Posted on by Andy Tomaswick

A Cheap Satellite with Large Fuel Tank Could Scout For Interplanetary Missions

A spacecraft that can provide the propulsion necessary to reach other planets while also being reproducible, relatively light, and inexpensive would be a great boon to larger missions in the inner solar system. Micocosm, Inc., based in Hawthorne, California, proposed just such a system via a NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) grant. Its Hummingbird spacecraft would have provided a platform to visit nearby planets and asteroids and a payload to do some basic scouting of them.

Continue reading “A Cheap Satellite with Large Fuel Tank Could Scout For Interplanetary Missions”
Posted on by Andy Tomaswick

Astronauts Will Soon be Getting a Space Fridge, Keeping Everything Cold in Zero-G

Purdue University researchers Eckhard Groll (left) and Leon Brendel stand next to a fridge experiment they designed to work in different orientations – even upside down. (Purdue University photo/Jared Pike)

One of the least known of NASA’s funding mechanisms is the Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program.  This program, required by the Baye-Doyle Act of 1980, earmarks a piece of every US Federal agency’s budget (including NASA) for the development of small businesses to commercialize new technologies.  NASA’s SBIR program usually focus on commercializing technologies that are useable in space, and many times fund a university doing some work in addition to the small business that received the grant.  A company called Air Squared Inc, based in Broomfield, Colorado, recently received one of these SBIR grants, and teamed up with a mechanical engineering lab at Purdue University and Whirlpool, one of the world’s appliance giants, to produce a necessary component for any long-term space mission – a refrigerator.

Continue reading “Astronauts Will Soon be Getting a Space Fridge, Keeping Everything Cold in Zero-G”