Guide to fy2017 Research Funding at the

From NSF “Federal Funds for Research and Development: FY2013-2015” NSF 15-324, July 2015

Because the FY2015 entries are Budget Request only, they are not reported here.

Basic 2013 Tables 30, 77 and 80-86

Applied Research 2013 Tables 44, 88 and 91-97

Basic 2014 Table 31 and 78

Initiate research activities based on new competitions in ROSES 2016. These will be solicitations for interdisciplinary research with several crosscutting science foci. In addition, a new round of the Airborne Instrument Technology Transition (AITT) program competition will initiate research on technologies for integration and testing on board various NASA airplanes and UAVs.

Scientific support to an expanded SERVIR (satellite) global network encompassing six regional hubs planned after 2017. The budget allows an expanded third SERVIR Applied Sciences Team to provide scientific expertise and applications projects across the six hubs.

In January 2017, NASA will release the announcement of opportunity for the next New Frontiers mission. The announcement adds a new target for Ocean Worlds, specifically soliciting missions focused on the search for signs of extant life and/or characterizing the potential habitability of Titan or Enceladus.

An expanded NEO observation effort that will increase the detection of NEOs of all sizes by increasing the observing time on ground-based telescopes such as Pan- STARRs and the Space Surveillance Telescope, and improve their characterization using assets such as the Infra-Red Telescope Facility. Also supporting the study of the composition of NEOs through the collection and analyses of meteorites, as well as the analyses of samples returned by spacecraft missions.

Implement the DRIVE (Diversify, Realize, Integrate, Venture, Educate) initiative, resulting in an increase of the competed research program from 10 percent to about 15 percent of the budget request. This budget supports a gradual increase with a goal of fully implementing DRIVE by the end of the decade.

In FY 2017, the Aeronautics programs are supported in part by mandatory funding from the 21st Century Clean Transportation Plan. With this additional funding, NASA will

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  accelerate and expand the New Aviation Horizons (NAH) - Subsonic Demonstrator project to evaluate advanced configuration subsonic transport X-planes.
  

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  initiate the development of a formal preliminary design for a large-scale Hybrid Wing Body experimental aircraft.
  

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  develop a series of transformative hybrid electric propulsion demonstrators, starting at small scale for risk reduction, learning, and for early applications,
  
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  accelerate and expand the scope NAH-Low Boom Flight Demonstrator project to include the use of low carbon alternative fuels.
  
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  enabling tools and technologies, revolutionizing operational efficiency, fostering advanced concepts and training the future workforce, and leveraging non-aerospace technology advancements.
  
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  enable smaller engine cores for turbofan engines leading to higher bypass, higher efficiency engines.
  
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  robust, fuel flexible combustors enables higher fractions of low carbon alternative fuel utilization.
  
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  augment internal early stage innovative research and the new university leadership initiative to focus on high efficiency, low carbon concepts, fostering advanced concepts and training the future workforce.
  
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  leverage non-aerospace technology advancements through support of challenge prizes to bring key non-aerospace technologies, such as advanced energy storage technologies, into aeronautics applications.
  
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  initiate an NAH - Subsonic Demonstrator project to design and build advanced configuration subsonic transport Xplanes that demonstrate and validate the configurations and technologies to achieve a 50 percent reduction in fuel use while also dramatically reducing noise.
  
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  augment internal early stage innovative research and the new university leadership initiative to focus on high efficiency, low carbon concepts, fostering advanced concepts and training the future workforce.
  
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  establish the Hypersonics Technology Project.
  

Establish a Hypersonic Technology (HT) project leveraging the work of the DOD investments in fundamental hypersonic research

In FY 2017, the current Leading Edge Aeronautics Research for NASA (LEARN) Project will be phased out and emphasis will be placed on a university leadership approach. The new project will involve universities independently analyzing the technical barriers inherent in achieving the strategic outcomes and proposing set of multi-disciplinary technical challenges along with supporting activities to address those barriers, and then NASA competitively selecting the most strategic and transformative proposals. The project will also continue to utilize challenges and prizes to the external community to catalyze investments from the aerospace and non-aerospace communities toward solving problems aligned with NASA interests.

engineers and workforce. The competitively selected research activities will open alternate avenues for accelerated progress by ARMD and the aerospace community toward the strategic outcomes, as well as leveraging new thinking and fostering development of the next generation workforce critical to the long term development of low carbon aviation.

Strategic Technology Integration will execute an initiative across seven NASA centers to encourage and track infusion of NASA-developed technology by NASA missions and other NASA user groups. The Technology Transfer Program will develop, launch, and migrate all Agency licensing activities to an online patent licensing portal. Additionally, the Technology Transfer Program will investigate a partnership with the National Science Foundation's Innovation Corps to further catalyze the engagement of local university teams in technology transfer and innovation.

Future Centennial Challenges will address:

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  NASA’s efforts in robotics for human exploration and planetary science missions, and improve University involvement through targeted challenges. For example, Space Technology is working with the NSF to formulate the Space Robotics Challenge. The selected teams will have three years to improve the software and automation aspects of the Robonaut series robots. The total prize purse for this challenge is $2M.
  
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  NASA is working with the Methuselah Foundation to support the Tissue Engineering Challenge in FY 2016, FY 2017, and FY 2018. This challenge will focus on the generation of tissue with cells performing functions of one of the four major organs (heart, lung, liver, kidney) and remaining alive long enough to advance scientific research capabilities. The total prize purse for this challenge is $0.5M.
  

Among many goals, Space Technology will provide technology development grants and academic funding support to more than 200 students and early career faculty through STRG and NIAC.