speed causing catastrophic failure.  The CFS will provide a means to avoid these failures as well as providing fluid quality data for a wide range of flow systems. Experimental hardware was able to detect the onset of two-phase flow and the presence of debris in the flow of water.  The innovation clearly shows that it can discern between entrained gas bubbles and unwanted debris.  The sensor has the potential to determine size and quantity of the contaminant.  In addition, a non-intrusive method for determining the Mass-Flow?Rate of the fluid propellant has been designed, and is the focus of this phase II effort.
Returning men to the Moon and manned Mars missions will require advanced bioastronanutics research.  One possible risk is Decompression Sickness (DCS) resulting from extravehicular activity (EVA), after exposure to habitat conditions that would be generated using available Moon or Martian resources.  A key research tool to measure the onset of DCS is a Transcranial Doppler (TCD) instrument.  The present research tool is bulky and does not allow for measurement of the TDC signal under astronaut stress conditions including exercise, EVA, pre-breathing prior to EVA, and work.  

GeneXpress Informatics, Ten X Technology and UTHSC-SA proposes to develop a fully functional TCD research device for hypobaric experiments for determining DCS risk assessment and management. GXI has develop a unique auto-focusing and steering TDC system which allows for the real time monitoring of DCS parameters during hypobaric stress activity experiments.  In this Phase II program, the team proposes to (1) Define and Determine test bed requirements, (2) Identify and procure TCD components, (3) Design &amp; Assemble the Piezoelectric Transducer, (3) Design &amp; assemble Transducer attachment method, (4) Design, Assemble &amp; Test Portable Instrument Electronics, (5) Develop Software for the Instrument and Development Platform, (5) Evaluate Laboratory Test Bed, and (6) Construct System Deliverable.
ASRI proposes to develop an advanced and commercially viable Non-Intrusive Vibration Monitoring System (NI-VMS) which can provide effective on-line/off-line engine vibration monitoring capabilities without relying on intrusive key-phasor speed measurements.  Many powerful vibration signature analysis techniques for engine-health monitoring rely on key-phasor signals to extract/enhance critical fault signatures from noisy vibration measurements.  In many situations (e.g. SSME HPOTP), such speed measurements are not available, usually due to the safety concerns of a key-phasor's intrusive installation (e.g.in a high-pressure liquid-oxygen environment for HPOTP).   As a result, the ability/reliability for health monitoring and post-test diagnostic evaluation is severely limited.  The proposed NI-VMS overcomes this problem by utilizing a novel signal analysis technique called Pseudo Key Phasor (PKP) to reconstruct a PKP signal directly from external vibration measurements.  This procedure enables powerful signal analyses that require a key phasor to become applicable, greatly enhancing fault detection and diagnostic capabilities.   NI-VMS can reduce the risks of catastrophic engine failure and improve the reliability of NASA's current/future propulsion systems.  Phase I feasibility studies using SSME test data have successfully demonstrated the technical merits of NI-VMS.  Phase II will complete design, development, and testing of the prototype NI-VMS hardware/software system.
Next generation astrophysical observatories need improvements in readout electronics and associated high density interconnects. In particular, advanced imaging spectrometers for x-ray astronomy will require significant improvements in the high density interconnects between the detector arrays and the first stage electronics. These detectors operate at 50 to 100 mK, while the first stage is held between 1.3 and 1.5 K.  Interconnects are needed that provide the required signal paths while imparting a total thermal heat load on the detector stage of less than 0.5 microwatts. The innovation proposed to meet this need is an ultra-thin polyimide membrane supporting a high-density array of vacuum-deposited superconducting traces.  During Phase I, 100-trace Niobium arrays were deposited on ultra-thin polyimide films. The critical current density (Jc) averaged 2.1 x 106 A/cm2, exceeding Phase I goals and demonstrating the feasibility of the innovation.  This result suggests that interconnects with 1000 traces are feasible within specified heat load limits and the goal of Phase II will be to produce such interconnects for both NASA and commercial applications.  The proposed interconnects greatly broaden the thermal budget/signal capacity envelope for low-temperature detector applications by combining existing lithographic technology with Luxel's state-of-the-art thin film processes and mission tested polyimide.
This NASA SBIR Phase II effort will develop a 1 x 10 prototype non-mechanical fiber optic switch for use with high power lasers.  The proposed optical device is a fiber-based multi-channel switch to rapidly switch a fiber-coupled laser among ten output channels as an integral part of a fiber-based fixed-array laser transmitter for next-generation NASA lidar systems.  The key innovation is the use of an arrangement of electro-optic prisms in a nonlinear optical crystal created through domain reversal to direct the laser into one of many possible output fibers.  This design will provide several important features that are required yet not currently available in a fiber switch in order to achieve a fiber-arrayed lidar source.  These features include high optical power handling, reduced crosstalk, low optical loss, fast switching times, low power consumption, and robust construction in a monolithic package with no moving parts.  A packaged device will undergo preliminary flight qualification testing and reliability analysis. The Phase II effort will deliver a compact, packaged 1x10 electro-optic fiber switch that meets specifications and is ready for testing in a NASA all-fiber lidar system.
ZONA Technology (ZONA) proposes to develop an enhanced model updating nonlinear system identification (MUNSID) methodology that utilizes flight data with state-of-the-art control oriented techniques.  The MUNSID toolbox augments the current match-point solution approach using the mu-analysis method with identified nonlinear operators.  The procedure calls for a high-fidelity linear aeroelastic model to be tuned quickly with available aeroelastic/aeroservoelastic flight data sets, while block-oriented models are used to highlight the underlying nonlinear structure of the dynamic system.  This framework is capable of accounting for several nonlinearities including those due to aerodynamics, structures, control/actuator, and/or geometry.

Specifically, this on-line Flutter/LCO predictor can be used to accurately estimate a supercritical LCO case if the global nonlinear dynamic behavior is described throughout a hardening nonlinearity, as well as a more dangerous dynamic behavior, denoted as subcritical LCO, could be developed if a global softening nonlinearity is identified. The devised MUNSID Toolbox will become the flight control engineer's "every day tool" to predict on-line Flutter/LCO phenomena. In Phase II, MUNSID will be updated with fast and computationally efficient routines for system modeling, LFT representation, identification of nonlinearity, estimation of uncertainty, and stability analysis. Deliverables include the MUNSID production software including a GUI, a library of S-functions, and the related user manuals.
Structured Materials Industries, Inc. proposes to develop SiGe photovoltaic technology that matches the Nd:YAG wavelength of 1.06 micron for insertion in future Wireless Power Transmission systems.  Full development of the proposed technology will provide NASA with a low-cost, SiGe-based alternative to compound semiconductors.  In Phase I of the program we have designed, fabricated and tested a SiGe photocell and demonstrated a 45&#37; external quantum efficiency and a 6&#37; power efficiency at the Nd:YAG wavelength of 1.06 micron.  In Phase II we will further optimize the SiGe materials properties and the photocell device structure.  In Phase III we will make the SiGe photocells commercially available to NASA's contractors and also market the deposition hardware.
Remote Sensing Solutions, Inc. (RSS) has developed a novel, practical design that will produce a low-cost precipitation radar / radiometer sensor. Operating in a stand-alone mode or in a network configuration, this system will provide the measurements critical to the NASA Global Precipitation Mission (GPM) calibration / validation efforts. With its unique ability to acquire simultaneous dual polarized, dual wavelength, active and passive measurements, this instrument will be capable of providing NASA and the research community with unique data that will significantly further research in the areas of precipitation rate and particle size retrievals. By utilizing solid-state technology and an innovative pulse compression scheme, the sensor can be built at a fraction of the cost of conventional precipitation radar while still maintaining the required sensitivity. The proposed Phase II effort will focus on developing and demonstrating the performance of two key innovations: the dual polarized, dual wavelength wideband antenna feed and transceiver.
Aircraft encounters with turbulence are the leading cause of injuries in the airline industry and result in significant human, operational, and maintenance costs to the airline community each year.  A large contributor to the above injuries and costs is that flight crews do not have sufficient situational awareness of the location and severity of potential turbulence hazards to their aircraft.  AeroTech will improve pilots' situational awareness of turbulence hazards by developing an integrated, graphical cockpit display of turbulence hazard information scaled to their specific aircraft.  This display will negate the need for inference that is required to interpret current turbulence information.  With better knowledge of turbulence hazards' severity and location, pilots will be able to avoid turbulence encounters or prepare for them by having all occupants seated with seatbelts on, thereby avoiding injuries.  Phase I work will develop, based on pilot input, a concept of operations and a requirements document for this display, evaluate several potential turbulence hazard information sources, and define requirements for simulations to be carried out in Phase II.  By the end of Phase II an intuitive and meaningful cockpit, turbulence hazard display will be developed and tested using simulations and operational flight evaluations.
There are two major commercial types of light-scattering particle size
analyzers: Static Light Scattering and Dynamic Light Scattering. They
are expensive, delicate, bulky, and must operate at extremely low
particle concentrations. A fundamental mathematical model for high
concentrations has been in need for decades and finally developed by the
author after 25 years of research and development (METAMODEL&lt;!DOCTYPE html PUBLIC "-//W3C//DTD XHTML 1.0 Strict//EN"
                      "http://www.w3.org/TR/xhtml1/DTD/xhtml1-strict.dtd"&gt;
&lt;sup&gt;TM&lt;/sup&gt;
).   UV-NIR spectroscopy has a long successful history for molecular
characterization of gases, liquids, or solids but commercial particle
size analyzers based on this powerful principle do not exit. Seven
impediments for its presence in the market are identified and their
resolution either described as already accomplished by the author or
achievable with a high probability of success during Phase I.  It is our
long-term goal to develop a commercial UV-NIR high dynamic-range,
miniaturized, robust spectrometer for particle size analysis in the
range 1 nm to 10 um (METASIZER&lt;sup&gt;TM&lt;/sup&gt;
). During Phase I, a breadboard prototype to demonstrate feasibility
will be developed. We firmly believe that, due to its expected superior
performance and lower cost, our innovation and its derivatives could
revolutionize the field of particle sizing in both diluted and
concentrated particulates. Applications are innumerable ranging from
materials science through pharmaceuticals to environmental.
Wireless technologies are an increasingly attractive means for spatial data, input, manipulation, and distribution. Mobitrum is proposing an innovative Adaptive Wireless Transceiver, which is targeted for NASA's Earth Science applications for field personnel and robotic platforms to interface with various wireless sensor networks, in real time, ingest data sequentially from a variety of input sensors, provide initial field verification of data and distribute the data to various nodes and servers at collection, processing, and decision sites.  This effort addresses important technology gap for interfacing with various wireless sensor networks and transmitting/receiving data over long distances.  This effort will include: (1) Design of the high-level system architecture of the adaptive wireless interface that employs model-based reasoning to achieve a specified level of competence in radio-related domains, (2) Design of the adaptive wireless module, and (3) Develop rules, procedures, software algorithms, and techniques through modeling and simulation for designing an adaptive wireless module.  The proposed enabling technology will provide NASA an effective wireless device for Earth science, data relay, and other situational awareness.
Polyethylene (PE), due to its high hydrogen content relative to its weight, has been identified by NASA as a promising radiation shielding material against galactic cosmic rays and solar energetic particles. Carbon nanotubes (CNTs), due to their small diameter, high-mechanical strength, and high-electrical and thermal conductivity, are recognized as the ultimate carbon fibers for high performance, multifunctional composites. Prior studies failed to produce the CNT/polymer composites that fully exploit nanotubes' outstanding mechanical, electrical and thermal properties because of poor dispersion of nanotubes in polymer matrices and poor adhesion between nanotubes and the polymer matrix,. Zyvex has developed a versatile and non-damaging chemical platform that allows us to engineer specific nanotube surface properties to permit homogeneous dispersion of nanotubes in various solvents and polymer matrices, and enables the significantly enhanced adhesion between nanotubes and the polymer matrix. The major innovation of our technical approach is to marry these two outstanding materials using Zyvex's chemical platform technology to produce a novel CNT/PE complex composite that not only has high radiation shielding performance, but also has high mechanical strength, high electrical conductivity, and improved thermal stability. Multifunctional CNT/PE complex composite will find broad applications in shielding humans in spacecrafts and habitats.
This project will focus on fabricating and optimizing a photodetector that utilizes the emerging  technology of internal discrete amplification to create photon-counting sensitivity detectors with very high gain, ultra low noise, high quantum efficiency and GHz bandwidth for optical communications in the spectral range of 1.06 ?m to 1.6 ?m.  Extensive modeling during Phase I of this project has permitted to optimize the design and develop manufacturing steps to produce such a photodetector.  The detectors will have performance parameters significantly superior to those of conventional avalanche photodiodes and photomultiplier tubes to and should meet and exceed NASA stated mission goals of boosting data transfer rates by a factor of 10-100 relative to the current state of the art.  The expected performance parameters include a GHz bandwidth (with a 10 GHz long term goal), gain of 10,000 to 100,000, excess noise factor less than 1.07, saturation levels greater than 50Mcounts/s (higher expected), and flexibility in the choice of active area size and shape, including the ability to create detector arrays.  These new capabilities could lead to important advances in deep space and other optical communication applications.
Current shared aperture diffractive optical elements (ShADOE) have intrinsic residual wavefront errors on the order of 50 waves which limits the angular resolution of the LIDAR application to about 300 micro-radians. We have reduced these aberrations by constructing a secondary holographic correction plate using the aberrated wave from the ShADOE as one of the two construction waves. The other construction wave was collimated. All six overlapping apertures require individually constructed plates, we delivered only 2 thus far. This method of correction requires the use of the final playback wavelength for construction and so is useful for 532 and 355nm but not for 2054 nm. Computed diffractive optics can be used for 2054 nm using measured aberrations at the same wavelength. This proposal deals just with a continuation of fabrication and test of the 2 inch 355 nm holographic correction plates (HCP) to bring resolution well under 50 micro radians. Secondarily we propose to make and measure a small 2054 nm ShaDOE and demonstrate a digitally mastered HCP that will approach diffraction limited performance as required at that wavelength.
Resupply of materials in space applications is a significant logistical problem. Historically the replacement materials have been carried with the spacecraft.  This problem increases dramatically as mission duration and distance from the earth increases, as in missions to Saturn or Titan.  It is estimated that a buoyant vehicle operating on Titan may require 75 g of make-up hydrogen per week.  This represents approximately 35 kg of additional mass at launch solely for the storage of make-up hydrogen to maintain buoyancy of the craft on Titan for a one-year mission.

During the Phase I project Lynntech demonstrated that hydrogen can be generated in-situ directly from the Titan atmosphere from 100 K to 300 K with 10 watts using proprietary plasma reformation techniques, and that metal hydrides are viable hydrogen separation devices.  Lynntech's low volume, low mass (~2 kg) system will save approximately 33 kg at launch ( &gt;$72M) for a one year Titan mission. Based on a conservative estimate (using Mars mission equivalency factors), Lynntech's proposed system has an advantageous equivalent system mass (ESM) after only 47 mission days.  The Phase II effort will focus on further improving hydrogen production efficiency and a long-term endurance test of the system.
One of the highest priorities of a regenerative life support system for manned space missions (to the Moon, Mars, and other remote locations) is to recover and process wastewater to provide clean water. Among detectors used to monitor recycled water quality, a total organic carbon (TOC) instrument must be used to assess the organic contaminant level. Available TOC instruments have major limitations for space missions: they need periodic resupply of reagents and water; thus, storage of toxic chemicals and crew time for maintenance are required. The aim of this project is to develop a novel Total Organic Carbon Analyzer (TOCA) for real-time monitoring of water quality. It will be designed with an operational lifetime of 5 years with no maintenance required and no need to supply reagents or water. During the Phase I, Lynntech designed, fabricated, and successfully tested both critical components of TOCA and a breadboard TOCA. Testing included ersatz reverse osmosis permeate water. Requirements for TOC range (0.25 to 50 ppm) and accuracy (? 25&#37; above 1 ppm and ?0.25 ppm below 1 ppm) were met. During Phase II, an optimized, precise, reliable, flight qualifiable, microgravity compatible TOCA prototype will be designed, fabricated, tested, and delivered to NASA.
This proposal is submitted under the Innovative Tools and Techniques Supporting the Practical Uses of Earth Science Observations topic. We seek to create a prototype rangeland decision support system that links remote sensing based rangeland products, a soil biogeochemical model and web-based tools for data mining, data management and product visualization. The resulting decision support system will be unique and innovative by not only providing operational remote sensing observations of rangeland condition, but also web-based tools that utilize these observations to provide critical information on soil fertility/productivity, greenhouse gas emissions, and potential erosion and sedimentation. Our Rangeland Decision Support System (RDSS) will build off of existing RANGES and DNDC tools. Landsat and MODIS prototype processing algorithms for rangeland condition (height, forage production, fractional cover) have been developed under the previous RANGES project and Phase I. The result of this Phase II project will be a series of web data management tools and a prototype RDSS for Walnut Gulch Experimental Watershed and Santa Rita Experimental Range regions in Arizona.
The proposed project is the continued development of the High Efficiency Lighting with Integrated Adaptive Control (HELIAC) system.  Solar radiation is not a viable option for growing plants on the Moon or on Mars for multiple reasons. On the other hand, lighting plants with electric lamps and rejecting the associated waste heat has associated energy costs that have driven NASA toward other options to provide food and fresh air to future Mars crews  The HELIAC lighting system consists of small individual LED "light engines" that provide a level of control precision far in excess of standard lamps. This precision enables lamp configuration to be adapted to species specific growth habits so that photons can be absorbed efficiently by all available photosynthetic tissues. HELIAC will also provide the capability to adapt spectral balance automatically to plant development stage. Finally, it will have the capability to automatically detect the proximity of plant tissue and power only adjacent light engines, thereby greatly decreasing power requirements, particularly in the early stage of plant development.
Starsys Research has developed a revolutionary new concept for a planetary gearbox that significantly improves the load capacity for any given volume. This concept is based on optimizing both the physical configuration and material selection. While yet to be proven, engineering estimates show load capacity improvements are between five and ten times other standard designs. This improvement in load capacity allow smaller gearboxes to be used for any particular application and thus reduce the system mass.
The innovation combines a new generation low power ice protection system with a novel path to certification that is based upon requirements that turbine engines be capable of operation in a hail environment. Eliminated are requirements for high voltages and currents characteristic of all previous impulsive or expulsive deicing systems. It is postulated that if the engine can operate safely in the hail environment as defined by the FARs, then it can be expected to operate safely and economically in the presence of particles shed by the deicer which are demonstrably smaller and less hazardous than hail. Such a system presents a viable alternative to the use of hot air ice protection systems, and will require a two magnitude lower power.
The size and accuracy specifications of telescope mirrors are ever more demanding.  This is particularly true for secondary mirrors, as they are convex and thus require large-aperture optics to test them.  Recent NASA programs, such as the Terrestrial Planet Finder (TPF) and James Webb Space Telescope (JWST), include monolithic secondary mirrors of significant size (larger than half a meter).  Secondary mirrors of such large sizes are difficult and expensive to test due to the large-aperture converging and nulling optics required.  Furthermore, calibration of these optics to the level required for next-generation programs is extremely challenging.  Subaperture stitching has the potential to provide accurate high-resolution maps of large-aperture aspheric optics without the use of even larger aperture optics or dedicated nulls.  QED's Subaperture Stitching Interferometer (SSI&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt;) has achieved nanometer-level accuracies on spherical optics with its novel compensation techniques.  Non-null capability is enhanced since the individual subapertures have significantly less aspheric departure.  However, the system is currently only capable of testing up to 280 mm optics of mild asphericity.  Phase I work demonstrated that the technology is scalable to larger aperture sizes.  This proposal focuses on innovations for leveraging the considerable benefits of stitching (high resolution, automatic calibration, and flexible aspheric testing) to aspheric optics.  Activities will include uncertainty analyses of aspheric tests, subscale measurement demonstrations, and development of concepts for testing larger amounts of aspheric departure.
In this Phase II SBIR project a high-sensitivity low-noise all-silicon CMOS-MEMS accelerometer for quasi-steady measurements of accelerations at sub 1 micro-g levels will be developed.  The outcome of the project is a capacitive microaccelerometer with a resolution of 90ng/sqrt-Hz over +/-0.1g range for Type A sensor and 0.8ug/sqrt-Hz over +/-1g for Type B sensor with programmable bandwidth from DC to programmable 0.1Hz-100Hz.  The accelerometer module includes integrated low-noise CMOS circuitry with active offset and low-frequency noise cancellation to enable high-precision DC measurements.  The high-performance of the sensor is enabled by innovation in both MEMS accelerometer and readout circuit technologies: i) Single-crystalline silicon capacitive accelerometer structure.  The device has high sensitivity and low thermo-mechanical noise; ii) Innovative high-yield fabrication process that enables formation of high-sensitivity devices on top of CMOS wafers; iii) New and improved low-noise capacitive sensor readout CMOS circuit.  This novel microaccelerometer has several NASA applications including measurement of residual accelerations on spacecraft and ground-based low-gravity facilities.
We propose to develop a state-of-the-art data mining engine that extends the functionality of Virtual Observatories (VO) from data portal to science analysis resource.  Our solution consists of two integrated products, IDDat and RemoteMiner:

 (1) IDDat is an advanced grid-based computing infrastructure which acts as an add-on to VOs and supports processing and remote data analysis of widely distributed data in space sciences.  IDDat middleware design is such as to reduce undue network traffic on the VO.

(2)  RemoteMiner is a novel data mining engine that connects to the VO via the IDDat.  It supports multi-users, has autonomous operation for automated systematic identification while enabling the advanced users to do their own mining and can be used by data centers for pre-mining.


These innovations will significantly enhance the science return from NASA missions by providing data centers and individual researchers alike an unprecedented capability to mine vast quantities of data.  Phase I is aimed at complete definition of the design of the product and a demonstration of a prototype of the proposed major innovations.   Phase II work will encompass the building of a full commercial product with associated production quality technical and user documentation.
A novel technique for controlling transition from laminar to turbulent flow in very low Reynolds number conditions has been developed.  Normally flows with Reynolds numbers in the range of 20,000 to 120,000 are dominated by laminar separation bubbles and are difficult to transition without using very large traditional trip devices, such as distributed roughness.  Additionally, these traditional trips are sized for one flow condition and are either not effective at off-design conditions or create a large device drag penalty.  RHRC's innovative transition control technology is capable of transitioning flow across a wide range of low Reynolds number conditions without resizing or incurring an off-design performance penalty.  The system also produces minimal device drag.  The novel transition control technology was shown to reduce trip drag penalties by as much as 35&#37; to 60&#37; when compared to correctly sized traditional trips, and increasing to as much as 190&#37; at off-design conditions.  In addition, the system can be implemented without external power. The commercialization potential for the technology is extremely promising, with applications such as micro unmanned air vehicles, high-altitude long-endurance aircraft, Mars exploratory flyers, and propeller systems.
This project consists in developing a Vibrating Powder Handling System for planetary X-Ray Diffraction instruments. The principle of this novel sample handling technique relies on vibrations generated in a sample holder to create movements in the powdered sample. The major benefit over conventional sample handling techniques is the possibility to characterize materials with grain-sizes up to two orders of magnitude larger, with no degradation in the data quality. It allows existing planetary sample-preparation systems such as rock crushers and drills to be used in place of fine-grinding mills normally required for quality XRD analysis. A secondary benefit is that it offers a simple means of loading and removal of samples, with potentially no moving parts. This research will answer a critical need for sample handling devices for conducting definitive mineralogical analyses in the Solar System.  The Phase 2 effort will focus on addressing key technical issues in the development of a miniature Vibrating Powder Handling System.  This work will lead to a brassboard prototype that can be remotely operated and interfaced to a planetary XRD instrument.
A method is proposed to measure soot mass concentration non-intrusively from a distance in a rocket engine exhaust stream during ground tests using laser-induced incandescence (LII). The basic technique has already been proven in an aircraft engine exhaust, and should be adaptable to a rocket plume with some modifications, including a correction scheme to account for the high plume temperatures, and proper isolation from acoustic vibrations.  Besides enabling the technique to be applied to a rocket engine, the required modifications should also lead to potential opportunities to measure temperature and additional species, including polycyclic aromatic hydrocarbons (PAHs) and trace metals introduced into the exhaust through wear, such as Ni, Fe and Cr. A multi-parameter sensor is envisioned that combines four techniques, all using the same hardware: LII to measure soot mass concentration, laser-induced fluorescence to measure PAHs, laser-induced breakdown spectroscopy to measure trace metals, and passive emission to measure temperature. The sensor will employ a line-imaging near-backscatter design, used successfully in our previous work, that allows spatially-resolved measurements of all parameters along a path through the plume from a single vantage point, located a safe distance from the plume. This system should provide continuous, rapid, in situ measurements in a difficult measurement environment.
An innovative microwave system is proposed for the continuous production of medical grade water.  This system will utilize direct absorption of microwave radiation to rapidly heat potable water well above normal autoclave conditions, achieving equivalent microbial lethality in much shorter times. High thermal efficiencies will be gained by placement of the microwave antennae directly in the flowing water stream allowing very efficient volumetric coupling of microwaves.  The sterilized water stream will then pass through a regenerable endotoxin filter to achieve water for injection (WFI) purity standards. This filter will remove endotoxins by selective adsorption.  The combined system will enable the energy efficient and practical production of WFI aboard spacecraft or planetary habitats under microgravity or hypogravity conditions with a low equivalent system mass (ESM).  In the Phase I research, sterilization chambers and endotoxin filters will be designed, assembled, and tested. The Phase II program will deliver a fully instrumented, computer-controlled system with a low ESM whose performance is well documented.  This technology will form the basis for multiple applications in commercial sterilization markets.
Computer codes such as MCNPX now have the capability to transport most high energy particle types (34 particle types now supported in MCNPX) with energies extending into the teravolt energy range.  The efficient use of these types of Monte Carlo tools is very important for modeling the effects of space radiation on humans, spacecraft and equipment.  This proposal would develop a graphical user interface for high energy multi-particle transport.  With this innovation, users of the MCNPX code would have access to a powerful graphical user interface for efficient creation and interrogation of their input files, which would significantly reduce the amount of time required to create and debug input files.
ORBITEC proposes to develop a High-Performance Methane Thrust Chamber (HPMRE) to meet the demands of advanced chemical propulsion systems for deep-space mission applications.  The HPMTC utilizes a unique propellant injector to generate a coaxial vortex flow field in the combustion chamber.  Propellant mixing and burning are confined to the core vortex, while the cool outer vortex provides convective cooling to counter the effects of thermal radiation. The HPMTC will utilize an optimized combustion chamber geometry and propellant injectors to maximize performance and minimize wall heating. Avoiding severe thermal cycling of the chamber will provide very long engine lifetime and allow for simple, lightweight chamber designs. The coaxial vortices also provide an extended flow path longer than the geometric length of the chamber. The enhanced shear mixing can produce high combustion efficiencies.  Phase I tasks include propulsion system analysis, thrust chamber fabrication, hot-fire testing with methane using both GOX and LOX, data analysis, scaling effects analysis, and development of plans for Phase II activities.
RMD proposes to develop a MEMS based complete blood count (CBC) instrument that can be used aboard a spacecraft.  We will produce a microfluidic scale combination cell counter-flow cytometer for CBC analyses that can be communicated to ground bases by telemetry.  The blood analyzer will utilize innovative optical and fluidic designs on a modular platform that enable compactness, high sensitivity and cell discrimination, combined with robust service.  No operator intervention is required.  Modules that require direct contact with blood will be economical and disposable.  These fluidic designs will be fabricated by microstereolithography and initially tested as two separate components.  A first component will constitute a hydrodynamic focusing injector and cell impedance meter.  A second component will monitor forward and side scattered light from hydrodynamically focused cells using novel signal collection designs and micrometer scale, Geiger-mode avalanche photodiodes.  New, custom formulated photopolymers will be evaluated for microstereolithography use and electroless deposition of metals will form the basis for fabricating microelectrodes.  During Phase II, the cell impedance transducer and microoptic modules will be integrated into one credit card size package that plugs into a handheld microelectronics board containing detectors, pump, microprocessors, and an automated cell lysing stage.
Maintaining the health of astronauts during extended spaceflight is critical to the success of the mission.  Radiation Monitoring Devices, Inc. (RMD) proposes an instrument to monitor astronauts' physiological responses to stress, microgravity, radiation, infection, and pharmaceutical agents through detection of multiple biological markers.  This will be accomplished under conditions of microgravity, within the weight, size and power requirements of space missions, and with minimal human intervention.  One representative biomarker of interest is 8-oxo-dG that serves as an indicator of oxidative DNA damage from radiation, chemicals, inflammation, and by-products of metabolism.  Upon repair of the damaged DNA, 8-oxo-dG is excreted into the urine where it may be conveniently monitored.  However, serious obstacles to detection and quantification arise due to the low amounts present and the complex chemical composition of urine.  Current techniques suffer from at least one of the following shortcomings: they are slow and labor-intensive, require complex instrumentation and a highly-trained operator, cannot be easily multiplexed to monitor many analytes, consume large amounts of reagents, and are not compatible for use under microgravity.  We will overcome these limitations by incorporating all analytical steps into a single microfluidic chip. Our system will utilize affinity purification and electrochemical detection.
Future missions to investigate the structure and evolution of the universe require highly efficient, low-temperature cryocoolers for low-noise detector systems. We propose to develop a highly efficient low-cost regenerator for regenerative cryocoolers with cooling temperatures in the range of 15 K and below. The proposed regenerator uses an innovative non-rare-earth material to achieve a volumetric specific heat of about 0.65  to 0.31 J/cm3-K at temperatures of 15 to 4.2 K.  The large heat capacity will substantially reduce the thermal swing during periodic heat transfer and therefore improve the efficiency of low-temperature regenerative cryocoolers. The regenerator will be lightweight and easy to fabricate. In Phase I we will optimize the regenerator for a specific cooling application.  We will use the resulting design and model to show that a regenerative cryocooler can achieve a very high efficiency. In Phase II we will build a prototype regenerator, measure its key performance parameters, and integrate it with an existing cryocooler to demonstrate its high thermal effectiveness.
Leveraging extensive experience from Joint Planning and Development Office (JPDO) environmental analysis, Federal Aviation Administration (FAA) National Airspace Re-design projects, as well as National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) environmental modeling and decision-aid projects, Metron Aviation develops a software system to enable balanced noise and emissions reductions by integrated Air Traffic Management (ATM)/aircraft systems.  The proposed capability, Emissions and Noise Total Impact REduction (ENTIRE) is innovative in the follow ways:
1.	It spans the spectrum of environmental impacts, encompassing both noise and local air-quality; 
2.	It conjoins both ATM and aircraft-based activities for the management of these impact; and
3.	It provides a tractable algorithmic approach to achieving specific noise and emissions impact reduction goals.
The proposed capability directly supports the next-generation capabilities and environmentally friendly ATM capability sought under Small Business Innovative Research (SBIR) Subtopic A3.01 ? Next Generation ATM Systems, directly addressing integrated ATM/aircraft systems that reduce noise and emissions.  This software system enables NASA to provide quantitative techniques for finding ATM/aircraft operations that achieve specific combined noise and emissions impact reductions using methods that identify relative contributions of each aspect of ATM and aircraft operations to these reductions. At its core the system will utilize greedy/breedy algorithms with variance in degrees of freedom and comparison of subsequent solutions towards meeting specific impact reduction goals.
MetroLaser proposes to design and develop an innovative narrowband tunable IR filter based on the properties of a one-dimensional photonic crystal structure with a resonant cavity. Such a structure can exhibit an ultra-narrow, high-throughput band in the middle of a wide low-transmission stop-band. During Phase I, we will demonstrate experimentally the proof-of-concept for the proposed filter with sub-angstrom bandpass and a tuning range of at least 10 cm-1 in the spectral region around 10 um. We will complete modeling of the functional characteristics, based on the specific features of photonic crystal structures with a resonant cavity, and develop a strategy for building a prototype of the instrument. Fine-tuning of the filter will be accomplished by varying the optical cavity length. The proposed filter is expected to have an acceptance angle of at least 1 degree and an aperture of about 1 inch. During Phase II, the compact prototype module will be demonstrated with an expected tunability range of 10 cm-1 and a bandpass range of 0.1 cm-1. A compact, rugged, monolithic filter architecture will allow this instrument to be incorporated in air- or space-based platforms and provide stable performance in harsh operating environments.
The need for higher performance fiber optic telecommunications receivers has provided the impetus for substantial progress during the last decade in the understanding and performance of InP-based linear mode avalanche photodiodes (APDs) for the wavelength range from 1.0 to 1.7 um.  However, these advances have not been paralleled in the performance and availability of single photon avalanche diodes (SPADs) based on similar design and materials platforms.  Moreover, the vast majority of the activity in this field has been focused on optimizing devices for telecommunications wavelengths in the vicinity of 1550 nm, and there has been very little work on devices for use at 1064 nm.  For this SBIR program, we propose to apply innovative design concepts for the development of high performance SPADs optimized for 1064 nm applications.  In particular, we will implement a novel bandgap engineering approach to tailor the SPAD avalanche gain properties to realize higher single photon detection efficiency while maintaining the very low dark count rates that are made possible by optimizing the absorption region design for the detection of 1064 nm photons.  We will also apply design concepts that we have innovated during the course of developing state-of-the-art 1550 nm SPADs that involve optimization of the device electric profile for photon counting as well as epitaxial layer compositions.  These efforts will culminate in 1064 nm large area detectors (with active area diameters up to 500 um) that demonstrate feasibility in meeting SPAD performance targets including 50&#37; detection efficiency, bandwidth of 500 MHz, saturation levels of 50 Mcounts/s, and non-gated operation.
This proposal discloses an innovative, economically feasible technique to capture and re-liquefy the hydrogen boil-off by using carbon nanotube adsorption prior to liquefaction.  The hydrogen boil- off involves an average of 10,300 SCFM of hydrogen vapor at pressures below 17 psia for a period of an hour.  The configuration disclosed in the proposal significantly reduces the size of the liquefaction equipment and this translates into a substantial reduction in cost for the system.  Preliminary calculations have indicated that a payback period of less than 12 months (based on the current cost of hydrogen and the use rate at KSC when shuttles return to flight).
The Phase I effort will also experimentally demonstrate the performance of a carbon nanotube coated (CNC) adsorption bed in Phase I.  This proposal discloses a patent-pending approach which makes this technology feasible, safe and affordable.
The Phase I effort is significant, in that an extensive demonstration of the performance, cost, durability, and simplicity of the CNC adsorption bed as well as a demonstration of the  economic benefits of the hydrogen capture system for NASA/KSC will both be achieved before proceeding to Phase II.
Scientists need to be able to quickly develop and run parallel simulations without paying the high price of writing low-level message passing codes using compiled languages such as C/C++/Fortran.  
This is especially true of students and researchers who are expert scientists in their field but don't have the time or resources to become experts in parallel computing.

This proposal will enable scientists to rapidly create parallel simulations by providing parallel building blocks in the high-level programming language Python.  The building blocks themselves, such as distributed arrays, parallel linear algebra, parallel Fourier transforms and parallel statistical algorithms, will be implemented by leveraging existing high-performance libraries and creating high-level Python objects that completely hide the details of the underlying libraries and parallelism from users. The building blocks will be developed as part of the open source IPython project, which will enable users to develop, debug and run parallel simulations in a completely interactive manner, similar to Matlab or IDL.

The anticipated Phase I result will be the demonstration of an interactive parallel simulation utilizing prototype building blocks on a commodity Linux cluster. Phase II will result in a production quality demonstration on a NASA supercomputer.
NASA has determined that it requires extremely durable, high-performance, low cost engines to meet future multi-use in-space, non-toxic, cryogenic propulsion requirements such as orbit transfer, descent, ascent and pulsing attitude control. Transpiration-cooling technology has long been considered a candidate for long-life thrust chambers but has never been deployed on a domestic rocket engine. In this program WASK Engineering, Inc. proposes to design, fabricate and hot-fire test a 100 lbf reaction control engine (RCEs) with transpiration-cooled thrust chambers and novel injector design. This effort will build on the technology demonstrations achieved on our Phase I program. These new transpiration-cooled O2/CH4 RCEs will be tested in existing atmospheric (non-vacuum) test facilities on an existing and operational test stand. Test results will be used to anchor and refine existing transpiration cooling thermal/performance analysis models. Ultimately, results of this Phase II program will lead to a durable, low cost, non-toxic RCE technology capable of using in situ propellant combinations, particularly oxygen/methane that will have higher performance than current toxic, expensive, storable hypergolic RCE designs using rhenium-based thrust chamber technology.
Phase 1 has seen the development of a revolutionary new type of sensor for making carbon dioxide (CO2) measurements from small Unmanned Aircraft Systems (UAS) and other platforms such as sounding balloons.  The chemistry behind the new sensor has been proven, example sensors were fabricated, and the technique has shown its immunity to many interferences (notably humidity and temperature) which affect other carbon dioxide measurement technologies.
   Phase 2 will involve optimizing the new sensor in terms of sensitivity and manufacturability.  Several field tests will be conducted with the new sensor, including baseline atmospheric CO2 measurements as well as CO2 flux measurements.  Four sensors of the final design developed in Phase 2 will be delivered to NASA for use on small UAS platforms.  
   Anticipated results include the completed development of a revolutionary new type of CO2 sensor for atmospheric research and its demonstration in the field prior to the conclusion of Phase 2.  A medical variant is expected to quickly result in part from this work as well.  It is also foreseen that several sensors for other gases may be developed based on this all-new measurement technology.
This SBIR Phase II proposal introduces a fast multi-mode hyperspectral-multispectral (MM-HS-MS) sensor with programmable spectral resolution. The sensor brings the following long-waiting benefits to the remote sensor community: (i) switchable between HS and MS operations, (ii) variable spectral resolution from 10nm to 560 nm; (iii) fast frame rate (54-1,750Hz), (iv) short full spectral range data acquisition time (10-1-10-2 sec), (v) increased sensitivity (particularly in measuring weak object or scene under lunar and man-made illumination), (vi) improved signal-to-noise ratio (SNR), and (vii) more flexible balance between the spectral image scanning speed and the data storage/processing flow rate.  Other features include: lightweight/compact size, versatile operation on orbit, low orbit, and even on ground, and low cost.  
The Phase II objective is design, assemble, and test the MM-HS-MS sensor prototype; evaluate performance pros and cons versus the state-of-the-arts; verify sensor performance against the NASA mission program; reach TRL-6, and deliver the sensor to NASA.
Manned planetary exploration has become re-invigorated, thanks to President Bush's recent call for a lunar base to be established within two decades and manned landing on Mars sometime after 2030. Such exciting explorations will demand innovative technologies for the next round of manned exploration of space.
One such technology that is desired to be advanced is LIDAR ? the LIght Detection And Ranging, for which SMI and Cornell University jointly proposed to develop a 1 x 10 electrically switched silicon nano-optic switch/multiplexer for use with high power lasers in LIDAR systems, especially the fiber-based fixed-array laser transmitter for use in NASA planetary explorations. Specifically, we have invented a few approaches to minimize optical absorption and optical loss in silicon nano-photonics and extend the applicability of silicon from infrared into visible and near-infrared spectrum with wavelengths shorter than 1100nm. These methods will serve as the groundwork for striding progress in Phase II.
The prototype 1x16 photonic switch array will have &lt; 10 nano-second switching time, &lt; 3dB optical loss, complete temperature stabilization circuit, electronics driver circuits, and can transmit greater than 200 micro-Joules transmission over 5 nano-second pulse at 10 kHz repetition rate for LIDAR applications.
The Small Business Innovative Research Phase II proposal seeks to develop a dual channel, compact mid-infrared laser spectrometer for planetary atmosphere exploration.  The device will be capable of measuring numerous trace gases at 3.3 and 4.6 um without the need for cryogens. By using novel, fiber-coupled, solid state lasers, performance will be improved over traditional tunable diode laser sensors with a simplified operation that is rugged and low power.
Advanced Materials Technology, Inc responds to the NASA solicitation Topic X9 entitled "Propulsion and Propellant Storage" under subtopic X9-01, "Long Term Cryogenic Propellant Storage, Management, and Acquisition". The proposed Phase II program will focus on developing new multifunctional insulation materials that will impact cryogenic systems for space transportation orbit transfer vehicles, space power systems, spaceports, spacesuits, lunar habitation systems, robotics, and in situ propellan
During the Phase I NASA SBIR, MATECH GSM (MG) has developed and evaluated the world's first ultra-high temperature (UHT) Zr-(O)-C ceramic fiber pre-form / organic ablative matrix composite TPS system.
This Phase II NASA SBIR Proposal from MG seeks to expand this technology to the following areas:
1)Microstructural level refinements and optimization of the char- and ablator phases for more reproducible material systems
2)Scaling-up for the fabrication of a larger and more complex-shape geometry
3)TPS design data generation with extensive arc-jet testing for a full TPS Component demonstration in Phase III.
In this TPS material concept, the "char" phase is UHT zirconium carbide (Zr(O)C) ceramic fiber pre-forms, which have dual functions of high compressive strength of ligaments and non-recession of fiber components after matrix ablation. MG's ablative TPS are designed to retain their shape, thereby reducing the thickness requirement and lowering the TPS total mass, crucial at high re-entry velocity. MG's new ablator slowly absorbs high levels of energy during high temperature ablation. 
At the completion of the Phase II-Base and Phase II-Option program, MG will have fabricated a high specific strength C-Zr(O)C / C-ablator (CZOCA) and have demonstrated one TPS component, operational at &gt; 5000oF.
This SBIR phase II project proposes a single frequency high energy fiber laser system for coherent Lidar systems for remote sensing. Current state-of-art technologies can not provide all features of high energy and efficiency, compactness, narrow linewidth, super frequency and power stability, low noise, and high extinction ratio at the same time. PolarOnyx proposes, for the first time, a high energy (1 mJ) single frequency (&lt; 1 KHz) fiber laser transmitter to meet with the requirement of solicitation. It is a specialty fiber based MOPA operating at 1550 nm. PolarOnyx proposes a revolutionary approach to fundamentally resolve the issues of nonlinear effects by employing our patent pending proprietary technologies in fiber lasers. Our unique spectral shaping techniques enable us to reduce the SBS and ASE noise significantly in the amplifier for commercially available EYDFs and to reuse the residual pump to further increase the efficiency. These will make the fiber laser transmitter system superior in terms of wall plug efficiency (over 30&#37;), energy(1 mJ), noise, size, and cost. In Phase I, we have demonstrated all major functions of the proposed idea and shown a practical energy scaling capability in proof of the concept. A prototype of 1 mJ level fiber laser will be delivered at the end of Phase II.
TRS Technologies, Virginia Tech., and MTech, Inc. propose to develop high torque (&gt;1.5 kg-cm), lightweight (&lt; 250 g), low power (&lt; 2 watts), high precision (&lt;0.2&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;), cryogenic stepping motors using single crystal piezoelectric technology.  The ultrasonic motors developed on this program will be targeted for use in passive optics positioning systems and interferometers in IR remote sensing and space telescope applications.  The above metrics were achieved during the Phase I program using a traveling wave ultrasonic motor with single crystal drive elements.  Motor operation was also demonstrated at 77K.  In Phase II, motor torque and speed will be increased and size, weight, and power will be further decreased by optimizing the motor design and crystal element configuration.  Drive electronics optimized for operation from 300 to 77K will also be developed.  Finally, the motor and electronics will be extensively tested at cryogenic conditions and under thermal cycling for reliability and repeatability.  At the conclusion of the Phase II program TRS and our partners will have optimized and characterized piezoelectric ultrasonic motors capable of operating over a very broad temperature range (400 to &lt; 77K) with significant performance improvements (torque, speed, precision, and power) over competing technologies with narrower temperature ranges.
The Phase I effort conceived a novel method for ISRU oxygen extraction and liquefaction from lunar regolith, repre-senting a significant advance in the state of the art.  The approach uses solar photovoltaics as a power source to heat and extract oxygen with highly favorable system metrics, capable of achieving TRL 3 during a Phase II effort and TRL 6 in earth gravity during Phase III. Autonomy of operation is straightforward with simple robotics.  Annual oxygen output is calculated to be many times the system mass.  Projections of engineering development indicate the potential to be flight-ready for lunar operations by the time a lunar outpost is established, followed by commercial lunar operations.
The severity of the lunar dust problems encountered during the Apollo missions were consistently underestimated by ground tests, illustrating the need to develop significantly better lunar dust simulants and simulation facilities. ORBITEC proposes to develop a family of High-Fidelity Lunar Dust Simulants that will better match the unique properties of lunar dust than existing simulants (such as JSC-1AF). Current lunar dust simulants do not have enough of the very fine particles, and they lack the agglutinitic glass and complex surface textures that dominate lunar dust. The proposed family of High-Fidelity Lunar Dust Simulants will approximate the size, morphology, composition, and other important properties of lunar dust. High-Fidelity Lunar Dust Simulants are required to physically evaluate the effects of lunar dust on the operation of all Exploration Surface Systems and to verify the effectiveness of dust mitigation strategies and technologies. The proposed Phase 1 effort will define requirements, develop, characterize, and deliver a sample of a prototype lunar dust simulant to NASA (TRL 4). The Phase 2 effort will refine the production process to create a large quantity of lunar dust simulant that will be characterized and delivered to NASA (TRL 6).
Advanced Scientific Concepts, Inc. (ASC) has developed a 128 x 128 frame, 3D Flash LADAR video camera which produces 3-D point clouds at 30 Hz. Flash LADAR captures an entire frame of data from a single pulse of light, therefore platform motion and vibration will not affect the measurements.  This is not true for any other laser-ranging system, such as scanning LIDAR.  Additionally, with no moving parts, the system is smaller, lighter, and requires less power than traditional approaches. The Phase I project used an ASC camera at the JPL mars yard to gather test data. Hazard Identification, and Entry Decent and Landing applications were investigated. These data sets were taken and delivered to JPL.  The analysis demonstrates that a Flash LADAR system can resolve landing hazards and is suitable as an EDL sensor.  This data, together with inputs from JPL scientists, was used to develop a brassboard camera concept for NASA applications. The optimized camera will be fabricated and delivered in Phase II.  This sensor will not be spaced qualified, but the Hi-Reliabilty module developed for phase II will be the first step.  Space qualification will be the next necessary step for Flash LADAR.
To meet the design challenges of tomorrow, NASA and industry require advancements in the state-of-the-art for physics-based design and analysis frameworks. In particular, NASA needs the ability to make more use of physics-based models earlier in the design process. This will allow engineers to more accurately capture the complex coupling between engineering disciplines and to more accurately simulate the complex behavior of novel design configurations. Key technical barriers include long execution times, model and data complexity, and geometry management. In the Phase II project, Phoenix Integration will expand on the successful Phase I prototypes to develop new technologies and user interfaces that will help overcome these barriers. This project will focus on (1) the development of a flexible capability for implementing Multi-Disciplinary Analysis and Optimization (MDAO) strategies (such as multi-fidelity) in ModelCenter, (2) the creation of a flexible geometry visualization and monitoring capability for high-fidelity system models, and (3) the extension of Phoenix Integration's "Plug-In" infrastructure to better support a wide range of high-fidelity analysis and geometry management tools (CAD/CAE tools, meshing tools, mesh morphing tools). These technologies will combine with other NASA funded technologies to create a robust physics-based design and analysis framework for designing next generation air vehicles.
In Phase I, we made prototype sliding bearings from functionally-graded, diamond-coated carbon-fiber reinforced composite. In dry-sliding experiments, the friction of the diamond-coated composites against lunar dust simulant was low and the wear was so small that it could not be detected. In contrast, all other tested materials experienced rapid abrasive wear. These tests demonstrate that diamond-coated composites are ideal materials for non-lubricated bearings, designed to operate in a lunar dust environment. The primary thrust of Phase II will be a fabrication of sliding, journal and ball bearings and testing them in low temperature vacuum chamber that corresponds to the parameters of the Moon's surface. To implement technology transfer, DMI will partner with established bearing companies. Hence, NASA will have qualified suppliers of different types of precision diamond-coated composite bearings.
Next generation air traffic management systems will be based to a greater degree on predicted trajectories of aircraft.  Due to the iterative nature of future air traffic management algorithms, the success of these systems will depend strongly on the ability to rapidly generate trajectory predictions. By combining algorithmic improvements and high-performance computing hardware, Phase I research demonstrated significantly accelerated prediction of high-fidelity aircraft trajectories using the NASA-FACET software. 
     Phase II research will build on the Phase I feasibility demonstration results to develop a full-scale computational appliance for rapid prediction of aircraft trajectories (CARPAT). The proposed architecture will combine the trajectory and airspace modeling capabilities of the FACET software with commercial, off-the-shelf high-performance computing technology. High-speed trajectory predictions and iterative computation of traffic flow management algorithms will be demonstrated under realistic traffic scenarios. The trajectory prediction appliance will commercialized during the Phase III work.
Space structures that are ultra-lightweight, and have gas barrier property, space durability, radiation resistance, EMI shielding, and high impact resistance are desirable to improve the reliability and provide a safe resting environment for astronauts and electronic equipment housing and protection. Some of the components currently in use such as stations or habitats use double-wall thick films with high internal pressure. Electronic housings made of metals are heavy and need improved EMC protection. Some components are in thin film form and the specific rigidity and dimensional stability needs improvement.  Components of landers and vehicles are subject to dust impact. All these solid or hollow components are vulnerable in space because of the foreign object impact or radiation attack. In the Phase I project, we have successfully developed lightweight, microcellular nanocomposite foams and sandwich structures that possess all the desirable properties mentioned above.   The nanocomposite sandwich structures have excellent compression-after-impact properties. Phase II project will optimize and scale up the proposed materials and structures for structural components fabrication. The proposed microcellular nanocomposite foam and sandwich structures do not involve or release any toxicity and will have high specific mechanical properties.  We will team up with Orbital Sciences Corp. to develop a prototype electronic housing for MACH3 space structure applications.
The purpose of the Enhanced Brine Dewatering System (EBDS) is to provide a scalable means of completely recovering usable water from byproducts created by reverse osmosis water purification systems without the use of consumable wicks. Extended duration Lunar and Mars missions will require the conservation and recovery of water to allow for autonomous closed environments that dramatically reduce launch mass and stowage volumes. The EBDS development will build on previous developments in condensing heat exchangers to establish reliable, passive, and energy-efficient methods for recovering water, and will develop the phase separation and solid salt removal and collection methods required for EBDS functionality. The EBDS will use evaporation and condensing surfaces designed to eliminate biological growth through material selection, surface treatments, and hardware operational procedures. Design for the reduced gravity of Lunar and Martian applications enables simplified liquid/gas separation, compared with microgravity applications, and makes the design readily applicable to terrestrial applications. Crew interaction is limited to periodically removing the bio-isolated waste byproducts from the system. A fully functional prototype Lunar Outpost EBDS will be developed and tested for an extended duration, to evaluate long-term feasibility and performance, and to bring the EBDS to TRL 6.
The proposed Plasma Air Decontamination System (PADS) is a trace contaminant control device based on non-thermal atmospheric-pressure plasma technology. Compared to the Trace Contaminant Control System (TCCS) and the Vapor Phase Catalytic Ammonia Removal system (VPCAR), this novel technology operates at ambient temperature and atmospheric pressure, requires less energy, has no moving parts, and requires no consumables. The non-thermal plasma has been proven successful in decomposing various volatile organic carbons (VOCs) found in spacecraft environments. The prototype PADS reactor developed in Phase I has also demonstrated successful removal of ammonia and selected VOCs (e.g., methane, acetone, methylene chloride, and ethylbenzene) in air. The Phase II effort will further optimize this technology and improve its efficiency. It will be designed to interface with both TCCS and VPCAR. Its incorporation would eliminate the high-temperature catalytic reactors in the two systems, and facilitate a decrease in size or total elimination of the intensive resupply of activated carbon for adsorbent beds. This would result in significant savings in launch mass and cost for long duration missions and a reduction in power requirements. It also has great potential to be scaled to various applications and/or incorporated into other life support systems for streamlined air purification.
Long duration spaceflight and exploration missions will require complex operations and demanding tasks. Success will therefore depend on the knowledge and flexibility of the crew and the critical tools at their disposal. The purpose of this Phase II project is to develop a software tool that combines intelligent tutoring (or logic) with highly interactive 3D simulation software to create an on-demand situational training and operations support system. The platform will include a user interface that allows subject matter experts ? not programmers - to author the logic and intelligent portion of each simulation in a non-programming environment for more cost effective training systems development. The project includes the creation of two new application program interfaces (API) an XML schema and several new Java functions to allow for communication between the logic engine software and the 3D scene. A menu-driven authoring interface will then be created. The feasibility of the system was determined in the Phase I project, and demonstrated with a 3D simulated NASA EVA decontamination trainer. For Phase II, a prototype of the system will be created for a current NASA scenario-based training system to test the commercial-readiness of the authoring tool.
The NLNS software developed in phase I is a robust and user-friendly environment that NASA researchers can use to customize the latest HHT technologies for their applications in astrophysics, earth sciences, and exploration. The proposed technology includes the latest discoveries and inventions not available in the state-of-the-art. Its taxonomy includes gravitational sensors and sources, expert systems, portable data analysis tools, software development environments, and software tools for distributed analysis and simulation. The Hilbert-Huang Transform (HHT) and related analysis technologies were successful in detecting non-linear and transient LISA-signal components of very small magnitude with respect to the signal noise. Other types of NLNS analyses will include de-noising (filtering), spectral analysis, reconstruction, and registration, potentially extended to two-dimensional data. The proposed research and development team has participated in the latest cycle of technology development related to the HHT at the theoretical, implementation, and application levels. Not only will the creation of the proposed software contribute to the detection of gravitational wave signals (for both LIGO and LISA data) or understanding patterns of climate change temperature records from ice cores or monitoring structural dynamics, but also in other non-linear and non-stationary applications within and outside NASA's mission.
Purpose of this effort was to offer a novel solution to the pressing need for radiation tolerant memory for the demanding satellite and space probe worldwide community. The effort included radiation testing of the Ferro Electric Random Access (FRAM) memory developed under NASA/JPL contract NNG04CA25C, and the design of stacked versions resulting in up to 16Mb of storage in a footprint smaller than a standard TSOP. The work done resulted in a number of tested samples of 2Mb FRAM die fabricated using the 0.35 um process at Fujitsu, and designed by Cellis Semiconductor. The packaged parts were electrically tested then subjected to radiation testing. The enclosed radiation test program conducted and the successful results are contained herein. For higher density configurations, a preliminary design of stacks in 2, 4, and 8 high die was done using our 5Z Ball Stack&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt; technology, offering a total of up to 16Mb of addressable memory.
Development of an advanced composite bipolar plate is proposed for a unitized regenerative fuel cell and electrolyzer system that operates on pure feed streams (H2/O2 and water, respectively).  The composite bipolar plate can greatly simplify "closed-loop" unitized fuel cell/electrolyzer power systems, as it eliminates the need for saturators, a second stack and water/gas phase separation.  It provides a substantial system improvement over presently used alkaline systems in that it allows for simple high pressure operation with a high differential pressure.  Additionally, it allows for dead-ended H2 and O2 feed for the fuel cell, eliminating parasitic pumping losses required for water removal.  Phase I demonstrated operation of a composite bipolar plate-based fuel cell and electrolyzers, and quantified the composite bipolar plate transport and mechanical properties required for system design.  In Phase II a full size unitized composite bipolar plate designed will be designed for high pressure (&gt;1000 psi) operation.  In addition a full-size (2kW) stack and support system will be designed.
This SBIR addresses the problem that current V&amp;V technology provides component guarantees, but does not do well on system properties.  Human acceptance of autonomy hinges on trusting system-level behavior. The goal is to develop technology to verify system properties for high-level autonomous control of complex systems operating in rich and unpredictable environments. The System-Level Autonomy Trust Enabler (SLATE) applies constraint-based models and reasoning to support incremental modifications necessary for system-level V&amp;V of fixed and reconfigurable systems, given component-level guarantees. The significance of this innovation is to enable trusted high-level autonomous control systems across a wide range of critical applications, including manned and unmanned spacecraft, rovers, and habitats. If successful, this will simplify the process of control system design, maintenance, and reconfiguration in response to changes in the environment, the system being controlled, or the mission profile.  Phase I addressed SLATE feasibility for requirements representation and reasoning.  A TRL-4 proof-of-concept prototype on a multi-level robotic control system, implementing a surface robotics exploration mission, demonstrated that SLATE is feasible in practice. Phase II will develop an application-specific version and provide a user interface, improve performance and reasoning, and demonstrate operation on a NASA application.
In Phase II of this SBIR, Harmonic Devices (HDI) proposes to develop miniaturized MEMS filters at UHF, S-band and Ka-band to address the requirements of NASA's next-generation software defined EVA radio.  The filters are a key enabler for this highly reconfigurable, fault tolerant, cell-phone sized EVA radio.

For UHF and S-band, HDI will employ its proprietary contour-mode aluminum nitride MEMS piezoelectric resonator technology.  Processed on silicon substrates, the resonators have their natural frequency defined by the lateral, in-plane dimensions of the structure.  This feature enables the definition of different frequencies directly at the CAD layout level.  Thus, the low insertion loss UHF and S-band filters can be monolithically integrated into a single chip.  For the Ka-band, HDI will employ coaxial 3D MEMS interdigital filters that exhibit low insertion and ripple in a miniaturized form factor.  Several US companies have expressed a keen interest in HDI's technology.  

In Phase I, HDI successfully proved the feasibility of employing the proposed UHF, S-band, and Ka-band filters in NASA's software defined EVA radio through simulation and microfabrication pilot studies.  The filters can be monolithically integrated onto the same silicon substrate, resulting in substantial savings in board space.  The objective of Phase II is to build the filter prototypes and deliver them to NASA for testing.  The results of the Phase I feasibility study convincingly justify Phase II continuation.
Reaction wheel mechanical noise is one of the largest sources of disturbance forcing on space-based observatories. Such noise arises from mass imbalance, bearing imperfections, and other sources. It takes the form of a number of discrete harmonics of the wheel speed, often also with a broadband noise component. Jitter problems can arise when harmonics sweep across observatory modes, and can be exacerbated by gyroscopically coupled spin-rate-dependent wheel structural modes that dynamically amplify the tonal and broadband disturbances. For a well-balanced wheel, higher harmonic forces can be on the same order as the fundamental, therefore when there is a jitter problem it can occur at very low wheel speed. These higher harmonics are generally less well-characterized than the fundamental.

The proposed Reaction Wheel Disturbance Model Extraction Software (RWDMES) is a tool for fitting a hybrid physical/empirical model to wheel induced-vibration data. The physical model captures the wheel structure including gyroscopic effects, while the empirical model captures the harmonic forcing and broadband noise. The Phase I effort demonstrated the ability to fit a highly accurate harmonic/broadband/structural model, including 43 harmonics up to 14.63 times the fundamental, to measured wheel disturbance data in a point-and-click environment in about 2 hours. The benefits of the technology include reduced program effort to produce wheel disturbance models, leading to more accurate jitter prediction earlier in a mission. This in turn allows jitter problems to be mitigated at the design stage when changes are relatively inexpensive.
Advanced Situation Awareness Technologies (ASAT) will facilitate exploration of the moon surface, and other planetary bodies.  This powerful technology will also find application in the commercial sector, particularly submersible vehicle operation.  ASAT will fuse video and other sensor technologies, with geographic databases to maximize vehicle operator situation awareness, and enhance the navigation state of the guidance and control system.  During previous research and development activities RIS invented a method to use video camera data to enhance vehicle attitude estimation from gyroscopic inertial navigation systems.  In non-earth environments, the absence of a strong reference field increases the problem of INS drift, and decreases operator situation awareness as a consequence.  RIS will develope technology which enhances navigation and situation awareness in these challenging environments.
A novel urine pretreatment that will prevent biological growth or chemical instabilities in urine without using hazardous chemicals is proposed.  Untreated urine fosters biological growth, ammonia generation, creation of bio-solids, and inorganic precipitates, which foul water and air reclamation hardware.  The current Russian system employs hexavalent chromium, a strong oxidant and carcinogen, and sulfuric acid to stabilize urine, while the American system utilizes potassium monopersulfate, another strong oxidant, sulfuric acid, and potassium benzoate.  Urine stabilized in these respective manners requires triple and double containment, and chemical storage and handling become problematic due to the hazardous nature and low pH (1.3 ?2.6) of these chemicals.  These requirements significantly increase urine pretreatment ESM.  The proposed pretreatment system consists of a simple flow-through Solid Phase Acid (SPA) bed containing sparingly soluble transition metal oxide particles for pH control, which combined with a soluble non-oxidizing biocide will provide long-term urine stabilization.  This innovative system fulfills an unmet need for safe, efficient and automated urine pretreatment for current and future NASA missions.  The Phase I effort will demonstrate the feasibility of this novel approach.  The Phase II project will fully develop the process, including the design and testing of deliverable hardware for urine pretreatment.
We propose new concepts for developing components for high performance space based Lidar systems. While it is generally recognized that photonic crystal  fiber technology can extend the performance range of fiber laser based sources these fibers are considered by many to be incompatible with complementary component technology such as fused couplers and pump combiners. Integration of these fibers into real systems for deployment either in space or terrestrial systems is hindered by the very structure which brings the advantage in effective area and nonlinearity mitigation. The problem is related to the air holes which provide guidance for both pump and signal. Our proposal centers not on developing sophisticated new component manufacturing techniques but rather on modifying the micro-structured gain fiber itself to retain the desirable advantages while eliminating the problems associated with component development.  This can be achieved by use of only refractive index micro-structuring to create an all-solid structure with index control an order of magnitude better than direct deposition techniques. In the phase I program we will demonstrate an all solid micro-structured gain fiber with effective area &gt;5005m2, as well as showing the feasibility of fabricating compatible tap couplers and pump combiners.
Helium plays several critical rolls in spacecraft propulsion.  High pressure helium is commonly used to pressurize propellant fuel tanks.  Helium cryocoolers can be used to sub-cool and thereby densify cryogenic propellants such as liquid hydrogen (LH2) and liquid oxygen (LO2).  The use of densified cryogenic propellants can reduce the gross payload weight of a launch vehicle by up to 20&#37;, or increase payload capability.  Helium compressors are critical components for cryogenic propellant storage and distribution systems, whether used in cryocoolers for densification or to compress gaseous helium for propellant pressurization.  Regenerative compressor technology can serve high head, low flow helium pressurization applications in a compact form with high reliability.  Pressure ratios on the order of 3:1 per impeller-stage are commercially available. Non-lubricated gas-bearing supported prototypes have been successfully demonstrated.  However, even state-of-the-art prototype regenerative compressors are limited to efficiencies of about 55&#37;.  This was achieved using aerodynamic rotor blades rather than the straight radial blades previously used.  Commercially available regenerative compressors with straight vaned rotors operate at much lower efficiency.  An innovation is proposed that promises to improve the efficiency of regenerative compressors well beyond the current state of the art.
We propose to design a general purpose reconfigurable wide bandwidth spectrometer
for use in NASA's passive microwave missions, deep space network and radio astronomy. 
In Phase I, we will design and build a low power, low cost real time FPGA based 
spectrometer board that will analyze a 3 GHz bandwidth signal with 16,384 channels.  
Utilizing 3 Gsample/sec 8 bit ADC's and Xilinx Virtex 4 FPGA's, the proposed spectrometer
can also be configured to analyze a pair of signals with 1.5 GHz bandwidth each, 
or four signals of 750 MHz bandwidth each.   A Polyphase Filter Bank (PFB) will be 
implemented instead of a large FFT, because the PFB has excellent out of band rejection ($&gt; 80$ dB),  
preventing strong RFI from contaminating adjacent bands.
In Phase II, we will space qualify the spectrometer, provide significantly higher bandwidth 
capabilities, and add high speed output, and consider an ASIC implementation for lower-power space-based applications. 
Techne instrumentation has flown on Rosetta, PERSI, and several soundong rockets.
Our goal is to adapt the peer?to?peer technology (P2P), which has been overwhelmingly successful in popular content distribution, as the basis for development of scientific collaboratory called Scienti&amp;#64257;c Peer Network (SciPerNet), pronounced Cyper?Net.  In contrast to P2P networks such as Gnutella, Bit Torrent, and others, SciPerNet incorporates three design elements that are critical to application of P2P for scientific purposes (Figure 1):

?	User Authentication

?	Data Integrity Validation

?	Reliable Searching

In order to make SciPerNet an effective tool for distributed collaboration, it will also have built-in features (Figure 2) for creation and management of communities, access to authenticated list of scientists from different professional organizations such as American Physical Society, management and sharing of files, blogs and whiteboarding.  It will also provide a number of novel features such as (i) Profiler which replaces the need to create personalized websites, (ii) searching documents for query hits rather than the usual &amp;#64257;le name only, (iii) U-publish which enables "publishing" scientific papers and their supplementary materials, and EmailAttacher which works by dragging a file into an email utility but rather than attaching and sending the file, it simply creates a link to the folder where the file resides with the instructions for the user on the other end to retrieve it.
Current and upcoming NASA space links require both highly reliable low-rate communications links supporting critical TT&amp;C, ranging and voice services and highly efficient High-data rate links supporting Mission or Payload Data. Investing in re-usable elements, such as Programmable Communications Radios, for ground and flight data handling that are capable of receiving both kinds of links would address current Communication and Navigation needs without foregoing future capabilities. 

Additionally, the development, test, and optimization of new algorithms and modulation schemes require a high-speed platform able to be reconfigured as needed. Such a product would feature an open and modular architecture, allowing users to independently load and route custom code blocks. A modular and flexible High Rate Receiver Backbone (HRRB) would allow customization of some processing firmware and should accommodate advances in deployed link formats more easily than units "factory loaded" for particular signal types.

SRI's Phase 1 SBIR researched, developed an architecture and test bed, and coded and tested an initial set of waveforms as a baseline for a Programmable High-rate Multi-mission Receiver. The results of this effort showed the technical and commercial viability of such a unit. The proposed Phase 2 effort will extend this innovation by developing and implementing an IF front end, refining and extending the performance of the ADC/DAC sections and hardware architecture, extending the architecture to support programmable and configurable decoding processing capacity, testing performance with both extended development support modulators/coders as well as other available high-rate modulators, and delivering a realized HRRB for further NASA use. Additional market segmentation, analysis, and prospect identification would be conducted in preparation for either a Phase 3 or independent SRI development of a market-ready Programmable High-rate Multi-mission Receiver (PHMR).
Lithium-ion (Li-ion) batteries are attractive candidates for use as power sources in aerospace applications because they have high specific energy, energy density and long cycle life. However, conventional Li-ion batteries experience loss of capacity and increased impedance and poor cycle life when they are charged/discharged at high rates over C-rate. These problems are magnified at low temperature operation. The limitations in the high rate capability of Li-ion batteries are mainly caused by slow solid-state diffusion of Li+ within the electrode materials Yardney/Lithion Inc., the world leader in cutting edge Li-ion battery technology proposes to investigate new non-toxic nano-engineered electrodes that significantly shortens the Li+ diffusion length within the electrode materials and increases the rate capability of Li-ion batteries. The goal of this Phase II project is to manufacture rapid recharge Li-ion battery for aerospace application. Yardney will manufacture 5 prototype cells capable of recharge at less than 15 min at room temperature. During the phase I we found that the nanoengineered anode showed excellent rate capabilities compared to planar electrode. Nanoarchitectured current collector provides higher safety due to large surface area contact with the active material and that acts as heat sink in high rate applications and also lower impedance.
In response to NASA's need to develop advanced nanostructured thermolectric materials, UTRON is proposing an innovative high pressure powder consolidation manufacturing to fabricate near net shape and net shape thermolectric components with improved densification and properties than possible conventional powder metallurgical methods. Potential candidate materials such as Tellurides, TAGs and SiGe micro/nano composites will be developed at high compaction pressures (150 tsi) using select geometries/shapes and optimized disk samples will be characterized for geometrical, shrinkage, mechanical, microstructure/microchemistry and thermolectric properties. The proposed work has been planned in close subcontract/collaboration with Teledyne and Auburn University-Space Research Institute. Other advanced nanocomposite alloys and scaling up to fabricate complex geometries will be done in Phase II.
As space missions become more complex and as mission demands increase, robots, human-robot mixed initiative teams and software autonomy applications are needed to provide increasing levels of support to the mission and to Astronauts. Whatever the task, robot teams will need to interact with Astronauts and possibly Mission Control. There is a need for cooperation and communication among all autonomous entities. Robotic intelligence is required in at least four areas: two-way communication with humans, safety awareness, self-monitoring, and self-maintenance. Robot teams will need to interact with Astronauts concerning the state of their hardware. They may need to interact with humans in order to insure human safety.  In Phase 1, we developed an initial HSI Framework (HSIF) to structure protocol-driven interactions (conversations) among Astronauts and multiple-component autonomous systems (soft-bot systems (SBS)). In Phase 2, we extend our HSI framework, with new protocol development that will support interactions among {human-robot team}, {SBS? robot}, {human? robot} and {SBS- human ? robot team}. In Phase 2, a protocol library will be developed. Scenarios involving interactions among humans, robot teams and soft-bot systems will be simulated using the protocol library. The protocol library will be integrated with robotic software and implemented on a hardware (robot) platform.
The key innovation in this effort is the development of a decision support tool for distributed air-ground scheduling sequencing, spacing and  merging of aircraft in the terminal airspace, and the development of modeling and simulation  testbed that will enable the evaluation of NAS wide impacts of technologies related to Airspace Super Dense Operations in the Terminal Airspace. The SBIR will primarily focus on developing algorithms and a  simulation testbed that will enable the modeling and fast-time simulation of simultaneous sequencing, spacing  merging and de-confliction in terminal airspace, reduced arrival spacing (with altitude offset/co-altitude) for very closely spaced parallel runways at OEP airports (Super Dense Airports Concepts), High density corridors (tubes) characterized by parallel tracks and delegation of separation responsibility to the flight deck via CDTI and ADS-B and Rerouting for mitigation of weather impacts  to terminal area operations The tesbed will be built on top of NASA's Airspace Concept Evaluation System (ACES).  While ACES does provide gate to gate simulation capability of the NAS, it currently does not include the modeling and simulation support for  spacing and merging related concepts in the terminal airspace. This research effort is a direction in meeting this technology need.
Building on recent advances in formal agent specification, protocol composition, model composers, and visualization capabilities provided by development environments such as eclipse, the key innovation in this effort is the development of an agent model composition toolkit that will enable NASA ACES  users to design and compose agents, activities, and models to meet specific design requirements. From a users perspective the front end of the toolkit will be very similar in spirit to a Simulink&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt; or a Matrix-X&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt; where users can drag and drop from a library of models, interconnect the inputs and outputs of these models, and run a simulation. In addition to composing models, a key feature provided by this toolkit is a family of "physical language specific adaptors" that will allow users to import domain models written in other languages such as Matlab&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt;. Integral to the Phase II effort will enhancements to the ACES-X, TAP architecture to enable plug-n-play of detailed 4-D trajectories in the terminal area, the development of a Command and Control framework for ACES-X and the development of  a library of C2 models to enhance the capabilities of the ACES-X TAP.
Fault detection and isolation (FDI) in spacecraft's electrical power system (EPS) has always received special attention.  However, the power systems health management techniques have generally been limited to the energy sources and storage elements.  Furthermore, these functions have been performed off-line by mission planners for the sole purpose of estimating future energy availability and effective device lifetime.  As new programs and vehicles developed for space exploration, degradation analysis and prognostics in spacecraft EPS are becoming key issues for safety and success of these missions.
QSI propose a novel approach to utilize ISHM decisions to estimate power generation, storage and delivery capabilities, and subsequently using the information for generating optimal reactive mission plans to maximize the mission success probability.  The key innovations in the proposed effort are 1). Utilization of diagnostic, prognostic, and recovery decisions to estimate the power supply capability of a spacecraft EPS and assess its reliability; 2). Development of an automated process to optimally utilize the available power supply capability with consideration for maximizing mission success probability; 3). Generation of optimal reconfiguration options and concomitant control actions for spacecraft EPS by using the onboard reactive planner and universal executive.
Supercomputing plays a major role in many areas of science and engineering, and it has had tremendous impact for decades in areas such as aerospace, defense, energy, finance, and telecommunications?to name just a few.  Supercomputing enables many of our most important high-tech tools, and nowhere is it more important than at NASA, where attaining increased computing speed and performance at lower costs are constant objectives.  The goal of this multi-phase SBIR project is exactly that?to develop, validate, and commercialize next-generation supercomputing capabilities that provide NASA and other government/commercial users with massive increases in speed at minimal cost and with reduced energy requirements and  significant "footprint" efficiency.
In Phase I of this NASA SBIR project, Accelogic successfully demonstrated the feasibility of developing the world's first reconfigurable computing linear equation (banded) solver for large-scale computing problems?such as those seen in aerospace applications?with greatly increased speed using an FPGA chip.  The speed attained was equivalent to 240 CPU's per FPGA chip for banded systems?which represents nearly a 60x computing speedup (surpassing the 50x Phase I target).  Accelogic's Phase I success sets the stage for a Phase II effort focused on prototyping/validating an initial supercomputing acceleration product.  The Phase II technical goal is to demonstrate the potential for 1,000x speedup.  
During Phase I, Accelogic has proven it is ideally positioned to capitalize upon recent advances in reconfigurable computing?many of which were attained by Accelogic's own experts.  Applications for the products targeted by this project include many that are of interest to NASA, DOD, DOE, and many commercial entities.  Based on Phase I results and the clear commercial potential, Accelogic has obtained interest/commitment letters from well-established commercial vendors and key NASA contractors, including Silicon Graphics.
NextGen Aeronautics, after achieving promising results in Phase I, is proposing a simple yet powerful damage identification technique for honeycomb advanced composite structures in Phase II. The proposed Phase II program is focused to achieve at least TRL of 5 and quickly commercialize technology in Phase III. The specific objectives are: 1) Improve Raleigh ?Lamb (RL) wave based statistical detection technology; 2) Reduce NDE time by field usable automated data collection; 3) Develop end-to-end system software; 4) Develop detailed early commercialization plan. The Phase II development will provide a significant improvement in functionality of the system and put strong emphasis on process automation. NextGen is pursuing teaming arrangement with Boeing and Northrop Grumman to test the proposed system in realistic environment. During Phase I, the NextGen team established feasibility of the proposed system by evaluating it on a honeycomb plate, a common construction used in many secondary structures of aircraft. NextGen has chosen an outstanding team that has considerable prior experience, an in-depth understanding of damage modes in advanced composite structures, and comprehensive knowledge of damage detection techniques. Our team's combined expertise in health monitoring systems and our relationship with system integrators will ensure near-term technology transition.
Intelligent Light, the makers of the FIELDVIEW CFD post-processing software, in response to NASA SBIR Phase 2 solicitation, proposes an effort that addresses A2.10 Rotorcraft-Acoustics. The proposed work shall result in a specialized prototype post-processing system designed for large rotorcraft acoustics problems. This system is designated as RCAAPS ? Rotorcraft Computational Aero-Acoustics Post-processing System. It is designed to expedite the exploration of large transient datasets that result from multi-physics based (i.e. Large-Eddy Simulation with aeroelasticity and acoustics) simulations as it pertains to rotorcraft performance predictions especially maneuver. It consists of specially configured hardware, flow solver, acoustics and post-processing software enhanced to take advantage of contemporary SMP computer clusters during both compute and I/O. The prototype system developed under this SBIR will revolutionize the way investigators explore large datasets and allows for more complete and thorough use of the complete CFD and acoustics data.
To address the NASA need for innovative optical technique for visualization and tracking of space vehicles during launch and landing operations, Light Prescriptions Innovators, LLC proposes to develop a Hyperspectral Imager - Tracker. The Hyperspectral Imager - Tracker architecture is based on an innovative and only recently developed concept in imaging optics. This innovative architecture will give the LPI Hyperspectral Imager - Tracker the possibility of simultaneously collecting the spectral band images (hyperspectral cube) to operate with high light-gathering power and high magnification. The innovative Adaptive Spectral Filtering algorithms will efficiently increase the contrast of low contrast scenes. In phase I LPI will analyze the device design for its spectral filtering and imaging efficiency and assemble and test a proof-of-concept prototype to demonstrate feasibility. In Phase II a full scale engineering prototype will be developed and tested.
Durable, creep-resistant ceramic composites are necessary to meet the increased operating temperatures targeted for advanced turbine engines. Higher operating temperatures result in improved performance, fuel savings (higher efficiency) and reduced pollution.  Silicon melt infiltrated ceramic composites have been identified as having a 2400F maximum use temperature, which does not take advantage of the highest temperature capability of the newest generation of near stoichiometric SiC fibers.  Conversely ceramic composites containing a SiC matrix derived from chemical vapor infiltration have sufficient stability to take full advantage of the creep resistance of the fibers.  For many applications, no existing matrix system for SiC-reinforced composites has sufficient through-thickness thermal conductivity at elevated temperatures to result in low thermally induced stresses; such that longer service life at higher temperatures can be achieved.  This Phase I work will demonstrate a higher temperature melt infiltrated matrix that is stable to 2950F, and thus allows the full temperature capability of the latest generation SiC fiber reinforcements to be used.  This higher temperature capability is combined with a significantly higher predicted elevated temperature thermal conductivity for the ceramic composite, which will reduce the thermally induced stresses on the material that often dominate the stress state on the material.  The Phase I effort will produce ceramic composites with this higher temperature melt infiltrated matrix and perform both thermal and mechanical property evaluations at ambient and elevated temperatures to demonstrate the benefits of the system.
Agiltron together with Prof. Michael Rubner's group at MIT is developing a new family of nanoporous, low refractive index coatings for next generation NASA UV anti-reflection (AR) application on large plastic optics. The initial application is intended for 2.5 m diameter PMMA Fresnel lenses which NASA anaticipates as part of the EUSO mission cosmic ray telescope.  The new thin film technology combines MIT advances in nano-structured, self-assembled, low index multilayer structures with Agiltron's recently developed mist deposition process, a method for applying large area thin films at low temperature with precise layer thickness control. The proposed UV AR coatings consist of inter-connected oxide nanoparticles in the form of a 3D nanoporous network able to produce stable films with refractive indices as low as 1.1 and high transparency in the visible - UV. In Phase I of this program we successfully demonstrated AR coatings on PMMA substrates with UV reflectance less than 1&#37; at 300-400 nm (compared to 5&#37; for bare PMMA substrates). In Phase II, Agiltron intends to further develop the coatings to a higher technical readiness level (TRL) by improving the robustness and abrasion resistance of the films and engineering the deposition techniques to enable multilayer coatings of tuned refractive index (graded index) for broader band AR performance. By the end of Phase II, nanoporous films deposited by the mist process will possess high transparency, good environmental stability, and excellent abrasion resistance and mechanical integrity. The material can be applied conformally on large area glass and plastic substrates (polycarbonate, PMMA) using low annealing temperatures. Mist deposition is fundamentally inexpensive and may have commercial applications to the plastic optics industry for eyeglasses or cellphone camera lenses.
For over 15 years, FMW Composite Systems has developed Metal Matrix Composite manufacturing methodologies for fabricating silicon-carbide-fiber-reinforced titanium components, also known as Titanium Matrix Composites (TMC), for the aerospace industry. These efforts have resulted in successfully flight qualifying three TMC components, including a piston rod used in the divergent exhaust nozzle actuator for the Pratt &amp; Whitney F119 engine (F-22), and two exhaust nozzle actuator links for the GE F110 engine (F-16). TMC weight savings over the monolithic titanium and steel components being replaced typically varies from 35 to 45&#37; depending upon the application load requirements. The relatively low density of TMC (10&#37; lower than Titanium) combined with its excellent mechanical behavior, results in significantly higher specific static properties than conventional material systems. Additionally, creep resistance of TMC is dramatically enhanced over monolithic titanium due to the presence of the SiC fibers, which do not exhibit discernible creep at the temperature regime of interest. Currently, FMW is working with closely with the aerospace industry to develop TMC structural components for both Military and Commercial airframe applications. FMW proposes to use this same technology to work with the Jet Propulsion Lab to develop a TMC pressure vessel for the Venus Lander mission.
The objective in this project is the development of a monochromatic x-ray source for a small x-ray Photoelectron Spectrometer (XPS) suitable for NASA missions.  This instrument will allow in situ elemental and chemical state measurements in off-earth NASA missions.  The need for these measurements is for understanding resource availability, toxicity, and chemical issues like oxidants on Mars.  The small XPS developed in a previous SBIR, NNC04CA20C, has a mass of 15 Kg and will reduce to 7 kg as refined for flight.  It will operate with about 10 watts.  This tool needs a monochromatic x-ray source for the capability to understand the chemistries expected on NASA missions as called out in Future Space Science Enterprise (SSE) missions.  
In Phase I for this proposal we designed a combination of sources that will accomplish this need. It uses both a monochromatic and a non-monochromatic x-ray source to provide the quality data needed at a data rate suitable for potential missions. It uses low power, has a small mass and has some redundancy to reduce risk.
Non-NASA applications will be process monitoring for semiconductor, polymer films and bioprocesses manufacturing.  This application will be made available by the small size
This proposal is for a flexible navigation system for deep space operations that does not require 
GPS measurements. The navigation solution is computed using an Unscented Kalman Filter that 
can accept any combination of range, range-rate, planet chordwidth, and angle measurements using any celestial object. The UKF employs a full nonlinear dynamical model of the orbit including gravity models and disturbance models. The filter will estimate both states and parameters. The integrated system employs a sensor measures solar chordwidths and angles between planets, stars and the sun vector.

The proposed sensor is is called the Twin Quad Sensor (TQS). Two independently gimbaled telescopes  each with a zoom lens comprise the sensor. The sensor includes redundant processors and data networks to provide a high degree of fault tolerance in a single package.  The focal plane of each telescope uses four 256 by 256 pixel arrays. These are used to measure the chord width of the Sun, angles between planets and angles to stars. In addition each telescope can be used independently and the angles between planets or to stars can be measured by high accuracy angle resolvers.
Lightweight, high performance thermal insulation is critical to NASA's next generation Exploration spacecraft. Zero or low cryogenic propellant boiloff is required during extended missions and lengthy on-orbit times. Multilayer insulation (MLI) is currently the insulation of choice for cryotank insulation. MLI's high vacuum performance exceeds alternative insulations by a factor of ten.  However, heat flow through MLI is usually the largest heat leak in cryogenic systems, so improvements in thermal performance are desirable. Integrated Multi-Layer Insulation (IMLI) is an innovative new technology using a micro-molded polymer substructure integrated with radiation barriers to provide an ultra-high performance thermal insulation system. 

IMLI was proven a viable concept in Phase I work, reaching TRL4 with component validation in the laboratory. Prototypes were built and tested, demonstrating equal to lower thermal conductivity than MLI, and layers attached to each other in a snap-together assembly with controlled layer spacing. The Phase I IMLI prototype had a thermal conductivity of 1.8 W/m2, with the Celcon polymer used for these prototypes still outgassing. The IMLI thermal conductivity was calculated to be 63&#37; that of MLI, which would provide improved long term cryogenic propellant storage. 

This improved insulation can provide lower thermal conductivity, vacuum compatibility, layers inherently attached to each other that support themselves, and efficient assembly. IMLI may also provide inherent structural benefits, including improved strength and integrity over current MLI.

This proposal is to further develop IMLI toward commercialization. Tasks proposed include a next generation design improving on what was learned in Phase I, for material selection, fabrication methods for seams and corners including interleaving and layer thermal matching, and building and testing prototypes in realistic environments such as a 500 liter cryotank.
This proposal is for funding to continue development of an alternative beam combiner for Stellar Imager (SI), a 30-aperture, interferometric telescope chosen as one of fifteen Vision Missions.  Called the Spatial Frequency Remapper, SFR, it trades the large field of view of a Fizeau design for simultaneous observations at multiple wavelengths.  Since SI does not require a large field, SFR, is a clearly better design.  It can produce better images and allows tight control requirements to be relaxed.  The SFR is also the heart of a full-aperture interferometric imaging system that will dramatically improve the performance of AO equipped telescopes.

The Phase I study was remarkably successful.  The SFR design was rejected during the Vision Study because of its perceived optical complexity.  That concern was retired; the design is robust, even with many apertures.  It needs only three optical surfaces, down from the five-surface design of the Vision Study.  Tolerances are not tight.  The inputs can be divided between combiners, further simplifying the optics and data flow with negligible effect on mission performance.

The search for better sparse-aperture configurations worked.  The search was sped up 1000 fold, enabling the discovery of the 30-aperture configurations needed for SI.

The main commercial application, improving images from AO equipped telescopes, requires a seemingly impossible to build optical fiber interface.  We found an alternative assembly procedure that is standing up well to detailed study.  A data reduction technique was developed that should improve sensitivity by a factor of 1000, increasing the range of possible applications.  The configuration search found ways to divide a full-aperture into the multiple configurations, tying off another loose thread in the design.

Finally, a testbed and prototyping plan was developed since in our view the success of the Phase I study clearly supports continuing the development of this technology.
To meet the increasing power demand of today's spacecraft systems, an integrated power electronics system capable of interfacing, and simultaneously controlling, three power ports is proposed in this project. This new proposed power electronic architecture employs a single-stage power topology, thus allowing cost-effective control of power flow with improved efficiency, power density, and reliability.

The project is developing an innovative, dc-dc converter which can effectively manage the interface of a source, a load, and an energy storage function within a single-stage, three-port topology.  Modern advances in digital control, in conjunction with a novel power processing concept make this logical next-step possible.

This unique topology and controller function together to realize three power processing paths which simultaneously utilize the power devices, allowing increased functionality while promising reduced losses and enhanced power densities.

Control objectives include battery charge regulation, solar array peak power tracking, and/or load voltage regulation. 

The Phase I efforts completed the preliminary analysis and the proof-of- concept prototyping. A demonstration test was successfully conducted substantiating feasibility.

Phase II will focus on system level control in order to  demonstrate the concept in a relevant application with a solar array source, a lithium-Ion battery, and an electronic load bank as the bus.
Shape Memory Alloys (SMAs) are metal alloys (of Nickel-Titanium, for example) that can change their shape when heated. When drawn and processed in wire form, the shape change is an aggressive contraction, with useable lifetimes of millions of cycles. Despite this fact, SMAs have largely been a scientific curiosity, finding very little commercial use as actuators since their discovery over 30 years ago. The apparent lack of practical application may be attributable to their low recoverable strain (~4&#37; of total wire length). MIGA Motor Company has numerous international patents covering Displacement Multiplication (DM) techniques that allow us to package large strokes in highly compact, lightweight packages. Our current commercially available electric linear actuators provide 1/2" of stroke with 4.5 pounds of output force. We propose to develop several high force variants of our DM designs, allowing up to 32 lbf (high cycle count) or 48 lbf (hundreds of cycles) in a device weighing less than 2 ounces. The manufacturing techniques that we have developed in manufacturing the DM actuators have paved the way to expansion into the high force realm: high reliability wire attachment methods, use of high temperature thermoplastics, protected or over-molded precision chemically-etched stainless-steel stages, and various load-sharing techniques have enabled these powerful actuators to finally become a reality.
A long-term center goal at NASA's John C. Stennis Space Center (SSC) is the formulation and implementation of a framework for an intelligent rocket test facility (IRTF). The IRTF is to provide reliable, high-confidence measurements for a variety of propulsion test articles. Smart sensor components play key roles in providing the distributed intelligence needed to perform diagnosis of its overall health and to further develop the Integrated System Health Management (ISHM), which has been identified as a key component to design exploration systems for the mission to go back to the Moon and explore Mars. Requirements to achieve this mission include improvements in safety, life-cycle costs, and autonomous operation of exploration systems. The objective of the Phase II effort is to complete the development of the sensor fusion based on the architecture that was presented in Phase I. Specifically, we intend to succeed in: (1) Providing health condition monitoring capability at the intelligent transceiver; (2) Providing analytic and diagnostic intelligence at the intelligent transceiver; (3) Enhancing IEEE 1451.x based standard for sensor data management and distributions; (4) Providing appropriate communications protocols to enable complex interactions to support timely and high quality flow of information among the system elements.
We propose to build and evaluate NDIR Analyzers that can be used to observe Eddy Covariance Flux and Absolute Dry Mole Fraction of CO2 from stationary and airborne platforms for a great range of environments. Both open- and close-path analyzers are to be evaluated. Phase I succeeded in building a fast CO2 analyzer with 100 Hz modulation frequency and sensitivity within a factor of two of the target value of 100 ppb. For Phase II, we propose upgrades to the technology that are designed to reach that target sensitivity. We are further proposing individual projects within restricted airspace that will demonstrate the potential of the technologies for significant kinds of observations for Observational Climate Change. Two robotic platforms are to be utilized, the Unmanned Airborne Vehicle (UAV) and The Portable Tower Observatory (PTO). The PTO will provide fluxes and eddy spectroscopy of CO2. The UAV will give CO2 eddy spectroscopy that can be compared for a range of practical heights (5- 30 m) of the PTO. Samples of air are to be dried, and the site is chosen to minimize the impact of H2O vapor on this first deployment of the technologies.
Analog-to-digital converters (ADCs) are the key components for digitizing high-speed analog data in modern data acquisition systems, which is a critical part of sensor/detector array readout electronics widely used by NASA. Unfortunately, commercially available ADCs consume high power and feature high system latency and poor linearity; especially at input bandwidths larger than 1GHz. In addition, these ADCs are not radiation tolerant due to the utilized process technologies and thus are susceptible to harmful total ionization dose and single event upset effects. Thus, they do not satisfy NASA's low-power, radiation tolerant, and high bandwidth (&gt;20GHz) requirements. In response to the described needs, we propose to develop a monolithic high input bandwidth, radiation tolerant analog-to-digital converter (HIBRA), which will be implemented into a sealed metal-ceramic microwave package with an FPGA-friendly parallel interface and will feature an improved radiation tolerance, high sampling rate, extremely high input bandwidth, and advanced functionality. The ADC will utilize ADSANTEC's high-speed current-mode logic library of Total Ionization Dose-tolerant-by-technology and proprietary architectural cells.  The fully functional ASIC will be fabricated in IBM SiGe technology at the end of Phase II.
Illuminex Corporation proposes a NASA Phase I SBIR project to develop high performance, lightweight, low-profile heat pipes with enhanced thermal transfer properties enabled by utilizing copper nanowire arrays as the wick material in the heat pipe. Thermal management is a critical issue for advanced electronic and optical systems as current cooling techniques are being rapidly outpaced by the heat load of new technologies. Superior thermal control technologies are needed both for NASA's science spacecraft components and commercial products such as computers and medical lasers. The incorporation of nano-structured materials in heat pipe manufacturing will allow the development of thermal management devices with increased heat dissipation efficiency and a reduced size and weight profile as compared to currently utilized cooling approaches. Illuminex will develop processes to engineer the nanowire wick directly onto the heat pipe package, and using this approach, it s envisioned that heat pipe systems can be manufactured directly into the housings of devices requiring advanced thermal management. This nanotechnology enabled miniaturization can be further size reduced to near the MEMS level for cooling micro-electronics and sensors. Phase II will lead to full commercialization and manufacturing of high performance, low profile, and lightweight heat pipes.
Creare proposes to develop a novel, laser-assisted, pre-finishing process for chemical vapor deposition (CVD) coated silicon-carbide ceramics.  Our innovation will enable the affordable single-point turning of CVD silicon carbide from a near-net shape blank to a pre-finished aspheric optic.  We will use our extensive experience and expertise in the advanced machining of ceramics to establish the parameter space for the production of high-quality, pre-finished aspheric optics from near-net shape blanks.  Our innovation has a material removal rate (MRR) that is two orders of magnitude higher than current pre-finishing options including diamond grinding, ductile-regime machining, reactive atom plasma processing, or standard laser micromachining.  In addition, our approach has demonstrated that these high MRRs can be achieved with no surface or sub-surface damage, which is key to minimizing the cost of the subsequent finishing operation.  Our novel solution is readily integrated with existing or new ultra-precision machine tools.  Thus, our innovation is effective, affordable, and flexible.
To address the NASA GSFC need for efficient UV photodetectors for NASA missions, such as the follow-on to FUV detectors of the Galaxy Evolution Explorer, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Silicon Microchannel-Plate-Based Large-Area UV detector (UV-Si-MCP).  It is based on a solar-blind, highly efficient GaN photocathode and POC's silicon microchannel plates (Si-MCPs). The high-quantum-efficiency, negative electron affinity GaN photocathodes will be fabricated directly on the entrance surface of the Si-MCP. This is possible because of the substrate's ability to withstand high temperatures and its compatibility with GaN application.  This enables us to meet NASA requirements for a UV detector with high sensitivity, resolution, and reliability. The UV-Si-MCP offers high quantum efficiency (50&#37;) and &gt;10^9 channels, for better detection of faint objects with improved spatial and spectral resolution.  In Phase I POC will demonstrate the feasibility of the UV-Si-MCP by fabricating and testing a preliminary prototype, exhibiting TRL-4. In Phase II POC will develop a fully functional (TRL-6) prototype with up to 10^9 readout channels and quantum efficiency up to 50&#37;. The demonstrated results will offer NASA capabilities to improve our understanding of the origin of the universe and its evolution to modern form.
This Small Business Innovation Research Phase I project concerns the development of a multi-wavelength monitor that will provide rapid, real-time measurement of the  average aerosol absorption coefficient in the parcel of sample air.  This monitor will employ Aerodyne's proprietary Cavity Attenuated Phase Shift spectroscopy technology in order to produce a far simpler, smaller,  lower cost alternative to more traditional instruments with no loss in sensitivity or accuracy.  A unique property of the proposed instrument is that it requires little or no calibration.  The Phase I work plan will focus on a proof-of-principle demonstration of the proposed technique tht compares its performance with a conventional particle absorbance monitor. The Phase II project will entail constructing a field-ready prototype using the information gained in the Phase I studies and deploying the sensor on various field missions undertaken by Aerodyne's particle measurement research group.  Aerosol particles affect the radiative balance of the earth directly, by scattering and absorbing solar and terrestrial radiation, and indirectly, by acting as cloud condensation nuclei.  The atmospheric loading of aerosols generated through human activities can exert an influence on the earth's radiation budget comparable in magnitude with greenhouse gases.  The uncertainties in the current understanding of aerosol direct and indirect forcing limit the ability to quantify human influences on climate change.
Advanced Materials Technology, Inc (AMTI) responds to the Topic X9
entitled &amp;quot;Propulsion and Propellant Storage&amp;quot; under subtopic
X9.01, &amp;quot;Long Term Cryogenic Propellant Storage, Management, and
Acquisition&amp;quot;. The proposed program will focus on developing new
multifunctional insulation materials that will impact cryogenic systems
for space transportation orbit transfer vehicles, space power systems,
spaceports, spacesuits, lunar habitation systems, robotics, and in situ
propellant systems.  These innovative materials will be capable of
retaining structural integrity while accommodating large operating
temperatures ranging from cryogenic to elevated temperatures conditions.
These advanced materials can be incorporated into thermal protection
systems (TPS), reducing the amount of TPS and its structure.  To meet
and exceed the NASA's requirements, we propose to develop
multifunctional organic/inorganic nanocomposites foams for structural
and insulation applications offering affordable cost, lightweight, and
high strength, low thermal conductivity, high thermal stability, and
easy processability which will result in improved efficiency and
reliability of the cryogenic systems.  The approach proposed in this
program will provide with more flexibility in designing cryogenic
insulators.  Once the feasibility of the concept of strong, lightweight
cryogenic insulating materials is demonstrated in Phase I, we shall
scale-up this concept in a Phase II program to meet the NASA's requirements.
Patz Materials and Technologies has developed, produced and tested, as part of the Phase-I SBIR, a new form of composite cellular core material, named Interply Core, this new product is a major step forward in composite core technology. The Interply Core was physically tested to have twice the compressive strength compared to the same density aramid paper and glass fabric core presently available to the aerospace industry.  In addition, the new core material has the ability be utilized without any change in the composite aerospace structures manufacturing processes.  The Phase II project will be to develop the production equipment to make significant quantities of Interply Core and then build and test different material iterations to quantify all parameters of Interply Core's abilities. 

At the end of phase II the rotorcraft, as well as other aerospace industries, will have a new material to significantly lower weight without changing platform production methodologies.
New wind tunnel flow quality test and analysis procedures have been developed and will be used to establish standardized turbulent flow quality measurement techniques and data reduction procedures for future flow quality studies in the National Transonic Wind Tunnel (NTF) and other Aeronautics Test Program (ATP) facilities.  To date, few measurements have been made of the characteristics of freestream turbulence in transonic wind tunnels, and details of the amplitude and spectra of freestream velocity and pressure fluctuations is lacking.  Consequently, there is an urgent need for in-situ measurements to determine flow quality and the performance of turbulence and noise suppression devices. This information is required if we are to accurately assess and characterize ground test facility performance. To meet these challenges, a unique research program is proposed to clarify and alleviate the aerodynamic problems associated with adverse wind tunnel flow quality.  It combines innovative advances in data base assessment and management, and new approaches to turbulence instrumentation and analysis.  Standardized turbulence measurement techniques and data analysis procedures will be established and used to document the flow quality in our major test facilities.
Honeybee Robotics, in collaboration with Firestar Engineering, proposes to continue development of a pneumatic regolith excavating, moving and heating approach. With this additional maturity, this base technology will enable multiple applications in lunar surface operations.   In particular: 
We propose to develop a prototype excavator for mining the top few centimeters to meter (via strip mining) of lunar regolith using pneumatics in an analogous jet-lift dredging method and excavating holes and trenches of various dimensions. This method uses a pulsed gas to draw adjacent material into a delivery pipe connected to a receiving container or exit tube for delivery over long distances. This work would continue development on the base technology of the pneumatic approach.  
We also propose to adapt the pneumatic system developed for mining to the task of regolith transfer. For example the pneumatic regolith transfer method could be used in place of an auger (which has a tendency to jam) to move the regolith from a hopper to an oxygen extraction plant. 
As another application of this pneumatic approach, we proposed to use dusty gas (regolith suspended in carrier gas feeding from a hopper to a processing plant) and heat it in a heat exchanger. The convective heat transfer (or even gaseous conduction) in granular material is much more effective than solid-solid conduction especially in vacuum where particle to particle conduction is minimal making a regolith four times better insulator than aerogel.
In response to the need for motors, actuators and sample acquisition system that can operate in the harsh Venusian environment for extended periods of time, on the order of several hours to days, Honeybee Robotics proposes development of high temperature scoop and joint; and continued development of an extreme temperature brushless DC motor and a resolver.  All hardware will be demonstrated in simulated Venus surface conditions.  During Phase I, a first-generation prototype BLDC motor and resolver were designed, built and tested in Venus-like conditions (460&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C temperature, mostly CO2 gas environment).  The Phase I tests demonstrated the feasibility of the design through verification that the motor and the resolver can operate at 460&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C for an extended period of time.  A further developed and optimized version of this motor and resolver could be used to actuate sample acquisition systems, robotic arms, and other devices outside of an environment-controlled landed platform on the surface of Venus. The motor and resolver's capability to survive for hours (and potentially longer) in that environment is a major benefit to future Venus science missions since it would allow time for communication ground loops to optimize sample target selection and allow for multiple samples to be acquired from the surface.  The extreme temperature motor and resolver would therefore revolutionize the exploration of Venus.  In Phase II, an extreme temperature resolver and a suite of different size of extreme environment brushless motor will be developed to TRL 6.   High temperature scoop and joint will also be developed to TL 6.  Aside from Venus exploration, other potential NASA and non-NASA applications for an extreme temperature motor include actuation of fluid pumps, gimbals, robotic joints and manipulation systems, as well as turbine, expendable launch vehicle and furnace tending system components.
High-bandwidth, Radiation Hardening, low-power, low-EMI, easily reconfigurable and upgradeable transponder-based interconnects between processor nodes, subsystems, and blocks are of utmost importance for the achievement of high performance computing on orbit and for providing reliable electronic systems in natural space and terrestrial radiation environments. In response to the described needs, we will develop a novel, monolithic radiation-tolerant transponder, which will be integrated into a hermetically-sealed pigtailed multi-chip module, containing opto-electrical and electro-optical components. Module will be featuring FPGA-friendly parallel interface and will provide an improved radiation tolerance, high data rate, low power consumption, and advanced functionality. The developed ASIC transponder will utilize our patent-pending high-speed current-mode logic library of TID-tolerant-by-technology and SEU/SEE-tolerant-by-architecture cells.  8B10B encoding will be used to achieve data disparity equal to 0, optimize performance of the optical receiver, and perform a reliable clock recovery. The encoder and decoder will utilize our patented radiation tolerant half-rate architecture. A fully functional module will be delivered and tested at the end of Phase II.
Many scientists have the common need of visualizing data in a collaborative and interactive manner.  In a modern environment, these data are often stored across a widely distributed network and the researchers themselves are just as often separated by large geographical distances.  Traditional visualization and collaboration approaches require the local installation of software specific to each end user as well as the downloading of data to each local machine.  The proposed innovation would provide researchers with an environment that allows them to visualize remote data using the standard and familiar web browser as the application platform.  No proprietary software need be installed and no data has to be downloaded to local machines.  Furthermore, multiple researchers can interactively explore data via visualization in a joint session where changes by one researcher are seamlessly seen by the others.  The architecture is based on technologies underlying state of the art web applications such as Google Maps.  Employing a modular design using web services as means to connect the modules, the environment is easy to modify and improve as new data access, rendering, and client-side display technologies mature and become available.
NASA, DoD, DHS, and commercial industry have a pressing need for miniaturized, rugged, low-cost high-vacuum systems.  Recent advances in sensor technology at NASA and other government laboratories, in academia, and in industry have led to the development of very small mass spectrometer detectors as well as other analytical instruments such as scanning electronic microscopes.  However, the vacuum systems to support these sensors remain large, heavy, and power hungry.  To meet this need, Creare proposes to build a miniaturized vacuum system based on a very small, rugged, and inexpensive to manufacture, molecular drag pump.  The vacuum pump has performance that is well matched to the needs of these new generation miniature analytical instruments.  Such a pump represents an order-of-magnitude reduction in mass, volume, and cost over current, commercially available, state-of-the-art vacuum pumps.  The new pump will form the heart of a complete vacuum system optimized to support analytical instruments in terrestrial applications and on spacecraft and planetary landers.
This is a proposal to develop an electronic, focusing schlieren system for flight research based on electronic cameras and spatial light modulators as dynamic programmable masks. Schlieren methods are widely used to visualize turbulence and shock phenomena. Focusing schlieren systems are ideal for applications requiring a large field of view, and are the preferred methods for outdoor schlieren systems. One schlieren technique for large field studies is the use of focusing schlieren with background grids. Recently, schlieren systems that use the sun as a background source have been developed for studying shock waves for aircraft in flight. The application of both schlieren techniques is restricted by the capabilities of fixed schlieren cut-off masks. Liquid crystal spatial light modulators afford greater flexibility, as the correct cut-off mask can be programmed and updated electronically. Since the spatial light modulators can be updated at video rates or faster, there is also the possibility of using the SLMs to correct for changes in the background. In addition, we will incorporate state of the art electronic cameras.
The combination of smart devices and embedded metadata and networked (wire and wireless) technologies present real opportunities for significant improvements in reliability, cost-benefits, and safety for remote testing, performance measurement, and facility management. Adding robust and autonomous network protocol for routing will further simplify testing installation process and increase test facility reliability.  However, the realization of a practical autonomous facility test system requires the synthesis of several technologies. One must bring together knowledge in the fields of sensors, data processing, distributed systems, and networks. Mobitrum proposes to develop "an autonomous facility health-enabled test instrumentation" for characterization and measurement of ground test facilities.  The proposed device includes: (1) facility health-enabled sensor, (2) signal conditioning and analog-to-digital (digital-to-analog) conversion, (3) microprocessor, (4) on-board memory (e.g., Flash or EEPROM) for metadata storage and executable software, and (5) embedded network interfaces to create a powerful, scalable, re-configurable, and reliable distributed test instrument. Autonomous facility health-enabled test instrumentation is built upon an open-system architecture with standardized protocol modules easily to interface with industry standards.
Innovative data measurement/acquisition systems are needed to support future Earth System Science measurements of the Earth's atmosphere and surface. An adequate system must employ a high-speed, extra low power, linear, analog-to-digital converter (ADC) with high input bandwidth and accuracy, followed by a digital signal processor that is usually implemented inside a field-programmable gate array (FPGA). Commercially available ADCs with input bandwidths larger than 1GHz feature high power consumption and latency, and poor linearity. With increasing ADC sampling rates, timing difficulties within the parallel interconnects between the ADC and the following FPGA become increasingly prominent. Therefore, a monolithic ADC incorporating a data converter that performs digital data demultiplexation and retiming is desired. To address these needs, the Advanced Science and Novel Technology Company proposes to develop a novel, extra low-power, extremely linear, under-sampling ADC featuring a high analog input bandwidth (&gt;5GHz) that can easily interface to a following FPGA through a low-speed (&lt;750Mb/s) parallel interface. To achieve this functionality, the proposed system-on-chip will utilize a proprietary sub-Nyquist front-end analog demultiplexer, a combinational ADC structure with proprietary gain-stabilization circuitry, and a digital signal processor implementing digital data demultiplexation and the company's proprietary data alignment scheme.
NASA's next generation of x-ray observation missions require x-ray calorimeters with superior energy resolution. Semimetallic HgTe has already proven itself as an excellent soft x-ray absorber material due to its low heat capacity. Hg0.834Cd0.166Te was shown in Phase 1 to have a heat capacity superior to that of HgTe. Hence Hg0.834Cd0.166Te-based microcalorimeter arrays are expected to have an energy resolution superior to that of HgTe-based ones. We propose the growth of single crystal Hg0.834Cd0.166Te layers by molecular beam epitaxy on Si substrates. Mercury vacancies will be filled after growth to reduce the possibility of them acting as acceptors and introducing a significant electronic heat capacity. The samples will be characterized by x-ray diffraction to assess their structural quality and crystallinity, FTIR mapping to confirm the uniformity of their energy gaps and alloy compositions, Hall measurements to assess their electrical transport properties, etch pit density counts to determine dislocation densities, transmission electron microscopy to determine microscopic structural information, and heat capacity and thermalization efficiency measurements at mK temperatures. These assessments will further test their promise as high energy resolution quantum calorimeters and will help optimize material and processing parameters. The thermal property measurements will be performed on samples specially processed to remove some or all of the Si substrates and CdTe buffer layers. Finally, the development of a broadband infrared/mm wave reflective coating will be undertaken. The produced samples will be compatible with incorporation into microcalorimeter arrays for NASA missions.
Validating software is a critical step in developing high confidence systems.  Typical software development practices are not acceptable in systems where failure leads to loss of life or other high costs.  

Software best practices for high confidence systems are often codified as coding rules. Adhering to these practices can increase software readability and predictability, thereby enhancing quality. However, adherence is limited by the lack of high-quality tools to measure adherence automatically. Checking rule conformance requires a diverse set of software analysis technologies, ranging from syntactic analysis to sophisticated inference of runtime behavior.

By combining lightweight verification techniques with other scalable analysis techniques that target syntactic and other static properties, we will create a tool that flags violations for almost all the rules typically applied to high-assurance code. 

Our Phase I work demonstrated the feasibility of this approach. In Phase I, we developed a tool for checking compliance with rules developed for JPL flight software. The tool leveraged GrammaTech's existing technology for static analysis, including facilities for analyzing a program's abstract syntax tree, control-flow graph, and inferred runtime behavior. The prototype successfully checks a set of rules designed for high-assurance software. Our experiments show that the tool adds only minimal overhead to our CodeSonar bug-finding tool, and generates few or no spurious results that could distract or annoy users.
This proposed Phase II program seeks to create dual-band pixel-collocated MWIR/LWIR photodetector arrays based on III-V semiconductor materials in a Type-II superlattice structure.  The Type-II superlattice offers a customizable cutoff wavelength while maintaining a lattice-matched condition to the host substrate.  This superlattice also has lower Auger-recombination, which reduces dark current noise, than HgCdTe solutions, and is sensitive to normal incidence radiation, in contrast to QWIP approaches.  The Phase I efforts successfully designed, fabricated and characterized a Type-II dual band IR photodetector.  The superlattice material growth will be further optimized in the Phase II, along with modifying the fabrication steps required to realize dual-band photodetector arrays.
The overall objective of this research program is to improve the affordability, survivability, and service life of next generation aircraft through the use of ADAPT --- an integrated adaptive diagnostic and prognostic toolbox. The specific focus of the research effort is adaptive diagnostic and prognostic algorithms for systems with slowly-varying dynamics.  Model-based machinery diagnostic and prognostic techniques depend upon high-quality mathematical models of the plant.  Modeling uncertainties and errors decrease system sensitivity to faults and decrease the accuracy of failure prognoses.  However, the behavior of many physical systems changes slowly over time as the system ages.  These changes may be perfectly normal and not indicative of impending failures; however, if a static model is used, modeling errors may increase over time, which can adversely affect health monitoring system performance.  Clearly, one method to address this problem is to employ a model that adapts to system changes over time.  The risk in using data-driven models that learn online to support model-based diagnostics is that the models may "adapt" to a system failure, thus rendering it undetectable by the diagnostic algorithms.  An inherent trade-off exists between accurately tracking normal variations in system dynamics and potentially obscuring slow-onset failures by adapting to failure precursors that would be evident using static models.   The proposed ADAPT will feature an innovative new parameter estimation algorithm and new adaptive observer / Kalman filter techniques designed specifically for health monitoring.  The research team of Barron Associates, Inc., the University of Virginia, and Lockheed Martin Aeronautics Company will demonstrate ADAPT using a high-fidelity electro-hydrostatic actuator simulation.
The primary material and manufacturing limitations of gamma TiAl alloys include processing difficulties, requiring costly non-conventional processing requirements, and large lamellar grains, which reduces damage tolerance.  We have developed a new class of TiAl-based alloys, called beta gamma, which would remove such barriers.   Unlike existing gamma alloys, beta gamma alloys are designed such that the ductile b phase is adequate at elevated temperatures (for processing) but negligible at the anticipated use temperatures (for performance).  The alloys also feature significant grain refinement and compositional homogeneity.  This program is aimed to utilize such beneficial beta-phase distribution and microstructure features observed in small (0.7kg) samples into forged disks from medium size (25kg) ingots.  The process-ability will be validated by employing a conventional forging process, and refined lamellar microstructures will be generated through usual alpha treatments.  The significance of this innovation is that beta gamma alloy disks can not only be produced by conventional forging, but also show improvements in RT strength and ductility and may retain other attributes (density, creep and oxidation) of conventional gamma alloys.
We propose an initial architectural and preliminary hardware design study for a high-rate receiver capable of decoding modulation suites specified by CCSDS 413.0-G-1 April 2003 (www.ccsds.org) and new advanced modulation suites.  We propose to detail a design which can provide a throughput of greater than 300 Mbits/sec and 7 bits/sample output.
In situ wind and turbulence measurements play a key role in the support and validation of Earth science missions using spaced-based technology.  NASA has been using Unmanned Aerial Vehicles (UAVs) in support of these Earth science missions, but the current UAVs do not have sensor packages to make science quality measurements of parameters including three-dimensional wind, turbulence, temperature, humidity, and pressure.  AeroTech will develop 3-Dimensional Wind and Turbulence Measurement System for UAVs that is based on thermal anemometer technology and that will measure and resolve science quality wind vector and turbulence information throughout the flight envelope.  The System will provide high quality data that will improve NASA's ability to validate, verify, and supplement spaced-based measurements taken during missions.  Phase I will assess the capability of the thermal anemometer sensor portion of the system and finalize the system design.  By the end of Phase II, the prototype system will have been developed, integrated into a UAV, and flight-tested.
Advanced Materials Technology, Inc (AMTI) responds to the NASA solicitation S2 "Advanced Telescope Systems" under subtopic S2.05, "Optics Manufacturing and Metrology for Telescope Optical Surfaces".  The proposed program is aimed at developing large, ultra-lightweight mirror substrate, including membrane optics for very large aperture space telescopes.  The novel materials offer considerable weight and cost savings.  In order to prevent significant figure error, mirror substrate materials should have very low (ideally zero) coefficient of thermal expansion (CTE), low coefficient of moisture expansion (CME), low cure shrinkage, low internal stresses, low outgassing, and high thermal and environmental stability.  The ultimate goal of the proposed Phase I program is to develop thin mirror substrate materials that will meet the desired requirements.  Once the feasibility of the proposed technology is demonstrated in Phase I, we shall scale-up the thin mirror substrate technology in a Phase II program to meet the NASA requirements.
It has been proven that the combination of smart sensors with embedded
metadata and wireless technologies present real opportunities for
significant improvements in reliability, cost-benefits, and safety for
remote testing and measurement. Adding robust and self-construct network
protocol for routing will further simplify testing installation process
and increase test network reliability.  While the idea of largely
autonomous sensors is desirable, there are many issues of cooperation
and control that need to be addressed. Specifically, the sensor fusion
and the schema of smart sensor attributes: prediction, planning,
updating, communication, and assimilation.  The IEEE 1451 standard
provides a basic communications link for sensors, but provides no
methods specific to programming a sensor's data processing resources for
data fusion. Combining IEEE 1451 and networked database, as well as
health-enabled smart sensor fusion technology enables user to interface
to sensor network to provide dynamic programming and access/monitor the
health of sensor nodes. The sensor fusion technology is built upon an
open-system architecture with standardized protocol modules/stacks such
as SQL, HTML, XML, MATLAB, and LabVIEW.
The feasibility of radioisotope thermophotovoltaic (RTPV) power systems has been shown. The best efficiencies reported to date for a TPV module test include front surface spectral control filters. This program will address  the technical challenges to developing and qualifying highly efficient spectral control filters that can survive high temperatures(above 150 degrees C)for long periods of time. In earlier work, we have identified thermally stable filter materials and demonstrated their use as high index filter materials, however they are quite sensitive to deposition conditions.  In this program, we will (1)optimize deposition conditions to improve reliability, repeatability, uniformity, and filter performance, (2)develop and optimize filter designs for radioisotope power,  (3)conduct extended high temperature, long life, radiation, and environmental durability testing, (4)identify other potential high temperature materials, (5) address the use of multiple spectral control architectures including spectrally selective emitters, back surface reflectors (BSR) and photonic crystals, and (5) integrate the spectral control architectures with RTPV technology to address NASA missions.
An innovative, ultra-low phase-noise, fully integrated single-chip cavity oscillator is proposed. The cavity is built on a standard MMIC process and has a quality factor of 120 at 50 GHz, and an insertion loss of 7 dB. This proposed technique is very well suited for MMW applications with emphasis on the frequency range 50-100 GHz. The achievable phase noise at 50 GHz is -112 dBc/Hz at 100 KHz offset. This is at least 10dB better than the best fully integrated oscillator reported today. To our knowledge this is the first ever implementation of a waveguide cavity on standard MMIC process. This new technique will allow the realization of ultra-small, high-performance integrated oscillators for future market demands. The oscillator can be readily integrated with digital blocks to form a Phase Locked Oscillator (PLO). The PLO will consist of a cavity oscillator, phase frequency detector, prescaler, and a loop filter. All components can be integrated on InP HBT process.
We propose to develop a SPECTRALLY-TUNABLE INFRARED CAMERA based on quantum well infrared photodetector (QWIP) focal plane array (FPA) technology. This will build on the handheld QWIP camera we DELIVERED to NASA in Phase 1 which featured a 320x256 QWIP FPA with fixed spectral response, as proof of this novel sensor technology.  Phase 2 will broaden spectral coverage (~ 6 - 12 microns), expand array format to 640x512 (for wider field-of-view), shrink pixel pitch (for higher image spatial resolution), and incorporate a cooled filter wheel with 6 to 8 spectral bands.  We will integrate the FPA with dewar/cooler/electronics/optics and deliver the resulting wideband camera to NASA for spectroscopic/imaging studies in this spectral range
In order to address the NASA lunar mission, DESC proposes to develop a proton exchange membrane (PEM) closed-loop pure oxygen fuel cell for application to lunar surface exploration, building upon DESC's expertise and fundamental demonstrations in closely related technology. Building upon the Phase I project, the static feed fuel cell hardware will be scaled up approximately three times in active area. The single-cell performance of the larger cell will be compared against the smaller cell. Sub-scale stacks will be tested for durability. The number of cells per stack will be increased as the thermal management and mass transport phenomena permit.  Thermal modeling will be conducted to predict the level of heat removal required by scaled-up stacks. Thermal management techniques will be investigated to permit effective scale-up.  Flight cell stack and system design will be undertaken at the concept level.
Planetary exploration missions, such as those planned by NASA and other space agencies over the next few decades, require advanced chemical and biological marker measurement technologies that will help answer fundamental questions about the composition of the Solar System and the possibility of past and present extraterrestrial life. Electrical/electrochemical array-based systems are highly suited for space and terrestrial applications because of their robustness, high-sensitivity, low-power requirement, miniaturization capability, and diverse transducer mechanisms which permit detection of a broad range of target analytes. Scribner Associates Inc. will leverage its expertise in measurement science, analytical instrumentation for arrays, and impedance spectroscopy to develop a prototype high measurement channel density array impedance analyzer for use with existing (e.g., Mars Oxidant Instrument) and future chemical and biological sensor arrays for planetary exploration. The proposed low mass instrument has hundreds of measurement channels for use with arrays with a large number of sensors. The analyzer is capable of conducting DC and swept-frequency AC impedance measurement. Successful development of the impedance array analyzer will facilitate multiple mission deployments with arrays tailored to specific mission objectives therefore ensuring efficient investment of NASA resources.
The objective of the project is the development of an open architecture, computational toolbox for design and implementation of diagnostic and prognostic algorithms for aircraft electrical power systems. The management of typical failure modes of the electrical system can have substantial returns in the overall availability, safety and operating cost of aircraft. We propose several innovative techniques for monitoring specific components of the power system such as generators, converters, and batteries. The integrated architecture using general purpose symbolic processing, numerical tools and data logging makes this project especially attractive and will bring advances in diagnostics and prognostics to engineering practice. The toolbox will include code generation tools resulting in the ability to seamlessly integrate the designed algorithms by automating several key steps for the implementation phase. In Phase I we have demonstrated the approach using simulations and experimental test beds. The successful completion of this phase of the project provided a prototype health monitoring system and established a framework to integrate new algorithms allowing the rapid packaging of advanced health management techniques for validation and verification, flight certification and final system integration and evaluation. In Phase II, we will develop a diagnostics and prognostics toolbox that will allow the transition of advanced techniques for on-line health monitoring of power system components to operational situations.  Outputs from the computational toolbox will be useful for scheduling both routine and preventive maintenance. The developed software and real time implementations will be well suited for packaging and integrating into vehicle health management systems for both military and commercial aircraft.
NASA has many needs for maintenance and repair technologies for long-duration human space missions.  We propose to continue developing a compact, portable, vacuum-compatible, multi-axis Manipulator/Machining Center (M/MC) to satisfy many of NASA's needs.  Our M/MC will provide complex manipulation during: layer-additive manufacturing; collection of geometric data for reverse-engineering; real-time non-destructive evaluation; and non-destructive material property determination.  Our M/MC will also finish-machine near-net-shape parts produced using layer-additive manufacturing.  Design features of our M/MC will: minimize mass, volume, and power consumption while providing required capabilities; maximize life and reliability; and enable our M/MC to operate in space-based vacuum, microgravity, and partial-gravity environments.  In Phase II, we will: generate alternative designs of M/MCs for space-based applications; and design, build, test, and zero-g-flight-test a prototype M/MC.  In Phase III, we will design, build, and sell M/MCs to the government and private sector.
Every day, turbulence has an adverse effect on aircraft operations and capacity of the NAS, costing the airline industry at least $100 million annually in delays, operational inefficiencies, and injuries.  There is a need to research and develop traffic flow and ATM methods that mitigate the turbulence impact to NAS operations, but turbulence is poorly represented in current airspace simulation and planning tools.  AeroTech proposes to improve these tools and therefore airspace operations by developing and integrating an ATM Turbulence Impact Module (ATM-TIM) into FACET and/or ACES.  The module will enable researchers and planners to identify and assess the impact of actual turbulence in the NAS and examine performance capability of new ATM methods with turbulence present.  A key enhancement will be the incorporation of a turbulence dimension into the ATM Weather Impact Model that enables the modeling of the impact of convective and clear air turbulence.  Phase I will develop the enhanced ATM weather impact model, investigate the integration of ATM-TIM components into the simulation tools, and perform a proof of concept study.  By Phase III, the integrated ATM-TIM will improve planners understanding of turbulence's impact on ATM and assist in evaluating new TFM ideas in a turbulent NAS.
Search, analysis and display of NASA science data by non-GIS experts can be facilitated using so-called "Web 2.0" technologies. Google Maps is a popular geospatial service which exemplifies the use of such technologies. Browser-based client-side mashups and overlays of various kinds of data sources using technologies such as AJAX have been demonstrated using Google Maps. We propose to develop tools that will enable integration of NASA science data with Google Maps. These tools can then be extended to other map servers.
This SBIR phase I project proposes a tunable single frequency high
energy fiber laser system for coherent Lidar systems for remote sensing.
Current state-of-art technologies can not provide all features of high
energy and efficiency, compactness, narrow linewidth, super frequency
and power stability, low noise, and high extinction ratio at the same
time. PolarOnyx proposes, for the first time, a fast tuning
(sub-microsecond) high energy (100 mJ) single frequency (&amp;lt; 1 KHz)
fiber laser transmitter to meet with the requirement of solicitation. It
is a specialty fiber based MOPA operating at 1550 nm. The mode selection
in seed fiber laser is achieved by using an EO polymer based ultra
narrow bandpass tunable filter. The output power can be scalable to
several hundreds mW without any spatial hole burning issues and the
frequency can be controlled at a stable and accurate operation. In the
amplifier stage, PolarOnyx proposes a revolutionary approach to
fundamentally resolve the issues of nonlinear effects by employing our
patent pending proprietary technologies in fiber lasers. Our unique
spectral shaping techniques enable us to reduce the SBS and ASE noise
significantly in the amplifier for commercially available EYDFs and to
reuse the residual pump to further increase the efficiency. These will
make the fiber laser transmitter system superior in terms of wall plug
efficiency (over 30&amp;#37;), energy(100 mJ), noise, size, and cost.  A
tabletop experiment will be demonstrated in Phase I time frame for proof
of concept. A compact prototype will be delivered in Phase II.
The objective of the Phase II effort will be an affordable demonstrated full-scale design for a thermally stable multi-meter submillimeter reflector.  The Phase I effort resulted in a design for a thermally stable reflector which by analysis should survive the launch environment and satisfy the as manufactured surface tolerance and on orbit thermal stability requirements for operation at 660 GHz, as in a CAMEO SMLS type mission.  The Phase I effort motivates the Phase II effort to demonstrate with flight-like hardware the thermal stability of the design developed in Phase I.  The Phase I study answered fundamental questions about the important parameters affecting the hygro-thermal stability of a reflector.  In the Phase II, we plan to develop the technology required to realize the important parameters for thermal stability and then demonstrate the predicted thermal stability with a flight-like test article.
The new Constellation vehicles, habitats and robots will be highly
sensored and generate large amounts of data.  For this data to be
useful to humans monitoring these systems and to automated algorithms
controlling these systems it will need to be converted into more
abstract data.  This abstracted data will reflect the trends and
characteristics of the systems and their environments.  Currently this
data abstraction process is manual and ad hoc.  It is manual in the
sense that either humans do the abstraction in their heads or the data
abstraction is done by hand-coding computer programs for each data
item.  It is ad hoc in the sense that each data abstraction is
developed on its own with no representation of how it relates to the
tasks being performed or to other data abstractions.  In this project
we propose building a Data Abstraction Architecture (DAA) that allows
engineers to design software processes that iteratively convert
spacecraft data into higher and higher levels of abstraction.  The DAA
also formalizes the relationships between data and control and the
relationships between the data themselves.  The DAA consists of
representations for data and data abstractions, a data store, a
abstraction architecture processing engine and a development
environment.  We will evaluate the architecture using three NASA
domains: 1) a lunar outpost monitoring and control application; 2) a
robotic scientific survey application; and 3) a vehicle procedure
execution scenario.
Under Phase I, the feasibility of a novel thermal stress-free ceramic composite mechanical fastener system suitable for assembly of high-temperature composite structures was successfully demonstrated. The innovative 2-dimensional (2D) fastener design facilitates joining load-bearing hot structural assemblies and can be produced at a cost much lower than other competing designs and methods. Functional SiCf/SiCm composite fasteners having two (2) fiber reinforcement orientations of 0/90-degrees (cross-ply) and 145-degrees (bias-ply) were fabricated for characterization. Testing of the respective fasteners included both axial tension and single-lap shear. The cross-ply reinforced SiCf/SiCm fasteners exhibited axial tensile and single-lap shear strengths of 38.0 and 33.1 ksi, respectively. The bias-ply fasteners exhibited axial tensile and single-lap shear strengths of 31.3 and 29.8 ksi, respectively. Using a generalized analytical method for determining the distribution of forces and stresses in the 2D mechanical fastener developed in Phase I, optimized configurations will be designed and produced in Phase II for evaluation. The metallic subcomponents used for Phase I demonstration will be produced using a high temperature-capable material (e.g., ceramic, superalloy). Aerodynamically smooth Cf/SiCm and SiCf/SiCm composite structural lap joints will be assembled using the optimized composite fastener system for characterization. Testing of the lap joint assemblies will performed to determine the flexibility and structural efficiency of the joint as a function of off-axis loading relative to the principal axis of the fasteners. Elevated temperature testing will be performed to establish the effects of temperature on the mechanical properties of the joint.
Robots are expected to fulfill an important role in manned exploration operations.  They will perform precursor missions to pre-position resources for manned missions.  They will assist astronauts in site preparation, buildup, and maintenance of a lunar outpost.  To support these roles, new forms of human-robot interaction are needed.  Task-level commanding and predictive interaction are promising for tasks where time delay and limited bandwidth make tele-operations difficult.  Supervised autonomy has potential to make better use of human resources by reducing the mission preparation time for routine tasks.  But these new types of operations require human operators to support new types of tasks.  TRACLabs proposes to develop a software framework that facilitates human-robot teaming.  This software framework will provide tools for human supervisors to use when monitoring the performance and health of robots.  The framework also will assist task coordination by applying operational protocols for information communication and allocation of control during remote distributed operations.  This work is an innovative combination of technologies to support the new human tasks that arise when operating robots at different levels of autonomy.  For performance monitoring, we propose to develop tools for users to define and adjust monitoring conditions, computations, and summaries in response to changing situations and missions.  Additionally we will provide software to aid understanding of operational events and their relationship to underlying data.   To support coordinating tasks, we propose to integrate our existing agent technology for role-based notification using communication protocols with new technology for authorizing the handover of robotic control.  Phase II will produce a software framework for human-robot teaming.
The Gimbal-stabilized Compact Hyperspectral Imaging System (GCHIS) fully integrates multi-sensor spectral imaging, stereovision, GPS and inertial measurement, gimbal-stabilization, and gimbal-pointing-and-tracking capabilities into a compact light weight package. Advanced adaptive Kalman filter and attitude calibration algorithms are embedded for precision inertial measurement and real-time platform stabilization, motion compensation, and pointing control. Innovative multi-thread-coded, fully concurrent execution software is implemented with the latest multi-core CPU, which makes operation of GCHIS seamless. GCHIS concurrently acquires pushbroom hyperspectral imagery and multispectral snapshot stereo pairs. It features: 1) at least a 1392 pixel swathwidth and 5nm spectral resolution in the VNIR range for hyperspectral imaging; 2) at least 2600 x 1920 pixel frame size for four band multispectral imaging; 3) 12 bit digitization depth for all imaging components; 4) about 20lbs complete instrument mass; and 5) 1/100 degree platform stabilization/pointing accuracy. GCHIS has a fast data rate for high resolution and large area coverage. GCHIS can deliver one-foot resolution orthorectified hyperspectral imagery and inch level resolution multispectral stereo imagery. With gimbaled stabilization and programmable pointing, GCHIS is highly resistant to air turbulence and can handle diverse flight profiles, e.g. non-linear corridors and block areas, high and low altitudes, re-visiting or repeated measurement for change detection, and etc.
In Phase 1, CRG demonstrated the feasibility of a novel approach to prepare cyanate ester based elastomers. This approach polymerizes in-situ siloxane within a reactive elastomer precursor matrix in order to achieve an elastomeric material with highly tunable and desired mechanical properties.  This methodology shows great potential in materials development for applications such as space deployable structures, space seals, and aeroshells. Using this methodology CRG was able to show that elastomeric cyanate ester materials having a vary broad range of thermal and mechanical properties could be formulated using a relatively small amount of CRG's synthesized monomers and other low-cost, commercially available components, such as low-cost, low molecular weight silicone materials.  The cyanate ester elastomer materials exhibited excellent thermal stability, maintaining their elastomeric properties to temperatures below -100 C and as high as 300 C.  The proposed Phase 2 effort will leverage Phase 1 results and CRG's other extensive R&amp;D in elastomeric material technologies to bring the methodology to readiness for transition to operational use.
Water electrolyzer stacks are a key component of regenerative fuel cells, designed to replace batteries as a means of storing electric energy on the lunar surface.  The design and demonstration of an innovative water electrolyzer cell is proposed.  The cell design will be significantly smaller and lighter than previous aerospace electrolyzers designed and built by Giner Electrochemical Systems, LLC.  The new cell will support high-efficiency electrolysis at pressures up to 2,000 psi.  Test data will be used to calibrate electrolyzer performance models.  These models will, in turn, be used to guide design decisions for regenerative fuel cells relative to the electrolyzer stack and maximum operating/gas-storage pressures of the regenerative fuel cell.  A preliminary analysis of an advanced cell frame new thermoplastic material will be conducted to determine its suitability for use in water electrolyzers.  Successful completion of the first phase will lead to the development of a demonstration stack in a second phase.
CU Aerospace and its University of Illinois teammate propose the design, sub-component fabrication and preliminary test of an UltraSail "Cubesat" 20 m2 solar sail spacecraft leading to a flight test in low Earth orbit.  The complete flight test program consists of: preliminary design and sub-component tests; fabrication and assembly of a University of Illinois Cubesat spacecraft bus adapted to solar sail deployment; spaceflight qualification testing; and the flight test.  The proposed innovation will demonstrate a scalable flight test in a 3 kg package of a high performance 200 m long solar sail plus two Cubesats to achieve a solar sail areal density of 5 gm/m2, and a large cost reduction factor for flight test of advanced solar sails.  Successful development of the UltraSail solar sail will enable very high energy inner heliosphere and interstellar scientific missions with large scientific payloads.  In addition, near-earth missions, such as Heliostorm for early warning of solar storms, will provide more warning margin as the solar sail performance is increased with UltraSail technology.
The runway safety issue has been on the Most Wanted list of the National Transportation Safety Board since the list's inception in 1990. The FAA has responded by implementing two ground surveillance technologies at major U.S. airports to reduce the risk of runway incursions. However, both technologies route information through air traffic control (rather than directly to pilots), which significantly delays safe responses. Several flight deck technologies that communicate information directly to pilots are currently in development. However, there is a need for tools to rapidly test the technologies early in the design process and measure their impact on pilot performance prior to implementation. The Aptima/George Mason University team proposes to develop two technologies that can be used together or independently to evaluate performance of flight deck technologies aimed at improving runway safety. We will deliver a computational cognitive model (Adaptive Control of Thought-Runway Safety; ACT-RS) that realistically emulates pilot performance, thus reducing the need for human pilots early in the design process. In addition, we will deliver a measurement tool (Performance Measurement Engine) that can measure the impact of the flight deck technology on the performance of ACT-RS and human pilots, making it useful across the technology lifecycle.
Current and future programs of near-Earth and deep space exploration performed by NASA and Department of Defense require the development of reconfigurable, high-speed intra-satellite interconnect systems based on switching fabric active backplane architecture with high-speed serial interfaces. Electrical and/or optical transponders operating with Space Wire, Fire Wire, or Gigabit Ethernet protocols are required to support the associated data interconnects. The systems must be easily upgradeable, power-efficient, fault-tolerant, EMI-protected, and capable to operate effectively for long periods of time in harsh environmental conditions including radiation effects. To address the described needs, Advanced Science and Novel Technology Company proposes to develop a basic concept of the novel, optical, radiation-tolerant transponder, which will be implemented as a hermetically-sealed pigtailed multi-chip module with an FPGA-friendly parallel interface and will feature an improved radiation tolerance, high data rate, low power consumption, and advanced functionality. The transponder will utilize the company's patent-pending current-mode logic library of radiation-hardened-by-architecture cells. 8B10B encoding will be used to achieve data disparity equal to 0 and perform a reliable clock recovery. The encoder and decoder will utilize the company's patented half-rate architecture that improves radiation tolerance. The proposed characteristics will be achieved by utilization of an advanced SiGe BiCMOS technology.
This is a Phase II SBIR proposal to develop an extremely versatile optical inspection tool for aspheric optical components and optics that are not easily inspected with conventional interferometry. Modern optical design and manufacturing procedures have begun using such components more and more in routine applications to improve optical system capability. Since the optical tolerances achieved in the manufacture of such components have an important bearing on the performance capabilities of the systems that employ them, instrumentation and techniques for precision metrology are vital for quality assurance. Inspection tools required for these types of optical components have lagged the capability to manufacture them. The proposed work will build upon a successful Phase I project that demonstrated the feasibility of a novel technique for full aperture precision metrology of such optical components. In Phase II we will deliver a complete turnkey instrument based on the Phase I research.  The instrument incorporates an extremely robust, reliable, and accurate wavefront sensor for precision metrology of a transmitted or reflected wavefront, together with a projection system that covers the full aperture. Achieved through a unique combination of digital holographic interferometry, Hartmann wavefront sensing, and adaptive optics the resulting instrument will be an extremely flexible tool.
Robotic systems will be deeply integrated into future human exploration of the lunar surface. Prior to human arrival, they will conduct scientific investigations, explore potential habitation sites, prepare infrastructure, and construct the necessary facilities for human occupation and activity. When humans are present, robotic systems will assist and support them in the various activities of exploration and habitation. Given the great cost of developing such systems, transporting them to the Moon, and maintaining them there, NASA must ensure that the robots it sends are capable of many different tasks. This will enable a smaller number of robots to accomplish the necessary tasks while providing better redundancy in case of subsystem failure. We propose to build an innovative manipulation system that includes a modular dexterous manipulator for various mobile platforms and a software control system that seamlessly coordinates motion control of rover and manipulator. The manipulation system will be JAUS-compliant, enabling many existing technologies to easily interface with it.
The proposed innovation has two main components. The primary component is a lightweight, low-power manipulation system for mobile platforms.  The manipulator itself will be swiftly reconfigurable with up to seven degrees of freedom (DOF).  There will be several different tools available for use at the end effector: some passive, some active.  All associated electronics will be internal to the manipulator, requiring only power and data connections externally.  Connections between modules will use the innovative "Universal Mating Adapter".  The second innovative component is a software control system that coordinates control of the vehicle and manipulator. Such coordination extends the robot's dexterous workspace and facilitates teleoperation by providing the operator with a unified interface.
AdvR, Inc. proposes the development of a highly efficient, fiber pigtailed, waveguide-based UV frequency converter module.  This UV module will be an important element in future NASA sponsored Doppler lidar and High Spectral Resolution Lidar (HSRL) aerosol missions.  The key innovation is the use of dual-element periodically poled waveguides embedded in a nonlinear optical substrate.  This innovation results in a vast improvement in the measurement capabilities of lidar systems by enabling the use of a single stabilized laser to both operate a high power transmitter and generate low power frequency tripled light for synchronous calibration and frequency locking of the Fabry Perot filter on the lidar receiver.  To be used in a space-based system, the UV module must be rugged and must perform optimally in a radiation environment over the mission lifetime.  To achieve this goal, the proposed dual-element structure will be packaged in a compact, robust fiber-pigtailed package which will readily lend itself to future space qualification for mechanical stability of the package and radiation damage resistance of the non-linear optical material.
We propose to develop and commercialize a new class of extreme ultraviolet (EUV) multilayer coatings containing the rare-earth element gadolinium (Gd), designed as efficient narrow-band reflective mirror coatings operating near normal incidence in the 60-65 nm wavelength range.  This long-wavelength region of the EUV includes the important solar emission lines O V near l=63.0 nm and Mg X near l=61.0 nm, formed at intermediate temperatures in the solar atmosphere.   While narrow-band EUV multilayer coatings are by now widely used in NASA missions for high-resolution solar imaging at wavelengths shorter than 35 nm, the observations made at those wavelengths probe coronal and transition region lines formed at either low (e.g., He II at l=30.4 nm) or high (e.g., numerous Fe lines) temperatures.  In contrast, the 60?65 nm wavelength region provides a unique spectral window in which to observe intermediate-temperature solar emission lines.  However, efficient narrow-band multilayer coatings operating in this range have been unavailable until now.  The successful development of efficient, stable Gd-based multilayers as we propose, based on preliminary experimental results, especially those obtained during our Phase I effort, will therefore enable the construction of new high-resolution solar telescopes tuned to O V or Mg X that will complement existing multilayer telescopes tuned to shorter EUV wavelengths, thereby providing more complete temperature coverage, and leading to better understanding of the solar atmosphere, its variability, and its crucial role in driving space weather.  EUV imaging instruments incorporating the multilayer technology we propose to develop may be included in future missions such as RAM, Solar Probe, and Solar Orbiter, as well as future GOES satellites and new Explorer-class missions.
Future detectors and arrays for visible, IR, and submillimeter imaging and spectroscopy require much higher speed digitizers than are currently available. In particular, low-power (&lt; 5 W) space-qualified digitizers with &gt; 10 GHz bandwidth and sampling at &gt; 10 Gs/s are needed to enable next generation digital submillimeter spectrometers. These digitizers must also interface to typical digital signal processing logic using e.g. LVDS I/O. To meet these needs, Hittite proposes an innovative digitizer combining a high-speed (10 Gs/s), wideband (10 GHz), moderate-resolution (6 bit) ADC with a companion digital demux to reduce the data rate and present LVDS-compatible outputs to e.g. Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs. The proposed SiGe HBT technology offers high reliability and radiation tolerance for space missions. A conceptual design was developed in Phase I. During Phase II, the ADC and demux chips will be designed, laid out, and fabricated. Prototype digitizer modules will be assembled into a small module, tested, and delivered during a Phase III effort. The initial two-chip digitzer reduces development risk. The technology will readily support a single-chip solution to further reduce size, weight, and power while improving system reliability in future programs.
This research proposes to develop the technology needed to implement a solar-fired regolith processing system at a lunar outpost that achieves low mass, high performance, easy assembly, operation and maintenance, and durability. The Modular Distributed Concentrator (MDC) comprises an array of identical, smaller-sized solar concentrator dishes with a network of power transmission links that route the high quality concentrated energy to a centralized receiver and avoids the challenges of deploying large concentrators with furnace chambers suspended at their focus. The Phase I showed the ability to optimize the concentrator reflector scale to provide low mass, showed that the heat pipe approach had better figures of merit than the optical waveguide approach, and, as a proof-of-concept, used a terrestrial solar concentrator to fire a sodium heat pipe to transmit heat at 1000C. The Phase II effort proposes to establish a system design for a MDC / heat-pipe based carbothermal processing system which requires &gt;1625C process heat.  We develop and demonstrate the components needed to deliver heat at this temperature with high performance, using space quality materials, including concentrator, concentrator receiver, tungsten/lithium heat pipe, and an innovative Heat Pipe Thermal Interface (HPTI) that most effectively transfers the power directly into the regolith. The Phase II includes an end-to-end demonstration of all of the subsystems, collecting and concentrating solar energy, transmitting it at &gt;1625C, through the heat pipe and HPTI into the regolith, and extracting oxygen from regolith simulant in an existing process chamber.
Space-based interferometry missions have the potential to revolutionize imaging and astrometry, providing observations of unprecedented accuracy. Realizing the full potential of these interferometers poses significant technological challenges, including the efficient maneuvering of multiple collectors to various baselines; regulating the path-length of science light from the collecting telescopes to the combining instrument with nanometer accuracy, despite the presence of vibration; and demonstrating through hardware-in-the-loop simulation that spacecraft sub-systems can be coordinated to perform such challenging observations in a precise, efficient, and robust manner.  We propose the Synthetic Imaging Maneuver Optimization (SIMO) program to develop a methodology, calibrated through hardware-in-the-loop testing using the SPHERES testbed, to optimize spacecraft maneuvers to more efficiently synthesize images for missions such as Stellar Imager.  Time and fuel-optimal maneuvers are only a part of the optimization problem.  Selecting the maneuver waypoints (number and location) determines the quality of the synthesized image.  The number of spacecraft, the size of the sub-apertures, and the type of propulsion system used also impacts imaging rate, propellant mass, and mission cost.  Capturing all of these mission aspects in an integrated mission optimization framework helps mission designers to select the most appropriate architecture for meeting the needs and constraints of future missions.
This proposal addresses NASA's need for improved TPS materials. The incumbent CEV heatshield TPS for Orion's Block II lunar return is PICA, a low-density carbon fiber infiltrated with phenolic resin. Variants of PICA with improved thermomechanical properties would benefit future missions. This effort will create a series of "mid-density" ablative materials to fill the gap between low-density PICA and high-density Carbon-Carbon.  Touchstone's carbon foam (CFOAM&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt;) has excellent thermomechanical properties, can be tailored to a range of densities (12 to 95 lbs/cu-ft), and has an open-cell structure allowing infiltration of high-temperature materials.  Aspen Aerogels recently completed a Phase II subcontract with Touchstone demonstrating the capability of fully infiltrating CFOAM&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt; with phloroglucinol-furfuraldehyde carbon aerogels with chemistry similar to PICA's.  

Phase I will use carbon aerogel infiltration in CFOAM&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt; samples of 3 densities from 17 to 35 lb/cu-ft to be calcined at Touchstone to carbonize the aerogel, creating a mass of amorphous carbon within the pore structure. Filling CFOAM&lt;SUP&gt;REG&lt;/SUP&gt; pores with pure carbon yields an inherent reduction in the TPS radiant heat transfer.  Fully carbonized samples will be re-infiltrated with PICA phenolic resin, and sample characterization will be conducted via SEM to demonstrate the capability of producing small-scale Carbon Foam-Aerogel/Phenolic composites at various densities. At the end of Phase I, the TRL will be 3-4 and then 4-5 by the conclusion of Phase II.
This Small Business Innovative Research Phase I proposal seeks to develop an ultrasensitive, laser-based formaldehyde gas sensor system for airborne and ground-based atmospheric monitoring. The proposed instrument will be capable of accurately determining sub-parts-per-billion formaldehyde concentrations in seconds.  This compact, lightweight instrument will be capable of long-term autonomous operation, and require minimal power. The Phase I research will demonstrate the feasibility of the technology by performing measurements on formaldehyde samples using a bench-scale laboratory instrument that employs a novel, frequency agile laser source.  The results of these tests will be used to quantify detection limits for a Phase II instrument. Commercial systems based on the Phase II prototype will be developed and marketed during Phase III.
A novel and robust flow control technique for the virtual shaping of extended run Natural Laminar Flow (NLF) sections has been developed.  The virtual shaping and separation control technology can be used to control the size and extent of extremely large separation bubbles to virtually shape the aft recovery region of the airfoil.  The system uses a novel pressure porting technique that requires no external air source to produce a pulsed tangential jet in the separated region capable of partially or fully eliminating the presence of the separation bubble.  The novel pulsed jet system was shown to produce equivalent results to continuous blowing using approximately a 42&#37; lower jet velocity and 87&#37; lower momentum coefficient.  The virtual shaping of an extended run NLF section could offer radical performance enhancement in the form of increased lift-to-drag and maximum lift.  Additionally, the system will produce a wing design enabling a hinge-less, full-span virtual shaping capability, which can be used for pilot reactive roll control, span load tailoring, and gust load alleviation.  The system will provide significantly enhanced performance for the air vehicle throughout the entire flight envelope.
NASA and DoD are seeking high-performance, lightweight liquid rocket combustion chambers with future performance goals that cannot be achieved using state-of-the-art actively cooled metallic liners, silicided C103, or even carbon fiber-reinforced silicon carbide (C/SiC) ceramic matrix composites (CMC). Ultramet has previously developed and successfully demonstrated carbon fiber-reinforced zirconium carbide (C/ZrC) and zirconium-silicon carbide (C/Zr-Si-C) matrix CMCs for use in liquid propellant applications up to 4200&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;F. In Phase I, Ultramet demonstrated the feasibility of combining the light weight of C/C with the oxidation resistance of ZrC and Zr-Si-C matrix composites in a unique system composed of a C/C primary structure with an integral CMC liner. The system effectively bridges the gap in weight and performance between coated C/C and bulk CMCs. Rapid fabrication was demonstrated through an innovative variant of Ultramet's melt infiltration refractory composite processing technology. In Phase II, Ultramet will team with ATK-GASL for process optimization, component fabrication, and comprehensive testing of lightweight, high-strength, elevated temperature oxidation-resistant liquid rocket combustion chambers. The fully developed system will have strength that is comparable to that of C/C, low density comparable to that of C/SiC, and ultrahigh temperature (&gt;4000&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;F) oxidation stability.
Photovoltaic arrays for future deep space NASA missions demand multiple functionalities.  They must efficiently generate electrical power, have very large areas and very low areal mass densities, mechanical flexibility to allow them to be compactly stowed and deployed in space, and the ability to simply survive and operate in the deep space environment.  The objective of this NASA program is to develop ultra low mass density fabric materials with patterned conductive traces capable of conducting high electrical current densities and able to survive the harsh thermal and mechanical environmental conditions required by deep space missions.  Such multifunctional Gossamer materials would provide both adequate mechanical support and low loss electrical interconnect network functionalities for power generation arrays.  NanoSonic won one of NASA's 13 "nanotechnology product awards" for 2006, recently announced in NASA Technical Briefs, for its electrically conducting and mechanically flexible Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; sheet materials.  The proposed program would build on this successful Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; technology to synthesize patterned, electrically conductive, low-weight fabrics rather than sheet materials.  During Phase I, NanoSonic would produce prototype high performance, ultra low mass density support fabrics with integrated patterned electrically conductive vias and demonstrate properties, and demonstrate the feasibility of large-scale rapid production of such materials.
ProtoInnovations, LLC proposes to develop a new type of planetary rover called a Lunar All-terrain Utility Vehicle ("Lunar ATV") to assist extra-vehicular activities in future lunar missions. The vehicle will operate unmanned or with an astronaut driving onboard. It will have a roughly 4 m2 footprint and be able to about twice as fast as an astronaut can walk on the Moon. The vehicle will feature four-wheel, all-terrain mobility with traction control. A multi-purpose tool interface and interchangeable cargo bays will support a variety of mission payloads. The Lunar ATV will be used for mission such as site preparation, emplacing beacons, equipment and commodity distribution, and sampling. It will also be useful for human/robot interaction experiments taking place at NASA research centers. 

The primary innovations of this effort are:

? A high-efficiency, long-life, lunar-relevant traction drive system
? A simplified steer / suspension chassis built for speeds over 1 m/s without sacrificing weight or maneuverability
? A multi-purpose tool interface for earthmoving, sampling, emplacing, etc.
? Traction control software to maximize performance in earthmoving and negotiating rough terrain
? CLARAty-compatible vehicle and tool interfaces to leverage NASA-developed teleoperation and autonomy software

ProtoInnovations brings an impressive amount of experience to the task of designing the Lunar ATV. Working at Carnegie Mellon University, members of our team have developed robots to operate in some of the harshest environments on Earth: surveying Antarctic ice fields, traversing the Atacama Desert, exploring into an Alaskan volcano and mapping Chernobyl. In total, our robots have traveled roughly 500 km through some of the most difficult terrain on Earth. We've accomplished these tasks by building robots that are, above all else, controllable and reliable. Our team has experience building all of the subsystems involved in this project.
Metron Aviation will develop optimization algorithms and an automated tool for performing dynamic airspace configuration under different operational scenarios. The Dynamic Airspace Configuration Tool (DACT) takes as an input the regularly updated projections of aggregated demand and weather forecasts and produces optimum airspace boundaries that balance the airspace complexity under various global and regional constraints for time horizons as short as four hours. The optimality criteria are defined separately for different levels of automation in Air Traffic Control (ATC) procedures. DACT enables the ATC managers to initiate high volume operational corridors and other classes of airspace to best serve the user demand for airspace resources. Additionally, when fully developed, DACT provides a capability for airspace managers to dynamically manage the allocation of Special Use Airspace (SUA) and Military Operation Airspace (MOA) to ensure security of the airspace system. DACT enables a more efficient utilization of airspace capacity and reduces the operational cost for air traffic control services by dynamically re-aligning the airspace boundaries to comply with the monthly, daily, and hourly alterations in user aggregated demand, route structures, and changes in weather patterns. DACT address one of the main components of NASA's NGATS Airspace effort in developing an operational framework for DAC concept that provides the air traffic service providers with a new degree of freedom to accommodate the user demand for airspace capacity, balanced against needs of national interest (e.g. security). The proposed effort will combine state of the art mathematical optimization techniques with ATC functional requirements necessary for development of the DAC concept.
In response to NASA's need to develop advanced nanostructured thermolectric materials, UTRON is proposing an innovative high pressure powder consolidation manufacturing to fabricate near net shape and net shape thermolectric components with improved densification and properties than possible conventional powder metallurgical methods. Potential candidate materials such as Tellurides, TAGs and SiGe micro/nano composites will be developed at high compaction pressures (150 tsi) using select geometries/shapes and optimized disk samples will be characterized for geometrical, shrinkage, mechanical, microstructure/microchemistry and thermolectric properties. The proposed work has been planned in close subcontract/collaboration with Teledyne and Auburn University-Space Research Institute. Other advanced nanocomposite alloys and scaling up to fabricate complex geometries will be done in Phase II.
Life on Earth is unique in many ways; one of its great mysteries is that all the biomolecules of Earth's life are chiral and non-racemic.  In our pursuit of life on Mars and beyond, it is likely that one of the clues to extant or extinct life is non-racemic chiral molecules. This proposal describes the development of a highly miniaturized and ultrasensitive lab-on-a-chip polarimeter to determine the chirality of samples. This proposal is based on a novel technology to achieve the miniaturization and high sensitivity desired for this application.  In Phase 1 of this project, we will design and construct the miniaturized polarimeter and develop the software to run the instrument.  The polarimeter will be tested with representative samples and with plans to integrate the device to the Mars Organic Analyzer that is being developed at the University of California, Berkeley.  In Phase 2 we will carry out the optimization and ruggedization of the device for space-use and will carry out additional testing and integration to the Mars Organic Analyzer.
Current and upcoming NASA space links require both highly reliable low-rate communications links supporting critical TT&amp;C, ranging and voice services and highly efficient high-data rate links supporting Mission or Payload Data return. Both are important to the success of a mission and for many ongoing missions rely on aging ground element equipment. Investing in re-usable elements, such as Programmable Communications Radios, for ground and flight data handling that are capable of receiving both highly-reliable low-rate links and highly-efficient high-rate links would address current Communication and Navigation needs without foregoing future capabilities. Current receiver designs typically address either high-rate or low-rate requirements but not both. NASA has requested a high-rate receiver capable of receiving coded and un-coded highly efficient modulation schemes supporting data throughput greater than 300Mbps. The proposed Phase I effort by Summation Research, Inc. (SRI) will develop, load, characterize and optimize these high-efficiency CCSDS and related modulations on a modern, high speed digital processing platform that can also support lower rate TTC and related links. Phase II work would then implement an analog IF front-end, develop deployable digital hardware to replace the evaluation boards used in Phase I, and combine the elements in an innovative Programmable High-rate Multi-mission Receiver (PHMR).
Polyethylene-based composite materials are under consideration as multifunctional structural materials, with the expectation that they can provide radiation shielding, micrometeorite shielding, and pressure containment during interplanetary missions. While ultrahigh molecular weight polyethylene (UHMWPE) is the hardest known thermoplastic, its impact strength and wear resistance still pale in comparison to many other known materials. We propose composites of UHMWPE with these materials, with the expected outcome of increasing its ability to perform as a micrometeorite shield.
Single crystal piezoelectric actuators are proposed to enable  large stroke, high precision, shape control for cryogenic lightweight deployable membrane mirror structures for future NASA Science and communications applications. Piezoelectric properties of PMN-PT single crystal at a temperature of 4 K will be investigated. Compact piezo linear motor utilizing PMN-PT single crystal driver will be assembled and characterized at temperatures of 4K-300K. Specific goals for cryomotor are: maximum stroke &gt;100 mm, maximum driving force ~10 N, response time ~ ms, positioning resolution ~50 nm, operating temperature of 4K-300 K, total mass &lt;50 g, and power consumption &lt;1 W. The deployment structure design and the stroke, force required for membrane mirror deployment will be identified in the phase I, and a 25 mm aperture membrane mirror deployment concept demonstration will be conducted in Phase I. At the conclusion of the Phase I program the feasibility of single crystal cryomotor for deployable membrane mirror will  have been demonstrated. In Phase II, optimized single crystal piezoelectric actuators will be integrated into a 3 m deployable membrane mirror structure and delivered to NASA Labs for evaluation.
NASA often must deal with the issue of protecting EMI sensitive payloads and instrumentation from damage due to radiated energy.  Many of these EMI sensitive payloads can be damaged by seemingly benign sources such as communication networks or microwave ovens. The problem becomes more difficult when these sensitive payloads and instrumentation require movement from one location to another.  It is extremely difficult and time consuming to identify and characterize the potential threat to these payloads with current tools and techniques. 

Soneticom proposes to utilize a small network of sensors to quickly and efficiently identify and locate sources of EMI radiation. Once the source is located Soneticom will utilize available signal parameters such as Received Signal Strength (RSS) at each sensor to estimate the signal strength at any point within the network's coverage area.  Figure 2.1 is a conceptual diagram of how this innovation might look once displayed on a map. 

Soneticom will utilize the existing Lynx Geolocation platform which has the capability to identify and locate an EMI radiation source in the 20 MHz - 3 GHz range.  The Lynx system will provide the hardware platform to develop algorithms required to estimate the signal strength across the network's coverage area.
Recent innovations in noncrystalline solar cells are beginning to emerge as viable replacements to traditional CVD grown single crystal counterparts in applications that demand high specific power, low product cost ($/sq.ft.) and ultimately scalable unit energy cost ($/W). Future NASA missions stand poised for adopting these new photovoltaics systems that are deposited onto lightweight, flexible substrates. Nanohmics proposes to fabricate a heterojunction solar cell composite consisting of high weight fraction titanium dioxide nanoparticles blended with amphiphilic, regioregular conducting polythiophene that are highly organized at an air-water interface. Furthermore, Nanohmics is proposing to prepare a novel device geometry that involves a low-cost, co-axial deposition process of all the cell layers onto core metal (e.g. copper, aluminum) or metal-coated fibers. Deposition of the blocking layers, heterojunction phase, and transparent conducting electrode in this fashion will lead to individual solar cell "threads", SuntwineTM.
International Electronic Machines Corporation, a leader in the design of precision imaging systems, will develop an innovative multispectral, panoramic imaging system for use on exploratory landing craft. During Phase I, IEM will build upon and advance alternative strategies, including our patent pending Synthetic Field of View (SynthFOV) technology and our Pan/Tilt Mirror System (PTMS), initially conceived by IEM for the USMC Gladiator UGV. These two technologies will eliminate or significantly reduce the use of conventional moving parts, will decrease power demand, will reduce launch weight, and will require less space than current imaging systems. SynthFOV incorporates an array of Off-Axis Telescopes to focus light to a sensor via a series of optically precise mirrors. The PTMS uses a centrally configured mirror that rotates and tilts along both horizontal and vertical axes thereby directing the reflected light to a sensor. Alternative configurations include use of two imagers for stereo panoramic imaging; incorporating filter wheels for multispectral imaging on a single sensor; use of multiple sensors for imaging visible, near IR, and other wavelengths, and use of multispectral lenses to further reduce weight. IEM will evaluate these and other alternatives and will demonstrate the applicability of the selected approach through pre-prototype testing.
Patz Materials and Technologies proposes to develop a unique structural
cellular core material to improve mechanical performance, reduce
platform weight and lower the production costs for rotorcraft platforms.
The performance of any rotorcraft will be inherently dependent on the
flight weight of that structure.  The goal of Patz Materials and
Technologies is to combine their experience of resin/fiber reinforced
composite materials with their core fabrication technology to create a
new and novel cellular core material for the advancement of the
rotorcraft industry.  To achieve this goal Patz Materials and
Technologies proposes to work directly with a rotorcraft producer, Bell
Helicopter, to quantify the specific physical requirements of cellular
core structures applied to rotorcraft platforms.  The outcome of this
partnership will allow Patz Materials and Technologies to develop a
unique structural prepreg based cellular core to optimize performance
versus weight. A small amount of the core will be fabricate and
physically tested to validate its significance.
The development of a library of Common MDO Objects is proposed, in which the software objects will automate a variety of recurring problems in the development of MDO systems.  The focus of the Phase I project is development of MDO objects to implement multi-fidelity modeling and simulation within MDO systems, and to implement general inter-disciplinary mapping/coupling algorithms that can apply to disciplines such as aerodynamics, structures, and thermal.  These modules will make it much easier to develop MDO applications, as the common issues can be solved by simply selecting the appropriate "MDO Object".
Research Support Instruments, Inc. (RSI) proposes to develop the Retroreflector Array for Test Environments (RATE), an innovative technology that will non-intrusively measure pressure on aerodynamic surfaces in NASA ground test facilities with high sensitivity and bandwidth.  The signal from RATE units will change locally due to pressure changes.  Pressure sensitive paints, in comparison, have serious drawbacks: they must applied to a rigid surface, are specific to the flow species, and do not retroreflect.  Because RATE will be independent of the flow species, and applied as a very thin, flexible, adhesive material, it will be able to measure the aerodynamic pressure while minimizing changes in the flow field.  The Phase I RATE program will involve design, fabrication, and test of various candidate designs in order to select the most promising approach for Phase II.  RSI will use its experience in microfabricated structures and pressure sensors to employ a highly innovative technology in order to non-intrusively measure aerodynamic pressure in NASA ground test facilities.  The result will be a product that will address a critical NASA instrumentation need.
The proposed Phase I SBIR proposes a low density (0.75-1.2g/cc)syntactic aluminum foam energy absorber co-manufactured inside a composite fan case for turbine engines.  Metal syntactic foams provide more energy absorption than any type other metal or non metallic foam on a volumetric basis (80-150J/cm^3). This will provide a lower weight alternative to hard wall fan casings and a smaller wall alternative to soft walled fan casings.  The phase I program will test Syntactic aluminum foam and integrated carbon fiber aluminum syntactic foam panels under high strain rate conditions and under a blade failure ballistic test.
IAI proposes an innovative collision avoidance radar and communication technology to detect and track both cooperative and non-cooperative targets. The system includes an L-band RF transceiver-sensor package, which continuously transmits Automatic Dependent Surveillance-Broadcast (ADS-B) compatible beacons to alert other cooperative aircraft and ATC (Air Traffic Control) ground stations regarding the aircraft's position and intent.  In addition, it uses the reflected beacon signal as a radar signal to detect and track any non-cooperative targets within its effective range.  A multifunctional RF transceiver serves as both the primary radar and secondary surveillance radar (SSR).  The phase I effort has successfully demonstrated the concept of this technology in three areas: (1) Adding phase modulation to the 1090 ES carrier and proving it still complies with ADS-B waveform standard, (2) Coherent pulse compression for ranging (3) 3D angular estimation using TCAS-like circular antenna array and using innovative digital beamforming and spatial spectrum processing.  In the phase II effort, we will work with commercial partners to build a 'brassboard' system and perform a series of system evaluation tests.
The structural integrity of jet engine turbine or fan rotor disks is vital for aviation safety. Cumulative cracks at critical loading and high stress areas, if not detected and repaired in time, may lead to catastrophic failure. Traditional methods such as Fluorescent Penetrant Inspection (FPI) and eddy current are limited to point-by-point measurement and are very time consuming. Disassembly of the engine is required for each inspection, which in turn may cause maintenance induced problems. 

We propose a wireless in-situ ultrasonic guided wave health monitoring approach. It applies light, thin, high temperature leave-in-place ultrasonic guided wave circumferential patch transducers around the root of the disk, and a pair of innovative tube antennae that wirelessly couple the transducers to the inspection instruments. Guided waves travel in the disk for crack inspection, and the inspection could be done even when the disk is rotating. Phase I results clearly demonstrate that the guided wave is very sensitive to tiny cracks on a rotating aluminum disk, and the tube antennae worked well. The envisioned system can inspect a relatively large area, has minimal effect on the rotor performance, instantaneously provides reliable and quantitative data such as crack location and severity level, and minimize and eventually eliminate the need for structural disassembly.
The objective of this NASA Phase II program is to develop and increase the Technology Readiness Level of multifunctional Metal RubberTM (MR&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt;) materials that can be used as 1) large strain sensors, and 2) strain-insensitive electrical interconnects for aerospace systems and structures.  The aerospace systems-level problem these materials would help solve is the inability of currently available metal-based sensors and wiring/interconnects to undergo the large strains and displacements associated with shape changes of inflatable, flexible and morphing structures.  During Phase I, NanoSonic demonstrated the feasibility of the MRTM family of free-standing nanocomposite materials to serve as 1) electrically-conductive, low-modulus electrode wiring for a) large displacement mechanical actuators required to affect large shape changes, and b) embedded or attached electrical data buses that are not affected by strain, and 2) strain sensors capable of measuring very large strains to allow mapping of the deformation of adaptive structural components.  During Phase I, NanoSonic also developed a first-principles physical model of electrical conductivity percolation in Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt;, and performed experimental analysis to validate model assumptions.  During Phase II, NanoSonic would work cooperatively with a large aerospace contractor to optimize material properties, upscale material production, and evaluate material performance under simulated space environmental conditions.
As part of the NASA goal of "locating and characterizing lunar volatile resources", Honeybee Robotics proposes to investigate two novel technologies that both are powered by a new monopropellant, NOFB3, developed by Firestar Engineering. Honeybee will test key concepts for a pneumatic drill, intended for use in the lunar cold traps, and will also investigate a method for mining the top few centimeters of lunar regolith with a gas system that has no moving parts. 
Analogous to the high-powered drilling done on Earth, the proposed pneumatic drill will derive its mechanical power from a chemical fuel (NOFB3), and it will use a fluid (in this case, low temperature exhaust gases extracted from the power system) to remove drill cuttings. A drill of this sort will have a number of advantages over traditional electromechanical drill/auger systems, including reduced power consumption, lower mass, less mechanical complexity, and better durability at extreme temperatures. In Phase I, the team proposes to investigate the production of mechanical power from the monopropellant via a small turbine, and, separately, to study removal of cuttings with gas flow while drilling in a laboratory vacuum chamber.
The second part of the proposed research will be to investigate a method for mining the top few centimeters of lunar regolith using a method similar to "jet-lift dredging". This method will use a stream of gas, also provided by the partial decomposition of NOFB3, to draw simulated lunar regolith into a delivery pipe connected to a storage bin. The system has no moving parts and is thus well suited for the abrasive lunar environment.
The proposed coupled propulsion/pneumatic system for excavation and prospecting will enable robust, rapid, subsurface access into an in-situ medium, and particularly into permanently shadowed regions on the moon without requiring solar illumination, potentially large nuclear power systems, or potentially complicated distributed power systems.
This proposal describes an Application Coherency Manager that implements and manages the interdependencies of simulation, data, and platform information.  It will also enforce a simulation configuration profile submission that includes the specification of the interdependency requirements.  To describe these interdependences, a general-purpose language will serve as the basis for higher-level rules that are assembled using a higher-level graphical user interface. We propose to implement a graphical user interface that allows the user to manage and assemble rule-profiles.  A rule profile would be created by assembling and parameterizing one or more low-level code modules.  This user interface would then be able to save these profiles into a revision archive, perhaps alongside the applications and the data sources.  These profiles could then be checked out, and used.  Locking the version of such a profile would freeze it in a known state.  Leaving it unlocked would allow it to evolve.   The profiles themselves would likely be stored as XML-based documents that refer to the low-level data-source checker modules
Constellation Program, the next frontier of NASA's space exploration plan, targets for manned mission to Moon and Mars. The missions under this program will be of long-duration and far more critical than any previous manned mission. Integrated Systems Health Management (ISHM), which includes fault detection, diagnosis, and prognosis, has been recognized as one of the critical processes that will enhance system functionality, mission success probability and crew safety for these missions. In addition, ISHM should support in deciding reactionary actions in response to a system failure or a failure precursor, i.e., the system recovery functions. Spacecrafts for the constellation program requires a significant degree of autonomy ? that includes the ability to monitor their own health and perform mission objectives in the wake of unexpected events (faults, failures, etc). In response to the needs stated in the solicitation topic x2.01, Qualtech Systems, Inc. (QSI) proposes to develop novel diagnostic, prognostic, degradation analysis and automated recovery techniques for spacecraft power systems. The proposed effort will use reactive mission planner technologies for formulating recovery options and mission re-planning to accommodate for degradation in power systems. Inclusion of the resulting technologies will streamline cost of long-duration space missions and enhance the mission success probabilities.
This effort undertakes the creation of an Airport Ground Resource Planning (AGRP) tool.  Little or no automation is currently available to support airport ground resource allocation decisions.  The AGRP tool provides visualization both of the resource assignments as well as other information relevant to making resource assignment decision.  In addition, AGRP automates or advises resource assignments, improving efficiency while reducing workload.  In Phase 2, we propose to continue development of the AGRP tool through four work areas.  First, we will complete the map and Resource Allocation displays.  We will also complete the algorithm to automate resource allocation decisions and integrate it with the displays.  The resulting AGRP prototype will be evaluated operationally.  We will also extend the Phase 1 work to develop a block out time predictor, which would have tremendous application and benefit in other traffic management systems.  In Phase 1, we proposed an architecture in which applications such as AGRP can subscribe to receive SMS data via a standardized interface.  In Phase 2 we will complete the specifications for and implementation of this interface, which will replace the existing SMS client-server communication.
Flexible, foldable, and/or inflatable antenna systems open up a wealth of opportunities.  Integrating antenna elements and related electronics onto flexible substrates, however, poses significant challenges.  To our knowledge, there exists no technology that can incorporate a variety of electronic/sensor materials onto large-area flexible substrates to create flexible and conformable circuits in an economical and reliable way.  The majority of the limitations stem from processing techniques.  Mesoscribe Technologies, a high tech start-up from SUNY-Stony Brook, proposes to apply a breakthrough new direct writing technology to meet the objectives set-forth in the NASA SBIR topic S2.06 Advanced Flexible Electronics.  This technology is based on revolutionary advances to modern day thermal spray materials processing enables deposition of wide range of electronic materials onto large areas at low processing temperatures and, for most part, requires no post-processing.  The Phase I effort focused on demonstrating proof-of-concept to deposit conducting microstrip lines and sensors on flexible substrates.  The Phase II program will be focused exclusively on developing a Direct-Write-Thermal-Spray based large-area patterning capability that is based on roll-to-roll processing to fabricate large-area antennas on flexible substrates, focusing, in particular, on JPL's L-band membrane-based active phased array radar.
Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) proposes to develop a plant lighting system which collects, transmits and distributes photosynthetically active radiation (PAR) for biomass production in planetary and transit missions.  In this system, solar light or electric lamp light is collected by reflector optics and focused at the end of an optical fiber cable.  The light is filtered by a selective wavelength filter to reject the non-PAR spectra to minimize heat generation within the plant growth chamber.  The PAR spectra are transmitted to the plant growth chamber where the light is uniformly distributed over the plant growth area at optimum intensities.

Key features of the proposed system are: (1) the PAR can be transmitted via a flexible optical fiber cable to plants away from the light source; (2) only the PAR will be transmitted to the plant, minimizing the thermal loading in the plant growth chamber, while the non-PAR spectra can be converted to electricity by means of low band-gap PV cells; (3) the low profile light diffuser makes more volume available for plant growth; and (4) the electric light source can be chosen for the best system efficiency and can be placed at the location best suited for thermal control.
The proposed research program aims at developing a variable-fidelity
software tool set for aeroservothermoelastic-propulsive (ASTE-P)
modeling that can be routinely applied to the design of aerospace
vehicles. The tool set can be applied to conventional vehicle types as
well as hypersonic vehicles. The major issues involved in ASTE-P
modeling and simulation will be significantly and extensively
investigated in this project, which include full coupling between
fluid/structure/control dynamics, the aeroservothermoelastic-propulsive
instability, the viscous/turbulent effects, shock and shock-boundary
layer interaction, as well as the large unsteady and highly nonlinear
aerothermal dynamic loading on structure of vehicles. The interface of
the structure/control surface dynamic vibration modes with flows will be
modeled using particle-based material point method (MPM) in an
integrated dynamic fluid-structure interaction environment.  The MPM is
essentially a particle-based method which avoids dealing with the
time-varying mesh distortions and boundary variations due to
structure/control surface deformations and/or motions (i.e. wing
flutters, FCS/structural mode interaction, PSD turbulence response),
thus being significantly more robust and computationally efficient than
the traditional finite element methods that must utilize moving-boundary
and mesh-regeneration. Phase I will build and demonstrate the initial
capability; the end software in Phase II will be fully capable of ASTE-P
analysis and evaluation for aerospace vehicles.
The abrasive, reactive, and ubiquitous nature of lunar regolith created significant and serious problems during the Apollo moon missions.  In this Phase I, Agave BioSystems, in collaboration with Dr. Randy Vander Wal of the Universities Space Research Association, propose to develop next generation smart filters using novel carbon nanotube (CNT)-based structures in electrostatic devices.  Since CNTs have extremely high surface area, can function without the mass transfer limitations of traditional filtrations systems, and they can be charged to emit very high charge densities, they constitute an ideal material for integration into spacecraft air handling systems as electrostatic filtration components.  The overall goal of this program is to build upon the unique structural and electronic nature of carbon nanotubes to create novel smart filters.  By synthesizing the CNTs in situ on solid mesh supports and integrating them into a novel electrostatic particle collection unit, we aim to create novel filtration media capable of removing airborne lunar regolith from spacecraft airlock and cabin atmospheres.
Space structures that are ultra-lightweight, and have gas barrier property, space durability, radiation resistance and high impact resistance are desirable to improve the reliability and provide a safe resting environment for astronauts and equipment operation. Some of the components currently in use such as stations or habitats use double-wall thick films with high internal pressure. Some components are in thin film form and the specific rigidity and dimensional stability needs improvement.  Components of landers and vehicles are subject to dust impact. All these solid or hollow components are vulnerable in space because of the foreign object impact or radiation attack. In this Phase I project, we propose to develop ultra-lightweight, microcellular nanocomposite foams and sandwich structures that possess all the desirable properties mentioned above.   The structural module can be compacted into a small volume to facilitate launching. The proposed microcellular nanocomposite foam and sandwich structures do not involve or release any toxicity and will have much higher specific mechanical properties than foams and sandwich structures processed by the conventional techniques.  They can be used to either replace or supplement to the inflatable technology for improvement in reliability, durability, and safety in space operation.  Preliminary research results are very encouraging.
Stereochemistry is an essential element of our organic life.  Only certain enantiomers are useful as drugs for the human body.  Raman optical activity (ROA) provides stereochemical information down to the bond levels.  Many biomolecules like proteins and DNA can be studied to understand their structural chemistry and structure related dynamics.  These methods do not require material in the crystalline form and hence can be very useful tools.
However, ROA signals are even weaker than the Raman signals.  Using an important biomolecule, we have demonstrated in Phase I that ROA can be enhanced using nanoparticles.  Not only did the ROA ratio increase by two orders of magnitude, the measurement time reduced from several hours to 10 seconds.  Phase II work will focus on enhancing ROA signals in different subspecies of biomolecules, namely amino acids and proteins, and developing the appropriate colloidal chemistry.  Use of nanoparticles is known to enhance Raman signals by several orders of magnitude.  Our goal is to achieve similar gains in ROA signals by using a sensitive detection system in combination with improved surface enhanced chemistry and microfluidics-based single-molecule detection techniques.  This will result in improved precision of measurement and shorten measurement time.
During the Phase I effort, OPTRA developed object detection, tracking, and identification algorithms and successfully tested these algorithms on computer-generated objects of various shapes and sizes and on sample real-world image sequences of a DeltaII booster separation.  The algorithms currently identify six basic shapes (sphere, disk, cone, thin rectangle, tube, and cube) with better than 90&#37; accuracy and estimate their size in three dimensions.  Object shape and three dimensional size information can be determine using images from a single digital camera while two cameras are needed to provide three-dimensional trajectory and ground impact position information.  While the Phase I showed the feasibility of the approach, work still needs to be done during the Phase II effort refining and expanding the detection, tracking, and identification algorithms to take into account the effect of noise, obscuration (smoke, clouds, etc), and viewing angle.  Also during the Phase II, we plan develop a robust optical system using all commercial off-the-shelf (COTS) equipment and then test the system with several live outdoor tests.
The objective of this project is to develop a physics-based pneumatic hammer instability model that accurately predicts the stability of hydrostatic bearings operating in a turbulent, compressible fluid.  In phase 2, the rig will be fabricated and assembled, design of experiment will be executed.  The empirical data will be used to determine if a particular variable, or input parameter, was a contributor to pneumatic hammer instability.  If not, the variable is eliminated.  If the variable is determined to be a contributor, it is non-dimensionalized and included in the equations of motion to develop a physics-based stability criteria.  The resulting criteria will then be validated using test data.  If the criteria is not validated, a gap assessment will be completed and the process is repeated.  Once the criteria is validated, it is implemented.
MetroLaser proposes to design and develop an innovative narrowband tunable IR filter based on the properties of a one-dimensional photonic crystal structure with a resonant cavity. Such structure would exhibit an ultra-narrow, high-throughput band in the middle of a wide, low-transmission stop-band. During Phase I, through an extensive and detailed analysis, we performed a feasibility study to establish the operational characteristics and performance of the proposed tunable filter. Following this, we assembled and tested a breadboard and demonstrated filter tunability over 4 cm 1 with bandpass close to 0.25 cm-1, rejection level better than 23 dB, and acceptance angle of about 1 degree at 10.6 microns. The acquired data demonstrated our optimal approach for designing and constructing an ultra-narrow tunable optical bandpass filter. During Phase II, we will design, build, deliver to NASA, and perform field testing of a compact and robust prototype module of a 1" diameter narrowband filter with a tunability range of 10 cm-1, a bandpass range of 0.1 cm-1, background rejection of 30 dB, and transmittance better than 50&#37;. A rugged and monolithic filter design will allow this instrument to be incorporated in air- or space-based platforms providing stable performance in harsh operating environments.
The overall objective of the Phase II effort is to demonstrate prototype multifunctional EVA system power patches that integrate energy storage into advanced space suit systems' components (suit and pack) to increase functionality and decrease weight and volume. The program will optimize materials and plasma processes to bridge the performance gap between current fiber and planar batteries. Optimized fiber batteries will be integrated into prototypes relevant to anticipated NASA missions. Successful completion of the Phase II will lead to an engineering demonstration unit that powers a distributed sensor under conditions that are compatible with anticipated missions. Additional integrated power pack designs such as composites based on fiber batteries will be also evaluated. The lessons learned in this effort will establish guidelines for effective development and transition of future generations of MFF into EVA systems and other applications.
In this phase I SBIR program, a team led by Advanced Ceramics Research
Inc. (ACR) propose a novel, low-cost manufacturing process for
multi-functional polymer composite components with improved lightning
strike mitigation and EMI shielding capabilities. The proposed program
will develop and demonstrate a process for manufacturing
complex-geometry composite parts with tailored lightning strike
mitigation capability based on design requirements. This process is a
natural extension of the ACR water-soluble tooling process for
fabricating complex-geometry polymer composite parts as well as filament
wound composite tanks. For the proposed phase I program, the ACR-led
team will use a novel process to create a highly conductive surface
capable of providing the necessary lightning strike protection and EMI
shielding. The ACR team will evaluate the new approach with two
different space qualified matrix polymers with graphite fibers and
compare the surface conductivity with baseline composite systems.
Advanced bipropellant engines are needed for ARES/ORION vehicle maneuvering and future deep space science missions.  Currently, an iridium-lined rhenium combustion chamber is the state-of-the-art for in-space propulsion applications.  An example of an in-space engine that incorporates an iridium-lined rhenium thruster is Aerojet's HiPAT apogee engine.  This engine uses monomethyl-hydrazine (MMH, CH3N2H3) as fuel and nitrogen tetroxide (N2O4, specifically MON-3) as oxidizer.  To increase performance of bipropellant engines, improved chamber materials are needed that will allow higher operating conditions (pressure and temperature) and better resistance to oxidation.  Therefore, Plasma Processes, Inc. and its partner, Aerojet, propose to develop hafnium oxide-iridium lined rhenium combustion chambers that will simplify engine design and allow higher operating conditions.  As a result, a lower cost, higher performance bipropellant space engine will be produced.
Hyperspectral imaging arrays offer far more data and the ability to discriminate objects being observed.  Continued difficulties with applying HgCdTe materials, especially for LWIR, present an opportunity for the development of alternate materials. One such candidate for MWIR/LWIR photodetectors are short period Type-II superlattices based on InAs/GaInSb.  This material system has the ability to tune the cutoff wavelengths during device fabrication and yet be amenable to the creation of multi-spectral serially-positioned pixels.  One of the issues this Phase I program will address is the intermixing of Arsenic and Antimony at the superlattice interfaces, which can hamper LWIR operation.  Improved superlattice growth will be achieved through the application of newly developed MBE apparatus.   At a second level, device performance will be enhanced by novel passivation of the pixel sidewalls.  The Type-II superlattices with then be applied to the creation of dual-wavelength photodetectors for MWIR/LWIR imaging.
This proposed program will focus on life management needs for new and emerging composite material systems and built-up structures in "young" aircraft.  Both wide area inspection of fuselage and wing structures and characterization of adhesive bonds in built-up structures are addressed.  JENTEK will develop both (1) hybrid methods in which spatially registered, digital images, produced by two or more sensing modalities are combined, and (2) a new method called Magneto-Thermography, invented by JENTEK, which offers both wide area inspection advantages and potential for characterization of adhesive bonds in built-up composite and metal structures.  

In one implementation of a hybrid method for graphite fiber/epoxy composites, the MWM-Array could sense and locate fiber damage and fiber movement under loads, while thermography could sense both fiber and matrix damage, allowing discrimination between fiber breakage, fiber/matrix disbonding, matrix cracking, and disbonding in built-up structures.

Magneto-Thermography will use the demonstrated capability of the MWM-Array to monitor temperatures of buried fibers and to monitor temperatures at buried interfaces to replace IR cameras with MWM-Arrays in thermographic methods.  This will enable both wide area inspection of thick composites and enhanced characterization of adhesive bonds in built-up structures, for foam layers, and other aerospace and space applications.
Various Earth Science fields require well-calibrated field radiometers whose calibrations must be tracked and verified in the field.  NASA has long recognized requirement.  However, these activities require specialized light sources that typically require high power, are bulky and difficult to use in the field, and do not work with all types of radiometers.
     We propose a next-generation portable, ultra-stable, lightweight and highly versatile light source based on light-emitting diodes (LEDs).  Recent advances in LEDs include higher power, efficiency, and a wider range of wavelengths (from UV to IR).  These advances, coupled with LEDs' inherent suitability for electronic feedback stabilization, make them excellent candidates for more compact and power-efficient calibration sources.
     During Phase I we showed that we can implement light sources with the desired characteristics, using current technology.  We identified and tested LED devices, measurement and stabilization techniques, and physical configurations.  In Phase II we will build prototypes and implement a program for test and evaluation, and refine the design based on test results.  At the conclusion of Phase II we will be ready to produce and sell a commercial version.
Payload Systems Inc. and the MIT Space Systems Laboratory propose Self-assembling, Wireless, Autonomous, Reconfigurable Modules (SWARM) as an innovative approach to modular fabrication and in-space robotic assembly of large scale systems.  Fabrication of modular components yields fabrication savings associated with large production volume and automated integration and test.  In-space assembly permits staged deployment on an as-needed, as-afforded basis.  It also decouples stowed launch geometry from deployed operational geometry.  The SWARM concept uses formation flown spacecraft, containing multiple universal docking ports, to dock with modular elements and maneuver them to dock with other, similar elements.  In the process, systems can be assembled that are much larger than what can be fit or folded into a launch vehicle fairing, or what can be launched on a single vehicle.  Furthermore, such modularity will allow jettison of failed components, upgrade of obsolete technology, and amortization of design costs across multiple missions.  In Phase I, we demonstrated the feasibility of this approach for a simplified telescope assembly on the flat-floor at MSFC.  In Phase II, we will develop the hardware and software elements necessary to demonstrate, on a flat-floor, the modular assembly and reconfiguration of systems representative of trans-planetary spacecraft and large telescope assembly.
We propose the development of automated systems to improve radiobiology research capabilities at NASA Space Radiation Laboratory (NSRL) at Brookhaven National Laboratory (BNL).  Current radiobiology experimentation at the NSRL is limited primarily by the amount of time required to manually move samples to/from the radiation target area.  Additionally, the NSRL facility currently does not support processing of samples during or directly after radiation exposure, or long duration radiobiology studies.  Our proposed automated system will address the above issues as follows.  First, an automated sample movement system will be developed to reduce the overhead time of the current manual system of moving samples to/from the radiation target area.  Second, an Online Assay System will be designed to provide immediate sample analysis, such as sample fixation and freezing, to allow a better understanding of the radiation effects on the samples.  Third, the Single Loop for Cell Culture (SLCC, developed by Payload Systems Inc. for NASA) system design will be modified to support long duration radiobiology research.  In addition, the system will also support animal experiments.
Redondo Optics Inc. (ROI), proposes to develop, demonstrate, and deliver to NASA an intrinsically safe, miniature, low power, autonomous, and self-calibrated, respiratory health monitor (ResHealth&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt;) system for monitoring of the oronasal activity associated with respiratory activity during extravehicular activity (EVA) sorties on Lunar surface exploration. In Phase I of this program, ROI will conclusively demonstrate the concept of the ResHealth&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; monitoring device by extensively testing a conceptual prototype of a multi-sensor array microchip and optoelectronic sensor readout unit capable of detecting, analyzing, and separating vital respiratory activity signatures associated with inspiratory and expiratory air flow. In Phase II, ROI will integrate the ResHealth&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; monitoring device into a field deployable autonomous unit and installed and qualified on a spacesuit PLSS system at a selected NASA test site and delivered to NASA for performance validation. The ResHealth&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; system's wireless communication mode offers true Tele-medicine capabilities to communicate remotely its sensor status and alarm condition to the crewmember EMU computer control and communications system, to other close proximity crewmembers, lunar habitat stations, and to flight doctors in the Mission Control Center. No other available commercial device on the market today offers such capabilities at an affordable cost.
This innovation is the design of a monochromatic x-ray source to be used in a mission compatible XPS spectrometer.  Existing x-ray sources for XPS are large, require high power and a will have difficulty meeting the vibration specifications for a mission type instrument.  The small x-ray sources developed for medical applications are exciting but are designed for high energy x-rays and require refractory anodes.  This program will develop a new design suitable for mission applications.  It will focus on small sources similar to the medical devices that will use low power.  The monochromator will be designed for low mass and use a feedback based stabilization to keep it aligned independent of temperature and vibrations associated with missions launch.  The feedback system will use x-ray detectors in a plane near the sample to since the x-ray beam direction and an interment angular vibration to make sure the monochromator is on the optimum angle for diffraction.  After a suitable design is implemented with thermal electron sources, a nanotube excitation sources will be considered.
Solid rocket motor cases are subject to a variety of external environmental and loading conditions from cradle-to-grave. These conditions can significantly impact the performance and decrease safety of the rocket motor. Fueling of the rocket motor adds an additional complexity in that inspection of the interior becomes impossible while creating the possibility of disbonds between the case and fuel. These factors can have potentially catastrophic consequences for the space vehicle performance. Acellent Technologies is currently developing structural health monitoring systems to address this issue. The TRL at completion of the current technology development is anticipated to be TRL 5-6. The proposed program focuses on maturing the technology to a TRL level 7 for implementation on existing and future space transportation vehicles. The development will be conducted in close collaboration with ATK-Thiokol who fully support the developmental and commercialization efforts.
To address NASA's need for an instrument for robotic in situ geochemical exploration of the solar system, Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new hybrid Laser Induced Breakdown Spectroscopy (LIBS) and Raman Spectroscopy (LIBRA) standoff chemical analysis system.  This 0.03 m^3, &lt;10 kg, &lt;15 W passively cooled system will offer high specificity in trace chemical detection through LIBS/Raman sensor fusion to minimize false alarm rate (&lt;1 in one million).  Its hermetically sealed, monolithic, space-qualified design will ensure the survivability of LIBRA through launch and extended operation on planet surfaces. In Phase I, POC demonstrated the feasibility of LIBRA by assembling and testing a proof-of-concept tabletop (0.020 m^3 sensing head; 0.025 m^3 power supply) prototype with a technology readiness level (TRL) of ~4, capable of up to 5 m standoff detection and identification of inorganic, organic, and mineral samples, including compounds associated with the origins of life, of interest to NASA solar system exploration missions. In Phase II, POC will optimize the system design and develop and fabricate a fully functional LIBRA prototype system to meet the needs of NASA solar system exploration programs.  Prototype test data will lead to an engineering design for a space-rover-operable prototype.
The research proposed targets airframe noise (AFN) prediction and reduction. AFN originates from complex interactions of turbulent flow with airframe components that are extremely difficult to compute efficiently and accurately. In Phase I the feasibility of an innovative generalized lattice Boltzmann equation (GLBE) approach as a computational aeroacoustics (CAA) tool was evaluated.  A subgrid scale (SGS) with wall damping was introduced into the GLBE to enable large eddy simulations.  GLBE results on wall turbulence statistics compared well with direct numerical simulations and experiments. The GLBE approach, which uses multiple relaxation times, was significantly more stable than, and as computationally efficient as, the more common single-relaxation time LBE at high Reynolds numbers. It was also computationally competitive with finite-difference methods on single processors, but GLBE had the major advantage of scaling near-linearly on large parallel computers. GLBE computations also accurately reproduced the tonal frequencies for cross-flow over a single, and a pair of cylinders, and feedback-generated tonal frequencies for flow over cavities, which are CAA benchmarks for AFN.  With feasibility demonstrated in Phase I, further developments of GLBE, including innovative use of wall-layer models, dynamic SGS models, improved boundary condition implementation and grid refinement strategies in Phase II would enable simulations of very high Reynolds number CAA problems of complex geometry with high fidelity. The GLBE approach developed will then be interfaced to an existing far-field acoustics prediction code to efficiently address AFN in configurations of interest, including high-lift systems and landing gear.
Silicone coatings are the system of choice for inflatable fabrics used in several space, military, and consumer applications, including airbags, parachutes, rafts, boat sails, and inflatable shelters.  Commercial silicone coatings with improved mechanical, thermal and physical gas barrier properties are needed for a broad range of space, military, and commercial applications.  The phase I program has demonstrated that addition of small amounts of nanostructured additives enhances tear strength, tensile strength, and hardness without significantly degrading other important properties, thermal stability, puncture resistance and air permeability of commercial silicone coatings.  It was also shown that properties of coatings are strongly correlated with the chemistry and composition of nanostructured additives. The significance of the Phase I innovation is that commercially used coating formulations were utilized as the starting material, making it easier to be adopted in practice. Success in Phase I has enabled us to put together a strong Phase II team, composed of commercial silicone coating applicators, an airbag assembly developer, and a large supplier of silicone coating formulation. The focus of the Phase II program will be to develop nanostructured additives for several different types of commercial silicone coatings to meet their specific application needs.  Additionally, nanostructured additive technology will be scaled up, and prototype airbags will be fabricated.
Images from space satellites are often compressed in a lossy manner to ease transmission requirements such as power, error-rate, and data stream size. These requirements differ from standard computer image processing requirements since storage space, processing speed, and power constraints differ between PCs and satellites. To facilitate use of satellite images in applications such as image analysis, dissemination, storage and retrieval, etc., a method is needed to convert images to a widely supported format. Since lossy formats lose information, too many transcodings, poorly performed transcodings, or transcodings between poorly chosen formats will degrade image quality, sometimes making them useless. Images such as military photos and deep space objects require high quality, so it is desirable to avoid or minimize loss during transcodings. NASA has requested software transcoding from the CSSDS Image Data Compression recommendation to JPEG2000 (J2K) with minimal image degradation. In Phase I Cybernet demonstrated mathematically that the wavelets used in the CCSDS format can easily, quickly, and accurately be transformed to the JPEG2000 format. This mathematical proof was implemented in a GUI software tool. 	For this Phase II proposal, Cybernet Systems Corporation will create a robust, end-to-end solution for transcoding CCSDS images to widely supported formats for dissemination, using mathematical techniques developed during the Phase I. This will be done in four stages. First we will evaluate or implement production level CCSDS, in order to provide users with an easy to integrate, small, fast implementation of this image compression standard. Second, we will create a toolset for optimal conversion to other image formats, including J2K, minimizing transcoding error. Thirdly, since J2K allows a lot of choice for encoding, we will create an optimal J2K encoder tailored for CCSDS images. Finally, we will integrate these toolsets into existing systems as needed.
NAL Research Corporation proposes to develop a small, light-weight, low-cost transceivers capable of establishing satellite communications links for telemetry and control during the launch and ascent stages of flight. The proposed transceiver will offer continuous and truly global coverage. When data are sent from a launch vehicle, the signals are received immediately by one of the LEO satellites and relayed in real-time to command and control center via either Public Switched Telephone Network/Public Data Networks (PSTN/PDN), directly to another transceiver, through the Internet or through a direct IP address. The entire process can take a fraction of a second. This will provide electronic global access to airborne vehicles from any place.
The core planning algorithms to support the NGATS concepts will need
accurate predictions of airport configuration over planning horizons of
six hours or more.  Such predictions are not currently feasible because
the configuration often is not completely determined by factors such as
weather forecasts, future demand, and noise restrictions that might be
input to an automated predictor.  When this is the case, the air traffic
control tower personnel choose between the feasible configurations based
on factors such as staffing issues and individual controller
preferences.  Furthermore, the primary meteorological forecasts
currently available to the tower are not adequate to enable accurate
runway usage prediction.  In fact, they often fail to predict required
changes in flow direction, causing reactive rather than proactive
airport configuration management.  In this SBIR, Metron Aviation and WSI
Corporation will jointly develop an airport configuration planner
incorporating optimized weather forecasts to assist tower controllers in
planning runway usage more accurately at longer time horizons than
currently possible and to communicate the plan to appropriate National
Airspace System (NAS) stakeholders and planning systems.  The
optimization algorithms in this decision support tool will improve
resource allocation not only at individual airports but also over all
airports in a metropolitan area.
ADVR, Inc. proposes the development of a fiber coupled, high power, electro-optically controlled, space qualified, phase modulator for the NASA Laser Interferometer Space Antenna (LISA). The proposed device will be capable of phase modulating a 1 W or greater, continuous wave optical signal at multi-gigahertz rates at 1064 nm. The key innovation is the use of a waveguide embedded in a non-linear optical material suitable for high optical power handling. The phase modulators used for LISA must be rugged and must perform optimally in a radiation environment over the mission lifetime. To achieve this goal, the proposed phase modulator development will include a fiber-in-fiber-out design that will readily lend itself to future space qualification for mechanical stability of the package and radiation damage resistance of the non-linear optical material.
The Phase II program will concentrate on manufacturing of qualified low-current, light-weight, 10K ADR magnets for space application. Shielded ADR solenoidal magnets will be compared with self-shielding toriodal magnets in terms of overall weight, volume, and cooling capacity. Models of both toroidal and shielded solenoidal magnet systems will be built and tested to compare the two options at practical as well as technical levels.
To address the NASA need for quiet on-orbit crew quarters (CQ), Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a new Adaptive Intelligent Ventilation Noise Control (AIVNC) system to reduce acoustic noise inside the CQ and work spaces. AIVNC is based on a new multimodal, skin-like active noise controller that will be easy to retrofit and will not interfere with air flow or generate secondary noise. AIVNC cancels ventilation noise by producing high fidelity, broadband counter-acoustic energy by means of very thin, flat multifrequency active patches under the control of an intelligent adapting module (IAM) based on a spontaneous adapting acoustic model.  In Phase I POC demonstrated AIVNC with in-duct streamlined MAPs based on two piezoelectric materials, reproducing high-quality sound at up to 90 dB from 300 to 10000 Hz with very low distortion; a compact driving MAP amplifier; two IAM algorithms predicting ventilation noise one step ahead to cancel it, reducing noise by up to 27 dB rms with real ISS ventilation noise provided by NASA. In Phase II POC will advance/optimize AIVNC components to build a fully functional AIVNC prototype to reduce CQ noise by &gt;30 dB, satisfying NC 40 requirements for NASA crew quarters.
This three phase SBIR project from ADA Technologies Inc. (ADA) builds upon the experience of ADA in development of fine water mist (FWM) fire suppression technology.  ADA has subcontracted Colorado School of Mines (CSM) to provide expertise in fire scenarios in NASA's spacecraft; Spraying Systems for their expertise nozzle development, optimization, testing, and commercial manufacturing; and Pacific Scientific HTL Kin-Tech Division as a commercialization partner with expertise in flight qualified hardware.  This team will work to develop the FWM fire extinguisher which was proven to extinguish fires in phase I.
FWM is a proven fire suppression technology with the ability to extinguish large fuel fed fires, as well as, small electrical fires. Unlike sprinkler water systems it does not damage structures, and unlike CO2 or Halon fire extinguishers it has only inert chemicals water and nitrogen, so it is not a health hazard, environmental hazard and easily scrubbed from the air with dehumidifiers when used in spacecraft. This new extinguisher's innovative design has the capability to discharge in any orientation, and has been dubbed the Universal Discharge Orientation System (UDOS). During Phase I the UDOS system was capable of extinguishing fires in both normal vertical positions as well as upside down.  During the Phase II efforts the system will be evaluated to extinguish fires in any 360 degree orientation. The ultimate objective of this project is to develop a FWM fire extinguisher which can be commercially manufactured and is capable of extinguishing both large open fires and enclosed electrical fires with minimal water usage.
The main purpose of this NASA SBIR Phase II proposal is development of a novel type of high resolving power diffraction gratings based on volume Bragg gratings technology. The key innovation, which was used for creation of these gratings, is based on patented technology of production of high efficiency volume diffractive elements in photo-thermo-refractive (PTR) glass on which OptiGrate has an exclusive license from the University of Central Florida. The significance of the innovation is that volume diffractive gratings in PTR glass have diffraction efficiency more than 95&#37; and resolving power up to 20,000 in spectral range from 400 to 2700 nm. These gratings have 25 mm-long standard aperture with possibility to increase it up to 50 mm with the spectral resolution less than 50 pm. This, to the best of our knowledge, exceeds parameters of all comparable gratings worldwide. Moreover, as a result of Phase I project performance, a combination of high resolution Bragg grating with Fabri-Perot etalon provides additional increasing of spectral selectivity and enables the further increasing of spectral resolution power. This approach will be used for development of narrow band filters for detection of O2 (766 nm), H2O (935 nm), CO2 (1571 nm) and CH4 (1650 nm) with spectral width well below 1 nm (100 ? 200 pm), aperture 25 mm, throughput exceeding 90&#37; in both reflecting and transmitting geometries. An additional task in Phase II would be a development of a scanning technology within a narrow line about 100 pm with resolution in the range from 1 to 10 pm. Aperture 25 mm, selected radiation should be focused to a photoreceiver of about 200 um.
Future detectors and arrays for visible, IR, and submillimeter imaging and spectroscopy require much higher speed digitizers than are currently available. In particular, low-power (&lt; 5 W) space-qualifiable digitizers with &gt; 5 GHz bandwidth and &gt; 5 Gs/s sampling rates are needed to enable next generation digital submillimeter spectrometers. These digitizers must also provide data reduction and interface to typical digital processing logic using e.g. LVDS-compatible I/O. To meet these needs, Hittite proposes an innovative digitizer combining a high-speed (10 Gs/s), wideband (10 GHz), moderate-resolution (4 ? 6 bit) ADC with a companion digital demux to reduce the data rate and present LVDS-compatible outputs to e.g. Xilinx Virtex-5 FPGAs. The proposed SiGe HBT technology offers high reliability and radiation tolerance for space missions. A conceptual design will be developed in Phase I, and prototype digitizer modules produced during Phase II. Although a two-chip solution is initially proposed to reduce development risk, the technology will facilitate a single-chip solution during Phase III to further reduce size, weight, and power while improving system reliability.
Future advanced telescopes require active mirror compensation without
the complexity of real-time adaptive control. Current wavefront
correctors, while dimensionally stable, require closed loop control
using a wavefront sensor and complicated electronics to maintain mirror
shape. For space based systems, simplified open loop control is
desirable since it reduces power and weight while greatly improving
system reliability by reducing complexity and electronic parts count.
Xinetics proposes a Programmable Relaxor Open-Loop Mirror using
Integrated Spatial Encoders (PROMISE) that combines surface parallel
actuation and micro optical encoders. The programmable relaxor open-loop
mirror uses a surface parallel actuator array, made using ferroelectric
micromachining originally developed for silicon based MEMS. The
programmable actuator array enables the dimensionally stability and
angstrom level control provided only by relaxor ferroelectrics, as has
been demonstrated by the Jet Propulsion Laboratory. The integrated
spatial encoder features an optical encoder that monitors dimensional
change and is integrated directly between the actuator array and the
surface mount interconnect. The voltage output of the optical encoder is
used as a direct input to the feedback loop for the actuator circuit
enabling electroactive control of the mirror surface without the
necessity of an optical sensor, thereby enabling open loop control.
Atmospheric pressure sensing in particular is of critical importance to any attemp of Mars landing. Pressure sensing has traditionally always drawn high interest from the military due to its applications to high-performance military airplanes and helicopters, missiles and ballons. Aerodynamics also find its applications in civilian aviation. After over 100 years of research and development, most powered aerodynamic experiments can be accurately simulated numerically on a computer today. However, aerodynamic experiments and measurements are still needed for the input parameters to the simulation, for the final verification of results and routine monitoring of performance. As a matter of fact, precision aerodynamic measurements gain ever higher importance today than before. 
There are 3 special challenges of measuring pressure on Mars: (1) the thin atmosphere requires high ensitrivity sensors; (2) the extreme temerature range; and (3) the survival of the landing impact. This proposal address them all. At home on the Earch, air pressure measurements reveal a lot of useful information about aircraft engine performance, about the air flow on aircraft wings, about the on-blade dynamic pressure of a helicopter, and about the optimal design and motion of a parachute among other things. 
The unique advantage of our solution lies in its high stability against temperature variations and mechanical disturbances, rendering the proposed system rugged and robust enough for Mars landing and exploration while keeping the cost at the level of commercial off the shelf fiber-optic communications systems. 
In Phase I of this program, we propose to demonstrate a bench-top system with several high-sensitivity etalon pressure sensors with high temperature and mechanical stability. In Phase II, we will develop the complete pressure sensor system using existing fiber optic components with monitoring and feedback control software.
We will leverage our prior work on Adaptive Information Management (AIM) to provide a core reasoning capability for use in an interactive and quantitative evaluation aid to assist designers in developing user interfaces (UIs). We have a task-linked information representation and associated algorithms for reasoning about the information needs of a set of user tasks, the information presentation capabilities of a set of devices and formats, and the degree of match between the two. These have served as the basis of multiple, successful AIM systems in the past.  In Phase I, we developed an architecture for making our core representation more interactive and subject to user guidance-- turning our AIM into a Multi-modal Advisor for Interface Design (a MAID). We demonstrated the effectiveness of the resulting evaluation algorithm in a set of 10 "walkthrough" experiments illustrating quantitative feedback on the adequacy of interface concepts for the types of procedures and displays under consideration for NASA's Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV).  In Phase 2, we propose to implement a prototype version of this approach in an integrated suite of software tools for procedure authoring and demonstrate it on a set of procedure execution displays for a NASA vehicle or platform (notionally, CEV).
Mobitrum has started the development of virtual sensor test instrumentation in Phase I for characterization and measurement of ground testing of propulsion systems.  It is clear that future wide availability of smart sensors will significantly reduce the cost and time required to design, repair, or modify sensor systems through modular and re-configurable capability.  The Phase II effort will complete the development of: 1) common sensor interface, (2) microprocessor, (3) wireless interface, (4) signal conditioning and ADC/DAC, and (5) on-board EEPROM for metadata storage and executable software to create powerful, scalable, re-configurable, and reliable distributed test instrument. The transducer senses the physical quantity being measured and converts it into an electrical signal. Then the signal is fed to an A/D converter, and is ready for use by the processor to execute functional transformation based on the sensor characteristics stored in TEDS. In order to maximize the data efficiency, a plug-and-play is required to interface with traditional sensors to enhance their identity and capabilities for data processing and communications.  Virtual sensor test instrumentation is built upon open-system architecture with standardized protocol modules/stacks easily to interface with industry standards and commonly used software such as IEEE 1451, MATLAB, and LabVIEW.
TRS Technologies proposes innovative hybrid electrostatic/flextensional membrane deformable mirror capable of large amplitude aberration correction for large aperture and light weight space telescopes, and proposes to investigate the performances of single crystal piezoelectric actuators in space environment. The innovative hybrid deformable mirror concept is expected  to eliminate  actuator cross talk in electrostatic membrane mirror, while the large stroke (&gt; 300 um) flextensional actuators provide large dynamic range by more than an order of magnitude over the current state of the art. The proposed membrane DM retains the characteristics of membrane mirrors such as light weight, adaptable to large aperture and low cost. Flextensional actuator arrays with stroke of &gt; 300 um will be developed and a hybrid electrostatic/flextensional membrane deformable mirror will be prototyped and characterized. The single crystal piezoelectric actuators produced at TRS offer large stroke, low hysteresis, and an excellent cryogenic strain response. Further investigation on using single crystal piezoelectric actuators in space environment will explore the possibility of using low profile, lightweight, and high performance piezoelectric actuations for positioning, alignment and shape control in space applications.
Aerobraking to reduce velocity for planetary capture and landing has long been assumed for use on Mars missions because Mars has an atmosphere, and the use of aerobraking minimizes the amount of propellants required from the Earth's surface. For Mars exploration missions, where large quantities of equipment will be required, an aerobrake that is adequate for the size and amount of equipment will need to be quite large.  Unfortunately, carrying a large aerobrake to orbit requires either an unreasonably large shroud or an expensive on-orbit assembly process.  Flexible aerobrakes have promise, but  pressure-supported ribs with tension-supported areal TPS have potential flagging instabilities. Andrews Space, Inc. proposes an innovative aerobrake design that is deployable and rigidizable, meeting initial launch volume constraints and satisfying terminal aerobraking requirements. The design will include rigidizing foams as a key feature, adding a few percent to weight but greatly enhancing the capability to aerobrake oversized exploration elements. Andrews proposes to initially explore in Phase I a range of design options, using its integrated conceptual design tools and systems engineering processes to establish a preferred approach.  That approach can be further developed and tested in Phases II and III to mature the associated technologies and design.
We propose to develop low cost diamond composite bearings utilizing our
new high pressure technology for carbon fiber reinforced 3-D C/C
composites and mixtures of pitch, fullerenes and nanotubes. Functionally
graded bearings will be engineered to function without lubrication and
to operate in Lunar dust. Tests have shown that these new materials are
thermally and chemically stable, have a very high wear resistance on the
diamond coated surface and can work in sand and regolith like
unlubricated sliding fits. Such bearings are also extremely lightweight.
Our variety of diamond coated composite would be easily scalable and
cost effective to fabricate. In Phase I, we will focus on designing and
prototyping precision unlubricated bearings. For Phase II and III, we
will work in collaboration with leading companies that produce ceramic bearings.
We propose to develop high figure of merit (ZT) oxide-based
thermoelectric materials.  This will be accomplished by engineering a
novel microstructure that will lead to reduced lattice thermal
conductivity, a large Seebeck coefficient and high electronic
conductivity. A new processing route to achieve the desired
microstructure is proposed, which builds upon our core competency in
nanomaterials synthesis and processing. The proposed oxide materials can
be used at higher temperatures than currently available non-oxide based
thermoelectrics. The Phase I effort, a collaboration with a leading
thermoelectrics research group in the United States, will demonstrate
the feasibility of fabricating a dense oxide leg with high ZT and
conversion efficiency at elevated temperatures.  Prototype
thermoelectric devices using p- and n- oxide legs will be fabricated and
tested, and efforts will be undertaken to transition the technology into
the commercial arena, especially in industrial waste heat recovery.
The Airspace Flow Program (AFP) is a new Traffic Flow Management (TFM) control technique that has entered operation in 2006. AFPs use two existing technologies, Ground Delay Programs (GDPs) and Flow Constrained Areas (FCAs), to reduce demand on constrained areas of the airspace by issuing delays to be applied pre-departure. The operational use of AFPs during the 2006 severe weather season was received positively by the TFM community. However, there are significant aspects of AFP operational characteristics that differ from the previous airport-based GDPs. NASA's FACET model has already contributed significantly to the research and evaluation of TFM concepts. As the JPDO continues to refine its vision for the Next Generation Air Transportation System, additional capabilities in FACET will support its use as a critical tool for further NASA research. The development of an AFP model for FACET is an essential addition to support research and analysis of both current and future TFM operations. Mosaic ATM proposes to conduct detailed analysis of AFP operations and to develop an AFP model for FACET.
Ceramic Composites Inc. (CCI) of Millersville, MD in association with Swales Aerospace of Beltsville, MD have evaluated an innovative approach for the design of a Venus probe to maximize the payload volume and mass, while increasing probe lifetime.  CCI and Swales have evaluated state-of-the-art materials and concepts to create a combination of thermal management approaches which maximizes value to NASA such as: 1) augmentation of the passive insulation with phase change materials (PCM) and two-phase evaporation cooling to maximize thermal protection at minimal volume and mass, 2) providing system corrosion protection through reverse flow gas balance to prolong vessel, sensor and window life, and 3) replacement of the titanium pressure vessel with a polymer matrix composite to reduce vessel mass and increase payload mass.  The analyses conducted in Phase I indicate that the baseline concept will provide a lifetime of approximately 35 earth hours (while also managing a continuous 150W load from the scientific equipment) with a 100kg mass savings compared to a system employing the same thermal management system with a titanium pressure vessel.  The Phase II effort will focus on refining the concept; designing, manufacturing, and evaluating a subscale prototype.
Computer codes such as MCNPX now have the capability to transport most high energy particle types (34 particle types now supported in MCNPX) with energies extending into the teravolt energy range. The efficient use of these types of Monte Carlo tools is very important for modeling the effects of space radiation on humans, spacecraft and equipment. This proposal would develop a graphical user interface for high energy multi-particle transport. With this innovation, users of the MCNPX code would have access to a powerful graphical user interface for efficient creation and interrogation of their input files, which would significantly reduce the amount of time required to create and debug input files.

Specific enhancements that are proposed include the implementation of the Los Alamos Quark-Gluon String Model Module in MCNPX;  adding the source creation capability to the graphical user interface; improvements to data visualization and 3D geometry plotting; and the investigation of implementing spline surfaces in MCNPX.
The innovation proposed here focuses on cleansing air with high energy electrons.  Bombardment by electrons has proven to be effective in removing a wide spectrum of chemical and biological pollutants.  Electron beam systems have a significant advantage over conventional VOC and odor control technologies.  The process requires less energy than other purification methods, generates no additional CO2, requires no additional reagents and does not produce any solid or hazardous waste. We propose to develop an e-beam source to meet the restrictive cost, weight and reliability requirements attendant to commercial passenger aircraft and manned space exploration.  The key to this transition is to replace the thermionic cathode electron emitter with a carbon nanotube (CNT) field emission cathode. During Phase 1 we completed a design of an e-beam system suitable for maintaining air purity for an enclosed four men space station.  The system is compact, light weight and will fit readily in line with an air conditioning duct.  In Phase II, we will detail the design, and build a prototype of the e-beam system. That e-beam source can also be use for decontaminating small widely distributed pollution sources, such as small paint shops, gas stations, and restaurants.
This proposal is for the creation of a system-level software specification and verification tool. This proposal suggests a major leap-forward in usability of modeling, code generation, Runtime Verification (RV), and Automatic Test Generation (ATG) from the component-level to the system-level. 
1.	We will create a specification and run-time verification environment for system-level specifications using J-MSC assertions and distributed assertions. J-MSC assertions are a UML-based system-level formal specification language. In phase-I we demonstrated J-MSC assertion and distributed assertion specification and monitoring. In phase-II we will construct an editor, code-generator, and run-time monitor for J-MSC assertions and for distributed assertions. 
2.	We will create  system-level verification environment, compliant with the de-facto JUnit testing framework, including: 
?	RV of J-MSC assertions for system verification combined with statechart-assertions for the component level. 
?	RV of distributed assertions.
?	System-level  white-box ATG of UML controller models and assertions: white-box ATG for a plurality controller modules and for a plurality of controller instances.
?	Combined black-box/Matlab and white-box ATG, with support for both open-loop and closed loop techniques.
?	White-box ATG based on real-time contracts of system components.
Microcosm will build on the Phase I X-ray pulsar-based navigation and timing (XNAV) feasibility assessment to develop a detailed XNAV simulation capability to evaluate navigation performance for specific missions of interest, and create an XNAV flight software experiment ready to integrate on an appropriate near-term flight demonstration mission in Phase III.  Phase I demonstrated achievable XNAV accuracy, developed a preliminary source catalog, constructed an XNAV error budget, and laid out potential implementation options for XNAV, focusing on an Earth-Sun L2 Lagrange point mission.  Brighter, less stable, non-traditional X-ray sources were also considered for possible XNAV application with promising initial results, especially for formation flying applications.  Taking advantage of concurrent XNAV efforts at DARPA to the maximum extent possible, Phase II will develop and validate XNAV algorithms via a simulation which will be targeted for integration with Goddard Space Flight Center's GPS Enhanced Onboard Navigation System (GEONS) software.  The error budget will be developed in more detail to support the algorithm and simulation work.  XNAV holds great potential for NASA as an enabling technology for fully autonomous interplanetary navigation and could provide a significant mission enhancement as an adjunct to the Deep Space Network (DSN) and ground based navigation.
This proposal addresses the need for a real-time Prognostics and Health Management (PHM) system to identify anomalous states in digital electronic systems used in spaceflight applications and recommend corrective actions. We identify promising host platforms for implementation of PHM and consider strategies for identifying faults at the board level. Models for each approach are developed for further study of the effectiveness in identifying faults, estimating system states, and identifying anomalous states. Each method is then ranked with respect to prognostic fault coverage (state-awareness), missed alarms, and false alarms. Finally, a strategy is developed to optimally and dynamically reconfigure or recover the digital system based on current or predicted system status given by the prognostic/reasoner approach and board topology. By responding to a need for greater health awareness in complex on-board digital systems, the technology developed in this project will improve safety and effectiveness of future spaceflight missions, and improve serviceability and availability throughout the system lifecycle.
To meet the ever-increasing power demand of today's spacecraft systems, an integrated power electronics system capable of interfacing, and simultaneously controlling, three power ports will be designed and demonstrated in Phase I of the proposed project. This new proposed power electronic architecture employs a single-stage power topology, thus allowing cost-effective control of power flow with improved efficiency, power density, and reliability. This is achieved by modifying the switching patterns and control strategy of suitable conventional isolated converters, fully utilizing digital power electronics control methods. The result is multi-function utilization of converter components for increased capabilities with minimal effects on losses, size, weight and cost for such components. Moreover, existing engineering design concepts can be easily used to optimize the new proposed power topologies in a fashion similar to the conventional mother topologies including soft-switching techniques, component selection, and magnetic design procedures at higher switching frequencies. Each of these topologies is capable of performing simultaneous control of two of its three ports from battery or ultra-capacitor charge regulation, solar array peak power tracking, and/or load voltage regulation. Such converters are valuable alternative for designers of power systems requiring multiple power sources, or interfaced to power storage devices.
NASA will return to the IIS by 2014 and the moon by 2020.  To accomplish these missions, NASA will exploit to the maximum degree possible the Apollo architecture and especially the lessons learned and technological advances that have occurred over the intervening 40 years in building robust, cost effective, efficient, and, partly reusable launch, lander, explorer, and resupply vehicles.  In support of this effort, Technology Assessment &amp; Transfer (TA&amp;T) proposes to develop a magnesium metal matrix composite (MMC) for use as aerospace structural members.  This material exhibits three times the specific stiffness of the best aluminum-lithium alloys and two times that of PMCs.  TA&amp;T will demonstrate the feasibility and practicality of a low temperature method for achieving high loading of ceramic particles in a magnesium matrix that will enable a cast or extruded structural material of non-uniform cross-section exhibiting the unusual combination of light weight, high specific stiffness and strength, radiation shielding, and low cost.  The MMC will be protected from corrosion by a unique thin film coating designed specifically to prevent corrosion of aluminum and magnesium alloys.
Pentalim Inc. is developing a new sensor for the measurement of
chemiluninescence of air breathing engine combustion.  The sensor will
be wireless and incorporate optical power scavenging technology that
will increase its effective transmission range.  The sensor will also
incorporate Silicon Carbide electronic materials to enable in situ
monitoring of combustion.   This sensor will be applicable to both
future propulsion systems as well as legacy and helicopter engines and
will enable improved combustion instability, pattern factor and
emissions control.
LIDAR is an innovative technology for the next round of manned exploration of space. The LIDAR instrument transmits light out to a target. The transmitted light interacts with and is changed by the target. Some of this light is scattered back to the instrument where it is analyzed. The change in the properties of the light enables some property of the target to be determined. 
SMI proposes to develop a 1 x 10 electrically switched silicon nano-optic switch/multiplexer for use with high power lasers in the fiber-based fixed-array laser transmitter for use in NASA planetary explorations. With switch operation proven at greater than 1 GHz switching speed and nearly lossless single-mode waveguides, our device can readily handle high optical power with minimal loss. This switch will allow array LIDAR systems to efficiently share the same laser source. The component is designed in such a way so as to be near seamlessly integrable into present designs so as to dramatically enhance present LIDAR efficiency. The very same fiber optic switch components are radiation-hard ? a feature uniquely suitable for outer space explorations. Further, utilizing our radiation hardened by design techniques developed to deliver a radiation hardened SRAM, we will ensure compatibility with radiation hardend standards.
Phase I will see design validation, and Phase II will see the proof-of-concept prototype devices that are delivered to NASA along with radiation testing certification. In Phase III, SMI will commercialize the results of SBIR funded research, by marketing the proposed silicon nano-optic switch/multiplexer to military, space and commercial sectors. In particular, by working with LIDAR system manufacturers serving NASA in Phase II, we will assure seemless acceptance and integration of the SMI switch into one or more LIDAR systems; further, we will also work with NASA system designers to assure our device meets future space system needs as well.
This Phase I NASA SBIR Proposal seeks to demonstrate a new zero-erosion ablative thermal protection system (TPS) technology that is based upon an ultra-high temperature (UHT) ceramic fiber pre-form / organic ablative matrix composite structure. In this TPS material concept, the "char" phase is pre-engineered UHT zirconium carbide (Zr(O)C) ceramic fiber pre-forms, which have dual functions of high compressive strength of ligaments and non-recession of fiber components after matrix ablation. To increase the pre-form ligament strength and stiffness, Zr(O)C fiber reinforcements will be combined with the high-modulus carbon fibers.  MG's ablative TPS are designed to retain their shape in extreme environments, thereby reducing the thickness requirement and lowering the TPS total mass, which will be crucial at high re-entry velocity.
MG's new ablator slowly absorbs high levels of energy when ablated at higher temperatures. The ablative carbonaceous phase has been identified by the use of a melamine-formaldehyde and/or polyethylene polymer resin. This selection was based upon its high heat of volatilization and decomposition. At the completion of the Phase I and Phase II program, MG will have fabricated a high specific strength C-Zr(O)C / C-ablator and have demonstrated an completely integrated 5'x5' size TPS with attachment features, operational at &gt; 6000oF.
Spaceports, spacecrafts for planetary missions, future projects on the moon and mars ? they all need to monitor mission critical propellants.  This project established the feasibility of a tapered optical fiber-based sensor (TOFS) that can be fitted into narrow orifices of plumbing junctions to detect the leakage of cryogenic fluids such as hydrogen. Complete reversibility and response/recovery time of less than 30 seconds for the hydrogen sensor were demonstrated in Phase I. Scanning electron microscope (SEM) images confirmed that the sensor suffered no degradation upon soaking in liquid nitrogen (LN2, 77 K). Tests with LH2 will be conducted in Phase II. The underlying sensor technology will support NASA goal of reducing vehicle and payload cost, and increase safety of operations by measuring hydrogen in real-time and in situ.  A prototype device will be engineered, field-tested and delivered to NASA in Phase II establishing technical maturity approaching TRL 6.  InnoSense LLC has received a strong endorsement letter from a major Aerospace company in support of the project. InnoSense LLC has also received Phase III follow-on funding commitment totaling $500,000 from commercialization partners. An engineering team having 80 person-years of cumulative experience in developing commercially viable products has been assembled for this project.
Oxygen regenerated from a crew's expired CO2 and H2O vapor is essential to enabling a continuous human presence on the moon at significantly reduced costs and risks.   Any such technology demonstrated on the moon will then be ready to support the transport of humans to Mars and their eventual surface exploration efforts.  Paragon Space Development Corporation is proposing an innovative, efficient and practical concept that utilizes Solid Oxide Electrolysis (SOE) for the next generation electrolysis/Sabatier subsystem to enable 100&#37; oxygen regenerative air revitalization systems (ARS).
 
The concept is innovative because it safely eliminates handling of hydrogen, works irrespective of gravity and pressure environments with no moving parts and no multi-phase flows, and requires no expendables while being compact with minimal impact on mass.  This innovation is directly relevant and essential to our current mandate set by the President to return humans to the moon and in doing so develop technologies that will enable our exploration of Mars.

The significance of the proposed Phase 2 SOE development effort is that it offers the very real possibility that life support systems could close the oxygen loop such that oxygen supporting consumables required to produce oxygen need not continually be delivered from Earth.
Two main innovations will be developed in the Phase II effort that are fundamentally associated with our gaseous oxygen/gaseous methane RCS thruster.  The first innovation is that of an integrated torch igniter/injector which, provides simple and reliable ignition for the thruster.  The second innovation is the thruster's capability to operate with both gaseous and liquid propellants.  This innovation enables greater system flexibility that is inherent in the capacity to function over a much wider range of operating conditions. 

Orion has been approached by several prospective customers concerning affordable, reusable thrusters. In the current commercial market, this does not exist and the commercial sector cannot afford traditional propulsion solutions. For this reason, Orion started developing a thruster that offers the following features:

?	Provides an affordable solution as compared to what is currently available
?	Uses a different manned approach since it is reusable
?	Uses a modular design, which allows for the robust inspection and replacement of parts
?	Uses green propellants and capitalizes on in situ propellant production
?	Provides greater system flexibility since it operates with both liquid and gaseous propellants

Not only does the gas/gas operation of the thruster attract companies such as t/Space and Bigleow Aerospace, but its liquid/liquid operation broadens this customer base and makes this design applicable to NASA programs such as the Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV).
The proposed innovation is a planetary surface tool called the Multi Purpose Excavation Demonstrator (MPED), which is intended to both extract Lunar Soil to feed an in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) processing plant, and to perform lunar civil engineering applications. The proposed MPED prototype is an excavation tool known as a 'bucket ladder,' a device with a long heritage of industrial use that is intrinsically abrasion and dust-resistant. The device will be a prototype bucket ladder excavation tool with a pivot arm, and will have a target mass of 20kg and a target production rate of 500kg/hr. It is intended to be integrated into a roughly 80kg mobile platform for a total projected mobile system mass of 100kg. The system will be designed for minimum power consumption for the lunar case, with a target power consumption of less than 200 watts for the terrestrial demonstrator (note: lunar power consumption is expected to be lower due to gravitational differences). Productivity goals include a maximum berm height of 3 meters (based upon multiple passes), a single-pass excavation depth of 30 cm (with a width of between 10 and 25 cm), and a multi-pass road width of 4 meters.
NextGen proposes an approach to significantly enhance aeroelastic analysis capabilities over what is commonly available in linear analysis environments such as NASTANTM The approach to accomplish this builds upon an existing software framework that allows the integration of varying-fidelity aerodynamic modeling capability with varying videlit structural models. The approach utilizes inherently nonlinear aerodynamic predictions schemes that are incorporated into the aeroelastic solution strategy. Potentially large (geometrically nonlinear) structural deflections under the influence of nonlinear aerodynamic can be analyzed using the approach. Hierarchical levels of analysis capabilities are included, ranging from simple yet powerful empirical approaches to the complete coupling of high-order CFD codes and nonlinear structural models. An aeroservoelastic solution framework will be developed in Phase I resulting in a prototype nonlinear aeroelasticity method suitable for a proof-of-concept demonstration. The developed methods will be demonstrated on test cases of recent research interest, such as the Active Aeroelastic Wing (AAW) F/A-18 aircraft.
We propose to build and evaluate NDIR Analyzers that can observe eddy covariance flux of CO2 from unmanned airborne platforms. For both phases, a total of four analyzers are to be evaluated for their nose (ppb rms, Dry Mole Fraction) and susceptibility to artifacts on platform. We present original framework for their evaluation. It consists of expressions for their potential noises, artifacts and the functionality of their electro-optical processors on platform. Phase I begins with the construction of two innovative NDIR analyzers, one close- and the other open-path.  Each is based on the industry-standard airborne analyzer made by the proposing corporation. It is solid-state, runs at 8 Hz and has negligible sensitivity to motion. We propose existing technologies to increase the electro-optical modulation frequency to 100 Hz. The rms sensitivity (ppb), the level of drying and frequency response to air will be documented. The goal is a technology having the air sampling frequency of 100 Hz, rms sensitivity of 100 ppb and negligible artifacts, the target specifications of NASA's Southern Ocean Initiative. The plan for Phase II will be to evaluate the analyzers by observations of eddy covariance flux made from unmanned and piloted aircraft above terrestrial and marine ecosystems.
This SBIR project will demonstrate and develop a novel micro-pump capable of controlled and selective chemical transport.  Phase I will create, characterize, and model a robust and readily fabricated low-power miniaturized pump achieving "forceless" dissolved ion transport compatible with microgravity conditions.  The compact technology will be extremely versatile, low-cost, stable, easily tailorable, and readily scaleable to higher fluxes via structure duplication and application in parallel.  The device will be physically stable, chemically inert, and pH insensitive while its small dimensions result in lower power consumption and reduced mass.   The result will be a more versatile and general pump capable of moving a variety of drugs.  Phase I will explore the pump performance, stability, and design optimization using selected ionic compounds as model transport subjects by running designed experiments exploring pump operations as a function of key pump structural and operation variables.  This data will determine the controlling variables, their effects on the system performance, and will be utilized with first-principles system physics analysis to develop a pump operation model.  This model will allow rapid technology configuration exploration, operation performance refinement, and will provide critical insights into preferred, better optimized, structures to be evaluated during Phase II.
We propose that the Membrane Aperture Shell Technology (MAST) approach be expanded with a specific focus on space exploration orbiting comm network RF aperture applications.  The approach is based on a proven combination of 1) thin film materials with space heritage, 2) inherent low areal density (40 to 200 g/m2), 3) structural shell stiffness provided through the induction of permanent curvature, 4) sufficiently low surface roughness and thickness variation (verging on optical grade), and global figure to satisfy all RF wavelength operations, 5) proven  RF reflectivity, 6) compact stack or roll stowage, 7) robust passive self deployment with stowed strain energy, and when needed, 8) compatibility with boundary control/adjustment to provide initial phasing, rigid body fine pointing and environmental disturbance effect rejection.  Recent advances in shell fabrication technology enable easily scaleable aperture systems based on hexagons segments.  By optimizing local segment figure and alignment large scale on axis (or even off axis) parabolas can be adequately approximated.  In the PI we will demonstrate fabrication of suitable hexagon shaped segments, determine optimal system architectures, confirm RF performance, numerically show sufficient stiffness in the face of environmental and launch loads, review figure mitigation and control techniques. This prepares the way for a detailed PII focused on demonstrating performance in realistic environments (TRL 6), a key step in any realistic commercialization plan for space hardware.
Radiant Acoustics' patented technology for micro-interferometry enables a nano-g intertial sensor for NASA's emerging needs.  The proposed sensor system is 1000x more sensitive than commercial sensors.  The sensor combines silicon micromachining (i.e. MEMS) and nanotechnology-based infrared vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) to form a robust sensing architecture functioning in a fundamentally different way than any existing sensor systems by using an optical interferometer within a 5 mm^3 package.  Working prototypes have been fabricated and characterized.  This Phase I proposal is to develop our proven laboratory innovation into a product for NASA and other commercial markets.  All Key Personnel are Full time Employees of the company.
Diffraction gratings are powerful tools for the spectral analysis of electromagnetic radiation.  Properties of gratings are determined by available fabrication means ? which have not changed substantially in 50 years.  Modern photolithography, now approaching nanometer resolution, may revolutionize the way many gratings are made and, through greater design flexibility, how gratings function. Over 1011 pixels, each smaller than 100 nm and collectively spanning areas of multiple centimeters, can be addressed individually with nanometer-scale absolute positioning accuracy by modern lithographic tools, thereby making it possible to create gratings with virtually any desired line curvature, variable line spacing, length and thickness ? features largely beyond traditional fabrication means.  LightSmyth Technologies proposes to leverage these state-of-the-art photolithographic patterning tools to design flat imaging gratings that combine dispersive grating function with one- and two-dimensional focusing.  Importantly, diffractive, aka holographic, focusing may have substantially lower aberration in low f-number or high incidence angle configurations.  Line spacing and curvature do the focusing. This design and fabrication strategy will be applied to the development of gratings for NASA's NEXUS effort and other advanced grating products of value to NASA and the commercial markets ? all of which leverage on the innovative fabrication platform LightSmyth brings to the diffractive market.
The new Presidential directive to place humans on Mars and establish bases on the moon will require advances in space nuclear power generation. Nuclear power generation has a combined advantage in power density, low fuel/mass ratio, mission duration and cost over any other generation method for these missions. To meet the needs of reactor safety, health monitoring and performance, light-weight, real-time, in-core neutron and gamma monitoring sensors need to be developed. Luna is proposing to further develop a real-time miniature gamma and neutron dosimeter. This hybrid sensor will measure gamma and neutron dose independently, as well as temperature at the same location. The transducer will be less than 5mm long and 1mg in mass. This dosimeter will enable real-time determination of reactor power level, health and remaining fuel as well as shielding effectiveness.  During the Phase I, Luna demonstrated feasibility of the proposed dosimeter material systems in a nuclear reactor determining that minimum dosimeter resolutions (based on material measurements) of 0.57MRad gamma and 0.83x1014n/cm2 can be accomplished with EFPI based sensors.  Phase II will optimize the sensor designs and demodulation system for performance and cost, considering space hardening constraints, and demonstrate the system in high radiation and high temperature environments.
The Small Business Innovative Research Phase I proposal seeks to develop a dual channel, compact mid-infrared laser spectrometer for planetary atmosphere exploration.  The device will be capable of measuring trace gases at 3.3 and 4.6 um without the need for cryogens. By using novel, fiber-coupled, solid state lasers, performance will be improved over traditional tunable diode laser sensors.
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	To stimulate and encourage creativity and innovation within the NASA Centers. The activities are envisioned to fall within the scope of NASA Space Technology or technology addressing a significant National need.&lt;/p&gt;
We propose to improve productivity of high performance computing for applications on multicore computers and clusters.  These machines built from one or more chips that may have from two to hundreds of cores on a chip or socket, are notoriously hard to program. Interactive Supercomputing's Star-P platform has been designed to meet this need but requires more components to fully deliver the dream of high performance computing.

We will work with NASA to develop the ability to reuse existing MPI and serial codes.   Software writers can then move forward by working in high productivity interactive languages such as Mathworks MATLAB. Star-P already has this general capability, but what is further needed are functional transformations from the language as it appears on the desktop.  In this work we will identify those transformations that will benefit NASA codes, and apply them first as a prototype in Phase I.  In Phase II we will complete the prototype fully automating what might be thought of as semi-automatic transformations. We will in addition widen the scope of NASA codes that will benefit from such productivity enhancement. As a synergistic activity, visits to NASA sites including   workshops are envisioned so that the work has maximum impact.
Two cryogenic flow-control valves of diameters 1/2" and 2" will be built and tested.  Based on cryogenically-proven Venturi Off-Set Technology (VOST) they have no stem-actuator, few moving parts, and an overall cylindrical shape.  Intended to demonstrate a breakthrough in cryogenic flow control, VOST provides precise linear flow control across its entire dynamic range, holds position without power and requires low actuation energy.
The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) foresee extension of exploratory space missions to the Moon, Mars, Venus and beyond.  To reach these outer locations will require development of a range of advanced technologies including life support systems.  Food represents one of the most crucial components of life support, as the ability to supply safe, nutritious and organoleptically pleasing meals to space flight personnel for the duration of their mission will be of paramount importance in maintaining crew functionality and morale.  In this Phase II Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program, Infoscitex Corporation will further develop an advanced barrier film, ElastiGlass, which will enable 3-to-5 year shelf life.  This technology will also provide the added benefit of reducing the logistic burdens associated with waste handling, and minimizing package weight and storage space requirements.  During this proposed program Infoscitex will modify the Phase I proof of feasibility barrier coating formulations to achieve the best combination of minimal oxygen and water vapor permeation, and maximized elongation properties to obtain the best of product durability.  Prototype barrier films and subsequent food storage pouches will be fabricated, filled with thermostabilizable foods and tested for shelf life capabilities.
Current and future programs of near-Earth and deep space exploration require the development of faster and more reliable electronics with open system architectures that are reconfigurable, fault-tolerant, and can operate effectively for long periods of time in harsh environments. Existing data transfer systems based on passive backplanes are slow, power hungry, hardly reconfigurable, and feature high latency, limited expandability, and low radiation tolerance. During Phase I, our company has proven in computer simulations the basic concept of a radiation tolerant switching fabric backplane with reconfigurable serial interfaces. During Phase II, the company proposes to develop a functional prototype of a novel, radiation-tolerant, switching fabric with user-programmable interfaces that support either Space Wire or the company's proprietary multi-level interconnect solution. The patent-pending multi-level interconnect technique provides improved serial point-to-point link functionality including lower latency, higher speed and lower power consumption. It eliminates the requirement of the second information channel utilized in Space Wire's data-strobe encoding scheme, which can be instead used as a redundant channel to improve the system's fault tolerance. The unprecedented reliability of the developed system-on-chip is guaranteed by utilization of inherently radiation-tolerant SiGe hetero-junction bipolar transistors in proprietary circuit structures that are specifically hardened to single-event effects.
This project extends Probability Bounds Analysis to model epistemic and aleatory uncertainty during early design of engineered systems in an Integrated Concurrent Engineering environment.  This method uses efficient analytic and semi-analytic calculations, is more rigorous than probabilistic Monte Carlo simulation, and provides comprehensive and (often) best possible bounds on mission-level risk as a function of uncertainty in each parameter.  Phase 1 demonstrated the capability to robustly model uncertainty during early design.  Phase 2 will build on the Phase 1 work by 1) Implementing the PBA technology in Excel-mediated computing tools, 2) Fashioning an interface for these tools that enables fast and robust elicitation of expert knowledge, 3) Initiating the development of a library of such elicitations, 4) Demonstrating the application of the tools, interface and library in an interactive, distributed-computing environment, 5) Developing case studies, and 6) Creating tutorial documentation.  Important applications of these new tools include the ability to rapidly and rigorously explore uncertainty regarding alternate designs, determine risk-based margins that are robust to surprise, and incorporate qualitatively described risks in quantitative analyses.  This suite of capabilities is not currently available to systems engineers and cannot be provided by more traditional probabilistic risk assessment methods.
Long-range imaging is a critical component to many NASA applications including range surveillance, launch tracking, and astronomical observation.  However, significant degradation occurs when imaging through the Earth's atmosphere.  The subsequent effects of poor image quality range from inconvenient to dangerous depending on the application.  In Phase I, EM Photonics developed a prototype solver based on field-programmable gate array (FPGA) technology capable of enhancing long-range images and videos by compensating for atmosphere induced distortions.  This solver was built on an FPGA-platform and thus offered a significant performance increase over traditional, software-based approaches.  In Phase II, we will extend this prototype to process incoming video streams in real-time for a variety of formats, including the high-definition version used by NASA.  The resulting device will be light-weight and low-power and can be integrated with current video collection, viewing, and recording equipment.  This device can be used to process data as it is collected (in real-time) or from previously recorded imagery and deployed with camera systems or in data centers depending on the application.  Additionally, since this processing unit is built on FPGA technology, it can easily be extended to perform a variety of other tasks such as compression, encryption or further processing.
This Phase I SBIR program will demonstrate the use of wear resistant high strength nanocomposites in the turbine engine repair and refurbishment process.  The metallic nanocomposite will be applied using laser additive remanufacturing to worn turbine blades.  This would provide greatly increased erosion resistance for rotorcraft turbine engines, extending their life and reducing fuel consumption by 15-20&#37; over the life of the engine.  Powdermet will develop composite feedstocks optimized for laser additive manufacturing, and is teamed with Flight Support International, and FAA certified repair shop certified for T64 engine repairs.
It is proposed to develop an accurate in-service aircraft engine life
monitor system for the prediction of remaining component and system life
for aircraft engines. Once proven in the aircraft engine environment,
this life monitoring system will be used in a wide variety of airborne
and land-based air-breathing engine systems.  The aircraft engine life
monitoring system will include three separate algorithms: an in-flight
service monitoring algorithm, a pre-flight and post flight engine
analysis algorithm, and a component-life tallying algorithm. The
in-flight service monitor will treat the engine as a whole in response
to sampling data of torque, speed, temperature and time. The engine
analysis algorithm will determine the engines' operation parameters from
those of its components. It also will determine the life and reliability
of individual components based on the service monitoring algorithm's
output. The component-life algorithm will accumulate life and
reliability tables.  The Phase I effort will develop the life-monitoring
and supporting life-estimation and reliability algorithms. In Phase II
effort, the full life-estimating system will be specifically tailored,
assembled and tested with a commercial aircraft engine.
For lunar-based fission power systems that will support In-Situ Resource Utilization (ISRU) or Mars robotic and manned missions, power requirements may vary from 10s to 100s of kWe to support initial human missions and longer term lunar bases.  Due to the large amounts of waste heat generated by these systems, a key consideration is the development of lightweight, highly efficient heat rejection systems (HRS) that can operate at elevated temperatures (~550 K).  Currently, an approach that is being strongly considered is the use of titanium sheathed heat pipe with a carbon composite over-wrap, combined with a carbon composite radiator panel to decrease the system mass.  Our innovation is the integration of an ultra-light radiator panel material with a lightweight titanium heat pipe.  Our calculations show that our approach will reduce the total mass by as much as 20&#37; compared to the carbon-composite systems under consideration and represents a lower risk approach to achieve a practical HRS.
NASA's future missions to investigate the structure and evolution of the universe require highly-efficient, very low temperature coolers for low-noise detector systems.  We propose to develop a highly-efficient, lightweight, space magnetic cooler that can continuously provide remote/distributed cooling at temperatures in the range of 1 K with a heat sink at about 30 K.  The proposed magnetic cooler uses an innovative cryogenic circulator that enables a lightweight magnetic cooler to achieve a large cooling capacity over a large temperature span.  The circulator also enables the magnetic cooler to provide remote/distributed cooling and reduces the mass of the magnetic shields.  The circulator has heritage in Creare's space-proven micro-turbomachine technology which has demonstrated long-life (&gt;10 years) with no-discernable emitted vibrations.  The proposed system will be much lighter than current multistage magnetic coolers.  In Phase I, we will prove the feasibility of the magnetic cooler by producing designs for the magnetic cooler and the circulator that will demonstrate the mass and performance benefits of the approach.  A magnetic cooler design will be delivered to NASA for future mission studies at the end of Phase I.  In Phase II, we will design, build, and demonstrate the operation of a complete prototype circulator that will be delivered to NASA for integration into a magnetic cooler.
Payload Systems Inc. proposes the Radiation Target Area Sample Environmental Chamber (RTASEC) as an innovative approach enabling radiobiologists to investigate the real-time, long-term radiation effects on living cells and tissues.  Most current research into radiation effects on living cultures is limited to short duration radiation exposure because of the lack of in-situ equipment to provide the environment needed to support cell/tissue culture growth while in the radiation field.  While these short-term experiments are vital to understanding cell and tissue culture reaction and adaptation to the radiation environment, long-term exposure at low dose rate is more likely to occur in space, and is more representative of long duration space missions of interest to NASA.  We propose developing the RTASEC to enable long-term radiation exposure studies at the Brookhaven National Lab by providing the proper environmental conditions (such as temperature, relative humidity, gaseous oxygen and carbon dioxide concentration, and ambient lighting) needed for the study of a variety of cell/tissue cultures, including mammalian, plant, microbial cells, and tissues, in both suspension and attachment culture modes.  The RTASEC can be used with a variety of existing culturing systems, including standard vials, wells, and flasks, such as the T-25, and NASA's rotary bioreactor.  As an added benefit, the RTASEC will also be capable of supporting studies involving laboratory animals such as mice and rats.
In order to facilitate wider understanding and use of NASA and other scientific data sources through publicly available and familiar tools, such as the Google Maps, Payload Systems Inc. proposes to develop a flexible scientific data search, analysis and visual presentation tool suite. This suite will use a modular plug-in approach to retrieve and translate information from user-selected networked data sources into semantic-web representations and then apply rule-based processing to integrate the translated content with geospatial display tools, such as Google Maps and Google Earth, and with sources of domain expert commentary about the displayed information.
Our Phase I effort will analyze data retrieval, processing and display architectural approaches, such as web browser plug-in applications versus  server centric approaches, and select the best for this type of application. Phase I will prototype key elements, such as data retrieval and rule-processing, to assess the performance and feasibility of the selected approach and create a preliminary design. Our Phase II effort will then advance the design and provide a polished implementation of the tool suite.
Concept phase space-systems architecture evaluations typically use mass estimates as the primary means of ranking potential mission architectures. Software does not directly have physical mass and, as a result, is often left-out of such evaluations, despite the potential of being one of the main contributors to a mission's overall cost and risk. During NASA's Concept Exploration and Refinement (CE&amp;R) program, personnel from MIT, Draper Laboratories, and Payload Systems Inc. developed a systems architecture software assessment approach that addresses both the early concept phases of a program and the complexities of critical embedded software systems. This approach uses a series of weighted software and human-computer interaction parameters that evaluate how a system's architecture affects software. Payload Systems Inc. proposes to validate this Systems Engineering Software Assessment Model for Exploration as the next step on the path to a tool that provides early, reliable ranking of systems architectures based on software. 
The Phase I effort will focus on validation of this assessment tool. This validation will be based on embedded spaceflight systems projects. Once validated, this assessment approach will provide a basis, during Phase II, for the development of a Systems Engineering tool for assessing the impact candidate system architectures on software.
Payload Systems Inc. (PSI) and the MIT Space Systems Laboratory (MIT-SSL) propose an innovative research program entitled SPHERES-ISS that uses their satellite formation flight laboratory (Synchronized Position Hold Reorient Experimental Satellites - SPHERES), currently operating aboard the International Space Station (ISS), to refine and validate NASA Goddard Space Flight Center's (GSFC) Pluribus algorithms.  Pluribus supports "multiple systems in simultaneous, tightly-coupled, non-quiescent operations, such as robotic servicing and formation flying." SPHERES-ISS supports the same by providing a unique and cost-effective technology validation approach for algorithmic technologies that support robotic servicing and formation flight. This proposal is particularly relevant to SBIR Topic Area O1.02 Precision Spacecraft Navigation and Tracking by providing a pathway for maturing and validating technologies that are fundamental to multi-vehicle missions that support NASA's Vision for Space Exploration. .  These include command and control of modular, replicated systems, robotic Earth and space science formation flown missions, in-space assembly, automated rendezvous and docking, formation flown sparse apertures, and the development of concepts of operations for such systems (e.g., software uplink protocols, required telemetry sets, fault detection and isolation).
Cornerstone Research Group Inc. (CRG) proposes to significantly improve the performance of communication systems and networks for lunar and interplanetary exploration by engineering a novel communications tower using an emerging structures technology called Veritex&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt;. Veritex&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; is a new structures technology based on shape memory polymer that offers the strength-to-weight ratio of high-performance composites and enables dramatic physical reconfiguration. One of the best applications of Veritex&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; is to reduce the volume fraction of structures during shipping. CRG's Future Systems Group will use this technology to engineer a low mass, low packing volume, self-erecting communications tower technology for lunar and interplanetary exploration operations. 
The innovation of this proposal is in the scale-up of existing deployable structures technology from 3 to 30 meter scale and the engineering of a self-erecting tower. With this innovation in place, lunar communication challenges such as increased point-to-point range, reduced power requirements, large area coverage, and minimized dead-zones will be overcome. 
During Phase 1, CRG will demonstrate that this technology is both technically feasible and cost effective for lunar operations, maximizing return on investment for exploration operations. During Phase 2, CRG will prototype a large-scale, fully operational tower for demonstration purposes.
Grid technologies provide a valuable solution for data intensive
scientific applications but are not readily available for astronomical
data and Interactive Data Language (IDL) widely used in astronomy.
There is a need for tools allowing IDL and astronomical data to
interoperate with Grids.   Tech-X Corporation proposes to develop a set
of tools, GRIDL, for accessing and manipulating of distributed
astronomical data via IDL clients.  GRIDL will automate generation of
the IDL clients of Web Services for analysis and visualization of
astronomical data and provide services for running parallel and serial
IDL processes on Grids facilitating astronomical data analysis. In Phase
I we will develop a prototype of GRIDL working with Flexible Image
Transport System (FITS).  Based on the mapping of FITS data types to the
Web Services Definition Language, we will implement a prototype Web
Service with an IDL client for accessing remote FITS data and develop a
prototype Web Service for running parallel IDL processes on a Grid.
Our approach is based on the ability IDL to call external C and Java and
the Grid interoperability with these languages.  In Phase II we will
fully implement the GRIDL and include other data formats common in astronomy.
The objective of this proposed effort is to demonstrate the promise of advanced C/SiC and SiC/SiC composites having improved environmental durability and longer life at higher allowable stress levels without using problematic external barrier coatings. Both oxidation inhibited C/SiC and SiC/SiC composite material systems are proposed for this effort on the basis that: (1) C/SiC offers the highest use temperature and lowest cost of all currently available refractory composite systems, and (2) SiC/SiC offers the highest durability and longest life. Each material system offers unique performance/cost benefits and limitations, and each has been identified as a viable candidate for advanced propulsion and thermal protection system component applications. Oxidation resistant C/SiC and SiC/SiC composite plates will be fabricated incorporating a recently developed, 2nd generation oxidation inhibited matrix produced by chemical vapor infiltration (CVI). Test samples from each material system will be prepared and experimentally evaluated in high-temperature tensile stress oxidation environments. The tensile stress rupture results will be compared to "baseline" uninhibited C/SiC and SiC/SiC composites to establish the performance benefits of the proposed approach.
Cornerstone Research Group Inc. (CRG) will develop new shape memory polymer (SMP) deployment mechanisms for actuating thermal protection system (TPS) panels to create a deployable, large surface area aeroshell.  This innovation will exploit Veriflex(R) -- CRG's high-performance SMP material -- to create a low-mass actuation system for a deployable aeroshell design.  Veriflex(R)-based mechanisms will deploy the aeroshell without the use of motors, springs, or mechanical controls.  These simple, self-deploying, self-aligning mechanisms will reduce the mass and the complexity of the aeroshell design. Veriflex(R)-based deployment mechanisms will enable use of panels made from existing TPS materials to create a large surface area aeroshells that will stow in a highly compact pre-launch and storage configuration and then self-deploy before entry to the operational configuration.  The TPS panels will deploy outward and increase the diameter of the aeroshell.  For every 10 percent increase in the diameter, there will be a 21 percent increase in the total surface area of the aeroshell.  The relative volume of space needed to stow the entry vehicle would not increase.  This innovation directly addresses the need for aeroassist/aerocapture technology for planetary exploration spacecraft as defined by subtopic S7.04 of NASA SBIR/STTR Solicitation 2006-1.
NASA's future missions to investigate the structure and evolution of the universe require highly efficient, very low temperature coolers for low-noise detector systems.  We propose to develop a highly efficient, lightweight space magnetic cooler that can continuously provide remote/distributed cooling at temperatures in the range of 2 K with a heat sink at about 15 K.  The proposed magnetic cooler uses an innovative cryogenic circulator that enables a lightweight magnetic cooler to operate at a high cycle frequency to achieve a large cooling capacity.  The ability to provide remote/distributed cooling not only allows flexible integration with a payload(s) and spacecraft, but also reduces the mass of the magnetic shields needed.  The circulator has heritage in Creare's space-proven micro-turbomachinery technology which has demonstrated long-life (&gt;10 years) with no-discernable emitted vibrations.  The proposed system will be lighter than current multistage ADRs.  In Phase I, we proved the feasibility of the magnetic cooler by showing its high thermal efficiency, light weight, and high reliability through detailed component design and system performance analysis.  In Phase II, we will design, build, and test a prototype circulator module at design conditions.  We will deliver the circulator module to NASA for integration into a prototype magnetic cooler.
Simulation technology plays an important role in propulsion test facility design and development by assessing risks, identifying failure modes and predicting anomalous behavior of critical systems. This is true for facilities such as the proposed A-3 that will operate at low pressures in conjunction with steam ejectors and the B-2 facility where flame deflector cooling and plume impingement dynamics become important.  Integrated analyses of facility designs that include supersonic diffusers, steam ejectors, valves, cooling spray nozzles and turning ducts will be carried out for both steady state operation and shutdown/startup transients.  More importantly, predictions related to thermal and pressure loads on diffuser/deflector walls will be made and transient phenomena such as blow-back during shutdown and start-up blast waves will be studied. 
The proposed innovation expands on the multi-element unstructured CFD which has been validated for complex valve/feed systems and high pressure propellant delivery systems used in engine and component test stands at NASA SSC.  The focus here will be on extending this capability to include advanced models for analysis of non-equilibrium two-phase flow dynamics and heat transfer in water injection systems in the flame deflector, steam loaded plume entrainment, chemical steam generator performance and operation of steam ejectors.
In stark contrast to current stagnation-based methods for capturing airborne particulates and biological aerosols, our demonstrated, cost-effective electrospray technology employs an entirely different approach based on the remarkable effectiveness of small, highly charged liquid droplets formed from an electrospray source to "getter" both particles and polar molecules dispersed in a gas. Less capable and expensive collection system technologies are generally based on stagnation of high velocity ambient airflow on a collecting surface. The momentum of particles and heavy molecules precludes their following gas streamlines during this stagnation. Instead, they concentrate and are trapped on the detector's surface if the surface is "sticky," or concentrated in the surface boundary layer, which can be separated from the mainstream flow and collected. Typically, current separation methodology collects about 50 percent of the particles between 1.0 and 10 microns in diameter from a flow of 500 L/min with a power consumption of up to 500 watts; i.e., about 1 watt of power is required for a small fan to compress 1 liter of air per minute to produce the high velocity airflow necessary for effective trapping of small bio-particles and heavy molecules. However, our electrospray technology consumes negligible power and achieves virtually 100 percent particle collection. In fact, we have demonstrated that the power efficiency of electrospray gettering for a single electrospray emitter to collect 100 percent of the particles, often without a fan, at 10,000 times greater than the power efficiency of state of the art systems.
Astronauts lose approximately 1-1.5&#37; of their bone mass per month during space travel due to a lack of physical stress in the microgravity environment.  Although, no effective treatments or prophylactic regimens have yet been defined, it is important to monitor the bone loss process in space.  As such, the sensor must be compact and facile to operate. Therefore, OpTech proposes to extend its already successful and patent-pending competitive fluorescence resonance energy transfer (FRET)-aptamer assay technology to the detection of bone loss and formation markers such as osteocalcin fragments, hydroxylysine, hydroxyproline, C-terminal and N-terminal telopeptides.  In Phase I, OpTech will develop, clone and sequence aptamers to each of these markers.  OpTech will also incorporate fluorophore-labeled dUTP into the sequenced aptamers by asymmetric PCR and complex them to their quencher-labeled bone markers for testing in buffer, animal sera, and urine.  Finally, in Phase I OpTech will dry and reconstitute the assays that will be tested using a commercially available handheld, battery-operated fluorometer and validated using OpTech's spectrofluorometer. In Phase II, the FRET-aptamer assays will be optimized and packaged in special leak-proof sealed plastic cuvettes and delivered to NASA along with the handheld fluorometer for testing on the ISS or other space missions.
Next generation space telescopes require advanced optical coatings to provide low loss transmission of light in a variety of spectral ranges and protect optical components from damage in a space environment.  In this SBIR program Nanohmics proposes to examine uses of amorphous nitrides and oxides as a high quality, long lived coating for production of wide-acceptance angle IR anti-reflection and band-pass coatings on optical components. Amorphous nitrides are hard, flexible wide-bandgap semiconductor materials that can be used as an optical coating.  Alternating layers of high index nitrides such as AlN combined with low index oxides such as SiO2 can be used to make good wide acceptance angle anti-reflective coatings for a variety of optical components.
Quallion's response to this solicitation calls for expanding the nominal operation range of its space rated lithium ion cells, while maintaining their long life capabilities. To expand  this temperature range, Quallion will conduct analysis on a variety of materials. At the end of the program, Quallion will choose the two most promising formulations and deliver test cells for analysis by NASA. 

In Phase II, Quallion will further optimize the formulations from Phase I and fabricate our large format satellite cells for cell and battery level qualification. Quallion is also proposing a "right sizing" of this production facility to allow for cost effective, low volume production with enhanced reliability, long-term supply guarantee and design flexibility that allows for future production for NASA missions.
This SBIR phase I project proposes a tunable single frequency high energy fiber laser system for coherent Lidar systems for remote sensing. Current state-of-art technologies can not provide all features of high energy and efficiency, compactness, narrow linewidth, super frequency and power stability, low noise, and high extinction ratio at the same time. PolarOnyx proposes, for the first time, a high energy (100 mJ) single frequency (&lt; 1 KHz) PCF fiber laser transmitter to meet with the requirement of solicitation. This proposal is based on the spectral shaping sub-mJ fiber laser we have achieved in our labs.  In the high power amplifier stage, PolarOnyx proposes an innovative fiber based regenerative amplifier approach by employing our patent pending proprietary technologies in fiber lasers, that will be able to operate at low repetition rate (10 Hz to 1 kHz) and reach high energy level of 100 mJ. These will make the fiber laser transmitter system superior in terms of wall plug efficiency (over 30&#37;), energy(100 mJ), noise, size, and cost.  A tabletop experiment will be demonstrated in Phase I time frame for proof of concept. A compact prototype will be delivered in Phase II.
Leveraging Phase I SBIR successes, in Phase II, a single photon sensitive LIDAR receiver will be fabricated and delivered to NASA. In Phase I, high-gain, electron-initiated avalanche photodiodes (e-APDS) were designed, manufactured, and characterized over a range of temperatures. The e-APDs, sensitive from 1064 nm to 4300 nm, were fabricated in single-layer p-type HgCdTe films grown using liquid phase epitaxy on IR-transparent CdZnTe substrates. Variable-diameter e-APDs, large-area 250-micron diameter e-APDs, and segmented 1-mm x 1-mm e-APDS - each with sixteen 250-micron x 250-micron pixel elements - were mounted to ceramic submounts, tested, and characterized. Under receiver bias, the e-APDs exhibited exponentially increasing gain that exceeded 1250. The devices showed exponentially increasing gain as a function of cutoff wavelength, and with decreased temperature - in agreement with our models for HgCdTe e-APDs.
In Phase II, we will optimize HgCdTe films for 1.5?3.6 micron response and fabricate 250-micron diameter e-APD elements, designed for operation with gains exceeding 1250, without excess noise. These e-APDs, when integrated with custom-designed &lt;100 e- rms noise transimpedance amplifiers and optimized to match the e-APDs' capacitance, will realize single photon sensitive LIDAR receivers for NASA LIDAR applications.
The objective of this proposal is to demonstrate the feasibility of producing a wearable health monitoring system for the human body that is functional, comfortable, bendable in 3 dimensions, durable, water-proof, washable, and light-weight. This new technology area of wearable health systems, sometimes referred to as smart-clothing, promises to allow for a secondary human nervous system that connects various different electronic devices positioned on or around the human body. As the shrinking in size and weight of electronic circuits has progressed, it is now possible for the modern human astronaut to carry increasing numbers of different electronic devices and sensors such as thermometers, gas monitors, microphones, altimeters, digital processors, digital memory, and push-button controls. These devices allow the astronaut to access data about their current environment and health status, and communicate with other astronauts and/or databases to send and receive information of value. As the variation in the number of devices and sensors that can be deployed increases greatly, a new technology is required to allow the seamless integration of these devices with the human astronaut so that the devices can be electrically powered, operated, re-charged, and communicate with each other over a digital pathway.
In-space valves are required to provide precise mass flow control, wide throttling range and handle rapid on-off control. These requirements can result in significant unsteady, transient effects both on the fluid mass flow rate, as well as the torque required. However, there currently are no analytical or numerical modeling tools that can predict the unsteady/transient performance of these valves; current design tools are limited to quasi-steady models and empirical correlations.  The innovation proposed here is a high-fidelity, comprehensive numerical tool that can characterize the transient performance of these flight valves and provide design support.  An innovative approach to modeling valve motion in a broad range of valves designs including showerhead, ball and butterfly valves is proposed; this will permit simulations of transient valve operations and the resulting mass flow history and pressure drop.  Unsteady effects at partial valve openings due to both turbulence interactions as well as multi-phase cavitation are addressed with an advanced numerical framework that incorporates both advanced LES models and real-fluid cryogenic effects.  The tools and technology developed here would directly impact design support efforts for the J-2X upper-stage engine in the Ares launcher envisioned under the Constellation program for the mission to the moon.
The overall goal of the proposed phase II SBIR program is to develop a compact, high SNR TDI APD array for future NASA earth observing missions. The enabling TDI APD technology is based on ultra-high sensitivity AlInAs/GaInAs APDs operable in the 1240 to 1640-nm spectra band integrated with Si CCDs that will enable for the first time, true TDI and CCD-like detector operation at these wavelengths. The performance of this TDI APD array will meet or exceed current performance requirements for radiometric sensors. The TDI APD array sensor will be designed to operate at 300K resulting in a significant weight, size and power reduction. At the conclusion of the program, we will deliver to NASA for evaluation and for mission insertion, fully packaged end-to-end tested TDI APD arrays with SNR in the range of 570-1066 within the 1240-nm and 1640-nm spectral band.
For active microwave surveillance of earth surface and atmosphere, radar transceivers perform functions of probing the atmosphere and the surface conditions of the earth. The primary objective of Phase 1 is to establish a design baseline for a high-efficiency pulsed power amplifier MMIC/module operating at L-band frequency. Hittite has been working on development of L-band MMICs for all those functions and integration of the entire T/R module using an E/D PHEMT process. The transmitter power output of the current program is limited to about 2 watts. In Phase 2, the program objective should be expanded to include integration of the complete T/R module using the process compatible with the GaN amplifier design. The amplifier technology developed so far will be expanded to provide a design of a pulsed amplifier operating at the higher output level first. The second crucial part of this proposal is to establish a design baseline for pulsed power switches with power output capabilities at 300 watts at a max of 20&#37; duty cycle.
We shall develop wide temperature range DC-DC boost converters that can be fabricated using commercial CMOS foundries. The boost converters will increase the low voltage supply (~ 0.7 to 3V) of an advanced CMOS integrated circuit to the higher values (3-10V) required for integrated command/control/drive electronics for sensors, actuators and instrumentation. The high voltage capability is a result of our patented, CMOS compatible transistor technology that is radiation tolerant (TID&gt;1 MRad), SEL immune and capable of wide temperature range operation (-196C to +150C). This new transistor technology has been demonstrated at multiple foundries and advanced device models are available for circuit design and simulation. The DC-DC boost converters will be integrated directly with the CMOS components to provide a single chip solution, greatly reducing the number of active and passive components that would otherwise be required. By allowing enhanced voltage operation in future CMOS technology nodes we will be avoiding many of the obsolescence problems facing NASA missions that are dependent upon commercial electronics. The circuits will be designed to operate in low temperature environments that experience wide temperature swings such as those found on the moon, Mars, Titan, Europa and comets.
The Lunar Sulfur Capture System (LSCS) is an innovative method to recover sulfur compounds from lunar soil using sorbents derived primarily from in-situ resources. Most of the sulfur released from lunar soil during higher-temperature thermal treatment is trapped by the LSCS at lower temperatures on iron oxides present in lunar soil. As needed, small amounts of polishing sorbents are used to reduce equilibrium sulfur concentrations to the low ppm level. After sorbents become saturated, sulfur compounds are desorbed and converted to useful sulfur products. Sulfur is present in concentrations of about 0.1 percent in lunar soils and can be recovered by the LSCS as a useful product from in-situ resource utilization (ISRU). The LSCS can capture and recover sulfur from lunar soil as a primary product during thermal desorption of volatile compounds or during thermal reduction ISRU processes used for oxygen production. Removal of sulfur compounds is required during ISRU to prevent electrolyzer damage, catalyst poisoning, and equipment corrosion. The LSCS is applicable to thermal ISRU reduction processes in which sulfur is released in forms such as hydrogen sulfide (H2S), carbonyl sulfide (COS), or carbon disulfide (CS2).
We propose to develop an innovative solar thermal system for oxygen production from lunar regolith.  In this system solar radiation is collected by the concentrator array which transfers the concentrated solar radiation to the optical waveguide (OW) transmission line made of low loss optical fibers. The OW transmission line directs the solar radiation to the thermal receiver for processing of lunar regolith for oxygen production. Key features of the proposed system are:

1. Highly concentrated solar radiation (~ 4W103suns) can be transmitted via the flexible OW transmission line directly to the thermal receiver for oxygen production from lunar regolith; 
2. Power scale-up of the system can be achieved by incremental increase of the number of concentrator units;
3. The system can be autonomous, stationary or mobile, and easily transported and deployed on the lunar surface; and
4. The system can be applied to a variety of oxygen production processes.

The proposed Phase II program consists of the following tasks: 

Task-1: Develop an engineering prototype of the solar thermal system.
Task-2: Integrate the solar thermal system with the carbothermal process reactor for utility demonstration and performance evaluation.
Task-3: Improve the key components to the level acceptable for a space-based operational system.
The potential benefits of Large Eddy Simulation (LES) for aerodynamics and combustion simulation hvae largely been missed, due to the complexity of generating grids for complex topologies, and the requirement for boundary fitted grids which reduce the accuracy of the method. The Phase 2 Program builds on the Cartesian grid LES flow solver developed under Phase 1, and includes new techologies such as immersed boundary conditions, multigrid code acceleration, compressibility, and advanced subgrid scale models for turbulence and combustion. Experimental validation cases using NASA-sponsored experiments, and using actual aeroengine combustor hardware will be performed, comparing the LES flow solver results with experimental combustor exit temperatures, and with other code predictions, providing a unique opportunity for validation of the flow solver.
During the Phase II Lunar Health Monitor program, Orbital Research will develop a second generation wearable sensor suite for astronaut physiologic monitoring. The low profile system will be appropriate for both Extravehicular activities (EVA) and Intravehicular activities (IVA) monitoring scenarios. The EVA and IVA wearable platforms are capable of monitoring a complete physiologic profile of overall astronaut health status. Sensors of respiration, body temperature, acceleration and cardiac data are included. Inclusive in this sensor suite is Orbital's FDA cleared and patented dry recording electrodes. The sensors are held to the body via the garment and function without any tapes, adhesives or gels. The sensors are mechanically connected to the sensor suite. The mechanical connections allow sensors to be semi-permanently interfaced with either the EVA or IVA designs. These connectors allow sensors to be added, removed or replaced based on monitor application or anatomical constraints. The Lunar Health Monitor is designed to be continuously worn serving as a safety mechanism for out of vehicle exploration missions and a monitoring device for applications such as in orbit fitness assessment. The Lunar Health Monitor is easy to don and doff and non-encumbering to routine and functional tasks.
Radiation or passively cooled thrust chambers are used for a variety of chemical propulsion functions including apogee insertion, reaction control for launch vehicles, and primary propulsion for planetary spacecraft.  The performance of these thrust chambers is limited by the operating temperature and thermal-chemical response of the available materials.  The Phase I efforts focused on performing design and analysis services to address multiple areas related to the development of lightweight high temperature non-eroding materials for liquid propulsion combustion chambers.  We showed through theoretical thermal-structural calculations that monolithic HfO2 and ZrO2 are the best performing ceramic thermal barriers for Ir/Re combustion chambers within liquid engines.  In the Phase II effort, MR&amp;D proposes to use the lessons learned from the Phase I studies to evaluate material options, optimize the design, demonstrate scale up to and fabrication of a full scale combustion chamber for the NASA 3000-5000 lb LOX/CH4 engine, and ultimately hot-fire the chamber at NASA.  This will be in direct support of NASA MSFC Lunar Lander Ascent Stage engine.  The Phase II tasks include: 1) Detailed thermal-structural design and analyses; 2) Addressing fabrication stresses/strains; 3) Addressing vibration stresses/strains; 4) Performing material characterization; 5) Performing any design revisions based on the material property characterization as it becomes available; 6) Fabrication of a full scale combustion chamber that reflects the best performing materials and geometry resulting from the thermal-structural design studies; 7) Performing pretest predictions and assisting with instrumentation for the hot-fire test; and 8) Performing posttest data correlation and suggesting design improvements.
One of the great hurdles to further development and evaluation of nuclear thermal propulsion and power systems is the issue surrounding the release of radioactive material from the fuel during ground testing and its subsequent impact on test facility siting and operation.  Therefore, the development of a crack resistant coating system on fuel elements for nuclear thermal propulsion that is insensitive to hydrogen corrosion and erosion is considered enabling.  Ceramic Composites Inc. (CCI) proposes a systematic approach for CVD deposition and evaluation of a family of zirconium carbide (ZrC) and niobium carbide (NbC) coating systems for both uranium carbide-zirconium carbide solid solution [(U,Zr)C]-graphite composite fuel elements and advanced triple carbide (uranium carbide-ziconium carbide-niobium carbide) solid fuel elements designed for use in space nuclear power and propulsion reactors.  The refractory metal coating systems developed in Phase I will be refined and an innovative deposition technique evaluated.  The resulting surrogate fuel elements will be evaluated in high temperature hydrogen in concert with a more detailed performance modeling effort based on the Phase I modeling.
Over the past decade, researchers have been making great strides in the development of algorithms that detect and compensate for damaged aircraft.  Before these algorithms can be used in civil aviation, progress is needed to (a) ensure that these innovative and frequently non-deterministic algorithms will always perform as expected and (b) address challenges associated with integrating these algorithms into an overall avionics system.  The authors addressed the second challenge by developing an integration approach called Operational Envelope Safety Assurance (OESA).  In Phase I, the authors showed that OESA can integrate control, path planning, diagnostics, and structural health monitoring algorithms in a way that ensures the subsystems will never issue commands that put the aircraft outside its safe-operating envelope.  In Phase II, the authors will formalize the approach, develop a general set of OESA subsystem specifications, and demonstrate safe integration of algorithms developed by other researchers under related research efforts.  Phase II will culminate in real-time high-fidelity demonstrations of an integrated controller for a NASA testbed (either the Langley AirSTAR GTM or the Dryden A-53 F-18 testbed) and will set the stage for Phase III flight tests.
We have investigated the feasibility of employing a hazard detection and mitigation system based upon a polarization discriminating range-gated Lidar system.  This dual use system will be capable of both imaging targets in low visibility scenarios, such as smoke, fog, haze, light rain, and low light levels, and providing an early warning of in-flight hazards, primarily icing conditions in clouds.  The polarization discriminating optical system and accompanying image processing software are capable of differentiating highly depolarizing surfaces from those that contribute little to depolarization.  Examples of this type of differentiation include water and ice phases in clouds and hard-target surfaces surrounded by an aerosol particulate media.  The NIR Lidar system is designed to operate around 1.5 &amp;#61549;m for maximum eye-safety, even when used from the ground.  Major components of the Lidar unit include a laser transmitter, a fast gated detector, and polarization switching components.  The performance of this type of system has been demonstrated in the Phase I project in laboratory experiments using custom built rain and fog generating chambers.  Both image enhancement of a hard target and detection differing depolarization ratios were demonstrated.  Backscattered noise from obscurants is greatly reduced by the fast-gated camera system, and a narrowband optical filter provides additional noise rejection.  The NIR Lidar system can be easily integrated with a database of common object types for identification of hard targets, such as obstacles on a runway.  Illuminated NIR imagery is ideal for providing images of hard targets, as object detail is very near that seen with a visible camera, unlike FLIR (forward-looking infrared) imagery, and the performance is equivalent in day or night conditions.
NanoSonic has developed a nanostructured spray self-assembly manufacturing method that has resulted in ultra-lightweight (&lt; 0.4g/cc) textile interconnects for photovoltaic arrays, durable EMI shielding (-70 dB) solar collector membranes with unprecedented flexibility (&gt; 1000&#37;), and multi-layer, high efficiency thermal rejection coatings for deep space missions.  NanoSonic has analyzed opportunities for its unique self-assembly processing techniques with the Photovoltaic and Space Environments Branch at NASA GRC.  Focus was placed on radiant heat barrier coatings formed as multiple organic and inorganic well-defined segments using spray-based self-assembly processing.  The spray technique allows the incorporation of materials required to achieve high coating reflectivity with low absorptivity and high emissivity over large-area NASA structures.  The low &amp;#61537;/&amp;#61541;&amp;#61472;coatings will be transitioned to use on NASA deep space mission structures, near space airships and commercial rooftops and buildings.  NanoSonic has also developed ultra low mass density fabric materials with patterned conductive traces capable of conducting high electrical current densities and capable of withstanding extreme thermal (-140&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C to 450&lt;SUP&gt;o&lt;/SUP&gt;C) and mechanical environmental conditions required in deep space.  Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; textiles will be transitioned to large area photovoltaic arrays.  Such multifunctional Gossamer materials would provide adequate mechanical support and low loss electrical interconnect network functionalities for power generation arrays.
This proposal addresses the need for high-efficiency, high-output power amplifiers operating in the Ka-band frequencies. For space communications, the power amplifier in the transmitter consumes the most prime power and impacts the size of the payload package as well as the size of the power source. The proposed program is aimed at increasing the available output power up to 5 watts with a power-added efficiency of the final stage greater than 50&#37;.  The primary device technology selected for these amplifier designs is the Gallium-Nitride (GaN) PHEMT (Pseudomorphic High Electron Mobility Transistor) technology. This technology offers high power density, potential high frequency of operation, and excellent thermal characteristic.

The primary objective of this Phase 1 SBIR is to establish the feasibility and preliminary simulation of two Ka-band high-efficiency, high-power amplifiers (HPAs) operating in the frequency range of 26 ? 32 GHz and 32 ? 38 GHz respectively. Optimum topology and class of operation of the amplifiers will be investigated. Hittite's efforts also include assessment of the technology and the status of development of GaN processes offered by a number of GaN foundries. The HPA MMICs will be fabricated and fully characterized as part of the Phase 2 effort of this program.
CFDRC proposes to develop, validate and demonstrate a comprehensive aeroservoelastic analysis framework for aerospace vehicles by enabling coupled interactions between multi-physics simulation modules with variable fidelity for flexible structures, aerodynamics, flight dynamics, and embedded smart materials. In Phase I, a nonlinear electrodynamics finite-element model for smart materials, capable of handling different materials and FEM mesh elements, will be developed. An interface model capable of handling different mesh densities and types for the smart materials FEM model and the structural dynamics (CSD) model will also be developed. A novel grid deformation technology, developed by CFDRC, using Solid Brick Analogy will be enhanced by nonlinear strain theory for large deformations and generalized for mixed elements computational grid systems. The feasibility of the proposed technology will be demonstrated for a fighter aircraft model in buffet mode. In Phase II, the modeling technologies identified in Phase I will be developed and implemented into the framework, with emphasis on developing an advanced data management procedures to increase the efficiency of the simulation framework. Additionally, an interface model between the aeroservoelastic framework and a general control design toolbox will be implemented to facilitate designs of complex control systems to command the smart materials. The developed technologies will then be extensively validated and demonstrated for typical aeroservoelastic simulations.
Air-Lock, Incorporated proposes to design an Enhanced Shoulder Mobility Joint Assembly (ESMJA) that increases dynamic mobility and static sizing capabilities for spacesuited crewmembers (CM) employing a Hard Upper Torso (HUT).  The proposed shoulder joint will allow historically fixed Hard Upper Torsos to be sized in-situ by crewmembers of varying anthropometries.  The Shoulders will also increase CM range of motion in a pressurized spacesuit and incorporate must mitigating strategies geared towards lunar exploration.  Throughout Phase One, Air-Lock will exhibit the following innovations:

?	Design pressure sealed ESMJA that optimizes mobility and sizing characteristics of Hard Upper Torso Advanced Planetary Spacesuits.
?	Utilize 3D CAD software to design, develop and integrate the ESMJA with the MK-III HUT.
?	Perform a materials evaluation in order to determine the lightest, most robust material to be use in the manufacture of the ESMJA.
?	Create a matrix highlighting sizing potential and added mobility (i.e., range of motion).
?	Perform a comparative analysis of the sizing and mobility matrix to historic NASA anthropometry data to determine the optimum HUT sizes required to outfit current NASA astronaut corp.
The goal of this Phase II project is to deliver an integrated L-band transmit/receive (T/R) module which will be fabricated from a GaAs-based combined HBT/PHEMT epistructure.  The T/R module will consist of a power amplifier, a low noise amplifier, and two switches.  The performance goal for the low noise amplifier is 30 dB gain with a less than 1.0 dB noise figure.  The performance goal for the power amplifier is 30 dB gain, 34 dBm (2.5 W) output power, and efficiency greater than 60&#37;.  The performance goal for the switches is that they not materially affect the operation of the amplifiers.  All components will be fully integrated on a single substrate.  Post Phase II work includes the integration of a phase shifter, amplitude modulator, and control and interface circuitry on the same chip.  We estimate the technology readiness level at the end of the Phase II program to be 6 or 7.
All NASA exploration systems operate in the extreme environments of space and require reliable electronics capable of handling a wide temperature range (-180:C to +130:C) and high radiation levels. To design low-temperature radiation-hardened (rad-hard) electronics and predict circuit and system characteristics, such as error rates, modeling tools are required at multiple levels. To determine the electrical responses of transistors and circuits to radiation events, physics-based Technology Computer Aided Design (TCAD) and mixed-level tools are required. This project will provide models and tools that will improve capabilities for prediction of technology-dependent responses to radiation in wide temperature range, which will lead to better design of rad-hard electronics, better anticipation of design margins, and reduction of testing cost and time. Future NASA missions will use nanometer-scale electronic technologies which call for a shift in how radiation effects in such devices and circuits are viewed. Nano-scale electronic device responses are strongly related to the microstructure of the radiation event. This requires a more detailed physics-based modeling approach, which will provide information for higher-level engineering models used in integrated circuit (IC) and system design. Hence, the proposed innovation: detailed high-energy-physics-based simulations of radiation events (using MRED/Geant4 software from Vanderbilt University) efficiently integrated with advanced device/circuit response computations by CFDRC NanoTCAD three-dimensional (3D) mixed-level simulator. This will also enable a large number of statistically meaningful runs on a massively parallel supercomputing cluster. The extreme low temperature physics models combined with radiation effects will be validated with the help of consultant, Dr. John Cressler (Georgia Tech), in collaboration with the NASA Extreme Environment Electronics program, and serving the NASA RHESE Program (led by NASA-MSFC).
This SBIR Phase II effort proposes the development and integration of a Planar Lightwave Circuit (PLC) into an all fiber-based seed laser system used in high spectral resolution aerosol and cloud lidar applications.  The PLC integrates a frequency doubling element, a waveguide splitter, and phase modulator into a monolithic, waveguide-based device.  This technology is important for lidar systems requiring high frequency stability and accuracy.  The proposed device, with the proper IR input, will generate the required visible radiation, spectrally formatted for the HSRL seed laser stabilization scheme.  The PLC concept advances NASA's lidar systems due to its compact, efficient, and reliable design, thus enabling use on small aircraft and satellites.  The key objective in this SBIR Phase II proposal is to develop and incorporate the PLC into a deployable, all fiber-based seed laser system for NASA-LaRC's HSRL cloud and aerosol measurements.
NASA has identified the need to develop lightweight structures to support Lunar Lander and Lunar Habitat programs and for the transfer of relevant technology to the Crew Exploration Vehicle and Crew Launch Vehicle programs.  Further, NASA called for revolutionary advances in radiation shielding materials to protect humans from radiation hazards during NASA missions.  To address this need, International Scientific Technologies, Inc., in conjunction with the College of William and Mary, developed lightweight, multifunctional polymers incorporating nanoparticles consisting of high atomic-number (Z) elements having large neutron-capture cross sections.  The Phase I program proved the effectiveness of these polymeric nanocomposites in shielding against both neutron and X-ray radiation.  The feasibility demonstrated in Phase I will be realized in Phase II through a research program having four Technical Objectives, including incorporation of metallic nanoparticle and organometallic additives into polymeric materials, fabrication of various polymeric materials of different geometries, measurement and test of composite materials for radiation shielding effectiveness, as well as thermo-mechanical and electrical properties, and optimization of prototype multifunctional nanocomposites for NASA applications.  The polymer nanocomposites in Phase II will provide shielding against galactic cosmic radiation, neutron and electromagnetic radiation in rigid and flexible structure habitants in deep space and lunar missions.
This NASA Phase II SBIR program would develop comfortable garments with multiple integrated sensor functions for the monitoring of astronauts during long duration space missions. During Phase I, NanoSonic demonstrated the feasibility of using its patented Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; sheet and fabric materials as both sensor elements and highly flexible electrodes integrated into prototype instrumented garments.  Heart rate and EKG data taken using the Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; sensors are essentially identical to those obtained using standard biomedical instrumentation.  The combined high electrical conductivity, low mechanical modulus, and environmental robustness of the Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; materials make them a lightweight, stretchy and comfortable alternative to conventional metal wiring and cabling.  During the proposed Phase II program, NanoSonic would work with a large-volume U.S. textile manufacturer, the sensor and electronics design group of a major aerospace company, and a biomedical sensor and devices laboratory of Food and Drug Administration.  NanoSonic would improve the Metal Rubber&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; materials and methods for their integration as sensor and interconnect materials into instrumented garments, design, fabricate and evaluate the performance of sensor jerseys based on the results of Phase I tests, develop data acquisition electronics needed to interface to standard storage and communication modules, and investigate requirements for scaled-up manufacturing.
Physical Optics Corporation (POC) proposes to develop a Selective Photoinitiated Electrophoretic Separator (SPIES) System to address NASA's volatile gas separation and collection needs on the moon and Mars. It will process gas streams generated by upstream lunar in-situ resource utilization (ISRU) processes to produce purified gases such as hydrogen, oxygen, water vapor, and others that support human habitat here. The SPIES system, consisting of a series of compact (&lt;20 cm diameter, 60 cm long, &lt;5 kg) and energy efficient (&lt;30 W) modules, produces highly purified gases of interest at ambient temperatures and pressures, requires no consumables, and eliminates the need for extensive downstream equipment thus, reducing equipment launch size and weight by 33&#37;. In Phase I, POC designed and assembled a proof-of-concept prototype of technology readiness level (TRL) 4 that successfully demonstrated purification of simulated lunar ISRU hydrogen gas streams by gas separation and extraction to reduce hydrogen sulfide contamination to &lt;1 part per million (ppm). In Phase II, POC will optimize the system design to assemble a fully functional TRL 5 SPIES system prototype that will efficiently reduce the hydrogen sulfide concentration to &lt;1 ppm in a realistic gas stream like those generated by NASA's hydrogen reformate process.
The recent performance increases in graphics processing units (GPUs) have made graphics cards an attractive platform for implementing computationally intense applications.  With their numerous parallel computational pipelines and SIMD architecture, modern GPUs can outperform high-end microprocessors by one to three orders of magnitude, depending on the problem.  Most work to date at EM Photonics and elsewhere has focused on accelerating specific applications by porting core engines onto the GPU.  In this project, we propose the development of general purpose computational libraries capable of solving numerous core numerical functions on commodity graphics cards.  These solvers will be based on accepted, industry-standard interfaces and will be easy to integrate with current and future applications.  The result will be a GPU-based numerical coprocessor capable accelerating a wide range of computationally intense functions, thereby reducing processing times in applications where numerical computations are the primary bottleneck.
We propose conducting further development for a Nitrous Oxide Fuel Blend (NOFB) propulsion system.  Phase I activities will concentrate on a revising a previous 5 lbf thruster to facilitate continuous operation with repeated restart.  The thruster will utilize a novel new NOFB monopropellant.  NOFB series monopropellant formulations have the following characteristics: 1) Non-toxic and readily manufacturable; 2) Vacuum specific impulse of 310+s (compared to monopropellant hydrazine's 235s); 3) Space-storable with wide temperature storage limits from &lt;-77 C to &gt;100 C; 4) High storage density at equivalent to twice as dense as monopropellant hydrazine depending on temperature; 5) Potentially highly throttleable due to very fast reaction kinetics; and 6) Self-pressurizing thereby simplifying the overall feed system architecture and reliability.  Due to these desirable characteristics of NOFB monopropellants, Phase I funding is requested from the NASA SBIR program.
Paragon Space Development Corporation proposes to develop a single-loop, non-toxic, active pumped radiator design with robust, reliable operation near stagnation regimes as expected to be experienced by NASA's Orion Crew Exploration Vehicle (CEV), the Lunar Surface Access Module (LSAM) and thermal control systems of the Lunar Base at the lunar pole.  This will be achieved through an innovative use of a common terrestrial-application, safe fluid that has lower temperature stalling characteristics over typical space-based radiator fluids.  Phase 1 has already shown this fluid to stall per predictions and, through a previous contract, Paragon has demonstrated its capability to perform spacecraft heat rejection.  The significance of this work is to understand stagnation behavior, both planned and mitigated, and then design and demonstrate a robust and reliable radiator performance based on this knew found knowledge.
The principal Phase II objective is to refine and further develop the prototype PCHP into a useful thermal management tool.  The Phase I program established the feasibility of thermal control an axially-grooved heat pipe with a variable-volume reservoir.  The follow-on Phase II program will address control system optimization, component longevity, reductions in mass and power, and show that the device can be flight qualified.  It is expected that the Phase II results will bring the PCHP to TRL 6: Prototype Demonstration in a Relevant Environment.
Alliance Spacesystems, LLC produced a rotary percussive drill designed for space use under a NASA-funded Mars Instrument Development Program (MIDP) project ? the Low-force Sample Acquisition System (LSAS). The flight-like drill prototype that was the end result of the project successfully drilled and acquired 1 cm3 samples from a variety of rocks and soils including the hardest anticipated Martian rock (basalt) and frozen soil. This ability was demonstrated not only in ambient conditions but also in a thermal/vacuum chamber replicating Mars pressure and extreme temperatures. The rotary percussive approach is simple, robust, and highly efficient with regards to power and mass.

During the SBIR 2006 Phase I effort, Alliance took this heritage device and expanded its potential to include coring against a variety of rock materials anticipated to be encountered on Mars. Through the use of a breadboard fixture, coring bit designs and coring parameters were evaluated to identify optimum combinations. At the completion of test a conceptual design was generated taking this coring experience into account and adding core retention, break and ejection features. A bit change mechanism, identified as a requirement for successful operation while maintaining design robustness and simplicity, was added as well.

A Phase II effort is now proposed that will take this conceptual design into prototype form. Primary activities to be performed during Phase II will include:

?	Additional coring test runs to work out final details of detail bit design
?	Detail design and prototyping of core handling mechanisms
?	Prototype testing of core handling mechanisms
?	Design and manufacture of full prototype LSAS Corer system
?	Testing of prototype LSAS corer
?	Integration of LSAS corer onto robotic platform and functional demonstration
The Phase I project successfully demonstrated the feasibility of the vapor compression hybrid two-phase loop (VCHTPL). The test results showed the high temperature-lift capability and robust operation under transient heat loads of the VCHTPL. At the end of Phase I, the VCHTPL technology reached the NASA's defined Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 4 (Component/breadboard validation in a laboratory environment).

The principal Phase II objective is to elevate the VCHTPL technology to NASA's Technology Readiness Level (TRL) 6: System/subsystem prototype demonstration in a relevant environment. This will be achieved through addressing the key technical and integration issues identified in Phase I of the proposed program. During Phase II, multiple generations of hardware will be designed, fabricated and tested to demonstrate the capability of the vapor compression loop technology in meeting the thermal performance, form factor, mass and reliability requirements for NASA's lunar missions. Five technical tasks plus a reporting task are planned to achieve the Phase II technical objectives.
The Grain Boundary Engineering (GBE) approach, successfully demonstrated in Phase I, that microstructural optimization provides a very significant improvement in reducing susceptibility to intergranular crack initiation and growth in conventional wrought Inconel 718.  
The principal objective of the Phase II research development program is to extend the applicability of the GBE technology from conventional wrought superalloys to more advanced powder metallurgy (PM) alloys, and in particular, the Low Solvus High Refractory (LSHR) developed by NASA.  In addition, the program also includes a limited effort to optimize the GBE process for application to wrought Inconel 718Plus.  
The phase II program will build upon the success of the phase I effort, and will have the following specific technical objectives: (1) develop and optimize GBE processing strategies for optimizing the bulk microstructure of an advanced PM disk alloy developed by NASA (i.e., LSHR) and Inconel 718Plus, (2) develop a cost-effective GBE processing strategy for locally optimizing the microstructure of the PM alloy (i.e., LSHR) at the near surface, and (3) evaluate the mechanical properties of the GBE-processed alloys and benchmark with properties of their conventional counterparts.
Wireless transceivers used for NASA space missions have traditionally been highly custom and mission specific. Programs such as the GRC Space Transceiver Radio System (STRS) seek to abstract the radio waveform from the hardware platform itself; this is meant to improve flexibility and promote component and subsystem reuse. In this Phase II effort Toyon proposes to perform work that will advance the state of the art in reconfigurable wireless transceivers in order to help realize the vision of STRS. Specifically, we propose to develop a modular, but highly integrated, digital and analog signal processing platform along with a standards-compliant waveform. The space-ready reconfigurable radio will serve a range of NASA missions and can be easily modified or enhanced for future needs. The RF front-end will be direct conversion with high integration of the frequency translation subsystems. For digital processing, we will pursue a system-on-a-chip (SoC) design with both reconfigurable logic and a soft-core processor implemented in a radiation-hardened Xilinx FPGA and PROM. The entire system architecture will leverage an EXP board-to-board connector design developed in Phase I. This system concept was validated in Phase I through Toyon's demonstration of a fully-functional packet-based 500 kbps waveform. In Phase II Toyon will pursue development of a waveform that is standards-based in order to further promote reuse and interoperability. Specifically, Toyon will develop a baseline implementation of the IEEE 802.16a standard. In addition to physical layer connectivity, such a waveform is well suited to IP-based networking, easing integration and increasing portability.
ProtoInnovations, LLC proposes to develop a new type of planetary rover called a Lunar All-terrain Utility Vehicle ("LATUV") to assist extra-vehicular activities in future lunar missions. The vehicle will operate unmanned or with an astronaut driving onboard. It will have a roughly 4 m2 footprint and be able to about twice as fast as an astronaut can walk on the Moon. The vehicle will feature four-wheel, all-terrain mobility with traction control. A multi-purpose tool interface and interchangeable cargo bays will support a variety of mission payloads. The LATUV will be used for mission such as site preparation, emplacing beacons, equipment and commodity distribution, and sampling. Our phase I work showed the feasibility of a new, high-efficiency, high duty, lunar-relevant traction drive system; a simplified steer / suspension chassis capable of handling 2 m/s speeds in lunar gravity; interchangeable utility modules for earthmoving, sampling, emplacing, etc.; and traction control software for earthmoving tasks as well as slope- and obstacle-climbing. In Phase II we will produce a terrestrial LATUV prototype with two rocker modules and two central modules designed for earthmoving the emplacing beacons.

ProtoInnovations brings an impressive amount of experience to the task of designing the LATUV. Two of our robots built for NASA Ames, dubbed K10red and K10black, are operating in the high Canadian arctic. Working at Carnegie Mellon University, members of our team have developed robots to operate in some of the harshest environments on Earth: surveying Antarctic ice fields, traversing the Atacama Desert, and exploring into an Alaskan volcano. In total, our robots have traveled roughly 500 km through some of the most difficult terrain on Earth. We've accomplished these tasks by building robots that are, above all else, controllable and reliable. Our team has experience building all of the subsystems involved in this project.
This work concerns the development of a prototype of a Volume Scattering Function (VSF) sensor for measurement of this inherent optical property(IOP) of seawater. The proposed prototype combines new development from Phase-I with our existing technology to extend existing capability for measuring VSF from 0.1 to 20 degrees, out to 170 degrees. We have developed a new and innovative sensor module that permits high sub-degree angular resolution measurement of VSF. The system is simple, yet powerful. For example, it permits programmability of the range of angles to be explored. A case is one of bubbles, which produce a bump in the VSF between 60-180 degrees. The instrument will be self-contained, internally recording, powered by batteries or external power. Beam attenuation coefficient will also be measured. The technology extends existing VSF measurement capability for benefit of NASA's interest in remote sensing.
NASA is continuing its development of electric propulsion engines for various applications.  Efforts have been directed toward both large and small thrusters, depending on the end use.  A current program is focused on the development of a miniature thruster.  Development of a Miniature Xenon Ion (MiXI) thruster will enable precision spacecraft positioning and formation maneuvers for formation-flying spacecraft.  The current MiXI thruster prototype will provide 0.5 ? 3 mN thrust at 3000 sec specific impulse and efficiencies around 50&#37; or better.  The MiXI thruster will use Xenon propellant, a noble gas, minimizing spacecraft contamination.(http://dst.jpl.nasa.gov/thrusters/)  One of the challenges of such a thruster is to be able to accurately control the flow of propellant.  The required flow rates are on the order of 0.1 to 1.0 sccm of Xenon.  To this end Midi, in Phase I, demonstrated that a small flow control valve, based on piezoelectric technology, met all performance objectives.  Midi is a world leader in this technology, demonstrated by its existing patented packaged actuator product line and past valve experience.  Aerojet provided electric propulsion expertise for the duration of the program and serve as a technology integration and transition path.
Environmental control systems for manned lunar and planetary bases will require condensing heat exchangers to control humidity in manned modules.  Condensing surfaces must be hydrophilic to ensure efficient operation and biocidal to prevent growth of microbes in the moist, condensing environment.  The coatings must be extremely stable and adhere to the condensing surface for many years.  We propose an innovative coating that has proven to be highly biocidal, hydrophilic, and stable.  In Phase I we have proven feasibility by developing methods to apply the coating to prototypical materials and demonstrating hydrophilic and biocidal performance under prototypical conditions.  In Phase II we propose to optimize the coating and demonstrate the performance of prototypical condenser surfaces designed to meet requirements for future lunar and planetary bases.
Abstract: The Multi-Purpose Excavation Demonstrator (MPED) is a commercial effort and a third generation of technology, following Bucket Wheel Excavator and Bucket Ladder Excavator work by the Colorado School of Mines.  The Moonraker&lt;SUP&gt;TM&lt;/SUP&gt; is an industrial instantiation, designed to be commercially viable.  The proof-of-concept machine is currently under construction.  

A phase two SBIR consists of: 1) upgrades to the original design, including more appropriate materials improvements and maturation of point solutions, 2) development of a robotic tool arm/turret to cradle, position and manuever the the excavator blade within it's work volume, 3) development of a 'universal' modular tool interface between the excavator blade and the robotic tool arm, 4) physics-based modelling and simulation of the excavator/tool arm/mobility platform ensemble, 5) a simulation which continues to co-evolve into a control systems/human interface, 6) extensive laboratory and field testing of excavator prototypes, particularly forces on buckets, and 7) enhanced systems reliability.  Field testing will include technology demonstrations at a Lunar Analogs site.

Related contextual topics are undergoing continous examination, including a simplified tool arm manipulation and control method, operations 'in the dirt' at the worksite, exploitation of regolith fines (dust) as a high-yield component of ores, and mitigation of the adverse effects of dust on the excavation system through exclusion, passive electrostatics and other methods.  This project draws extensively upon the expertise of CSM alumni who have prior experience in the earlier generations of Lunar Excavator prototypes.
This proposal is based on successful results of Phase I project where it was shown that the use of volume Bragg gratings in PTR glass as selectors of transverse and longitudinal modes in external resonators of fiber lasers resulted in single-frequency oscillation. Technology of low-loss thick volume Bragg gratings in photo-thermo-refractive (PTR) glass which provide extremely narrow spectral width down to 60 pm in the spectral range of 1.5 um is developed. New narrow-band filters based on coherent and incoherent combinations of Fabry-Perot etalons and volume Bragg gratings are demonstrated. The main purpose of this NASA SBIR Phase II project is to develop the prototype of a compact single-frequency mode laser oscillator with pulse energy in millijoule region by means of pulse pumped Er-doped single-mode fiber. The main feature of the laser design is the use of new narrow-band filters based on a coherent and incoherent combination of Fabri-Perot etalons and volume Bragg gratings (VBGs) recorded in photo-thermo-refractive (PTR) glass for longitudinal and transverse mode selection in an external laser resonator. Those new spectral filters will be used in external resonators of large area photonic crystal fibers. Optimization of parameters of Bragg filters and active fibers will provide both single frequency operation and high pulse energy.
TLC demonstrated a high performance remote Doppler Radar adjustable X-band to W-band transceiver chip that can perform well as a FMCW, super-heterodyne or pulse radar that meets space qualification specifications. This reconfigurable transceiver will serve as the basis for the precipitation &amp; cloud measurement doppler radar system that will be developed, tested and delivered to NASA in this Phase II effort.
In this proposed SBIR project, we seek to implement the Adaptive Chemistry methodology in existing CFD codes used to investigate the emissions performance of gas turbine engine combustors. We will demonstrate the feasibility of integrating Adaptive Chemistry algorithms to current CFD codes. We will also further develop the Adaptive Chemistry method to take advantage of species reduction enabling even larger CPU speedups. The value of the technique is enhanced predictive capability and computational efficiency of existing CFD codes for reacting flows such as gas turbine engine combustion systems. The successful completion of this project will produce the first CFD numerical code that is able to model detailed chemical kinetics as well as fluid dynamics. The end results allow the user to easily and transparently control the balance between computational efficiency and solution accuracy.
We propose an alternative to using Microsoft Word for representing medical procedures that will make the procedures easier to construct and maintain, particularly when there are changes to the hardware or changes to the resulting format of the procedure. We call this alternative an "electronic procedure". Rather than a text-based document, this content-based document separates the text from the formatting standards and tags items contained in the procedure so that they can be recognized by other electronic systems. 
If a standard format changes, a reference to that format is updated. The electronic procedures can be re-converted in a single batch process, and the entire body of procedures will have the new format. Changes to hardware can be made in a similar manner, where changing a piece of hardware in a procedure will change all references to it in that procedure. 
Switching to this new representation offers many short and long-term benefits, which we describe herein. We have already demonstrated the use of electronic procedures for modeling ISS operational procedures (and in modeling one ISS medical procedure). We hope to extend this work into the medical operations field so we can demonstrate how medical procedures can benefit from this technology.
NASA captures and distributes operational knowledge in the form of procedures. These procedures are created and accessed by a range of people performing many different jobs.  These people have different needs for procedure data and different ways of interacting with procedures. We propose an Procedure Integrated Development Environment which will present different editing modes and different views depending on the users and tasks, but will use a consistent data representation for all users. We propose to explore alternate editing paradigms and discover which are the most valuable for NASA operations.  We propose to build this environment on the basis of an existing prototype, PRIDE, which was developed for the Engineering Directorate of Johnson Space Center.