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2007
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Building upon an $18M DoD investment, a Seed Fund collaboration among Goddard, NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL), and Coherent Logix of Austin, TX will enable researchers to radiation-harden a high-performance, low-power processor that can enable or enhance computationally intensive NASA spaceflight capabilities. The performance and power efficiency of the resulting device is expected to be significantly superior to current state-of-the-art spaceflight processors. Goddard researchers expect that the radiation-tolerant version of the processor resulting from this collaboration will be critical to achieving NASA’s performance goals for many spaceflight capabilities currently in development, such as autonomous landing and hazard avoidance technology (ALHAT), rover stereo vision and path planning (i.e., autonomous surface mobility), autonomous rendezvous and capture (AR&C), and adaptable communications systems.

Researchers from Goddard and the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL) will use Seed Funding to develop a spacecraft global positioning system (GPS) receiver with a SpaceWire-based plug-and-play (PnP) interface that will be applicable for multiple missions and provide NASA insight into building a PnP spacecraft. Reusable components like this receiver can dramatically reduce design time and costs for spacecraft construction. In order for this to be realized, the avionics computer interface must be standardized to its highest functional layers. To this end, researchers plan to modify the hardware for Goddard’s Navigator spacecraft GPS receiver to include a SpaceWire application-specific integrated circuit (ASIC) that will enable standardization of the interface and compatibility with all other SpaceWire-based architectures. The researchers plan to deliver a receiver that would be ready for testing in September 2008, and for integration on NASA’s planned AFRL PnP satellite technology demonstration flight to be launched one year later.

Recently awarded Seed Funding will help researchers understand the potential implications of near-Earth objects.

To meet this need, researchers from Goddard, Penetradar Corporation, and Ohio State University will use IPP Seed Funding to develop a lightweight, low-mass, low-frequency, high-bandwidth, and high-resolution inverse synthetic aperture radar (ISAR) instrument for subsurface 3D imaging of the interior structure of critical bodies of the solar system. The instrument concept development is ideally suited for NASA reconnaissance missions to such primitive objects as part of emerging priorities within NASA’s Science Mission Directorate, and is also relevant to scientific issues within Earth system science and for enabling human exploration of the Moon and Mars. In addition, the instrument can be used for NASA’s NEO program to characterize asteroids and comets that could be a threat to Earth.

Seed Funding may help improve next-generation topography techniques.

With support from the Seed Fund, researchers at Goddard and Fibertek, Inc. of Herndon, VA plan to accelerate development of a next-generation mapping technology, leading to an engineered aircraft mapping lidar system by 2009. The planned innovation will be capable of mapping using multiple laser beams, building on NASA’s rich heritage in laser altimeter topographic mapping. The project will help meet the Science Mission Directorate’s need for new remote sensing technologies to better see, detect, and measure the Earth and the solar system and will enable high-resolution mapping of the Earth’s land topography, vegetation structure, and ice sheet elevation change. The advancement will benefit several NASA missions, including the National Lidar Mapping Initiative (NLMI), Lidar Surface Topography (LIST) mission, ICESat-II mission, and planetary missions to the icy moons (Europa, Enceladus) of the outer planets. The technology will enable NASA to build instruments for these missions with greater spatial coverage and range resolution while substantially reducing the mass, size, power consumption, complexity, risk, and cost of the laser transmitter.

Astronaut safety is a key goal of a Seed Funded partnership with United Space Alliance.

Of paramount importance to NASA space and lunar exploration missions is the health and safety of crew members. Yet current methods provide minimal real-time response and predictive capabilities for adverse space weather conditions. Such “solar particle events” can subject the crew to potentially lethal radiation doses and impair critical systems (e.g., life support, communications, power). Key data about such events must be integrated into situational awareness/mission operations tools so that timely mitigation plans can be implemented for crew, vehicles, and surface assets. To this end, researchers at Goddard and United Space Alliance (USA) are receiving Seed Funding to develop prototype software tools and spatio-temporal visualizations that will import space weather and radiation science data directly into operational tools for the pre-mission planning and real-time execution phases of exploration programs. The planned innovation will provide early identification of adverse weather events and will provide NASA’s Space Operations Mission Directorate the ability to account for such events during mission planning/scheduling as well as to react during real-time execution. This includes providing lead time to direct exploration crews to the closest radiation-hardened safe haven and implementing plans to protect lunar outpost infrastructure.

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