NASA - National Aeronautics and Space Administration

Qamar Shams, Allan Zuckerwar and Cecil Burkett earned the NASA Langley Engineering Directorate's annual Innovation award for their "Development of a Portable Detection System for Measurement of Natural and Man-made Events," according to the Engineering Directorate.

The peer-selected award, made in a contest that began in 1996 to promote innovation and awareness, was given in competition with 11 other nominations.

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Innovation Award recipients. Credit: NASA/Sean Smith

The directorate defines innovation as "the introduction of a novel or improved product or process that has demonstrated impact to solve an identifiable problem or issue, as well as the potential for expanded applications with significant benefits, such as cost, schedule or new knowledge.

Their innovation "demonstrated measurement of low frequency infrasound for use with detecting a variety of events, such as clear-air turbulence, aircraft and potential for early disaster warning systems," according to the selection committee.

A selection team winnowed the 12 nominations down to eight finalists, who went to a presentation round.

Finishing second were Kurt Severance and Sam Miller with their “New Photogrammetry System for Measuring 6-Degrees-of-Freedom (6-DOF) Motion Using Cameras with Non-Overlapping Fields of View.” It demonstrated measurement of aerospace vehicle 6-DOF motion and opens potential applications in wind tunnel and other flight tests.

Third was Paul Brewster, with his “Flash Light Detection And Ranging (LIDAR) Emulator for Hardware In the Loop (HIL) Simulation.” It was a demonstrated emulator for replacing LIDAR within the systems development and opens up potential for emulators of all-visual based systems.

Others in the presentation round included:

--Jill Prince and John Dec, for "Aerobraking Temperature Corridor Control," which enables more efficient aero-braking missions.
--Charles Antill, Tak-Kwong Ng, Thomas Johnson and Robert Akamine, for "Flash Solid State Data Recorder for Sensor Test for Orion Rel-Nav Risk Mitigation (STORRM)," high-speed, high-capacity flash storage in a space environment.
--Michael Kavaya, Grady Koch and Jeffrey Beyon, for "Method for Measuring All Three Components of Wind with an Airborne Coherent Doppler Wind Lidar System," which will enable vertical wind component measurements in applications such as hurricanes.
--Byron Meadows, Audra Bullock and Douglas Hawk, for "STORRM Short Range Target Reflective Elements," which enabled use of cooperative visual targets in a space environment.
--And Lucas Horta, Mercedes Reaves and Ralph Buehrle, for "Software Tools and Algorithms for Dynamic Calibration of the Ares 1-X Flight Vehicle," which enabled timely assessment and calibration of the vehicle modes integrating simulation and test data.

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