Summary

Description

eSky will develop specific crew state metrics based on the timeliness, tempo and accuracy of pilot inputs required by the H-mode Flight Control System (HFCS). Specific scenarios will be developed which define required inputs by the pilot and metrics of timeliness, tempo and accuracy will be developed for each required input. An existing HFCS simulator will be enhanced to support the full scenarios and crew state metric capture. Human subject testing will validate the stability of the metrics in normal situations and the responsiveness of the metrics to crew state degradation due to high workload. Strategies for continuous real-time function allocation to crew and automation will be developed. At the end of phase 1 crew state monitoring metrics will be at TRL 4/5. In phase 2 we will incorporate these metrics and strategies into the HFCS simulator and evaluate the usability and validity of these metrics and strategies using both workload and hypoxia as means of controlled crew state degradation. At the end of phase 2 metric-based function reallocation will be implemented in a collaborative flight control system ready for incorporation into a full motion simulator at TRL 5.

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A major objective of the NASA science spacecraft systems development programs is to implement science measurement capabilities using small affordable spacecrafts. High conductivity materials to minimize temperature gradients and provide high efficiency radiators and heat spreader panels are required to meet this objective. Under this proposed effort, kTC will develop a high performance thermal distribution panel (TDP) concept. The panel will be fabricated with a high conductivity macro composite skin and in situ heat pipes. The processing technologies proposed to build such a panel can also be used to produce this panel with high structural stiffness, similar to aluminum honeycomb type structure currently in use. This advanced TDP material concept will have high conductance the will obviate the need for attached bulky metal thermal doublers and heat pipe saddles. The conductivity of the proposed material system can be configured to exceed 800 W/mK with a mass density below 2.5 g/cm3. This material can provide efficient conductive heat transfer between the in situ heat pipes permitting the use of thinner panel thicknesses further reducing the mass of this critical spacecraft subsystem. This concept will also obviate reliability challenges due to CTE mismatch between structures and the heat pipes. In the Phase I program, kTC will produce prototypes employing the proposed TDP concept. In Phase II, in conjunction with kTC's Tier I team members, the qualification and integration of the concept into spaceflight hardware will be pursued.

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Future space exploration missions present significant new challenges to crew health care capabilities, particularly in the efficient utilization of on-board oxygen resources. The International Space Station and future exploration vehicles require a light weight, compact, portable oxygen concentrator technology (OCT) that can provide medical grade oxygen from the ambient cabin air. Current OCTs are heavy, bulky, have a narrow operating temperature range (ambient to 40 degrees C), and require 15 to 30 minutes start-up time to reach their full operating capacity. Lynntech's proposed electrochemical OCT solves these issues by operating the OCT with a cathode-air vapor feed, unlike conventional electrochemical OCTs which require a liquid water feed. This is possible due to the use of in-house developed proprietary nanocomposite proton exchange membrane and oxygen reduction/evolution catalyst technologies. Cathode-air vapor feed operation eliminates the need for a bulky on-board water supply, significantly reduces the complexity of the balance-of-plant, and greatly increases the system efficiency. Lynntech's OCT will be a quarter the size and weight of conventional OCTs, be capable of instant start-up, and have an operating temperature range of 10 degrees C to 110 degrees C.

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The well-being of the crew on manned missions depends critical on the composition of the habitat air. Oxygen, carbon dioxide and water vapor are the most important air constituents that have to be monitored continuously. Optical monitoring with its features of high precision, strong species selectivity and fast response is the preferred method if lightweight, small and low power-draw instrumentation can be developed. Vertical cavity surface emitting lasers (VCSELs) are now available covering a broad wavelength range. These single frequency light sources are ideal candidates for high performance gas monitoring and especially suited for space applications due to their small size and extremely low power consumption. Vista Photonics proposes to develop technology based on these lasers that leads to small sensors that fulfill the strict requirements of spaceflight. The narrowband output of these lasers combined with wavelength modulation spectroscopy and a compact absorption cell will provide superior sensor performance. Inherent features like sensor health monitoring and recalibration without the use of expendable gases will be incorporated. The developed sensor will be fully automated and no maintenance will be required.

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Recovery of water from brine is critically important for manned space exploration. Resupply of water is prohibitively costly for extended missions. It is anticipated that NASA will pool urine, hygiene water and humidity condensate into a combined waste stream that will subsequently be concentrated into a brine while recovering some but not all of the water, 90-95%. The concentrated brine that results from primary water recovery systems contains a significant amount of water. The proposed innovation will recover virtually all of the remaining water. This will be accomplished by ultrasonically creating nebulized droplets of the brine that can be readily dried under a partial vacuum with moderate temperature microwave heating. The process bears some resemblance to spray drying, but uses much smaller droplets (1.6 m as compared to ~100 m). Small droplets enable quicker drying due to their high relative surface area. This is particularly important when drying wastewater brines which contain ingredients that are thermally labile and require drying at relatively low temperatures. The proposed system has no nozzles to become plugged, requires no chemical additives, uses a minimal amount of power, is simple and small, requires minimal astronaut attention and uses a continuous, closed cycle process that is gravity independent.

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Shape Change Technologies (SCT) has pioneered the use of Self-propagating High Temperature Synthesis (SHS) to manufacture open celled, porous TiNi. Recently, we have been able to demonstrate the shape memory effect in these foams, which is a unique capability. Unlike solid, monolithic TiNi, the open-celled foam structure allows for very rapid response times when immersed in fluids, such as hot water or hot air. The SHS process makes net shape components, and so the cost of the tube can be dramatically reduced, and can have features introduced into the end of the tube to allow for simple torque transfer into a structure. Thus, in developing a foam torque tube using SHS, all of the key obstacles to its incorporation into existing aerostructures can be resolved, while preserving the key benefits of a lightweight, solid-state structure.

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To address NASA's need for L1 C/A-based navigation with better anti-spoofing ability and higher accuracy, Broadata Communications, Inc. (BCI) proposes to develop a new Navigation Robustness and Accuracy Improvement (NRAI) system, based on BCI's innovative noise nulling and observable combiner technology. BCI's novel approach incorporates the innovations of the highly successful multiple-antenna detection technique and the optimized fast quad diversity combiner technique, enabling BCI to meet NASA's requirements for reliability, safety, and high accuracy by effectively nullifying the interference noise from GPS receiver data and eliminating errors and ambiguities in observables. The NRAI system offers a 4-6 dB SNR improvement factor over current techniques and increases the accuracy of L1 C/A navigation to less than 1 m and 1 cm/s, which directly fulfills NASA's requirement of anti-spoofing ability and high accuracy. In Phase I BCI will demonstrate the feasibility of the NRAI system by building and testing a preliminary prototype, which will demonstrate TRL-level 3-4 by the end of Phase I. In Phase II, BCI plans to develop a fully functional prototype and demonstrate the anti-spoofing and high-accuracy navigation performance of NRAI. The demonstrated results will offer NASA capabilities of accurate and reliable navigation using L1 C/A code.

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The Next Generation Air Transportation System (NextGen) strives to transform the existing National Airspace System (NAS) into the safest, most efficient system feasible. This proposal addresses the automated surface traffic and resource planning for the NextGen Airportal concept. Current system is primarily reliant on manual planning and human decision making with minimal computer support. The proposed Collaborative Aircraft Planning System (CAPS) will implement advanced evolutionary algorithms to achieve Airportal usage optimality in real-time while maintaining the required safety margins in aircraft separation and conflict resolution. CAPS will be designed to be flexible to accommodate future aircraft capabilities and equipage, modeling of arbitrary pre-requisite and post-requisite resource requirements, weather driven changes in Airportal constraints, and will be scalable to larger metro-plexes of multiple airportals while maintaining real-time planning capabilities. CAPS will also provide intuitive graphical operator interfaces with enhanced visualization and safety alert capabilities. SSCI will leverage its expertise and past experience in implementing evolutionary algorithms for large planning problems in designing the CAPS software tool. Phase II will lead to a CAPS software package delivery that can be integrated with NASA's FACET and ACES software for evaluation and demonstration.

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Incidents related to impaired human performance in space operations can be caused by environmental conditions, situational challenges, and operational deficiencies. Detecting, reporting, and correlating related incidents are key to preventing future incidents. NASA has made significant progress in standardizing the reporting of aviation incidents by developing electronic forms for reporting incidents. While such forms improve report consistency, incident data are not represented in a way that enables computer-based reasoning across reports (e.g., automatic linking of related reports.) TRACLabs proposes to develop a human factors incident-reporting tool for gathering incident data, documenting data in incident reports, and archiving incident data. We will define an XML-based semantic language for incident reporting to capture information about human factors incidents, including multi-modal data. We will develop software for authoring incident reports using this language, archiving these reports, and searching the archives using incident semantics. This project is innovative in defining an incident reporting language that uses an ontology-based vocabulary. This enables improved tools for gathering incident data, and for authoring and archiving incident reports. The semantic indexing provided by the use of incident reporting language permits more sophisticated search of archives, including automatic identification of prior incidents potentially relevant to the current incident.

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Loop heat pipes are commonly used for heat rejection radiators above a few hundred watts. The LHP condener tubing is embedded in composite panels which are manually deployed. By making the LHP condenser tubing out of shape memory alloy tubing, the radiator becomes self deploying and self contained. It will passively deploy when the payload components begin producing significant heat. This not only eliminates the deployment mechanisms and controls, but also provides more flexible stowing arrangement for the radiators. Very small satellites and spacecraft can now have deployable radiators.

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Broadband Photonics Incorporated proposes to develop a patent-pending fiber optic continuous liquid sensor for low-thrust level settled mass gauging with measurement uncertainty <0.5% over fill levels from 2% to 98%. The fiber optic liquid sensor has significant advantages over the existing liquid sensors, including Delta-P pressure sensors, capacitance probes, ultrasonic sensors, and silicon diode point sensors in terms of gauging accuracy, reliability, simplicity, and maintenance. The proposed sensor is able to replace silicon diode point sensors currently used for propellant gauging without any modification on the tank. In Phase 1, we will prove the feasibility of the liquid sensor, including demonstration of 1 mm liquid level spatial resolution and development of the robust sensing fiber for cryogenic temperature applications. In Phase 2, we will further develop the prototype of the fiber optic liquid sensor.

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LOX Olefin Rocket Propulsion for Deep Space Project

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Nanomaterials and nanocomposites offer great potential for improvement in many applications. One such NASA application is the prevention of microcracking as well as improvement in impact strength at cryogenic temperatures of composite cryotanks/carbon fiber-reinforced filament wound composite overwrapped pressure vessels (COPVs) as used in liquid fuel propulsion systems and other related fiber-reinforced structures as used in space exploration. Replacement of the currently-used aluminum-lithium cryotanks with composite cryotanks is advantageous from a weight-saving standpoint, but these composite structures are susceptible to microcracks from long- and short-term exposure to cryogenic temperatures from fuel storage and space environments. In Phase I, we propose to demonstrate the feasibility of a novel engineered nanocomposite in a fiber-reinforced composite in order to eliminate microcracks and enhance the impact strength at cryogenic temperatures. The program is a collaborative effort with a leading developer and manufacturer of COPVs. A key aspect of the proposed program is that it combines nanoscale additives with modifications to the conventional epoxy matrix polymer structure and morphology in ways never done before. The Phase II program will build upon the Phase I demonstration effort by implementing the technology in other epoxy systems and fiber systems used in the filament winding process combined with technological advances made by our strategic partner; implementation of the technology to linerless cryotanks will be a major focus as a drop-in replacement for current aluminum-lithium cryotanks. In addition, we will implement the technology in other fiber-reinforced composite structures as may be applicable to NASA applications.

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Iris AO will extend its proven segmented MEMS deformable mirror architecture to large array sizes required for high-contrast astrophysical imagers. Current implementations consist of arrays of 37 mirror segments (currently available commercially) and 163 segment arrays (first prototypes under test). Existing thin-film based MEMS fabrication techniques used by competitors typically can not achieve an adequate degree of optical flatness and maintain it over a range of temperatures. Even newer thick-film methods suffer from the same problem to some degree. The Iris AO segmented mirror approach, on the other hand, uses a thick and rigid single-crystal-silicon optical surface bonded to an electrostatically driven actuator platform. This results in excellent mirror flatness and insensitivity to temperature even when specialized optical coatings are used. This proposal addresses scaling this technology up to 10^3 segments. Key technical issues to be addressed in accommodating the larger number of segments include: (a) controlling overall bow of the larger chip; (b) developing the electrical interconnect design and fabrication process, and (c) modifying the mirror-wafer bonding process. This Phase I will include one process run in order to test and refine the proposed solutions.

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With the advent of the new exploration initiative, the number of customers and missions to be supported by the NASA Space Communications infrastructure will increase dramatically. As well, new antenna types to be developed in support of exploration will increase, thus increasing the complexity of constraints governing the use of space communications assets. In a new concept, the communications architecture will evolve from the present legacy assets but with the addition of new assets. This future architecture will need a radically new user interface paradigm that must allow space communications missions to both unequivocally specify their requests and also iteratively get those requests integrated with those of other users in increasingly crowded bandwidths. It is our contention that such an interface cannot be developed easily with conventional means, but instead is best designed using intelligent agent technologies, resulting in an intelligent space communications scheduling agent for each user/mission. Therefore, to meet the increased scheduling needs we propose to: design and develop software scheduling agents to interface with existing space communications scheduling engines, using local working databases of active schedule possibilities; to incorporate in the agents models of user preferences for communications requests, conflict resolution and notification of schedule changes; to allow the user/mission to vary the autonomy of the scheduling agent; and to imbue the agents with the capability for planful interactions for peer-to-peer resolution of schedule conflicts.

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United States spaceports carry out the impressive task of launching and recovering spacecrafts and payloads which represent extremely unique and expensive assets. The successful deployment, recovery, and operation of these assets are essential to our scientific discovery, economic prosperity, and national security. Range surveillance is a significant factor in enabling safe, reliable, and cost effective operations. Our ranges encompass large ocean regions that are not under the exclusive control of the spaceport. As such, these areas must be cleared in preparation for launch and reentry operations to ensure overall safety to the public as well as the space transportation system itself. Emergent Space Technologies, Inc. (Emergent) proposes to research a integrated marine autonomous surface vehicle (ASV) range surveillance (MARS) system to enhance spaceport situational awareness. The surveillance payload includes an array of optical, infrared, and RF sensors and onboard software to facilitate measurement infusion and analysis. The surveillance payload provides state estimates including position, velocity, and heading for marine assets. State measurements are relayed to the range control personnel to aid in operational decision making. The MARS system is intended to increase range availability and safety while decreasing operational costs.

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Physical Sciences Inc. proposes to develop a compact, rugged, rapid-response, autonomous sensor for in-situ monitoring of ambient O3 from UAVs. Our innovation is to combine newly available UV light emitting diodes (LEDs) with miniaturized, low power, high sensitivity signal detection electronics to create a next generation, UAV-class, photometer for O3. The advent of UV LEDs enables the development of a very compact and highly sensitive monitor for ambient O3. An LED-based sensor has many advantages over currently available technologies and is highly suitable for deployment in UAVs. The Phase I program will demonstrate the feasibility of a breadboard sensor and create a detailed conceptual plan for a fieldable prototype. The TRL at the end of Phase I will be level 4. The Phase II program will fabricate a prototype that can be field demonstrated on an aircraft. The TRL at the end of Phase II will be level 6. Successful completion of Phases I and II will result in a rigorously validated prototype sensor that can monitor ambient O3 with high speed and precision. The sensor architecture can be easily modified to measure other species. Using new mid-IR LEDs, the photometer can monitor trace gases such as CO2 and CO.

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Miniaturized Water Recovery System for Advanced Life Support Systems Project

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A novel design for an in situ atmospheric sensor for CO2 and trace gases is proposed. The sensor, named AirCore, provides the advantages of existing in situ sensors (e.g. high resolution) but eliminates possible biases in analysis that often originate from imperfect measurement condition. The AirCore provides a significant savings in cost and weight while increasing the capabilities of existing in situ sensors. The AirCore system consists of the AirCore gas sampler and the support system to accomplish its high altitude (nominally 70,000 ft.) mission. This support system includes the sensor launch and recovery components. The AirCore can be launched and recovered by a crew of two which reduces the operational cost of the system.

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FGM HfC/Sic Composites for RlV Leading Edge Applications Project

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This Phase I SBIR will demonstrate the feasibility of a process to create multi-layer thin-film optics for the far-infrared/sub-millimeter wave spectral region. The process will create alternating sub-wavelength layers of window and air with high index contrast. The process proven in Phase I will be applied to Phase II commercial prototypes including mirrors with reflectivity exceeding 99.99%, design tunable band-pass and band-blocking filters, anti-reflection optics, and scanning Fabry-Perot spectrometers with simultaneous unprecedented high resolution and broad free spectral range at 100 micron wavelengths. Such spectroscopic component technology can be immediately integrated into a number of future NASA missions in Earth and planetary science, astronomy, and astrophysics, as well as having dual use and large potential markets in defense, security, and biomedicine.

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Flight in the hypersonic regime is critical to NASA's goals because access to earth orbit and re-entry from orbit to earth or to other planets with atmospheres require flight through this regime. Hypersonic flight poses a wide array of difficulties, including significant guidance and control challenges. For example, flexible airframes and highly integrated airframe and propulsion systems common in scramjet designs mean that aerodynamic and propulsion control are closely coupled. Control laws for hypersonic vehicles must also handle a very broad range of dynamics as hypersonic vehicles often operate from subsonic through hypersonic speeds and possibly with multiple propulsion modes for different speed ranges. Actuator saturation and significant models uncertainty also pose control challenges, and demanding energy management requirements make guidance and trajectory optimization challenging tasks as well. The proposed research will develop innovative control strategies to address the challenges of hypersonic flight. These will be based on recent advances in switching control methods that provide large stable regions and disturbance rejection guarantees in the presence of actuator saturation. The proposed control methods will ultimately be integrated with advanced guidance approaches for hypersonic vehicles developed by Barron Associates.

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Novel Isotopic Gas Analyzer for Plant Health Monitoring Project

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In space missions, launch vehicles (LV) are filled with cryogenic propellant fluids. It is important to protect these LVs from any leakage of liquid propellants through a reliable, accurate, leak detection system. Currently used analytical methods do not meet space mission requirements of low power consumption, reliability, low weight, and cost effectiveness. To overcome these limitations, Intelligent Optical Systems (IOS) proposes to adapt, optimize, and integrate optical detection technologies into an accurate leak detection system for H2, O2, and CH4. Due to their extreme low temperatures, these cryogenic fluids induce a contraction of the materials they contact, creating a potential cause of leakage. Hydrogen leakage in air creates an explosive atmosphere for hydrogen concentrations (between 4% (v/v) ? the lower explosive limit (LEL) and 74.5% (v/v) ? the upper explosive limit (UEL)) at room temperature and pressure. The early detection of cryogenic fluid leakage is extremely important for reasons of safety, reliability, and economy. IOS will provide its expertise in optical sensing to develop a miniaturized, reliable, highly sensitive, multi agent detection prototype, a Multi-Agent Optical Sensor Chip for Cryogenic Fluids Leak Detection (MOSCLD). The study will target detection limits of 1ppm or less and a response time in the millisecond range.

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Improving Binaural Simulation of Structural Acoustics Project