National Aeronautics and Space Administration
Small Business Innovation Research 2002 Program Solicitations
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A6.01 Human-Automation Interaction in Aerospace Systems
A6.02 Nanotechnology
NASA's Computing, Information and Communications Technology (CICT) Program will enable scientific research, space exploration, and aerospace technology research to be performed with greater success, at less cost, and with increased return through the development and use of advanced computing, information and communications technologies. Research areas include goal-directed systems, enabling of seamless access to NASA’s information technology resources, high rate delivery, and overall strategic research to develop, and evaluate a broad portfolio of fundamental information and bio/nano technologies for infusion into future NASA missions.
The CICT program seeks to develop more intelligent and adaptive systems and tools that work collaboratively with humans to achieve NASA’s mission/science goals. This includes robotic and human-robotic exploration; safe, cost-effective operation of all launch vehicles; Earth-orbiting satellites for monitoring relationships associated with planetary phenomena; and development of methodologies to enhance the capacity, safety and security of our National Airspace System (NAS). It also seeks to enhance access to ground, air, and space-based distributed hardware, software, and information resources. This will allow scientists and engineers to focus on making new discoveries in science, design next-generation space vehicles, control missions or develop new concepts for the NAS.
Another aspect of the CICT program is enhancement of high rate data delivery from ground, air, and space-based assets directly to the users enabling NASA’s twenty-first century missions, including: distributed networks of observing spacecraft to provide real-time multi-sensor information directly to users; multi-gigabit Internet-based communications in near Earth orbit; high rate communications from spacecraft traveling to the outer planets including, intra-planetary networks for surface exploration; and development of the NAS Communication, Navigation and Surveillance Architecture to meet future air travel demands.
Aerospace systems rely increasingly on supervisory monitoring and control of automated systems supporting individual and distributed decision-making. Innovative proposals that are relevant to NASA aviation and space missions are sought in the following areas:
A6.02 Nanotechnology
Lead Center: ARC
Participating Center(s): GRC, JPL
Nanotechnology is the science of creating functional materials, devices and systems through control of matter on the nanometer (atomic) scale and the exploitation of novel phenomena and properties (physical, chemical and biological) at that length scale. Control of organization at the atomic level provides the opportunity to create function-specific materials at the micro and macro scales. Nanotechnology is not simply another step toward top-down, miniaturization; it represents a fundamental change in approach that exploits new behaviors dominated by quantum mechanics, material confinement, and large interfaces.
Nanotechnology is expected to have a profound impact on all of NASA Enterprises by enabling revolutionary, lighter smaller spacecraft; powerful, small, low power consuming computers; radiation-hardened electronics; nano-electronics; nano-sensors and instruments, high power density fuel cell, biosensors for astrobiology and astronaut health monitoring; biomedical sensors and in-vivo medical devices; novel nanoelectromechanical systems (NEMS); and advanced materials for aerospace vehicles and space launch vehicle structures.
NASA's missions for Space Science, Earth Science and Aerospace Technology development have pushed the state of the art for extraordinary computational speed and memory capacity for at least two decades. The Space Science mission has the added requirement for computing devices that must have low power consumption, unparalled reliability, and resistance to harsh radiation environments. In the past, the electronics revolution has been based upon transistor miniaturization; smaller transistors are faster, and denser circuitry has more functionality. However, this miniaturization of transistors faces limitations due to quantum effects, wavelengths involved in lithography and cost barriers that will make the past approach to advancements futile within a decade.
Nanotechnology provides radical new approaches to size reduction and speed improvements through materials manipulation at the atomic scale. Possible candidates arising from potential advances in nanoelectronics include molecular computing (e.g., carbon nanotube based electronics and DNA computing), quantum computing, and artificial quantum-structure systems. These concepts can be realized through the concurrent development and fabrication of the underlying nanoelectronic building blocks (e.g. gates, interconnects), new system architectures and associated algorithms.
Specific interests for the 2002 solicitation include technology developments directed toward the above applications, including: