Universities help propel NASA technology forward, researching everything from unique rocket engine designs to how landers interact with surfaces on other worlds. NASA has selected 14 university-led research proposals to study early-stage technologies relevant to these topics and more. The grants will fund ambitious projects to mature technologies for future NASA missions.

"There are talented researchers outside of NASA, working at universities across the country, who are poised to help us look at challenging aspects of space exploration in new ways,” said Walt Engelund, deputy associate administrator of programs within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate in Washington. “With the help of these institutions and principal investigators, NASA will accelerate innovation for critical space technologies.”

The university teams will work on their proposed research and development projects for up to three years and will receive as much as $550,000 each in Early Stage Innovations grant funding from NASA's Space Technology Research Grants program.

As outlined in NASA’s Early Stage Innovations 2019 solicitation, the proposals address six new topic areas. The selected universities, principal investigators and research projects by topic area, are:

Topic 1: Rotating Detonation Rocket Engine Concept Development
Rockets that launch spacecraft into orbit are large, complex machines. The research selected under this topic will develop technology for rotating detonation rocket engines, which could make future rockets less expensive and more capable. These engines use a different reaction to burn their fuel, which releases more energy than today’s rocket engines. 

• University of Alabama, Tuscaloosa
  Principal Investigator: Ajay Agrawal
  A novel hybrid rotating detonation engine optimized with aerospike nozzle for rocket applications
• University of California, Los Angeles
  Principal Investigator: Raymond Spearrin
  Hypergolic rotating detonation rocket propulsion with low pressure-loss injection and advanced thermal management
• Purdue University, West Lafayette, Indiana
  Principal Investigator: Stephen Heister
  Rotating detonation combustion for space engines using reduced toxicity hypergolic propellants

Topic 2: Chemical Heat Integrated Power Systems
Powering and heating spacecraft can be challenging, especially far from the Sun where solar panels provide less and less energy. Research conducted under this topic will explore storable chemical heat sources that can be controlled to provide heat and electrical energy, even in the very hot or very cold conditions found on some planetary destinations.

• University of Central Florida, Orlando
  Principal Investigator: Subith Vasu
  Propagation controlled solid fuel-oxidant reactions for the generation of harvestable heat
• University of Texas, El Paso
  Principal Investigator: Evgeny Shafirovich
  Controllable combustion of metal fuels for space power systems

Topic 3: Rocket Plume-Surface Interaction Prediction Advancements
Under the Artemis program, NASA will return humans to the Moon by 2024 in preparation for future missions to Mars. One challenge of planetary landings are engine plumes that can blow sandy soils in all directions and at very high speeds. These particles can obscure the landing zone and damage the landing spacecraft or other human-made infrastructure in the area. The following efforts seek to understand how rocket plumes interact with soil on the Moon and Mars so negative effects can be minimized.

• Auburn University, Auburn, Alabama
  Principal Investigator: David Scarborough
  Non-intrusive approaches to full-domain, scaling-law based experimental investigation of crater formation and plume-surface interaction dynamics
• University of Illinois, Urbana-Champaign
  Principal Investigator: Laura Villafane
  Fundamental experiments of jet impingement on granular surfaces
• University of Michigan, Ann Arbor
  Principal Investigator: Jesse Capecelatro
  Multiscale modeling to enable physics-based simulations of plume-surface interactions with quantified uncertainty

Topic 4: Machine/Deep Learning Tools for Protecting Astronauts from Solar Energetic Particle Hazards
Outside of the protective barrier of Earth’s magnetic field, particles emitted during solar flares and other space weather events can damage spacecraft and be harmful to astronauts. The proposals selected under this topic will develop artificial intelligence technologies to better predict these events and give astronauts ample time to protect themselves from these particles.

• Florida Institute of Technology, Melbourne
  Principal Investigator: Ming Zhang
  Prediction of solar energetic particle radiation timing and dosage using physics-guided machine learning algorithms with remote observations of the solar photosphere, corona and interplanetary medium
• New Jersey Institute of Technology, Newark
  Principal Investigator: Alexander Kosovichev
  Machine learning tools for predicting solar energetic particle hazards

Topic 5: Next Generation Durability and Damage Tolerance Methodologies
Most spacecraft are made of metal alloys that have well-defined characteristics at observable scales. At the microscopic level, however, their behavior is not well understood. The research conducted under this topic will develop tools to model these materials on the microscopic scale in order to understand their failure mechanisms and how they can be made more durable.

• Purdue University
  Principal Investigator: Michael Sangid
  Microstructure and defect informed predictions of damage tolerance and durability of materials and structures, including verification and uncertainty quantification
• Vanderbilt University, Nashville, Tennessee
  Principal Investigator: Caglar Oskay
  Stochastic multiscale fatigue life prediction framework for next generation durability and damage tolerance 

Topic 6: Integration of Cryogenic Fluid Two Phase Numerical Modeling Techniques
Future exploration missions will require cryogenic propellants to be stored in a spacecraft’s tanks for months or even years at a time, but the behavior of cryogenic fluids in space is very different from how it acts on Earth. The following efforts will develop novel approaches to modeling these types of conditions to better understand how to design long-term missions and their propellant storage systems. 

• Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute, Troy, New York
  Principal Investigator: Shanbin Shi
  Development of an intelligent coupling approach for modeling and prediction of cryogenic propellant behavior in microgravity during long-term storage
• Florida State University, Tallahassee
  Principal Investigator: Kourosh Shoele
  Fast multilevel multi-phase CFD-nodal (computational fluid dynamics) model for cryogenic applications

The Space Technology Research Grants program is funded by NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate, which develops transformative space technologies to enable future missions.

For more information about NASA's Space Technology Research Grants program, visit:

https://www.nasa.gov/strg