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Participating Center(s): AFRC, KSC
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- State of the Art
- T1.02 Detailed Multiphysics Propulsion Modeling Simulation Through Coordinated Massively Parallel Frameworks Lead Center: MSFC Participating Center(s): SSC
- T2.01 Advanced Nuclear Propulsion Lead Center: SSC Participating Center(s): GRC, MSFC
- Focus Area 2: Power and Energy Storage
- T3.01 Energy Harvesting, Transformation and Multifunctional Power Dissemination Lead Center: SSC Participating Center(s): GRC, JSC, KSC, MSFC
- T3.02 Intelligent/Autonomous Electrical Power Systems Lead Center: GRC Participating Center(s): JPL
- Focus Area 3: Autonomous Systems for Space Exploration
- T11.01 Machine Learning and Data Mining for Autonomy, Health Management, and Science Lead Center: ARC
- T11.02 Distributed Spacecraft Missions (DSM) Technology Framework Lead Center: GSFC
| Participating Center(s): AFRC, KSC
There has been recent significant growth in both the Quantity and Quality of Nano and Micro Satellite Missions:
Stage concepts are sought that can be demonstrated within the scope & budget of a Phase II STTR project:
State of the Art Small launch vehicles are targeting a total launch cost of ~$1-2M. Proposed stages must demonstrate significant cost savings over state of the art. What is the compelling need for this subtopic?
STMD/NASA/NARP/National-Affordable access to space is a key objective for NASA. The Nano/Micro Launch scale is an affordable avenue that will enable the development and validation of key technologies and approaches to reduce fixed cost, recurring costs and range costs. T1.02 Detailed Multiphysics Propulsion Modeling & Simulation Through Coordinated Massively Parallel Frameworks Lead Center: MSFC Participating Center(s): SSC Detailed modeling and simulation to assess combustion instability of recent large combustors while successful to a degree showed the need for significant advances in two-phase flow, combustion, unsteady flow, and acoustics. Additionally, simulation of water spray systems for launch acoustic sound suppression and test stand rocket engine acoustic sound suppression showed the need for advances in two-phase flow, droplet formation, and particulate trajectory. In these cases, and others, the need for improved physics based models is accompanied by the requirement for high fidelity and computational speed. Rocket combustion dynamic simulations are 3D, multiphase, reacting computations involving the mixing of hundreds of individual injection elements which require a long time history to be computed. Methods are sought (VOF, SPH, DNS/LES, PIC, etc.) to accurately capture the physics of the injection elements in a computationally efficient manner. Experimental validation of individual submodels are required. NASA successfully leveraged advances/ innovation in computer science technology to leapfrog the barriers to massive parallelism via the adoption of the Loci framework in the late 1990's. Computer science has evolved in the last two decades with respect to technology of massive parallelism. The intent of this subtopic is to infuse newest technologies, i.e., improved physics based models accompanied by the requirement for high fidelity and computational speed, into tools for propulsion related fluid dynamic simulation. This solicitation seeks simultaneously coordinated computer science (CS) technology advances, multi-physics (MP) simulation, and high fidelity (HF) models. The value and requirement for proposals is this coordinated CS-MP-HF framework. Ideally, technologies that are up to this point only Lower TRL demonstrations are strong candidates if they are developed to fit in a coordinated CS-MP-HF framework that can be applied to propulsion system fluid dynamics. Tools developed in this framework are expected to enable propulsion system production & DDT&E cost reductions. T2.01 Advanced Nuclear Propulsion Lead Center: SSC Participating Center(s): GRC, MSFC The objective of this subtopic is to advance low TRL (<3) nuclear propulsion technologies that have the potential to transform space transportation and space exploration to Mars and other planets/moons in our solar system. Radical improvements in in-space propulsion technologies beyond the current state of the art (SOA) are required to enable new missions that safely transport humans and/or robotic systems with increased reliability to meet mission requirements, transport them quickly to reduce transit times and provide quicker scientific results, increase the payload mass to allow more capable instruments and larger crews, and reduce the overall mission cost. SOA in-space transportation systems typically employ chemical propulsion or electric propulsion systems. In parallel, thought must go into how best to ground test these concepts to allow a smoother, more efficient and safer path for future development. This subtopic specifically seeks proposals for innovative research and development of advanced nuclear propulsion technologies that have the potential for significant improvement over the current SOA, primarily to achieve:
Other design requirements to consider in the proposed concept include:
Most of the known advanced nuclear propulsion candidate technologies are listed in the 2015 NASA OCT Roadmap TA02: In-Space Propulsion Technologies (http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/home/roadmaps/index.html). Advanced nuclear propulsion technologies are identified in section 2.3.3 Fusion Propulsion, section 2.3.5 Antimatter Propulsion, and section 2.3.6 Advanced Fission. Technology SOA and technical challenges are included for each. Other advanced nuclear propulsion technologies not listed in the 2015 OCT TA02 Roadmap are welcome and within the scope of the subtopic (e.g., various nuclear hybrid concepts), including novel system and component ground test approaches and associated supporting/enabling technologies. Proposed technologies must be theoretically credible and proposals must describe how the technology will make a significant improvement over SOA in-space propulsion systems. Proposals must describe the ultimate objective of the effort and detail the planned investigative approach. The planned experimentation should be described, including the test equipment to be used and/or developed. The proposal should describe the development risks and mitigation plans. Proposals should strive to advance the proposed technology to TRL 3: perform experimental critical function and/or proof-of-concept. If a significant increase in the TRL of a particular propulsion technology is not realizable, the proposal should clearly indicate the value proposition of the proposed effort to mature the candidate technology in the context of an overall development plan, describing how the award would support the maturation of the technology through phase II. Focus Area 2: Power and Energy Storage Power is a ubiquitous technology need across many NASA missions. Within the SBIR Program, power is represented across a broad range of topics in human exploration, space science, space technology and aeronautics. New technologies are needed to generate electrical power and/or store energy for future human and robotic space missions and to enable hybrid electric aircraft that could revolutionize air travel. A key goal is to develop technologies that are multi-use and cross-cutting for a broad range of NASA mission applications. In aeronautics, power technologies are needed to supply large-scale electric power and efficiently distribute the power to aircraft propulsors. In the space power domain, mission applications include planetary surface power, large-scale spacecraft prime power, small-scale robotic probe power, and smallsat/cubesat power. Applicable technology options include photovoltaic arrays, radioisotope power systems, nuclear fission, thermal energy conversion, motor/generators, fuel cells, batteries, power management, transmission, distribution and control. An overarching objective is to mature technologies from analytical or experimental proof-of-concept (TRL3) to breadboard demonstration in a relevant environment (TRL5). Successful efforts will transition into NASA Projects where the SBIR deliverables will be incorporated into ground testbeds or flight demonstrations. T3.01 Energy Harvesting, Transformation and Multifunctional Power Dissemination Lead Center: SSC Participating Center(s): GRC, JSC, KSC, MSFC The NRC has identified a NASA Top Technical Challenge as the need to "Increase Available Power". Additionally, a NASA Grand Challenge is "Affordable and Abundant Power" for NASA mission activities. As such, novel energy harvesting technologies are critical toward supporting future power generation systems to begin to meet these challenges. This subtopic addresses the potential for deriving power from waste engine heat, warm soil, liquids, kinetic motion, piezoelectric materials or other naturally occurring energy sources, etc. Development of energy harvesting (both capture and conversion) technologies would also address the national need for novel new energy systems and alternatives to reduce energy consumption. Conversion and transformation technologies for gathering energy naturally occurring in conjunction with induced energies are being pursued, and novel technologies capable of artificially saturating an environment with energy for storage and power dissemination along with non-conventional transmission via the surrounding environments such as wireless power are also applicable. Energy gathering is limited by the quantity of energy available within a system’s immediate environment, and often the environment’s energy contains prolonged periods of lulls in harvestable energy. Technologically bridging power from a distance would fundamentally alleviate issues with low energy environments by allowing energy to be supplementally broadcast through preexisting structures and environments while simultaneously reducing docking and interfacing for power transfer. Technology development should support powering small remotely located equipment such as wireless instrumentation, or support power gathering for independently providing supplementary power to centralized equipment such as control consoles. Distributed Nano energy generating technologies are applicable for gathering scattered environmental energies into significant amounts of accumulated power along with supplementation for long-duration power utilization. This kind of distributed power should also be able to recover waste energy from rocket, nuclear, fission, and electrical propulsion devices while providing enhanced protection from energies contained within the work environment through transformation and consumption. Transforming harmful radiation, elevated temperatures, unwanted vibrations etc. into usable energy will support increased scope and duration of missions while enhancing protection from the waste energies (mitigation by transformation and consumption). Waste energies from warm soil, liquids (water, oils, hydraulic fluids), kinetic motion, piezoelectric materials, or various naturally occurring energy sources, etc. should also be transformable. Areas of special focus for this subtopic include consideration of:
Rocket propulsion test facilities within NASA provide excellent test beds for testing and using the innovative technologies discussed above because they offer a wide spectrum of energy types and energy intensities for capture and transformation. Additional Federal mandates require the optimization of current energy use and development of alternative energy sources to conserve on energy and to enhance the sustainability of these and other facilities. Specific emphasis is on technologies which can be demonstrated in a ground test environment and have the ability/intention to be extrapolated for in-space applications such as on space vehicles, platforms or habitats. Energy transformation technologies to generate higher power output than what is presently on the market are a highly desired to an expected outcome from this subtopic. Phase I will develop feasibility studies and demonstrate through proof-of-concept demonstrations. Phase II will develop prototypical hardware and demonstrate infusion readiness to be incorporated into other products. T3.02 Intelligent/Autonomous Electrical Power Systems Lead Center: GRC Participating Center(s): JPL Missions to Mars and beyond experience communication delays with Earth of between 3 to 45 minutes. Due to this, it is impractical to rely on ground-based support and troubleshooting in the event of a power system fault or component failure. Intelligent/autonomous systems are required that can manage the power system in both normal mode and failure mode. In normal mode, the system would predict energy availability, perform load scheduling, maintain system security and status on-board and ground based personnel. One aspect of overall system autonomy would be solar array characterization, for spacecraft utilizing this technology. One drawback of current satellite systems is the lack of adequate means of determining solar panel or cell status. Being able to automatically characterize solar panel status can enhance energy availability prediction. Similar technology to access that status of battery systems would further enhance these predictions. In failure mode, the system must identify a fault or failure and perform contingency planning to react or reconfigure the system appropriately to move it back into normal mode of operation, without human involvement. The technologies to detect and identify specific failures in both the generation, distribution and storage systems are needed along with strategies to utilize the failure data to identify recovery strategies for the power system. With the potential of future manned missions to Mars, this technology will become increasingly important for electrical power management and distribution. Specific areas of interest include:
Focus Area 3: Autonomous Systems for Space Exploration The exploration of space requires the best of the nation's technical community to provide the technologies that will enable human exploration beyond Low Earth Orbit (LEO): to visit asteroids, and to extend our reach to Mars. Autonomous Systems technologies provide the means of migrating mission control from Earth to spacecraft and habitats. This is enhancing for missions in the Earth-Lunar neighborhood and enabling for deep space missions. Long light-time delays, up to 42 minutes round-trip between Earth and Mars, require time-critical control decisions to be closed on-board autonomously through automation and astronaut-automation teaming rather than through round-trip communication to Earth mission control. Long-term crewed spacecraft and habitats, such as the International Space Station, are so complex that a significant portion of the crew's time is spent keeping it operational under even under nominal conditions in low-Earth orbit, while still requiring significant real-time support from Earth. The considerable challenge is to migrate the knowledge and capability embedded in current Earth mission control, with tens to hundreds of human specialists ready to provide instant knowledge, to on-board automation that teams with astronauts to autonomously manage spacecraft and habitats. The autonomous agent subtopic addresses this challenge by soliciting proposals that leverage the growing field of cognitive computing to advance technology for deep-space autonomy. The technology challenge for autonomous crewed systems in off-nominal conditions is even more critical. In the majority of Apollo lunar missions, Earth mission control was needed to resolve critical off-nominal situations ranging from unexplained computer alarms on Apollo 11 to the oxygen tank explosion on Apollo 13 that required executing an 87 hour free return abort trajectory around the moon and back to earth. Through creative use of Lunar Module assets, Apollo 13 had sufficient resiliency to keep the three astronauts alive despite loss of the oxygen tank and many of the capabilities of the service module. In contrast to a lunar mission, a free return abort trajectory around mars and back to earth is on the order of two years – requiring a leap in resiliency. To prevent Loss of Mission (LOM) or Loss of Crew (LOC) in deep space missions, spacecraft and habitats will require long-term resiliency to handle failures that lead to loss of critical function or unexpected expenditure of consumables. Long communication delays or accidents that cause loss of communication will require that the initial failure response be handled autonomously. The subtopic on resilient autonomous systems solicits technology for the design and quantification of resiliency in long-duration missions. The subtopic on sustainable habitats solicits technology for long-term system health management that goes beyond short-term diagnosis technology to include advances machine learning and other prognostic technologies. Enhancing the capability of astronauts is also critical for future long-duration deep space missions. Augmented reality technology can guide astronauts in carrying out procedures through various sensory modalities. The augmented reality subtopic within the human research program topic area is very relevant to autonomous systems technologies, and proposers are encouraged to review that subtopic description. T11.01 Machine Learning and Data Mining for Autonomy, Health Management, and Science Lead Center: ARC Nearly all engineered systems in all of NASA's areas of interest have one key aspect in common---they generate substantial data. These data represent:
Machine learning, data mining, big data, and related methods have been used to study data in these four areas individually for offline study, with the goal of understanding how the system really operates, as distinct from how it was designed and intended to operate. However, these data-driven methods have not been used so far to study data across more than one of these four areas, and not during operations, with the goal of enabling a human and/or autonomous system to make adjustments to the system's operations on the fly. Allowing both online and offline learning would allow for both online (tactical) and offline (strategic) adjustments to operations. Allowing humans and autonomous systems to interact in making strategic and tactical decisions, including user interfaces that allow the autonomous system to show the human what it has learned and the human to specify high-level objectives and/or low-level actions, is a key problem to be addressed. Increasing the scope of the data covered to all of the four areas above would allow autonomous systems and human operators to account for both science and system health drivers in operations, and identify the trade-offs between increasing science operations, increasing availability, maintaining systems health, minimizing maintenance costs, and other considerations. Some of these considerations may extend to improvements in on-demand system responsiveness through optimal resource sharing of the computational burden between online and offline computing platforms. Integration of learning autonomous systems into existing mission operations and systems is a key problem that will need to be addressed.
The utilization of the above types of data to optimize all aspects of operations is important for missions/projects in all of NASA's areas of interest such as space science (e.g., Kepler, TESS), space exploration (human and autonomous rovers), Earth science (satellite-based and airborne instruments and platforms), and aeronautics (e.g., UAS in the NAS) to operate them in as cost-effective a manner as possible. This becomes more critical as NASA increasingly moves towards operating multiple platforms in a coordinated manner (e.g., Distributed Spacecraft Missions, airborne Earth science platforms coordinating with satellite instrument platforms) where the volume of relevant data will increase and autonomy will be needed to properly operate the multiple platforms. This subtopic has three goals:
Proposed solutions may have characteristics including but not limited to:
T11.02 Distributed Spacecraft Missions (DSM) Technology Framework Lead Center: GSFC Directory: sites -> default -> files files -> Answer True False 2 points Question 2 files -> Northern England’s set-jetting locations files -> Nstructions for Acquiring Excess Equipment online, through the 1033 Program files -> Occupational health and safety files -> The Black Panther Party’s Ten Point Program files -> International programs roel profile files -> Fermi Questions a guide for Teachers, Students, and Event Supervisors Lloyd Abrams, Ph. D. DuPont Company, cr&D/ccas experimental Station Wilmington, de 19880 files -> Personal Information Name: Maha Al-Ammari Nationality: Saudi Relationship Status Download 1.54 Mb. Share with your friends:
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