Exploration Systems Development Mission Directorate (ESDMD)

Autonomous Systems and Robotics

Point of Contact: Matt Simon, matthew.a.simon@nasa.gov

Employ software and hardware to assist the crew and operate systems during crewed and uncrewed periods. Enable robotics to conduct exploration operations including utilization activities and inspecting, maintaining, and repairing architectural elements.

Communications, Positioning, Navigation, and Timing Systems

Point of Contact: Matt Simon, matthew.a.simon@nasa.gov

In deep space and on planetary surfaces, enable reliable and high-bandwidth transmission and reception of data, precise positioning and navigation of crewed and uncrewed systems, and precise timing systems.

Data Systems and Management

Point of Contact: Matt Simon, matthew.a.simon@nasa.gov

Transfer, distribute, receive, validate, secure, decode, format, compile, and process data and commands.     

Facilitating Emergency Medicine Beyond Low Earth Orbit

Point of Contact: John Graf, john.c.graf@nasa.gov

As NASA human spaceflight missions progress beyond Low Earth Orbit, administering emergency medical oxygen becomes more difficult. As the time needed to conduct an emergency medical evacuation increases, corresponding oxygen supplies must increase. The habitable volume of exploration spacecraft can be substantially smaller than the habitable volume of the International Space Station. In a relatively small volume, administering emergency medical oxygen can cause the atmospheric oxygen concentration to increase beyond established fire safety limits. Pressure Swing Adsorption (PSA) devices have been evaluated to determine the feasibility of extracting medical oxygen from spacecraft cabin atmosphere. These PSA devices show promise as a method for providing medical oxygen in a confined space without increasing vehicle oxygen concentration, but PSA devices can be relatively large, oxygen delivery rate can be limited, and oxygen separation performance can be affected by changes in cabin pressure, cabin humidity, or airborne contaminants. Novel methods for extracting medical oxygen from cabin atmosphere, especially methods that are more tolerant to changes in cabin pressure, humidity, and trace gas composition could strengthen emergency medical capability without causing an increased fire safety risk.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Produce >20 standard liters per minute of air with >80% oxygen, for a duration of >100 hours, using a device that is small enough to credibly fit in a spacecraft designed for exploration beyond low earth orbit.
• Demonstrate separation performance in an atmosphere with dew points ranging from 2 degrees C to 30 degrees C.
• Demonstrate separation performance in an atmosphere with carbon monoxide concentrations ranging from 0 to 5000 ppmv.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

Resulting system must be safe and effective to use in a human rated spacecraft beyond low earth orbit. It is acceptable to collect and vent oxygen to space vacuum (it is preferable to use the oxygen as the primary source of medical oxygen).

Habitation Systems

Point of Contact: Matt Simon, matthew.a.simon@nasa.gov

Ensure the health and performance of astronauts in controlled environments. Interests include advances in:

• Environmental monitoring
• Water storage and reclamation system
• Dormancy recovery
• Dust mitigation
• Fire safety
• Lightweight habitation structures and materials 

Human Systems

Point of Contact: Matt Simon, matthew.a.simon@nasa.gov

Enable human missions; this includes:

• Crew
• Ground Personnel
• Supporting systems such as extra-vehicular activity, long-duration food systems, medical capabilities, lightweight and effective exercise equipment, and radiation monitoring and mitigation.
• This also includes countermeasures for physiological, sensorimotor, and behavioral challenges of extended habitation in space.

Infrastructure Support

Point of Contact: Matt Simon, matthew.a.simon@nasa.gov

Includes facilities, systems, operations planning and control, equipment, and services needed on Earth, in space, and on planetary surfaces. This includes but is not limited to items like in-situ manufacturing, waste management, and planetary protection.

Logistics Systems

Point of Contact: Matt Simon, matthew.a.simon@nasa.gov

Logistics Systems for items, samples, and cargo include:

• Package
• Handle
• Transport
• Stage
• Condition
• Store
• Track
• Transfer       

Lunar Surface Life Support Systems

Point of Contact: Grace Belancik, grace.a.belancik@nasa.gov

As NASA works to sustain a continuous human presence on the Moon, several challenges will need to be overcome, including robust life support systems (LSS). Regenerable LSS have continued to operate on the International Space Station (ISS) for decades, and testing of new technologies has also occurred. However, the Lunar surface has several unique qualities the ISS cannot simulate that can affect the performance of LSS. Consideration must be made for lunar dust, reduced gravity, power limitations, periods of dormancy, lower atmospheric pressure, and increased risk of flammability. The lunar surface environment may enable more efficient LSS capabilities, such as leveraging extreme temperatures or gravity. LSS may also integrate with space suit portable life support systems to enable more frequent extravehicular activities. The focus of this research area is to ensure life support systems will be ready for implementation in lunar surface habitats. All aspects of LSS may be investigated, including air revitalization, water recovery, waste management, and emergency response, etc.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

The key objective is to mature at least one subset of life support systems to increase confidence in lunar operation. Improvements may be made to known technologies developed for other applications (for example ISS) to address the unique environment or new technologies tailored specifically for lunar operations may be developed. Entire systems may be investigated or critical components of systems, such as materials.

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

Work may occur at a NASA center that specializes in life support systems, for example characterization or integrated testing. Please contact the RFA POC for more information.

Mobility Systems

Point of Contact: Matt Simon, matthew.a.simon@nasa.gov

Move crew and cargo around the lunar and Martian surfaces, including in extreme cold environment  

Power and Thermal Systems

Point of Contact: Matt Simon, matthew.a.simon@nasa.gov

Power and Thermal Systems for electricity for architectural elements include:

• Generate
• Store
• Condition
• Distribute

Support system operation and survival in exploration environments such as deep space and the lunar and Martian surfaces.

Transportation Systems

Point of Contact: Matt Simon, matthew.a.simon@nasa.gov

Convey crew and cargo to and from Earth to the Moon and Mars. This includes in-space propulsion; entry, descent, landing, and ascent systems; and cryogenic and storable propellant management and transfers.  

Utilization Systems

Point of Contact: Matt Simon, matthew.a.simon@nasa.gov

Enable science and technology demonstrations.

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Space Operations Mission Directorate (SOMD)

Human Research Program (HRP)

Human Research Program/Human Health Countermeasures Element Research Topic

Point of Contact: Stuart Lee, stuart.lee-1@nasa.gov

Management and execution of a head-down tilt bed rest study, with specific emphasis on proposing measures of physical fitness and functional performance test protocols to characterize the effects of deconditioning and exercise interventions on operationally relevant tasks.

Subjects will participate in a set of tests defined as the HRP Bedrest Standard Measures, but respondents to this solicitation are invited to propose new or novel physical fitness tests, assays, or other biomarkers of cardio-respiratory and musculoskeletal performance that would inform the efficacy of the countermeasures and the individual readiness of an astronaut to perform mission critical tasks (e.g., A novel approach for establishing fitness standards for occupational task performance).

Proposers will develop the necessary arrangements to implement bed rest studies in a facility that will:

• Recruit subjects and schedule bed rest campaigns,
• Monitor the health and safety of the bed rest subjects (including the provision of appropriate medical monitoring by physicians or other qualified personnel),
• Monitor compliance to the strict head-down tilt protocols,
• Coordinate admission and testing schedules,
• Coordinate implementation of the study plan
• Provide storage space for samples from HRP Standard Measures

Reduced exercise capacity (i.e., muscular strength and endurance, maximal aerobic capacity) has been documented after spaceflight and spaceflight analogs, and it is presumed that deconditioning decreases the ability of astronauts to perform mission-specific tasks. Currently there is minimal evidence regarding the physical fitness or performance levels required to achieve exploration mission objectives. Thus, the second goal of this project is to assess the relationship between measures of physical fitness and relevant biomarkers and metrics of performance of mission-relevant tasks.

Areas of Research Interest:

There is a long history of studying the effects of deconditioning during spaceflight analogs, such as bed rest and dry immersion, during which many different countermeasures have been tested. Given the limitations on exercise capabilities expected for the Artemis missions and missions to Mars imposed by the architecture of the space vehicle and mission objectives (i.e., limited volume, mass, power), it is unlikely that astronauts will have a full suite of ISS-like hardware. more compact and/or multi-functional countermeasure hardware will be required. Development and validation of a compact and/or multi-functional countermeasure exercise system (i.e., modality or modalities) is paramount to the success of future exploration missions.

Research proposals are sought to implement a strict 6° head-down tilt bed rest study with conditions emulating NASA standard conditions with duration of test at the discretion of the proposer within allowable budget. Bed rest is a well-accepted analog of spaceflight, and many control (no exercise) and countermeasure subjects have been studied but there have been few opportunities to relate measures and indices of physical fitness to critical mission tasks (Physiological and Functional Alterations after Spaceflight and Bed Rest , Influence of muscle strength to weight ratio on functional task performance).

Two groups of subjects will be investigated. One group should participate in the bed rest with no countermeasures (control). The second group would participate in bed rest in the same conditions but would perform nominal exercise countermeasures (aerobic and resistive) using a small light weight exercise device provided by NASA with the prescription defined by NASA subject matter experts. Subjects would participate in pre- and post-bed rest tests of physical fitness and mission-critical task performance using protocols provided by NASA. The number of subjects participating in each group should be based upon power analysis key measures of fitness (peak oxygen consumption measured during a graded cycle ergometry test and isometric mid-thigh pull).

There is paucity of published data in female astronauts and spaceflight analog subjects though one of the central goals stated for the Artemis missions is for the first woman to stand on the lunar surface. Therefore, this study should include both female and male subjects.

Investigation Of Space Radiation Induced Parkinson’s Disease and Other Late Neuro Degenerative Diseases

Point of Contact: Ryan Norman, ryan.b.norman@nasa.gov

Either radiobiological experiments using neural organoid models, animal models, or analyses using previously exposed tissues to identify potential mechanisms and provide information for space radiation quality factors for use in risks models. For translational relevance organoids cellular compositions should represent the areas in the brain that exhibit decrements such as the striatum, substantia nigra etc. in the case of PD. Recent results from epidemiological studies of terrestrial workers exposed to radiation have shown an increased risk of Parkinson’s’ disease (PD) (Dauer, 2023) and work is currently ongoing to investigate other late CNS disease. While these results suggest the possibility that space radiation may also increase this risk, knowledge of an underlying mechanism as well as information needed to scale risks from terrestrial exposure to those in spaceflight are currently lacking.

Dauer LT, et al. Moon, Mars and Minds: Evaluating Parkinson’s disease mortality among U.S. radiation workers and veterans in the million-person study of low-dose effects. Z Med Phys. 2024 Feb;34(1):100-110. doi: 10.1016/j.zemedi.2023.07.002. Epub 2023 Aug 1. PMID: 37537100; PMCID: PMC10919963.”

Novel High-throughput and/or High-content Screening Techniques to Identify Radiation Countermeasures

Points of Contact: Janice Zawaski, janice.zawaski@nasa.gov | Janapriya Saha, janapriya.saha@nasa.gov

Establish innovative screening techniques, high-throughput and/or high-content screening protocols, of compound-based countermeasures (CMs) to assess their efficacy in modulating biological responses to radiation exposure relevant to the high priority health risks of cancer, cardiovascular disease, and/or central nervous system decrements. Techniques that can be used for screening cancer preventative CMs, induced by space-like radiation (high-LET) effects, are of high priority.

• This research topic does not include the discovery of novel CMs.
• Screening technique should test already approved FDA drugs.
• Radiation type and doses should be relevant to space exploration missions.
• Radiogenic cancers with poor prognosis such as lung, stomach, ovarian, liver, etc. are of highest priority

Space Radiation Element

Point of Contact: Janice Zawaski, janice.zawaski@nasa.gov

Space radiation exposure is one of numerous hazards astronauts encounter during spaceflight that impact human health. High priority health outcomes associated with space radiation exposure are carcinogenesis, cardiovascular disease (CVD), and central nervous system (CNS) changes that impact astronaut health and performance. For additional information concerning areas of interest please visit: Human Research Roadmap: Risk of Radiation Carcinogenesis.

Use Of Human-Based Tissue Engineered Models for Characterization of Space Stressors and/or Hazard Effects

Point of Contact: Janapriya Saha, janapriya.saha@nasa.gov

Complex in vitro models that mimic component of human physiology continue to evolve and show promise for various research. These tissue-engineered models, such as tissue chips, could be ideal in better understanding space flight stressors and hazards such as chronic effects of low-dose radiation exposure to the human, microgravity, etc. Research proposals are sought to establish translational value of human-based tissue models for characterization of space flight hazards and/or stressor, and countermeasure studies. Such research should include models relevant to cancer, cardiovascular health, and central nervous and immune systems. (For additional information concerning areas of interest please visit: Human Research Roadmap: Risks. Selected stressor and or hazard levels should be relevant to space exploration missions.

Space Operations Mission Directorate (SOMD)

Better Astronaut Preparation, Performance, and Recovery Before, During, and After Space Missions by Utilizing Deep Sleep in Ketosis

Points of Contact: Narasimha Prasad, narasimha.s.prasad@nasa.gov | Wesley E. Miksa, wesley.e.miksa@nasa.gov

Many of the antagonistic health impacts of space travel are similar in type to those resolved by the whole-system physiologically restorative health benefits provided by non-rapid eye movement (REM) deep sleep. Likewise, many types of damage encountered during space missions (extended periods in low earth orbit (LEO) or deep-space) are similar to those of the type that are repaired and protected against by the whole-system health benefits of ketosis, which is a natural metabolic state in which our body burns fat for fuel instead of carbohydrates. However, receiving adequate sleep is a major challenge for spaceflight and pharmacological hypnotics that potentially counteract health benefits of deep sleep remain among the most utilized medications. Conventional eating patterns replenishing liver glucose stores and preventing ketosis in astronauts remain standard practice on space missions.

Recent developments in the sciences of sleep and ketosis have identified synergies to be leveraged to support astronaut physiological resilience and cognitive reserve for space missions. Particularly, alterations to eating patterns timed to achieve ketosis during deep sleep hold promises. Ketones provide approximately 37% more energy to metabolic processes than glucose/glycogen molecules powering metabolic processes in a non-ketosis state. Increasing the whole-system physiologically restorative health benefits of deep sleep with the greater energy supplied by ketones holds potential to greatly enhance the restorative health benefits of deep-sleep while also boosting the cellularly reparative and protective benefits of ketosis in astronauts.

This study explores the physiological and cognitive health benefits arising from non-REM deep-sleep in ketosis to determine the presence and intensity of a dose-response relationship.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Establish existence and intensity of the dose-response relationship between number of minutes of deep sleep while in ketosis and improvements in basic biometrics and cognition above baseline: resting heart rate, heart rate variability, intensity and duration of delta brainwave during non-REM deep sleep; performance on cardiological, pulmonary, sensory perception, reflex and cognition tests measuring basic organ and nervous system health and function; and subjective tests/surveys of human test subjects’ perceived physiological, psychological, and emotional well-being.
• Development of new protocols and practices for astronaut feeding timing to utilize deep sleep in ketosis for improved mission preparation, performance, and recovery of astronauts.
• Reduction in astronaut sleep need duration (time; T) and reduction in use of pharmacological hypnotics in place of increased sleep intensity (quality; I) for improved astronaut time utilization, performance in resource-intensive and time sensitive missions and mission components, and reliability as a function of sleep benefit exposure (E): E = I x T.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

• Commercially available wearable brainwave sensors and biometrics monitors.
• Google Anti-Gravity for scaffolding, ChatGSFC/Claude Sonnet 4.6, and Gemini for logic adjustments and de-bugging.
• Cardiology and pulmonary function test equipment; reflexes and cognitive function test computers and software; and statistical analysis computers and software.
•  Human test subjects.
•  10 months’ time to include preparation and recruitment of human test subjects; before and after measurements and testing of human test subjects; time duration for health monitor and brainwave sensor training, calibration, and familiarity; acclimation to ketosis while sleeping; and data collection, analysis, reporting.
• Doctor/biomedical research experts and students to implement study.
• Standard and approved practices in data collection, data management, data storage and data dissemination.

Resources:

• Barger, L. et al. Prevalence of sleep deficiency and use of hypnotic drugs in astronauts before, during, and after spaceflight: an observational study. Lancet Neurol. 13, 904–912 (2014).
• Barham, Michael P. et al. Transcranial electrical stimulation during sleep enhances declarative (but not procedural) memory consolidation: Evidence from a meta-analysis, Neuroscience & Biobehavioral Reviews, Volume 63, 2016, Pages 65-77, ISSN 0149-7634, doi.org/10.1016/j.neubiorev.2016.01.009.
• Clément, Dondé, et al. The Effects of Transcranial Electrical Stimulation of the Brain on Sleep: A Systematic Review. Frontiers in Psychiatry, Volume 12. 2021. www.frontiersin.org/journals/psychiatry/articles/10.3389/fpsyt.2021.646569,DOI:10.3389/fpsyt.2021.646569.
• Colrain, I. M., Crowley, K. E., Nicholas, C. L., Afifi, L., Baker, F. C., Padilla, M., et al. Sleep evoked delta frequency responses show a linear decline in amplitude across the adult lifespan. Neurobiology of Aging, 31(5), 874-883. (2010).
• De Cabo, Rafael, Mattson, Mark P. Effects of Intermittent Fasting on Health, Aging, and Disease. New England Journal of Medicine. VOL. 381 NO. 26. 2026. DOI: 10.1056/NEJMra1905136 7. Fattinger, S., de Beukelaar, T., Ruddy, K. et al. Deep sleep maintains learning efficiency of the human brain. Nat Commun 8, 15405 (2017). doi.org/10.1038/ncomms15405.
• Hiroki, Takeuchi, et al. Systematic Review and Meta-analysis of the Effects of Transcranial Electric Stimulation on Sleep in Healthy Adults. medRxiv 2025.03.30.25324699; doi: doi.org/10.1101/2025.03.30.25324699 [non-peer reviewed preprint].
• Kripke DF, Langer RD, Kline LE. Hypnotics ‘association with mortality or cancer: a matched cohort study. BMJ Open 2012;2:e000850. doi: 10.1136/bmjopen-2012-000850.
• Hauglund, Natalie L. et al. Norepinephrine-mediated slow vasomotion drives glymphatic clearance during sleep. Cell, Volume 188, Issue 3, 606 – 622.e17. 2025.
• Léger, Damien, et al. Slow-wave sleep: From the cell to the clinic, Sleep Medicine Reviews, Volume 41, 2018, Pages 113-132, ISSN 1087-0792, doi.org/10.1016/j.smrv.2018.01.008.
• Marshall, L., Helgadóttir, H., Mölle, M. et al. Boosting slow oscillations during sleep potentiates memory. Nature 444, 610–613 (2006). doi.org/10.1038/nature05278.
• Schaeffer, Erin et al. Enhancement of Sleep Slow Waves Using Transcranial Electrical Stimulation with Temporal Interference (TES-TI), Sleep, Volume 48, Issue Supplement_1, May 2025, Page A204, doi.org/10.1093/sleep/zsaf090.0468.
• Takahashi, Kuri et al. Induction and stabilization of delta frequency brain oscillations by phase-synchronized rTMS and tACS, Brain Stimulation, Volume 17, Issue 5, 2024, Pages 1086-1097, ISSN 1935-861X, doi.org/10.1016/j.brs.2024.09.003.
• Tasali, E., Leproult, R., Ehrmann, D. A., & Van Cauter, E. (2008). Slow‐wave sleep and the risk of type 2 diabetes in humans. Proceedings of the National Academy of Sciences, 105(3), 1044–1049.
• Tempaku, Priscila F., et al. Telomere length as a marker of sleep loss and sleep disturbances: a potential link between sleep and cellular senescence, Sleep Medicine, Volume 16, Issue 5, 2015, Pages 559-563, ISSN 1389-9457, doi.org/10.1016/j.sleep.2015.02.519.
• Yu Sun, Min-Kuang Tsai, Chi-Pang Wen. Association of sleep duration and sleeping pill use with mortality and life expectancy: A cohort study of 484,916 adults, Sleep Health, Volume 9, Issue 3, 2023, Pages 354-362, ISSN 2352-7218, doi.org/10.1016/j.sleh.2023.01.017.

Evaluation of Novel Countermeasures for Spaceflight-Associated Neuro-Ocular Syndrome (SANS) During Head-Down Tilt Bed Rest

Point of Contact: Maneesh Arya, maneesh.arya@nasa.gov

Spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS) is a recently recognized consequence of long-duration spaceflight occurring during 4 to 12-month missions onboard the International Space Station (ISS), though some ocular changes are evident within one month. SANS is characterized hyperopic shifts in refractive error, central visual distortions optic disc edema. globe flattening, acute visual field loss, and brain ventricle enlargement, and these may persist for months and years after return to Earth. Given that NASA plans to return to the moon and missions to Mars, the incidence and severity of SANS may increase without the use of countermeasures or treatment interventions, and there is no clear evidence that lunar or Martian gravity will prevent or reverse the development SANS-related signs. Potential investigators will submit proposals for management and execution of a head-down tilt bed rest study, with specific emphasis on testing a novel SANS countermeasure.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

The goal of this project is to demonstrate the capability to reproduce the development of SANS during bed rest and test a novel countermeasure.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

This study should include both female and male subjects.

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

Proposers must have access to bed rest facility.

Resources:

• https://humanresearchroadmap.nasa.gov/

Commercial Space Capabilities

Space Operations Mission Directorate (SOMD) Commercial Space Capabilities (CSC) Topics

Points of Contact: Marc Timm, marc.g.timm@nasa.gov | Warren Ruemmele, warren.p.ruemmele@nasa.gov

• Crewed environmental control and life support (ECLS), hygiene, waste, and housekeeping systems. Emphases include: low consumable resupply, low maintenance/high reliability, closing air and water loop, repurposing waste.
• In-space inspection, maintenance and repair external to space stations. Emphasis on systems that do not require an crew EVA.
• Materials and Processes Improvements for Chemical Propulsion State of Art
• Materials and Processes Improvements for Electric Propulsion State of Art
• Improvements to Space Solar Power State of Art (SoA)
• Small cargo return, LEO space station resupply systems, and related technologies
• Other topics in this area that have demonstrable need and support from a U.S. company(ies)

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Active Hardware Fault Recovery Architectures for Radiation-Tolerant Adaptive Systems-on-Chip (SoCs): Detection, Isolation, and Background Repair on Versal XQR Platforms

Point of Contact: Brennan Hay, brennan.hay@nasa.gov

Radiation-tolerant adaptive SoCs such as the AMD Versal XQR family are drawing significant engineering attention across industry and NASA because of their combination of high compute density, mature tool support, and ability to host substantial AI workloads on-orbit. Many NASA groups have already outgrown the performance envelope of earlier-generation radiation-tolerant Field Programmable Gate Array (FPGAs) and are evaluating Versal-class devices for SpaceCube, NavCube, and related platforms precisely because the architecture can sustain the processing rates required for modern sensor, autonomy, and navigation applications. Versal XQR platforms are also of strong interest within the Defense community and among NASA industry partners.

These devices incorporate silicon-level SEU hardening and configuration scrubbing, yet residual vulnerability remains in the programmable logic fabric and in the control and data-path logic surrounding hardened accelerators. Conventional TMR and frame-based scrubbing can mask or correct many faults, but they do not actively isolate a faulty hardware region and restore it in the background while the remainder of the device continues to operate.

This Research Focus Area seeks fundamental and applied research into hardware architectures that adapt multi-module redundancy, behavioral monitoring, isolation of faulty regions, and background partial-reconfiguration repair—approaches that go beyond conventional TMR by adding active isolation and background repair—to already radiation-tolerant Versal XQR devices. The research should examine how these recovery mechanisms compose with existing Versal mitigations while preserving real-time performance and determinism, and should quantify residual availability benefits for critical hardware functions.

While the primary focus is Versal XQR, the architectural principles under investigation—detection, isolation, and background restoration of faulty compute or memory elements—are expected to have relevance to other radiation-tolerant FPGAs. They are also expected to apply to a broader set of devices, including GPUs, NPUs, DPUs, and especially FPGA-based external memory extenders (such as intelligent PCIe or other fabric-attached memory chassis). In the space domain, where modern CXL capabilities are limited or unavailable, external memory expanders can implement FPGAs that contain substantial control, interface, and management logic; these present a natural additional target for the same class of active recovery techniques.

Results are expected to be directly applicable to improving SpaceCube and NavCube implementations, with broader relevance to specialized Positioning, Navigation, and Timing (PNT) systems, human spaceflight, cis-lunar operations, and deep-space exploration platforms.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Investigate hardware architectural approaches that provide detection, isolation, and background partial-reconfiguration repair of radiation-induced faults in programmable logic and critical hardware modules on Versal XQR devices while preserving hard real-time behavior.
• Characterize the determinism, performance, resource overhead, and residual SEFI/availability trade-offs of candidate recovery architectures when composed with XilSEM and native Versal safety features, including practical hybrid strategies for AI Engine data paths and surrounding logic.
• Assess the applicability of the resulting recovery principles and architectures to human spaceflight and cis-lunar systems (in coordination with Johnson Space Center (JSC) interests) and to deep-space exploration platforms (in coordination with Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) interests).
• Produce foundational research results, design principles, and technical artifacts that advance the state of knowledge for active hardware fault recovery on radiation-tolerant adaptive SoCs and that can be applied across SpaceCube, NavCube, human spaceflight, cis-lunar, and deep-space mission classes.
• Develop recovery approaches that are independent of any particular softcore implementation. Solutions must not require replacement of existing softcores. The architecture should remain applicable across common space-oriented softcores, including (but not limited to) the LEON SPARC family, MicroBlaze / MicroBlaze V, NOEL-V, Nios / Nios V, Microchip Mi-V, and representative open-source RISC-V cores.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

• Research must focus primarily on hardware-level active recovery (redundancy, isolation, and background repair) on Versal XQR or equivalent radiation-tolerant adaptive SoC platforms.
• Findings should remain compatible with the determinism and performance expectations of spaceflight hardware.
• Both pure programmable-logic recovery and hybrid approaches that also address AI Engine control and data-path resilience are in scope.
• Applicability of the resulting principles to other FPGAs and to devices such as GPUs, NPUs, DPUs, and AI accelerators should be considered.
• Results should be directly relevant to improving SpaceCube and NavCube implementations and should have clear applicability to specialized PNT, human spaceflight, cis-lunar, and deep-space exploration use cases.
• The work should advance the foundations of active hardware recovery architectures rather than delivering a complete flight product.

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

Versal XQR evaluation platforms, HPSC or equivalent space-processor development platforms, and associated simulation environments. No specialized physical test facilities required beyond standard laboratory characterization if pursued in later stages. Versal XQR platforms may be emulated by other Versal platforms.

Resources:

• AMD Versal XQR documentation, XilSEM, and Dynamic Function eXchange (DFX) resources
• FPGA partial-reconfiguration and module-based error recovery literature
• NASA SpaceCube and NavCube documentation and roadmaps
• Relevant NASA onboard computing, human spaceflight and cis-lunar (JSC), and deep-space exploration (JPL) technology roadmaps
• Access to related NASA Small Business Innovation Research (SBIRs) or university radiation-effects efforts Assumes researcher can pass a background investigation and reach a level of confidence ≥ 40.

Advanced Manufacturing

Group Contact: agency-epscor@mail.nasa.gov

Advanced Momentum Management for Solar Sail Propulsion

Point of Contact: John Dankanich, john.dankanich@nasa.gov

Solar sail propulsion leverages solar radiation pressure (SRP) acting on large, lightweight reflective membranes to provide continuous, propellant-less thrust. This capability enables long-duration missions, non-Keplerian orbits, solar polar trajectories, and other mission architectures aligned with NASA’s heliophysics, astrophysics, and deep space exploration goals. However, the same continuous SRP forces that enable propulsion also generate persistent disturbance torques. Small offsets between the sail’s center of pressure and center of mass, combined with structural flexibility and environmental disturbances, result in steady angular momentum accumulation. Over time, this can lead to reaction wheel saturation, degraded pointing performance, and increased mission risk.

Conventional spacecraft use propellant-based thrusters to unload stored angular momentum. For solar sail systems, reliance on consumables diminishes mission lifetime, increases mass, and erodes the fundamental advantages of propellant-less propulsion. As sail architectures scale to larger areas with lighter, more flexible structures, the magnitude and complexity of momentum management challenges increase. There is a critical need for flight-viable, propellant-less momentum management methods that can be implemented through hardware, structural features, or integrated sail mechanisms to support sustained solar sail operations.

Previous momentum management solutions include active mechanisms and solutions with scaling limitations. The sail shape uncertainty drives requirements and performance of viable solutions. Roll control is the priority need, whereas pitch and yaw have a proven approach with an active mass translator.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Evaluate propellantless roll control solutions through modeling and simulation bounded by sail shape uncertainty limitations
• Assess scalability of momentum management approaches, ranging from 100m^2 solar sails through 6,000m^2.
• Figure of merit are reliability and simplicity with minimum impact to the sail system (i.e. Operational solutions > electrically actuated solutions > mechanically actuated solutions).

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

• Research must focus on traditional rigid boom deployment sail system. For example, ribbon sails and helio gyros are out of scope.
• All results to be publicly disseminated

AI-based Satellite Retrieval Algorithms and Applications for Satellite Remote Sensing Data

Point of Contact: Xu Liu, xu.liu-1@nasa.gov

Satellite remote sensors—such as the Atmospheric Infrared Sounder (AIRS), Cross-track Infrared Sounder (CrIS), CLARREO PathFinder (CPF), Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO), Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, Ocean Ecosystem (PACE), and Earth Surface Mineral Dust Source Investigation (EMIT)—provide a wealth of information on the Earth’s atmospheric vertical and horizontal structures, as well as cloud and surface properties. To fully exploit the vast amount of spectral data generated by these hyperspectral instruments, fast and accurate radiative transfer models and retrieval algorithms are essential.

The Principal Component-based Radiative Transfer Model (PCRTM), developed at NASA Langley, provides fast and accurate calculations of top-of atmosphere radiance or reflectance spectra that match satellite observations. The PCRTM covers multiple spectral regions, including the visible, near infrared (IR), IR, far-IR, and microwave (MW). Advanced retrieval algorithms based on the PCRTM have been used for numerous satellite and airborne remote sensors. To explore the vast amount of NASA’s Earth science remote sensing data, we are seeking collaborations in AI algorithm development for retrieving atmosphere and surface properties from multi-satellite platforms using the PCRTM and satellite observations. We also seek collaborations in developing real-time AI-based applications which use satellite data to aid decision making, environmental monitoring, disaster management etc.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Satellite Data Fusion: provide capability to translate satellite observations (e.g. sounders and imagers) into spatial-temporally unified radiance and atmospheric state truth-tags, through a common radiative transfer modeling framework (e.g PCRTM). AI will be used to further improve the speed of the high-fidelity PCRTM satellite data simulator.
• Train AI-based algorithms for retrieving atmospheric temperature, water vapor, clouds, aerosols, greenhouse and pollution gases, winds, surface temperature, surface properties.
• Develop methods which relate the AI-retrieved products to various application such as agriculture, mining, environment monitoring, fire measurement and forecast, pollution gas and aerosol (including dust) transports, short-term and long-term weather events, and solar energy prediction.

Advanced Spacecraft Energetic Non-Toxic (ASCENT) Decomposition Cold Gas CubeSat Reaction Control System for Lunar Orbiters

Point of Contact: Christopher Burnside, christopher.g.burnside@nasa.gov

MSFC is advancing new ASCENT‑based propulsion technologies, including catalytic gas‑generation, low‑flow feed systems, and compact propulsion modules, and this EPSCoR topic invites collaboration to adapt those maturing capabilities into a small, self‑contained decomposition‑and‑stored‑gas reaction‑control module that would provide precise attitude control for a lunar CubeSat using the same ASCENT propellant architecture already under development at the center.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

Demonstrate reliable low‑temperature ASCENT decomposition suitable for generating clean, stable gas for CubeSat‑scale reaction‑control applications. Develop and characterize a compact gas‑storage accumulator and micro‑valve flow‑control system sized for 6U/12U spacecraft attitude‑control duty cycles. Integrate and evaluate stored‑gas RCS performance in a representative lunar‑orbit flight environment, providing data and design methodology for future small‑spacecraft propulsion systems.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

Proposals should focus on CubeSat size vehicles (6U or 12U). Reactor designs must be compatible with ASCENT monopropellant and its decomposition products. Gas‑generation approaches should consider low‑flow catalytic decomposition rather than high‑temperature combustion Flow‑control and storage concepts must support impulse bits in the sub‑millinewton‑second range for fine attitude control Any developed test articles must be compatible with vacuum‑chamber test conditions and safe handling requirements for ASCENT

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

Although the proposers can focus on their own facilities, the MSFC team would like to offer our facilities for use as well. Our team develops advanced propellant thruster, components, and spacecraft propulsion systems. As part of that work, we routinely use our vacuum chambers, thrust stands, and small component facilities to perform our work. If the proposers would like to talk about how to best collaborate, we are available to do so.

Autonomous Systems

Point of Contact: Danette Allen, bonnie.d.allen@nasa.gov

Autonomous Robotic Inspection and Manipulation for Hazardous Space-System Testing

Point of Contact: Adam Martin, adam.k.martin@nasa.gov

Develop and demonstrate robotic perception, manipulation, and supervisory autonomy technologies for inspection, maintenance, sample handling, and experimental operations in hazardous or inaccessible test environments representative of space nuclear system development. Research would address force-controlled manipulation, machine vision, interchangeable tooling, remote operation, autonomous task execution, and fault recovery, with the goal of establishing a reusable university testbed for remote operations applicable to nuclear ground testing and future planetary surface systems.

Avionics

Group Contact: agency-epscor@mail.nasa.gov

Avionics interests include:

• Nanotechnology-electronics and sensors, flexible electronics
• Electronics for Extreme Temperature Environments: devices, components, and subsystems
• Microwave, Optical, and Cognitive Communications Devices, Components, and Systems: expanded bandwidth and reductions in size and power consumption

Communications & Navigation

Points of Contact: Bernie Edwards, bernard.l.edwards@nasa.gov | Jason Mitchell, jason.w.mitchell@nasa.gov

Communications & Navigation interests include:

• Quantum Sensors, Communications, and Networks: devices and simulations
• Communication Architectures, Networks, and Systems: integration and simulation

Comprehensive Material Compatibility Studies for the Advanced Spacecraft Energetic Non-Toxic (ASCENT) Family of Green Propellants

Point of Contact: Christopher Burnside, christopher.g.burnside@nasa.gov

NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) is developing a new Agency‑wide technical standard to define material compatibility test procedures for ASCENT-family monopropellants—a class of high‑performance, reduced‑toxicity ionic‑liquid propellants increasingly adopted in modern spacecraft. Although ASCENT is rapidly emerging as a favored alternative to legacy hydrazine, the spacecraft community still lacks a unified, comprehensive database describing how common structural materials, elastomers, composites, and coatings behave when exposed to these reactive fluids.

The proposed research opportunity aims to perform systematic, long‑duration compatibility assessments between ASCENT propellants and a broad set of spacecraft‑relevant materials. Building on emerging MSFC methodologies, this effort will evaluate corrosion behavior, ion leaching, softgoods degradation, galvanic interactions, propellant assay changes, and long‑term chemical stability.

Results will directly support MSFC’s developing NASA Technical Standard and fill critical knowledge gaps across government and industry.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

Collaborate with NASA to establish repeatable, industry‑ready test protocols for evaluating metallics, elastomers, polymers, ceramics, lubricants, and coatings in contact with ASCENT. Generate high‑quality quantitative datasets capturing corrosion rates, dissolution profiles, mechanical property shifts, and propellant composition changes. Identify passivation strategies and design best practices to mitigate degradation in propulsion feed systems, tanks, valves, and thrusters. Provide validated material compatibility classifications suitable for NASA programs, industry manufacturers, and future spacecraft designers.

Proposals must evaluate ASCENT propellant compatibility for materials relevant to spacecraft propulsion systems, including metallics, elastomers, polymers, ceramics, lubricants, and coatings. Testing approaches should follow standardized, repeatable protocols aligned with emerging MSFC methodologies for corrosion, ion leaching, softgoods degradation, galvanic interactions, and propellant stability. Laboratory testing must adhere to recognized standards (e.g., ASTM G31 for corrosion, ASTM D471 for elastomers, ICP‑MS for ion leaching, and NASA‑STD‑6001 Test 15–type conditions) to ensure industry‑consistent data quality. Proposed work must include long‑duration immersion or accelerated aging at elevated temperature to simulate short‑term and multi‑year mission environments. Any test methods that produce export‑controlled chemical assay data must follow proper handling practices; however, test procedures and compatibility conclusions remain non‑export‑controlled (only detailed propellant chemistry results may be restricted).

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

In addition to any facilities available to the proposing institutions, the NASA MSFC Advanced Propellants Team can support collaborative testing and

analysis through a wide range of propulsion research facilities. Our team develops advanced propellant thrusters, components, and spacecraft propulsion systems, and we routinely leverage MSFC’s extensive capabilities to conduct research.

Comprehensive SBOM Framework for seL4: License, Version, Function Signature, and Cryptographically Signed Function Signature Support for High-Assurance Space Systems on HPSC, Versal, and NXP Platforms

Points of Contact: Brennan Hay, brennan.hay@nasa.gov | Rizwan Merchant, rizwan.merchant@nasa.gov | Eshwar Singh, eshwar.singh@nasa.gov

seL4 is the only general-purpose microkernel with machine-checked formal proofs of functional correctness, integrity, and confidentiality down to the binary. It is a leading candidate for high-assurance flight software on next-generation NASA processors, including the High Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) processor, AMD/Xilinx Versal Adaptive SoCs, and NXP platforms, and for use alongside or within cFS- and F Prime-based systems.

seL4 remains a highly active research topic in academia. Leading universities and research groups worldwide continue to publish new results on its formal verification, security properties, real-time extensions, hypervisor capabilities, and application to cyber-physical and space systems. This sustained academic interest both validates seL4’s foundational importance and creates a strong ecosystem of expertise that NASA can leverage.

While seL4 already provides strong licensing transparency through REUSE/SPDX practices, current SBOM support is limited. NASA and the broader high-assurance community increasingly require richer Software Bills of Materials that go beyond basic license and version information. This research will develop a comprehensive, multi-tiered SBOM capability for seL4 covering four progressive levels:

• License SBOM – Complete, machine-readable license and copyright inventory (building on existing REUSE/SPDX foundation).
• Software Version SBOM – Full component inventory with versions, dependencies, suppliers, and build provenance.
• Function Signature SBOM – Fine-grained inventory of function-level signatures (API/ABI and/or cryptographic hashes of functions) to support integrity checking and interface assurance.
• Cryptographically Signed Function Signature SBOM – The highest assurance tier, in which function signatures are themselves cryptographically signed, enabling strong non-repudiation and verifiable integrity of the software composition.

The resulting framework, tooling, and reference implementations will be demonstrated on HPSC, Versal, and NXP platforms and designed for integration into NASA flight software pipelines using both cFS and F Prime. Critically, the framework will also be usable by downstream commercial and partner products that incorporate seL4, including Magnetite RTOS and Magnetite Hypervisor, the DornerWorks seL4 Hypervisor, and other products participating in NSA’s Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) program. This ensures that improved supply-chain transparency and software assurance extend beyond the core seL4 artifacts to the flight systems, commercial products, and CSfC solutions that depend on them.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

Develop automated generation of License and Software Version SBOMs (SPDX and CycloneDX) for the seL4 kernel, Microkit, and representative system images on HPSC, Versal, and NXP platforms, including enriched space-relevant metadata (verified configurations, formal proof status, platform attributes, and build provenance). Design and implement Function Signature SBOMs that capture fine-grained function-level signatures (API/ABI signatures and cryptographic hashes of functions) for seL4 and key user-level components, enabling stronger integrity and interface assurance. Extend the Function Signature approach to produce Cryptographically Signed Function Signature SBOMs, providing non-repudiable, verifiable evidence of software composition suitable for the highest-assurance NASA missions and CSfC use cases. Ensure the SBOM generation framework and tooling are directly usable by downstream commercial and partner products that incorporate seL4 — including Magnetite RTOS & Magnetite Hypervisor, the DornerWorks seL4 Hypervisor, and other products in NSA’s Commercial Solutions for Classified (CSfC) portfolio — as well as by NASA systems based on cFS or F Prime, enabling them to produce consistent, high-assurance multi-tier SBOMs with minimal additional effort.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

All solutions must preserve seL4’s existing formal verification guarantees and licensing model; no kernel changes that invalidate proofs. Must support both verified and unverified seL4 configurations. Explicitly target in priority: (1) HPSC, (2) Versal, and (3) NXP platforms and support integration with both cFS and F Prime, if possible via SBIRs or research projects in development. Tooling and processes must support composition and inheritance of SBOMs so that downstream products reusing seL4, Microkit, or related components including Magnetite RTOS & Magnetite Hypervisor, the DornerWorks seL4 Hypervisor, and other NSA CSfC partner products — can automatically or semi-automatically incorporate License, Software Version, Function Signature, and Cryptographically Signed Function Signature information. Solutions must remain compatible with both open-source and commercial/proprietary downstream products without requiring disclosure of proprietary intellectual property. Prefer open standards (REUSE, SPDX, CycloneDX, and appropriate cryptographic signature formats). Deliverables should be publicly releasable under compatible opensource licenses wherever possible. Collaboration with the seL4 Foundation is encouraged but not required for core development. We would prefer active participants in the Sel4 Foundation to increase the liklihood of upstreaming. Given the nature of this work and interfacing products, we expect the researchers in question must be US citizens capable of passing a public Trust and being exposed to ITAR/EAR and Distro C products.

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

None required for the core tooling and analysis work. Optional use of existing Center computing resources for builds and testing if available.

Resources:

• techport.nasa.gov/projects/185452
• sel4.systems/Foundation/  
• www.ndss-symposium.org/wpcontent/uploads/spacesec26-3.pdf  
• https://tlo.mit.edu/industry-entrepreneurs/available-technologies/magnetite-operating-system-extensions-microkernels
• www.dornerworks.com/solutions/technology/virtualization/ 
• www.riversideresearch.org/expertise/type-1-virtualization/secure-platform

Data-Driven Radiation Hardness Assurance for Commercial-Off-the-Shelf Electronics

Point of Contact: Gregory Allen, gregory.r.allen@jpl.nasa.gov

NASA missions increasingly rely on commercial-off-the-shelf (COTS) electronics and multi-mission avionics for which part-level radiation characterization is incomplete or absent. Traditional radiation hardness assurance (RHA) assumes exhaustive part-level test data; an assumption that no longer holds at modern mission cadence and parts-count. What is needed is a statistically rigorous framework for bounding mission risk from partial information.

This RFA seeks university research in data-driven, probabilistic RHA methodologies. Topics of interest include: hierarchical Bayesian models that leverage historical single-event latchup (SEL) and SEE databases to construct informative priors for untested or partially tested parts; similarity metrics across technology nodes, foundries, and part families for defensible read-across; uncertainty quantification and decision-theoretic frameworks for accept/test/mitigate decisions at the board and assembly level; and machine-learning approaches to mining published radiation test literature into structured, queryable knowledge bases.

Research teams with strengths in applied statistics, machine learning, and reliability engineering are well suited to this topic; extensive radiation test facility access is not required, as substantial published and archival datasets exist.

NASA relevance: Enables risk-informed COTS infusion for small missions, multi-mission avionics platforms, and technology demonstrations while preserving traceability required by NASA RHA standards. Directly supports JPL and agency-wide efforts to reconcile COTS procurement practice with mission assurance requirements. Impact to commercial subcontractor requirements for NASA missions.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Develop and validate a hierarchical Bayesian framework that produces part-level SEL and SEE risk estimates with quantified uncertainty for untested or partially tested parts, benchmarked against at least two independent historical radiation test datasets.
• Establish defensible similarity and read-across metrics spanning technology nodes, foundries, and part families, validated through hold-out testing against archival data with documented predictive performance.
• Deliver an openly documented decision-support toolset for accept, test, or mitigate decisions at the board and assembly level, suitable for adoption in NASA flight-project radiation hardness assurance workflows.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

• Methods must produce bounded risk estimates with stated confidence levels traceable to input data. Point estimates without uncertainty quantification are out of scope.
• Research is expected to draw primarily on published and archival radiation test data (for example, IEEE NSREC and RADECS data workshop records and NASA-published test reports). New accelerator testing is not required; if proposed, it must be limited in scope and serve model validation only. – Software deliverables must be provided as open source or with government purpose rights, with documentation sufficient for independent use.
• The statistical methodology must be documented to a standard suitable for review under NASA RHA practice, including assumptions, priors, and sensitivity analyses. – Annual presentation or publication at IEEE NSREC, RADECS, or an equivalent venue is expected.
• Work must remain fundamental research; no export-controlled or proprietary data is required.

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

None required. Optional validation testing, if proposed, would use NASA-sponsored accelerator facilities in coordination with the POC.

Resources:

• NASA Electronic Parts and Packaging (NEPP) program publications; published system-level SEL bounding methodology (Ladbury et al., IEEE TNS); IEEE Radiation Effects Data Workshop records; NASA guidance on COTS EEE parts assurance.

Demonstrate operation of a Magnetic Nozzle at Plasma Temperatures as high as 1 keV

Point of Contact: Adam Martin, adam.k.martin@nasa.gov

Create an expanding plasma from a point source and redirect the plasma magnetically into a collimated jet. The method can start at any level but be extensible to plasma temperatures of 1 keV. The project should explore both economical ways to produce higher temperature plasmas in laboratory environments and explore magnetic nozzle geometries that are most efficient in extracting thrust.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

Experimentally demonstrate re-direction of a high temperature (~ 1 keV) plasma by a magnetic nozzle.

Distributed XR Holographic Training, Digital Twins, and Edge AI for Human Spaceflight Mission Systems

Points of Contact: Anthony Bruins, anthony.c.bruins@nasa.gov | Fernando De La Pena Llaca, fernando.delapenallaca@nasa.gov

NASA Johnson Space Center is investigating how XR Holographics (XRH), spatial computing, digital twins, embedded artificial intelligence, and edge computing can improve human spaceflight training and simulation for Artemis, LEO and future Moon-to-Mars missions.

The research should evaluate methods for transforming spacecraft engineering data, CAD models, mission simulation outputs, state vectors, trajectories, telemetry, and procedures into interactive three-dimensional environments that can be used by flight controllers, instructors, engineers, medical personnel, and crew.

A primary research objective is to determine whether XRH-enabled training can reduce development and testing time for selected training scenarios and procedures, improve spatial understanding of complex spacecraft systems, and enable useful training before final physical vehicles, crewstations, spacesuits, landers, rovers, robotics, or mockups are available.

Candidate demonstrations may include mission trajectory and burn visualization using MTS/FreeFlyer outputs, virtual spacecraft or crewstation training, spatial visualization of spacecraft systems, and distributed training across Mission Systems environments.

AI should function as an analytical and advisory capability only. NASA personnel remain human-in-the-loop and retain all operational and training authority. Existing NASA mission software, flight software, simulations, and certified systems remain authoritative sources of data.

The proposal is cross cutting technology that supports various Directorates at NASA JSC.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Develop and demonstrate an XRH prototype that converts NASA mission simulation, engineering, or digital-model data into an interactive three-dimensional training environment.
• Quantitatively evaluate whether XRH-based visualization and reconfiguration can reduce development time and/or improve task performance, spatial understanding, or decision quality compared with a representative conventional training workflow.
• Characterize the technical performance of distributed XRH training, including end-to-end latency, synchronization, edge-processing performance, bandwidth utilization, system reliability, and human-in-the-loop usability.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

• Research shall augment, not replace, NASA authoritative mission, simulation, flight software, training, or command-and-control systems.
• Human operators shall remain in the loop. Embedded AI may perform analytics, trend identification, anomaly recognition, information prioritization, and bounded training assistance, but shall not serve as autonomous operational decision authority.
• Research should use a modular, device-agnostic architecture where practical and should not require a single proprietary display technology.
• Candidate data sources may include approved simulation outputs, state vectors, trajectory/burn data, CAD/digital models, telemetry-like data, procedures, and other NASA-approved research data.
• When MTS/FreeFlyer, spacesuit, or other authoritative simulation data are used, the source software/configuration/version shall be documented and remain the authoritative source. The XRH environment shall function as a visualization and research layer.
• Representative or synthetic data may be used when authoritative flight software or simulators are unavailable, but research results must clearly distinguish representative data from flight- or simulator-validated data.
• Research shall characterize latency, synchronization, bandwidth, reliability, recovery, and edge-computing performance.
• Research shall include measurable human-performance or training-effectiveness metrics.
• Research involving NASA facilities, networks, software, data, or hardware is subject to NASA cybersecurity, information technology, data-rights, configuration-management, safety, and facility-access requirements.
• The effort should be achievable within the three year research period and $250K per year award scope.

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

• NASA Johnson Space Center Mission Systems environments may be used, subject to NASA approval and availability, including:
  • Mission Control Center (MCC)
  • Mission Training Center (MTC)
  • Space Vehicle Mockup Facility (SVMF)
  • Mission Systems Holodeck research/test environments associated with MCC, MTC, and SVMF
  • Texas A&M Space Institute at JSC Potential research may also use approved NASA simulation, engineering, digital-model, or mission-analysis environments to provide representative data to the XRH research prototype. Facility, network, simulator, software, and data access are not guaranteed and will be coordinated with the responsible NASA organizations.
  • NASA human spaceflight training and simulation architectures
  • MTS/FreeFlyer mission trajectory and state-vector visualization concepts
  • Artemis and Moon-to-Mars mission scenarios
  • NASA digital engineering and digital-twin data, where approved
  • NASA cybersecurity and human-in-the-loop AI requirements. Additional NASA technical documentation and representative datasets may be made available to selected researchers subject to data rights, security, configuration-management, and program approval.

Dust-Mitigating Erosion-Resistant Coating for Transparent Hardware Surfaces Subjected to Plume Surface Interaction at the Lunar Surface

Point of Contact: William Scott,

On the surface of the Moon, various environmental hazards must be addressed for hardware to be deployed for human habitats or other purposes. Among these hazards are high speed impacts from small, sharp, hard, and abrasive lunar regolith particles.  These particles can be propelled away from the Moon’s surface by plume surface interactions (PSI), in which plumes of lunar regolith are lifted by spacecraft engine exhaust during landings or takeoffs.  These particles can move at thousands of meters per second due to the lack of an atmosphere (thus the lack of air drag) on the Moon. Particles can also be propelled to lesser, but still significant, speeds during other physical interactions with the regolith, as with lunar rover wheels in contact with regolith.  When these hard and sharp high-speed particles strike the surface of hardware, the hardware can undergo erosive wear.  Various pieces of hardware, like helmet visors, vehicle windows, solar panels, will have transparent surfaces.  This project seeks to find suitable coating(s) for transparent surfaces to minimize adhesion with lunar regolith, preserve transparency, and make the surface robust to erosion for PSI and other high speed regolith impacts.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Produce a coating that minimizes adhesion of transparent hardware to lunar regolith, while preserving the coating’s transparency
• Make the coating robust to the effects of plume surface interactions, mainly to potential erosive wear.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

• Some testing must be performed with environmental effects of the Moon environment accounted for charged particle radiation, temperature extremes, vacuum
• Solid particle erosion tests must be performed for the coated surface using lunar regolith simulant. The proposer should investigate methods/options for propelling regolith simulant at as high of a speed as practically possible. (Speeds of thousands of meters per second may require advanced technology that may be beyond the scope of this call.) Temperature is expected to have a large effect on the erosion resistance of materials.
• Adhesion testing, i.e., adhesion testing of regolith simulant to coated surfaces, would be required to demonstrate low adhesion of the coated surface. At least one journal publication and one or more conference presentation is expected.

Entry, Descent and Landing (EDL)

Point of Contact: Mike Wright, michael.j.wright@nasa.gov

Entry systems focuses on safely delivering spacecraft to Earth and other celestial bodies. This includes:

• TPS materials development and testing
• Entry system modeling
• Aeroshell technology
• Vehicle stability
• High-speed aerocapture
• Uncertainty quantification

Environmental Control and Life Support System (ECLSS) Lead

Group Contact: agency-epscor@mail.nasa.gov

Experimental Validation of Radiation Effects on Structural and Functional Materials for Space Nuclear Applications

Point of Contact: Adam Martin, adam.k.martin@nasa.gov

Establish an experimental and analytical capability to quantify radiation-induced changes in the mechanical, thermal, and functional properties of materials relevant to space nuclear systems, including metallic alloys, composites, polymers, electrical insulation, and additively manufactured materials. The effort would develop small-specimen irradiation and post-irradiation test methodologies, property-degradation models, and data suitable for incorporation into component lifetime and structural design assessments.

Exploration Destination, Structures, and Materials

Point of Contact: Mark Hilburger, mark.w.hilburger@nasa.gov

Formal Methods for RTOS: Evaluating Applicability to High-Assurance Spaceflight on HPSC, Versal, and NXP Platforms with RTEMS

Points of Contact: Brennan Hay, brennan.hay@nasa.gov | Rizwan Merchant, rizwan.merchant@nasa.gov

Hypothesis: Formal methods techniques (of the kind advanced by DARPA HACMS, PROVERS, and related efforts) are highly applicable to a mature, flight-proven real-time operating system such as RTEMS, and can deliver meaningful improvements in security, determinism, and assurance cost for NASA spaceflight systems — including the large population of sensors, instruments, and embedded controllers required for Human Spaceflight and Moon-to-Mars architectures.

This research will systematically apply, adapt, and evaluate formal methods against RTEMS with the goal of characterizing the degree and practicality of that applicability.

 Formal methods have been shown by DARPA (notably HACMS and the ongoing PROVERS program) to produce software that is functionally correct and free of entire classes of exploitable vulnerabilities. The application of formal methods to real-time operating systems remains a highly active research area. ESA has already sponsored formal methods work on RTEMS (primarily model checking with Promela/SPIN), providing a useful foundation. DARPA’s continued investment through PROVERS and related efforts underscores that scalable, usable formal methods for operating systems and embedded platforms remain a national priority.

We have ongoing interaction with the DARPA formal methods community and projects, including awareness of advanced tooling developed by DARPA performers that is regarded as significant progress in the field.This research will leverage that engagement to evaluate and adapt relevant techniques for application to RTEMS.

Relevance to Human Spaceflight and Moon-to-Mars: Human Spaceflight systems depend on large numbers of sensors, instruments, and embedded controllers. Many of these run on resource-constrained microcontrollers or small processors where commercial high-assurance RTOS options (e.g., VxWorks) are cost-prohibitive, while general-purpose options (e.g., Linux) lack the required determinism and real-time guarantees.

RTEMS is uniquely positioned as the leading open-source RTOS that can scale from the cheapest microcontrollers all the way to high-value instruments. It already has flight heritage and can be deployed in places other RTOS solutions cannot economically or technically reach (star trackers, instrument controllers, suit-related electronics, secondary sensors, and similar elements). Even when a commercial RTOS is chosen to host primary vehicle flight software, RTEMS remains a strong candidate for the broad “carpet” of supporting sensors and instruments.

Two persistent questions limit broader Human Space adoption of RTEMS: safety qualification / assurance evidence, and determinism. Applying formal methods directly targets both. By producing mathematical evidence of critical properties (scheduling correctness, isolation, absence of certain classes of defects, and timing/determinism guarantees), this research can raise confidence in RTEMS for these widespread embedded roles. The resulting trade becomes more attractive: more deterministic than Linux-based approaches, significantly lower cost and broader hardware reach than commercial alternatives, and improved assurance posture through formal methods. This contributes to a safer overall environment for Human Spaceflight and Moon-to-Mars missions by raising the quality and predictability of software running on the many distributed computing elements that such architectures require.

Example NASA Flight Software Use-Cases: RTEMS is used (or is a candidate for use) underneath major NASA flight software frameworks, including core Flight System (cFS) and F Prime (F′). Improving the formal assurance, security, and determinism of RTEMS therefore directly benefits flight software stacks built on these frameworks when they are hosted on HPSC, Versal, NXP, or similar platforms. The research will consider these frameworks as representative example use-cases for how stronger RTEMS assurance translates into higher-confidence flight software for both traditional spacecraft and Human Spaceflight / Moon-to-Mars systems.

The primary focus platforms are the High-Performance Spaceflight Computing (HPSC) processor, AMD/Xilinx Versal Adaptive SoCs, and NXP platforms. Expected benefits include improved security, increased determinism, potential reduction in assurance/certification cost through automation and reusable formal evidence, stronger support for mixed-criticality systems, and reduced V&V risk.

This research is intended to complement and strengthen the broader Securing RTEMS Campaign. While the Campaign includes commercial and engineering activities, the proposed Formal Methods work provides a rigorous academic research component that can supply verified models, property proofs, and assurance guidance back into the Campaign.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

Evaluate and adapt formal methods techniques — with emphasis on model checking (building on existing Promela/SPIN experience with RTEMS) and complementary approaches (including timed model checking and methods emerging from the DARPA formal methods ecosystem) — for critical RTEMS components and behaviors. Develop and apply formal models to key RTEMS subsystems relevant to spaceflight use on HPSC, Versal, and NXP platforms, targeting properties related to security, isolation, scheduling correctness, and determinism. Characterize the practical benefits, limitations, and engineering cost of these techniques for RTEMS, including their potential to strengthen the safety/assurance case and reduce certification effort for Human Spaceflight sensor, instrument, and embedded controller use cases, as well as for flight software stacks based on cFS and F Prime. Produce reusable formal artifacts, tooling guidance, and recommendations that can be adopted by NASA projects (including Human Spaceflight and Moon-to-Mars relevant systems, and cFS- / F Prime-based applications) and that can feed into the broader Securing RTEMS Campaign.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

Leverage and build upon interaction with DARPA formal methods efforts and awareness of advanced tooling from relevant performers where beneficial and accessible. Focus on open, reusable approaches that can be adopted by the RTEMS community and NASA projects. Prioritize HPSC, Versal, and NXP platforms. Explicitly consider cFS and F Prime as representative NASA flight software frameworks that benefit from improved RTEMS assurance. Prefer techniques that support incremental adoption. All key personnel must be U.S. citizens and potentially clearable to at least Public Trust. Deliverables should be publicly releasable under compatible open-source licenses wherever possible.

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

None required for the core modeling, analysis, and tooling evaluation work. Optional use of existing Center computing resources for builds and testing if available. However, given that RTEMS is used for NASA Physics & National Labs, we may have more potential applications with the EPICS system.

Foundations for Space-Based Zero Trust in RTEMS: Isolation and Least Privilege

Point of Contact: Brennan Hay, brennan.hay@nasa.gov

RTEMS is one of the most widely used open-source real-time operating systems in spaceflight. Its classic single-address-space, mutual-trust design has served NASA well for decades because of its determinism and performance. However, that same design provides essentially no isolation or least privilege mechanisms between tasks. As missions move toward mixed-criticality workloads and space-based Zero Trust architectures on platforms such as HPSC, this limitation becomes a significant research and engineering challenge.

This Research Focus Area seeks fundamental and applied research into how isolation and least-privilege principles can be introduced into an RTEMS-based system while preserving the real-time properties that make the operating system valuable for spaceflight. Research may explore hardware supported mechanisms available on HPSC-class processors, Versal, and NXP platforms, software abstractions for protection domains or rights management, composition with separation kernels such as seL4, and the trade-offs between security, determinism, and performance.

Both native (non-seL4) and seL4-hosted execution environments are of interest. The goal is not to prescribe a single architecture, but to develop the conceptual and practical foundations that would allow RTEMS-based systems to participate meaningfully in space-based Zero Trust architectures.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Investigate architectural approaches that can provide meaningful isolation and least privilege within or around RTEMS while preserving hard realtime behavior.
• Characterize the security, determinism, and performance trade-offs of candidate approaches in both FPGA, and native RISC-V and ARM environments and environments that involve seL4.
•  Produce foundational results, design principles, and open artifacts that advance the state of practice for Zero Trust-compatible real-time systems in space, including at least one peer-reviewed paper.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

• Research must address isolation and least privilege in an RTEMS context relevant to HPSC.
•  Solutions or findings should remain compatible with the determinism and performance expectations of spaceflight software.
• Both native execution and composition with separation kernels (including seL4) are in scope.
•  All code developed under this effort should be designed for upstreaming into the RTEMS project.
• Open, upstreamable, or publicly available research artifacts are strongly preferred.
• The work should contribute to the broader foundation for space-based Zero Trust rather than implementing a complete Zero Trust stack.

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

HPSC development / evaluation platforms (or equivalent RISC-V space processors) and associated software simulation environments. No specialized physical test facilities required.

Resources:

• NASA HPSC program documentation
• RISC-V Documentation
• ARM Documentation
• FPGA Security resources
• cFS AerLock access & access to cFS Security PDL at GSFC
• access to F Prime Flight Software Team at JPL
• Access to any related NASA SBIRs or DoD seL4 related projects
• RTEMS Project and existing RTEMS Security Campaign materials
• seL4 documentation and formal verification resources
• Access to NASA –DARPA collaboration around formal methods
• NIST SP 800-207 and emerging space Zero Trust guidance
•  Relevant NASA onboard computing and cybersecurity roadmaps Assumes researcher can pass a background investigation and reach a level of confidence => 40

Fuel-Rich and Ox-Rich MMH/MON Combustion Characterization: Enabling High Fidelity Deep-space Engine Cycle Trades

Point of Contact: Jason Thrasher, jason.s.thrasher@nasa.gov

Research into fuel‑rich and oxidizer‑rich MMH/MON combustion properties is increasingly important as mission designers explore higher‑performance, deeply throttleable propulsion systems for future systems, such as Mars landers. Although MMH/MON has decades of heritage, most available data focuses on conditions relevant to engine main chamber operation. Emerging lander and spacecraft concepts, however, require gas generators and preburners that operate over a much wider mixture‑ratio range to accommodate advanced cycle options. Understanding how combustion temperature and product species distribution vary at high pressure at both fuel‑rich and oxidizer‑rich limits is therefore essential for accurately predicting performance in non‑conventional operating regimes.

Enhanced fidelity in these combustion models directly supports engine cycle trade studies by reducing uncertainty in combustion device performance, enabling propulsion teams to evaluate advanced configurations with greater confidence. These data also improve predictions of throttled transient behavior, which is a critical driver for lander terminal‑descent control authority. Without these refined models, cycle‑trade assessments must rely on assumptions that can unnecessarily eliminate promising architectures. By establishing experimentally validated combustion‑property datasets, propulsion analysts can couple engine performance more tightly with vehicle design constraints, producing more realistic comparisons cycle concepts. This reduces risk early in formulation and ensures that selected architectures are grounded in experimentally developed data.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Measure flame and/or exhaust temperature for a range of gas generator/preburner operating pressures and oxidizer to fuel mass ratios using MMH and NTO (MON3, MON25, etc.)
• Identifications of concerns associated with combustion at these conditions, such as residues.
• Provide correlations or corrections to the results of predictive tools such as CEA based on test data.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

• Work must remain unclassified, with export controlled material handled per applicable ITAR and EAR requirements
• Results shall be published in an appropriate venue such as AIAA or JANNAF.

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

Potential facilities: White Sands Test Facility, U.S. Army Combat Capabilities Development Command, Aviation & Missile Center (DEVCOM-AVMC)

In Situ Resource Utilization

Point of Contact: Julie Kleinhenz, julie.e.kleinhenz@nasa.gov

In Space Transportation

Point of Contact: John Dankanich, john.dankanich@nasa.gov

Inflatable Drop-Stitch Structures for NASA Exploration Elements

Points of Contact: Thomas Jones, thomas.c.jones@nasa.gov | Paul Cavallaro, paul.v.cavallaro@nasa.gov

Drop-stitch fabrics are examples of 3-D woven pre-forms. They consist of 2 skins (deck layers) that are simultaneously woven and spaced apart by a distance governed by the length of the drop yarns woven between them. Air-inflated drop-stitch panels follow the principle of rigid sandwich panels, replacing the honeycomb core with yarns under tension. Load-carrying capacities and stability of an inflatable drop-stitch panel depends upon the shape, fabric architecture, material properties, inflation pressures, mechanical loads and temperature. They can be designed to have a specified developable shape at a set pressure, where each skin becomes biaxially pretensioned and the drop yarns carry tension to maintain the panel’s shape. This focus area would develop this technology toward space exploration applications, considering in-space and lunar environments. These applications could include:

• Deployable secondary structures – deployable floors, racks and room dividers for habitats; floors in air locks and surface tunnels; furniture; radiators and externally deployed structural panels. Possibly filling with regolith or using as free-standing structures / shelters / jackets to protect other assets from elements of the environment.
• Inflatable Trusses & Booms for Non-Cylindrically Shaped Forms – flat packed, inflated and provide a custom cross-section as needed.
• Precision 3D surfaces – large space antennas and reflectors – drop-stitch density controls shape. Use as mandrel for large-scale forming or regolith berms.

Integrated Radiation Shielding and Spacecraft Configuration Optimization for Space Nuclear Systems

Point of Contact: Adam Martin, adam.k.martin@nasa.gov

Develop physics-based and reduced-order methods for jointly optimizing radiation shielding, equipment placement, separation distance, structural mass, and inherent spacecraft self-shielding for space nuclear power and propulsion missions. The research would combine high-fidelity radiation transport with multidisciplinary design optimization and experimental validation to quantify when system-level configuration changes can reduce dedicated shielding mass while satisfying crew and electronics radiation requirements.

Low-Cost Distributed Dosimetry and Constellation-Derived Radiation Environment Awareness

Point of Contact: Gregory Allen, gregory.r.allen@jpl.nasa.gov

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Develop, calibrate, and demonstrate at least one low-cost, low size, weight, and power dosimeter payload design suitable for large-scale deployment on CubeSats, hosted payloads, or rideshares, with total ionizing dose and particle-flux response characterized against traceable reference irradiation and documented for third-party reproduction.
• Develop and validate methodologies for retrieving radiation environment information from existing spacecraft engineering telemetry (for example, EDAC scrub counts, star-tracker transient rates, or imager dark-frame statistics), including quantified sensor response functions, demonstrated on at least one publicly available or partnered dataset and benchmarked against reference instrument data and standard models (AP9/AE9 and known South Atlantic Anomaly morphology).
• Deliver a data assimilation framework that fuses distributed, lowfidelity measurements with physics-based environment models, demonstrated through environment nowcast or model validation products covering both quiescent conditions and at least one solar particle event or geomagnetically disturbed period, with uncertainty quantified.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

• Proposals may emphasize the hardware, retrieval, or assimilation thread, but must address a complete path from measurement to environment estimate; sensor development without a retrieval and validation plan is out of scope.
• Sensor response functions must be characterized and documented, and all environment estimates must include a stated uncertainty budget. – Hardware thread: designs must use commercially available components with parts cost documented; calibration must be performed against characterized gamma or particle reference sources with traceable dosimetry. Flight demonstrations through CubeSat or rideshare opportunities is encouraged where available, but launch costs are not covered by this award and ground calibration and characterization are required deliverables regardless of flight status.
• Data thread: input datasets must be publicly available or covered by a data-use agreement in place at proposal time.
• Benchmarking against established references is required, for example AP9/AE9 model outputs and archival reference instrument data such as GOES particle sensor records.
• Software and design deliverables must be provided as open source or with government purpose rights, with documentation sufficient for independent use.
•  Annual presentation or publication at IEEE NSREC, RADECS, a space weather venue, or an equivalent forum is expected. – Work must remain fundamental research; no export-controlled or proprietary data is required.

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

None required. For the hardware thread, calibration irradiation may be coordinated through the POC at JPL radiation facilities (gamma irradiator, electron accelerator) or NASA-sponsored facilities, subject to availability; university or commercial irradiation sources are equally acceptable.

Resources:

• AP9/AE9/SPM model documentation and distribution site; “Global Ionizing Radiation Environment Mapping Using Starlink Satellite Data,” IEEE Transactions on Nuclear Science (2023); NOAA Space Weather Prediction Center data services; NASA CubeSat Launch Initiative documentation for potential flight opportunities.

Multiagent Control and Decision Making of Hybrid Autonomous Systems

Point of Contact: Nhan Nguyen, nhan.t.nguyen@nasa.gov

Autonomy plays a central role in aerospace applications and space exploration. Control of autonomous systems often involves multiple control systems operating at different timescales and levels of cognition. These systems can be viewed as hybrid systems comprising subsystems operating at different clock rates, for example, a human controller tele-operating from earth operates at a slower clock rate than a lunar rover traction control. When these subsystems operate together, due to the timescale differences, potential adverse interactions could pose challenges to safe operations. This research area is intended to develop capabilities to support autonomous control and decision making of multiagent hybrid systems that enable safe and cooperative policies. Ideas are sought to establish fundamental research and technology demonstration to mature these capabilities for relevant space applications.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Capability to detect and prevent potential adverse interactions among different agents operating at different timescales and latencies.
• Capability to coordinate control and decision policies to achieve cooperation among the agents to accomplish high level goals of the overall system.
• Demonstrate on relevant space applications with focus on lunar and mars exploration.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

• Proposals should address control and decision policies that can compromise safe operations of autonomous systems due to inherent feedback actions of mutlagent systems to achieve subsystem goals.
•  Time scales of multiagent systems could range from milliseconds to several seconds. Time latency could range from seconds to minutes.
• Models of multiagent systems should provide sufficient flexibility to address dynamics that occur at multiple timescales and latencies.
• Human supervisory controller as an agent may be considered in appropriate settings where tele-operations are necessary.
• Technology demonstration by simulations and physical experiments is highly encouraged.
• Publications and dissemination of research results at suitable conferences and in journals.

Non-Intrusive Flight Software Code Coverage and Control-Flow Analysis Using QEMU

Point of Contact: Samuel Price, samuel.r.price@nasa.gov

This research will investigate non-intrusive software code coverage for embedded and flight software using QEMU processor emulation. The goal is to determine whether source-line, instruction, function, and branch coverage can be measured accurately while executing an unmodified flight-like binary, without compiler instrumentation, runtime coverage libraries, or modifications to the guest operating system or application.

A prototype implementation, tcgcov (https://github.com/thesamprice/tcgcov), demonstrates the feasibility of collecting executed addresses, execution counts, and control-flow edges through QEMU’s TCG plugin infrastructure and mapping them to source-level coverage using ELF and DWARF information. Because observation occurs at the processor-emulation layer, the approach is potentially applicable across RTEMS, VxWorks, Linux, bare-metal systems, and other environments supported by QEMU.

Research is needed to improve coverage fidelity and reduce architecture-specific analysis. Areas include using QEMU’s existing instruction decoders to identify executable instructions and branch outcomes, distinguishing normal branches from interrupts, exceptions, traps, and other non-sequential control transfers, and determining how Translation Block behavior affects exact coverage measurement.

The research will also investigate dynamically loaded software, including shared libraries, relocatable objects, overlays, and runtime-loaded applications. This includes detecting load/unload events, associating guest address ranges with the correct executable and debug information, and maintaining accurate coverage when modules are relocated or loaded multiple times.

The resulting capability should be validated against conventional instrumented coverage across multiple processor architectures and software environments.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Develop and upstream to QEMU an architecture-independent mechanism for non-intrusive coverage collection that identifies executable instructions, branch outcomes, and control-flow transitions without compiler coverage instrumentation or guest software modification.
• Validate coverage fidelity across at least three processor architectures and multiple software environments by comparing QEMU-derived line and branch coverage against an independent instrumented baseline, and quantify agreement, false positives/negatives, and runtime overhead.
• Develop and validate support for interrupts, exceptions, and dynamically loaded or relocated executable modules, including correct attribution of execution to the associated ELF/DWARF information, with the resulting generally applicable QEMU changes submitted upstream and maintained outside an application-specific QEMU fork.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

• The approach shall collect coverage without compiler coverage instrumentation, guest runtime coverage libraries, or application-specific modifications.
• QEMU/TCG shall be evaluated as the primary reference approach because it already provides processor-level execution visibility and broad architecture support.
• Alternative approaches are permitted and encouraged if they can provide equal or better non-intrusive coverage fidelity, portability, maintainability, or performance.
• Any alternative approach shall be compared directly against the QEMU-based approach using common workloads and metrics, including coverage accuracy, branch fidelity, runtime overhead, architecture support, operating-system dependence, and implementation complexity.
• Initial validation should focus on flat-address-space embedded systems where executable addresses can be mapped directly to ELF/DWARF information. RTEMS and bare-metal software are suitable initial environments.
• The underlying solution should not be specific to RTEMS or any single operating system.
• Where QEMU is used, research should reuse QEMU’s existing target decoders and TCG infrastructure rather than duplicating architecture-specific instruction decoding externally.
• Generally applicable QEMU improvements shall be designed for upstream acceptance and submitted to the upstream QEMU project. A long-term application-specific QEMU fork is not an acceptable end state.
• Validation shall include line and branch coverage and compare results against an independent compiler-instrumented coverage baseline where feasible.
• The research shall characterize interrupts, exceptions, traps, and other non-sequential control transfers so they are not incorrectly interpreted as normal branch outcomes.
• The research shall address dynamically loaded or relocated executable modules in flat-address-space environments, including load/unload detection and association with the correct ELF/DWARF information.
• Support for virtual memory, MMUs, per-process address spaces, and dynamically mapped shared libraries is a stretch goal.
• The existing tcgcov prototype may be used as a reference implementation, but its algorithms and assumptions shall be independently reviewed and validated.
• Results and generally useful software should be suitable for open publication and open-source release, subject to applicable NASA software-release, export-control, and data-rights requirements.

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

No specialized NASA facility is required for the core research. The work can be performed using software-based processor emulation, representative embedded software workloads, and standard development and test computing resources. NASA Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V) would be a potential beneficiary and collaborator because the capability could provide independent, non-intrusive coverage evidence from flight-like binaries during software verification activities. IV&V participation could be valuable for evaluating the approach against representative NASA software and V&V workflows, but use of the IV&V Facility is not required to complete the research.

Resources:

• NASA Software Engineering and Software Assurance Handbook (NASA-HDBK-2203) — Agency guidance for implementing NASA software engineering and assurance requirements.
• SWE-189 — Code Coverage Measurements — Requires projects to select, implement, track, record, and report software code coverage measurements.
• SWE-190 — Verify Code Coverage — Requires verification of code coverage through analysis of test execution results.
• NASA-STD-8739.8B — Software Assurance and Software Safety Standard — Defines NASA requirements for software assurance, software safety, and Independent Verification and Validation (IV&V).
• NPR 7150.2D — NASA Software Engineering Requirements — Defines Agency software engineering requirements for acquisition, development, maintenance, operations, and management.
• NASA IV&V Independent Test Capability (ITC) — Relevant example of software-only V&V using unmodified flight binaries and high-fidelity simulation.
• tcgcov prototype — Non-intrusive QEMU-based line and branch code coverage: github.com/thesamprice/tcgcov

Power        

Point of Contact: Jeremiah McNatt, jmcnatt@nasa.gov

Power and Energy Storage Systems for Lunar/Mars Surface and Space Applications:

• Substantial mass and efficiency improvements
• Operability in challenging environments.

As well as:

• Power System Architectures
• Integration Approaches: including microgrids and power conversion and management electronics.

Also includes development of Breakthrough Concepts in, including enabling manufacturing approaches and integration:

• Photovoltaics
• Electrochemistry
• Thermal Energy Conversion

Process-Induced Deformation Prediction for Large, Heterogeneous Structural Components

Point of Contact: Cyrus Kosztowny, cyrus.j.kosztowny@nasa.gov

Advanced composite laminated structures are competitive with metallic structures for systemwide mass reduction and performance benefits when designed and implemented effectively. Widely applied lamination practices such as symmetric layup and balanced ply orientations unnecessarily constrain composite designs from consideration because highly nonlinear effects resulting from thermo-chemo-mechanical interaction during fabrication can be challenging to design and control without thorough understanding of applicable physics. To meet the needs of ambitious NASA goals proposed by multiple aeronautics and space missions, a multidisciplinary approach to the design, analysis, fabrication, certification, and implementation of advanced unconventional composite structures is needed. Significant previous work in cure-process and process-induced deformation simulation exists. Further development is still needed to verify and validate digital engineering-based methodologies for large-scale structural components such as stiffened singly and doubly curved shells, tailored laminates, and integration of multiple components for first-time-fit assembly. Accurate prediction of process-induced deformation (warpage or off-nominal shapes) and residual internal stresses and strains (as-manufactured) is a key part of a larger, integrated workflow that can be generally categorized as digital engineering.

Proposals to develop specific tools, develop methodologies, computational models, or wholistic frameworks are sought to enhance the state of the art for composite structures in digital twins, digital threads, or digital engineering methods. A full product cycle, or segments therein, are open for consideration. Proposals that consider nonlinear elastic and viscoelastic formulations are desired for materials including (but not limited to) carbon, boron, glass, and basalt fibers and thermoset, thermoplastic, vitrimer, or geo-polymer matrices.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

Process-induced deformation predictions shall be compared with experimentally observed validation data for sub-component level of structures such as multi-stringer flat or curved panels or wing skins greater than one square meter. Process-induced residual internal stress and strain formation shall be characterized experimentally and compared to computational predictions to inform the “as-manufactured” state of the fabrication article. Roadmaps and frameworks for future research, including commercialization and certification plans shall be developed.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

Technology advancement is expected to be disseminated through conferences, research forums, and journals as appropriate. Test and numerical data produced as part of this funded effort is anticipated to be shared in full with NASA upon request. Development of any software, numerical tools, codes, scripts, or other non-physical system is anticipated to be shared in full with NASA upon request. Complete source-code is expected if applicable.

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

None are required to conduct the work, though collaboration with and use of NASA facilities is open to discussion with the research team. Possible facilities include NASA’s Automated Fiber Placement robotic manufacturing systems at MSFC/LaRC, or other structural fabrication systems across GSFC/LaRC/GRC/MSFC/KSC.

Resources:

• NASA Vision 2040: ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20180002010/downloads/20180002010.pdf NASA Technology Taxonomy TX11 and TX12, among others, are applicable: techport.nasa.gov/taxonomy

Propulsion Systems

Group Contact: agency-epscor@mail.nasa.gov

Space-Based Electric Propulsion: advanced materials, components, and systems

• Launch Propulsion Systems, Solid & Liquid
• In Space Propulsion (Cryogenics, Green Propellants, Nuclear, Fuel Elements, Solar-Thermal, Solar Sails, Electric Sails, Electrodynamic Tethers)
• Propulsion Testbeds and Demonstrators (Pressure Systems)
• Combustion Physics
• Cryogenic Fluid Management
• Turbomachinery
• Rotordynamics
• Solid Propellant Chemistry
• Solid Ballistics
• Rapid Affordable Manufacturing of Propulsion Components
• Materials Research (Nano Crystalline Metallics, Diamond Film Coatings)
• Materials Compatibility
• Computational Fluid Dynamics
• Unsteady Flow Environments
• Acoustics and Stability
• Low Leakage Valves

Qualification Methods for Sensors Used in Space Nuclear Reactor Ground and Flight Systems

Point of Contact: Adam Martin, adam.k.martin@nasa.gov

Develop standardized methodologies and test fixtures for evaluating temperature, pressure, displacement, strain, neutron/gamma, and other instrumentation intended for space fission power and propulsion applications. Research would investigate calibration stability, radiation-induced drift, environmental cross-sensitivity, signal degradation, uncertainty propagation, and accelerated-life testing, producing validated qualification approaches and a flexible university sensor-characterization testbed.

Radiation-Tolerant Instrumentation and Controls for Space Fission Systems

Point of Contact: Adam Martin, adam.k.martin@nasa.gov

Develop and experimentally validate instrumentation, data-acquisition, signal-conditioning, and control technologies capable of reliable operation in the combined radiation, thermal, electrical-noise, and long-duration environments associated with space fission power and propulsion systems. Research could address radiation-induced drift and degradation in sensors and electronics, fault detection and accommodation, distributed sensing, and methods for qualifying commercial and emerging instrumentation technologies, while establishing a university capability for harsh-environment instrumentation testing.

Rendezvous & Capture

Point of Contact: Bo Naasz, bo.j.naasz@nasa.gov

Resilient Edge AI for Autonomous Space Systems on Radiation-Hardened Processors

Point of Contact: Kyongsik Yun, kyongsik.yun@jpl.nasa.gov

As NASA missions push more autonomy to the edge — planetary rovers, Arctic/maritime sensing platforms, small-sat constellations — onboard AI must run reliably on radiation-hardened, resource-constrained processors (e.g., HPSC-class, RISC-V) where commercial GPU-class ML stacks don’t apply. This RFA solicits research into fault-tolerant machine learning inference and multi-agent decision-making for space-qualified edge hardware, spanning single-event-upset resilience, triple-modular-redundancy-aware model architectures, and low-latency peer-to-peer coordination between distributed agents. A secondary application track extends this to multi-agent geospatial reasoning (natural-language-driven GIS copilots) operating under the same hardware constraints, enabling autonomous systems to interpret and act on sensor/imagery data without ground-loop latency.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Demonstrate ML inference fault-tolerance (e.g., TMR, checkpoint/rollback) on rad-hard/HPSC or RISC-V embedded targets with quantified accuracy-vs-resilience tradeoffs.
• Benchmark P2P communication latency and coordination overhead for multi-agent AI systems under space representative bandwidth/power constraints.
• Deliver a reusable, open benchmark suite (model + hardware + fault-injection harness) that EPSCoR affiliated teams and NASA centers can extend to new missions.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

In scope: cross-compiled ML libraries for RISC-V/HPSC targets, radiation fault-injection testing (simulated SEU/TID), P2P Ethernet or equivalent low-power interconnect, edge-deployable model architectures (quantized/pruned). Out of scope: cloud-only or GPU-datacenter-scale model training; commercial (non-rad-hard) flight hardware assumed as end target. Data rights: benchmark code and non-sensitive results should be publishable/opensource; any NASA mission-specific data used stays ITAR/export-control compliant. Expected deliverable: at least one conference paper or technical report per year, plus a working benchmark repository. Citizenship: standard EPSCoR/NASA collaboration terms apply (per program guidance).

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

Yes — HPSC (High-Performance Spaceflight Computing) hardware testbeds and associated radiation/fault-tolerance test environments at JPL.

Robotics

Point of Contact: Josh Mehling , joshua.s.mehling@nasa.gov

• Autonomy & Robotics: Enabling complex air and space missions, and complementing humans in space
• Intelligent and Autonomous Systems: smart sensors, extreme environment instruments

Single-Event Rate Prediction for Non-Planar Device Geometries: Modeling, Test Methodology, and On-Orbit Validation

Points of Contact: Michael Campola, michael.j.campola@nasa.gov| Gregory Allen, gregory.r.allen@jpl.nasa.gov

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Develop and demonstrate a geometry-aware single-event rate prediction methodology, coupling Monte Carlo radiation transport with TCAD-based charge collection, for at least one non-planar logic technology (FinFET or gate-all-around) and one vertical power device technology, with end-to-end prediction uncertainty quantified.
• Deliver experimentally validated test methodology guidance, including angular and roll-orientation test matrix design, ion species and energy selection criteria, and quantitative criteria defining when effective-LET and cosine-law equivalence assumptions are valid, in a form suitable for incorporation into community test standards.
• Validate predicted on-orbit event rates against flight upset data or published mission anomaly records, with agreement demonstrated within stated confidence bounds by the end of the period of performance.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

• Modeling must be physics based. Monte Carlo radiation transport (for example, Geant4 or MRED-class tools) coupled to device-level charge collection simulation is required. Purely empirical rectangular parallelepiped fitting without physical justification is out of scope.
•  Simulation fidelity must be documented, including sensitive-volume construction, calibration approach, and convergence and sensitivity analyses.
• Proposals must identify a credible strategy for experimental data, which may include collaboration with NASA-sponsored heavy-ion test campaigns, use of published datasets, or independently arranged beam access. Ground-test validation of model predictions is required before on-orbit validation.
• The final year must include comparison against on-orbit or flight-relevant data; methodology-only results without validation do not satisfy the objectives.
• Methods and criteria must be documented in a form usable as input to test standard development (for example, JEDEC JESD57 class guidance).
• Annual presentation or publication at IEEE NSREC, RADECS, or an equivalent venue is expected.

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

No NASA facilities are required for the modeling thrusts. Experimental validation may be coordinated with NASA-sponsored heavy-ion facilities through the POC, subject to availability.

Resources:

• EDEC JESD57A test standard; CREME96 and OMERE/SPENVIS environment and rate tools; published nested sensitive-volume and Monte Carlo rate prediction literature (IEEE TNS); NASA and JPL radiation hardness assurance guideline documents.

Static-Dissipative Dielectrics for Spacecraft Charging Mitigation in Extreme Environments

Point of Contact: Allen Andersen,

Spacecraft charging remains a persistent reliability risk across NASA missions operating in high-radiation environments, especially at cryogenic temperatures. Space radiation interactions embed electrical charge in spacecraft materials, creating conditions that can lead to electrostatic discharge (ESD) which can cause electrical upsets, latent damage, or loss of mission-critical hardware. These challenges intensify as NASA expands operations into permanently shadowed lunar regions, outer planet icy moons, or operates cryogenic observatories. In these environments electrical conductivity of dielectric materials drops by many orders of magnitude, which increases the likelihood of ESD.

NASA lacks sufficient options for qualified static-dissipative dielectrics, especially at low temperatures. This gap directly impacts multiple NASA directorates:

• HSMD lunar surface systems including power distribution insulation and electronics protection.
• SMD Astrophysics for cryogenic instrument housing and IR telescope components.
• STM Planetary Science including icy moon landers and missions in planetary magnetospheres
• RTMD materials development for extreme environments.

This RFA seeks academic partners to develop novel dielectric materials including nanodielectrics and composite formulations capable of maintaining controlled static-dissipative performance across broad temperature ranges and relevant radiation environments. Applications include but are not limited to power system insulation, white thermal-control coatings, and conformal coatings for electronics.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

• Develop and characterize new dielectric materials that maintain static-dissipative conductivity at cryogenic temperatures (down to approximately 40- 100 K) through ambient conditions.
• Quantify ESD susceptibility, and conductivity behavior under relevant radiation dose rates, charging conditions, and operational temperature ranges.
• Demonstrate mechanical and thermal material durability and evaluate suitability for applications such as thermal control coatings or power insulation.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

• All validation must be performed in relevant simulated environments including vacuum, mission-representative charging rates, and cryogenic-to-ambient thermal conditions. See NASA HDBK 4002B.
• Proposals should not rely on metallic or other conductive coatings or approaches that cannot maintain mechanical or electrical stability across cryogenic temperatures.
• Modeling of charge accumulation, decay, and radiation interaction is encouraged, but empirical validation in relevant laboratory environments is required.

NASA Facilities or Specialized Test & Simulation Facilities Involved in this Research:

JPL Reliability Assurance Technology Test (RATT) lab and Dynamitron accelerator. These facilities support electron beam induced ESD testing, constant voltage and charge storage conductivity measurements, and radiation induced conductivity testing in relevant vacuum and thermal environments.

Resources:

• NASA HDBK 4002B, Mitigating In-Space Charging Effects-A Guideline. Andersen, Allen, et al. “Spacecraft charging test considerations for composite materials.” IEEE Transactions on Plasma Science 51.9 (2022): 2447-2454.

Structures/Materials

Point of Contact: Mark Hilburger, mark.w.hilburger@nasa.gov

Surface Systems

Point of Contact: Angela Krenn, angela.g.krenn@nasa.gov

Thermal

Point of Contact: Thomas Leimkuehler, thomas.o.leimkuehler@nasa.gov

Ultra Lightweight, High-Load Precision Linear Actuators

Point of Contact: Thomas Jones, thomas.c.jones@nasa.gov

NASA’s Moon Base program requires significant infrastructure to set up the outpost including assets to offload and maneuver heavy payloads, connect and dock large elements, including the use of actuated tunnels, and excavate, grade, and prepare a site for landers and habitation. A current challenge in all of these cases is the need for lighter-weight, high-load capacity linear actuators. Current terrestrial designs for high-load linear actuators are extremely massive and not designed for operation in-space. The largest actuators that have been flown in space are rotational drive motors versus linear actuators. Actuators for large-scale positioning and lifting robotic arms, and the actuators to drive a pressurizable tunnel element will require load capacities in the tens of thousands of pounds.

This focus area would develop the technologies needed to enable novel lightweight, high-load actuators. These could include using high-tensile strength inflatables to provide pneumatic capability versus purely electro-mechanical solutions. Modern high strength/stiffness, reversible bond composites could also be studied to provide a means of creating very lightweight telescoping elements that can be positioned and set, for lower duty-cycle applications, such as leveling large assets, or actuating a tunnel. Consideration of the application and the environment would be required as some of these actuators would be used internally and some externally. Development of such actuators would have multiple uses on Moon Base, in addition to terrestrial applications given the mass and power requirements of the current state of the art.

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Aeronautics – Advanced Materials, Manufacturing Technologies & Structural Systems

Point of Contact: Chris Wohl, c.j.wohl@nasa.gov

Advanced Materials for Aeronautics Applications:

• Rapid, scalable additive manufacturing
• Materials for extreme environments
• Materials manufacturing and characterization in extreme environments
• Computational modeling of the manufacturing process influence on metallic microscale and bulk properties
• Characterization and evaluation of additive manufactured, multifunctional, and sustainable materials
• Computational modeling of polymer synthesis, processing, and additive manufacturing
• Multifunctional materials supporting electric aircraft
• Composite materials supporting green aviation
• Process monitoring during composites fabrication      

Aeronautics Electronics for Both Flight Platforms and Ground Test Facilities

Group Contact: agency-epscor@mail.nasa.gov

Aeronautics – Intelligent Flight Systems & Trusted Autonomy

Group Contact: agency-epscor@mail.nasa.gov

Aeronautics research in areas of advanced air mobility, increasingly automated and autonomous systems, robotics, and “smart cities” to enable current and future NASA missions and maintain U.S. aerospace preeminence. Development and validation of new architectures, technologies, and operations for increasingly complex and increasingly autonomous aerospace systems is accomplished by:

• Enabling robust control, vehicle performance, and mission management under nominal conditions, and contingency management under off-nominal conditions.
• Ensuring robust and flexible human-machine integration and teaming.
• Advancing technologies for vehicle and system-autonomy, robotics, and flight vehicle environment awareness.
• Developing new methods and tools for the verification, validation, and safety assurance of complex and autonomous systems.
• Developing, maintaining, and utilizing advanced experimental ground and flight test facilities and labs that enable intelligent flight systems and trusted autonomy.      

Aeronautics Material Science, Power, and Propulsion

Point of Contact: Maxwell Briggs, maxwell.h.briggs@nasa.gov

Focus on Aeronautics in the following areas:

• Power and Energy Storage Systems for Aviation and Space Applications: sustainable, reduced- and zero-carbon emission approaches, substantial mass and efficiency improvements, and operability in challenging environments
• Power System Architectures, Networks, and Systems Management and Integration Approaches: including microgrids and power conversion and management electronics
• Breakthrough Concepts in Photovoltaics, Electrochemistry, Photocatalysis, Photo/Thermal Energy Conversion: including enabling manufacturing approaches and integration
• Electronics for Extreme Temperature Environments: devices, components, and subsystems
• Microwave, Optical, and Cognitive Communications Devices, Components, and Systems: expanded bandwidth and reductions in size and power consumption
• Quantum Sensors, Communications, and Networks: devices and simulations
• Communication Architectures, Networks, and Systems: integration and simulation
• Intelligent and Autonomous Systems: smart sensors, extreme environment instruments
• Advanced Concepts in Systems Engineering for Aeronautical and Space Systems: physics-based models, machine learning, and artificial intelligence applications
• Electrified Aircraft: architectures, components, systems, and system-level simulations
• Thermal Management Systems: propulsion and/or power systems for aviation and space
• Acoustic Emission Mitigation: aviation and space propulsion applications
• Aircraft Icing: prevention, mitigation, and simulation
• Aviation Safety: simulation, system concepts, architectures
• Advanced Computational Fluid Dynamics and Systems Engineering related to aviation propulsion systems including internal and external aerodynamics, aero-thermochemistry
• Multi-Functional Materials: concepts, components, and simulations engaging mechanical, structural, electrical, thermal, energy, communications, or propulsion features, especially including applications enabled by advanced manufacturing processes
• Shape Memory Alloy Utilization: actuation, harsh environments, high-strain applications
• Advanced Metallic Alloy, Ceramic, Macromolecular, and Composite Materials and Coatings: for extreme environments, especially where enabled by advanced manufacturing processes
• Nanotechnology Applications: enhanced mechanical, thermal, electrical, chemical, electrochemical, or catalytic properties
• Fundamentals of Fluid Physics, Combustion Phenomena, Complex Fluids, and Bioengineering in reduced- or near-zero gravitational environments

Aerosciences Evaluation and Test Capabilities & Intelligent Systems

Point of Contact: Harry Partridge, harry.partridge@nasa.gov      

Focus on Aeronautics and Aerosciences in the following areas:

• Aero sciences: Wind Tunnels: Testing on the ground before you take to the sky
• Air Traffic Management: 
  • NextGen air transportation: Transforming the way we fly
  • Airborne science: Examining our own world & beyond from the sky
  • Airspace Systems, Unmanned aerial Systems
• Intelligent/Adaptive Systems: Complementing humans in space
  • Autonomy & Robotics: Enabling complex air and space missions, and complementing humans in space
  • Human Systems Integration: Advancing human-technology interaction for NASA missions
  • Nanotechnology-electronics and sensors, flexible electronics

Aircraft Electrical Powertrain Modeling

Point of Contact: Peter Suh, peter.m.suh@nasa.gov

Air Vehicle Design with Flow Control

Point of Contact: Luther Jenkins, luther.n.jenkins@nasa.gov

Active flow control (AFC) is the open- or closed-loop strategic addition of energy to the flow around a vehicle to affect vehicle level improvements in aerodynamics, aeroacoustic noise, and aircraft control & handling qualities. The technology has seen only limited implementations, such as niche aircraft Shin Maywa US-2 and F-4H Phantom. The emergence of new modes of aviation, such as advanced air mobility (AAM), and a global push toward sustainability, create an opportunity for AFC to be an enabling technology for revolutionary new aircraft designs for achieving NASA’s sustainable aviation goals. Research is needed to develop methods to perform multidisciplinary optimization and trade studies on aircraft that incorporate AFC technologies.         

Autonomy (Collision Avoidance, Perception, and Runtime Assurance)

Point of Contact: Nelson Brown, nelson.brown@nasa.gov

Boundary-layer Transition Delay

Point of Contact: Luther Jenkins, luther.n.jenkins@nasa.gov

Delaying the transition of a boundary layer plays a crucial role in improving aerodynamic performance, enhancing fuel efficiency, and reducing drag in aerospace and other fluid-dynamics-based systems. This research focus area includes development of novel strategies to maintain laminar flow over aircraft surfaces for extended periods, as well as development of actuators and considerations for integration into real-world aircraft. Laminar flow is one of the enabling technologies for NASA’s sustainable aviation goals.

Broadband Noise Prediction of Advanced Air Mobility Aircraft

Point of Contact: Chris Bahr, christopher.j.bahr@nasa.gov

The emerging Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) ecosystem will require vehicle acoustic signatures that are not detrimental to nearby communities and population centers. Furthermore, the size and operating conditions of AAM propulsion systems can lead to an increased importance of broadband noise in the overall noise signature. Traditional rotorcraft noise signatures, on the other hand, tend to be dominated by tonal noise. Improved physical understanding and prediction capability for broadband noise of AAM vehicles aligns with NASA ARMD’s Strategic Thrust 4 of Safe, Quiet, and Affordable Vertical Lift Air Vehicles, and there is synergy with the Revolutionary Vertical Lift Technology Project.

Control of Flexible Structures, Modeling, System Identification, Advanced Sensors

Point of Contact: Matt Boucher, matthew.j.boucher@nasa.gov

Efficient Synthetic Turbulence Generation Methods

Point of Contact: Luther Jenkins, luther.n.jenkins@nasa.gov

Flow Visualization Methods for High-Speed Ground Test Facilities

Point of Contact: Brett Bathel, brett.f.bathel@nasa.gov

Gas Lattice Methods for Continuum (High Density) Flows

Point of Contact: Andrew Norris, andrew.t.norris@nasa.gov

High Lift Design Method for Conceptual Level Aircraft          

Point of Contact: Chris Bahr, christopher.j.bahr@nasa.gov

NASA continues to develop a toolset for the analysis of conceptual level aircraft from conventional types to future, advanced ultra-efficient aircraft. It is a priority need for a method that could design the high lift system to meet the landing and takeoff performance for a NASA developed aircraft model. The method should also be able to design the detailed parameters used as inputs to the NASA airframe noise prediction methods for leading edge and trailing edge high lift devices that are typically needed for commercial subsonic transport aircraft (e.g. deflection angles, chord, gap dimensions, etc.). A successful method would be required to be integrated into NASA’s Model-Based Systems Analysis (MBSA) process.

High-Order Unstructured Schemes for High-Speed Flows and Aerothermodynamics          

Point of Contact: Ali Reza Mazaheri, ali.r.mazaheri@nasa.gov

A critical aspect for determining the environment of high-speed vehicles with complex configurations is an accurate prediction of solution gradients, such as shear stresses, heat fluxes, pressure gradients, and density gradients. These quantities are required in reducing uncertainties in predicting turbulent flows, separation and reattachment points, and surface heat fluxes of spacecraft and hypersonic vehicles, to name a few. Furthermore, analysis of boundary layer instabilities also requires a nearly pristine set of solution gradients. The vehicles’ geometrical complexities such as wings, protuberances, cavities, thermal protection systems, compression pads, reaction control surfaces, as well as complexities in the flowfield such as shocks, shock-boundary layer interactions, shock-shock interactions, separations, and vortices are the main reasons for using purely simplex (triangle and tetrahedral) elements. The high-order Discontinuous Galerkin (DG) method is one of the attractive high-order schemes that are mathematically sound and combines the benefits of both finite-volume and finite-elements schemes. In addition, DG schemes are suitable for h/p adaption and can be numerically very efficient and scalable due to its compact stencil.

High Spatial and Temporal Resolution Velocimetry Measurements, Both Seeded and Seedless

Point of Contact: Paul Danehy, paul.m.danehy@nasa.gov

Hybrid Electric Propulsion

Point of Contact: Sean Clarke, sean.clarke@nasa.gov

HYBRID Turbulent Simulation Methods and Models to Simulate Highly Separated Turbulent Flows

Point of Contact: Luther Jenkins, luther.n.jenkins@nasa.gov

Hypersonic Structures & Sensors

Point of Contact: Larry Hudson, larry.d.hudson@nasa.gov

Machine Learning and Artificial Intelligence for Advancing CFD

Point of Contact: Mujeeb Malik, m.r.malik@nasa.gov

Advanced computational fluid dynamics (CFD) tools enable superior design of aerospace vehicles at reduced cost and risk and open new frontiers in design and performance of such vehicles, which serve a wide range of NASA missions. To enable novel designs, without significant ground or flight testing, the computational tools must provide accurate predictions of physical phenomena near the edges of the flight envelopes. NASA’s CFD Vision 2030 Study¹ emphasized the need for development of advanced computational tools that are robust, efficient (cost effective) and accurate.

Toward that end, the vision study developed a research roadmap that included recommended developments along multiple swim lanes such as:

• High-performance computing (HPC)
• Physical modeling
• Numerical algorithms and high order methods
• Geometry modeling and mesh generation/adaptation
• Knowledge extraction.

Machine learning (ML) and artificial intelligence (AI) techniques can play an important role in making progress along these swim lanes resulting in computational capabilities that would help accomplish the 2030 vision goals. Use of ML and AI techniques that would help make revolutionary progress along one or more of the technology development areas highlighted in the vision study.

These advanced computational tools are needed not only by various ARMD projects and programs (e.g., AAVP, TACP) but also other NASA missions requiring planetary entry.

• https://ntrs.nasa.gov/api/citations/20140003093/downloads/20140003093.pdf

Machine Learning for Turbulent or Transitional Flow Modeling

Point of Contact: David Lockard, d.p.lockard@nasa.gov

Modular GPU-Based Chemically Reacting Solver with Stiff Integrator

Point of Contact: Andrew Norris, andrew.t.norris@nasa.gov

Multi-Physics High-Fidelity Approaches for Advanced or Emerging Computer Architectures      

Point of Contact: David Lockard, d.p.lockard@nasa.gov

Novel Material Concepts to Extend the Frequency Range of Acoustic Liners

Point of Contact: Chris Bahr, christopher.j.bahr@nasa.gov

Novel Noise Reduction Concepts for Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Propulsors

Point of Contact: Chris Bahr, christopher.j.bahr@nasa.gov

Supersonic Research (Boom Mitigation and Measurement)

Point of Contact: Ed Haering, edward.a.haering@nasa.gov

Systems Modeling for Next Generation Aircraft

Point of Contact: Ben Phillips, benjamin.d.phillips@nasa.gov

To realize the full potential of Aviary, subsystem and component level models for new technologies are necessary to build. The focus of this research is to generate optimization ready Aviary aircraft subsystem models to enable conceptual aircraft design for vehicles entry into service in the 2050 timeframe.

Efforts within the Transformational Tools and Technologies Project and the Advanced Air Transport Technology Project have focused on creating the next generation conceptual aircraft design tool, Aviary. Aviary combines capabilities of legacy codes with modern code architecture, is tightly integrated with state-of-the-art optimization tools (OpenMDAO) and enables the design space exploration and optimization of novel aircraft concepts.

Unconventional aircraft and new technologies will likely need to be developed over the next decade to maintain US dominance in the aircraft market, while enabling aircraft to exploit the least expensive energy sources. Although the current aircraft market is primarily based on aviation fuel, the uncertainty of future demand and supply may change the optimal selection of energy source to yield the lowest cost per seat-mile for passenger planes, and volumetric weight per mile for cargo planes. There are a significant number of challenges associated with new aircraft types and yet-to-be-developed technologies. A primary challenge is the modeling of alternative and hybrid energy sources within the context of an aircraft design framework. It is difficult to analyze these new concepts at a conceptual design level, as legacy tools lack the ability to model new technologies or account for the interactions between subsystems without resorting to high-fidelity analysis or performing a significant number of manual iterations. 

Uncertainty Quantification for High-Fidelity Multidisciplinary (e.g., Aeroelastic, Aeroacoustic) Analysis for Aircraft Flight                    

Point of Contact: David Lockard, d.p.lockard@nasa.gov

Uncertainty Quantification for Stochastic Probability Density Function (PDF) Methods

Point of Contact: Andrew Norris, andrew.t.norris@nasa.gov

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Envelope Protection

Point of Contact: Shaun McWherter, shaun.c.mcwherter@nasa.gov

Urban Air Mobility (UAM) Vehicle Handling and Ride Qualities

Point of Contact: Curt Hanson, curtis.e.hanson@nasa.gov

Wall Models for Non-Equilibrium and Separated Flows in Wall-Modeled Large-Eddy Simulations (WMLES)

Point of Contact: Luther Jenkins, luther.n.jenkins@nasa.gov

Eddy-resolving methods such as direct numerical simulations (DNS), wall-resolved Large-Eddy Simulations (WRLES), and wall-modeled Large-Eddy Simulations (WMLES) are becoming increasingly adopted due to their accuracy in predicting wall-bounded turbulent flows, especially flows with separations. DNS and WRLES methods are computationally too expensive for flows over complex geometries and at high Reynolds numbers, due to the large grid resolution required near the wall. WMLES remedies this problem by modeling the inner layer of the boundary layer and resolving only the outer part of the boundary layer. Currently, one-dimensional equilibrium models are employed to model the inner layer in the WMLES. This model becomes less accurate in non-equilibrium boundary layer flows with adverse pressure gradients and flow separations. Improved wall models are needed in these flows. This project solicits proposals to develop new wall models in non-equilibrium flows to improve the accuracy of the WMLES. This work supports efforts by the Transformation Tools and Technologies Project to develop simulation capabilities for developing, analyzing, and certifying air vehicles. Such capabilities are critical to assess and evaluate technologies and configurations required to achieve NASA’s aircraft efficiency and sustainability goals.

Weather Sensors for Advanced Air Mobility (AAM) Applications

Group Contact: agency-epscor@mail.nasa.gov

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Astrophysics

Point of Contact: Hashima Hasan, hhasan@nasa.gov

Research Focus Areas:

• Probe the origin and destiny of our universe, including the nature of black holes, dark energy, dark matter and gravity
• Explore the origin and evolution of the galaxies, stars and planets that make up our universe
• Discover and study planets around other stars, and explore whether they could harbor life

Description:

NASA’s strategic objective in astrophysics is to discover how the universe works, explore how it began and evolved, and search for life on planets around other stars. Three broad scientific questions flow from this objective:

• How does the universe work?
• How did we get here?
• Are we alone?

Each of these questions is accompanied by a science goal that shapes the Astrophysics Division’s efforts towards fulfilling NASA’s strategic objective:

• Probe the origin and destiny of our universe, including the nature of black holes, dark energy, dark matter and gravity
• Explore the origin and evolution of the galaxies, stars and planets that make up our universe
• Discover and study planets around other stars, and explore whether they could harbor life

To address these Astrophysics goals, the Astrophysics Research Analysis and Technology Program invites a wide range of astrophysics science investigations from space that can be broadly placed in the following categories.

• The development of new technology components covering all wavelengths and fundamental particles, that can be applied to future space flight missions. This includes, but is not limited to, detector development, and optical components such as primary or secondary mirrors, coatings, gratings, filters, cryogenics systems, and spectrographs. Specifically, the Astrophysics Division prioritizes technology needs and gaps for future strategic missions, based on inputs from the community and subject matter experts. This information, including the technology gaps, are updated every two years, and the most recent relevant document is the Astrophysics Biennial Technology Report 2024 (ABTR-2024) (available at: https://apd440.gsfc.nasa.gov/images/tech/2024_ABTR.pdf )
• New technologies and techniques that may be tested by flying them on suborbital platforms such as rockets and balloons that are developed and launched by commercial suborbital flight providers or from NASA’s launch range facilities, or by flying them on small and innovative orbital platforms such as CubeSats.
• Studies in laboratory astrophysics that enable analysis of astrophysical data from NASA telescopes. Examples of these studies could include atomic and molecular data and properties of plasmas explored under conditions approximating those of astrophysical environments.
• Theoretical studies and simulations that advance the goals of the astrophysics program
• Analysis of data that could lead to original discoveries from space astrophysics missions. This could include the compilations of catalogs, statistical studies, algorithms and pattern recognition, artificial intelligence applications, development of data pipelines, etc.

These investigations can include theory, simulation, data analysis, and technology development. Information on the relevant Astrophysics research program and missions are available at https://science.nasa.gov/astrophysics.

Proposers may also review the information in the Astrophysics Research Program Overview section of the Research Opportunity for Space and Earth Science (ROSES) solicitation for further information about the Astrophysics Research Programs: https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/grant-solicitations/

Science Mission Directorate (SMD)

Biological and Physical Sciences (BPS)

Combustion Science

Group Contact: agency-epscor@mail.nasa.gov

Research Focus Areas:

• Spacecraft fire safety
• Droplets
• Gaseous – premixed and non-premixed
• High pressure – transcritical combustion and supercritical reacting fluids
• Solid fuels
• Carbon free fuels

Description:

Improve combustion processes, leading to added benefits to human health, comfort, and safety.

Flammability of solid fuels to advance fire safety research.

Develop carbon-free and carbon-neutral transportation fuels.

Effects that can be studied in the absence of buoyancy-driven flows caused by Earth’s gravity. Research conducted without the interference of buoyant flows can lead to an improvement in combustion efficiency, producing a considerable economic and environmental impact. Combustion science is also relevant to a range of challenges for long-term human exploration of space that involve reacting systems in reduced and low gravity. These challenges include – spacecraft fire prevention; fire detection and suppression; thermal processing of regolith for oxygen and water production; thermal processing of the Martian atmosphere for fuel and oxidizer production; and processing of waste and other organic matter for stabilization and recovery of water, oxygen and carbon. Substantial progress in any of these areas will be accelerated significantly by an active reduced-gravity combustion research program.

Flammability of solid fuels to advance fire safety research: Specifically, testing is necessary to understand the fire performance of representative spacecraft and planetary habitat materials at all g-levels (Microgravity, Lunar, Martian, and Earth gravity). Study is needed of these materials at a research level – ignition, flame spread, size, heat output, radiation, O2 level, g level, etc. In 1-g and drop tower. Also, to organize results by type of materials. Also, to use these gravity dependent data for the improvement of computational models. The goal is to use the experimental results and numerical simulations to support NASA material flammability testing, material controls, and habitat/vehicle designs which depend on g-level. Use of the NASA Glenn Research Center (GRC) drop is a useful method to achieve 5 seconds of microgravity and, with the use of the centrifuge drop rig, any partial gravity levels as well. The POCs for the GRC 5 second drop tower facility are David Urban, david.urban@nasa.gov and Nancy Hall, nancy.r.hall@nasa.gov

Develop carbon-free and carbon-neutral transportation fuels: Airlines have committed to reduce carbon emissions by 50% by 2050 (relative to 2005 levels). Doing this requires (1) moving to carbon-neutral feedstocks that are drop-in replacements for petroleum-based fuels (PBFs, i.e., biofuels that have a closed-carbon cycle) and (2) moving whenever possible to carbon-free fuels (e.g., ammonia) that have no carbon footprint. Given the capital cost of aircraft an airplane put into service today will still be in operation 20+ years from today. There are needs for drop-in replacements for PBFs that will enable current generation aircraft to remain in service for their entire service life. Low-gravity research proposals that will improve our understanding of the kinetics, flame structure, and product emission from carbon-free and carbon-neutral fuels will facilitate use of these fuels in the transportation sector.

Fluid Physics

Group Contact: agency-epscor@mail.nasa.gov

Research Focus Areas:

• Adiabatic two-phase flow
• Boiling and condensation
• Capillary flow
• Interfacial phenomena
• Cryogenic propellant storage and transfer

Description:

The goal of the microgravity fluid physics program is to understand fluid behavior of physical systems in space, providing a foundation for predicting, controlling, and improving a vast range of technological processes.

Specifically, in reduced gravity, the absence of buoyancy and the stronger influence of capillary forces can have a dramatic effect on fluid behavior. For example, capillary flows in space can pump fluids to higher levels than those achieved on Earth. In the case of systems where phase-change heat transfer is required, experimental results demonstrate that bubbles will not rise under pool boiling conditions in microgravity, resulting in a change in the heat transfer rate at the heater surface. The microgravity experimental data can be used to verify computational fluid dynamics models. These improved models can then be utilized by future spacecraft designers to predict the performance of fluid conditions in space exploration systems such as air revitalization, solid waste management, water recovery, thermal control, cryogenic storage and transfer, energy conversion systems, and liquid propulsion systems. Some examples include: Nuclear fission Rankine power cycle for future space missions (Moon, Mars) and deep space missions, Vapor Compression heat pump for planetary bases (Moon, Mars), Thermal Control Systems and advanced Life Support Systems for spacecraft and Cryogenic systems, such as nuclear thermal propulsion, fuel depots, tank chill-down.

Development of innovative and transformative pressure control strategies that allows efficient, reliable and lossless storage and transfer of cryogenic propellants. Understanding the phase change and transport of volatile fluids in microgravity is essential to preserve propellants on orbit and allowing refueling operation is space to carry out and sustain long-duration human planetary exploration missions to Moon, Mars and beyond. The need for scientific understanding and discoveries of liquid/vapor phase change phenomena in the absence of gravity will remain valuable in providing the foundation for development of next generation of light weight thermal management and power generation systems. Novel technologies will be based on multi-physics phenomena, such as the electro-hydrodynamically driven cooling devices. Also, there is a need to develop a fundamental understanding of two-phase flow condensation heat transfer in reduced gravity. Areas of interest include the observation of the condensate film and relevant temperature measurements. Condensation research is relevant to spacecraft thermal control, humidity control, water recovery and certain power generation systems.

Improved passive thermal management of electronics, batteries, high capability sensors, power system heat rejection, etc. for future spacecraft and planetary habitat systems. Due to the potential to extract heat at significantly higher heat flux levels, oscillating heat pipes (OHP) offer the promise of significantly higher efficiencies compared to conventional heat pipes used on today’s spacecraft. However, the underlying liquid-vapor fluid dynamics (distinct liquid plugs and vapor plugs), interfacial phenomena, and two-phase heat transfer in the pulsating flows of OHPs are not well understood. It is imperative that a physical model that can predict the performance of an OHP be developed. An instrumented, ground-based OHP experiment to provide insight into the mechanisms, fundamental processes and governing equations.

Fundamental Physics

Point of Contact: Mike Robinson, michael.p.robinson@nasa.gov

Research Focus Areas:

• Quantum coherence and entanglement
• Quantum interferometry and precision measurements
• Properties of quantum matter
• Quantum phenomena in many-body systems
• Particle Physics
• General Relativity

Description:

Research in quantum physics that will lead to transformational outcomes, such as the discovery of phenomena at the intersection of quantum mechanics and general relativity that inform a unified theory, the direct detection of dark matter via atom interferometry or atomic clocks, and the creation of exotic quantum matter than cannot exist on Earth.

Space offers a unique environment for experimental physics in many areas. Current areas of focus for NASA’s Fundamental Physics program are cold atom physics, the application of cold atom technologies to research in quantum science and general relativity.

A primary objective of NASA’s solicitations in Fundamental Physics is to engage the skills of the U.S. research community to establish and maintain a world-leading program in space-based quantum science. Quantum mechanics is one of the most successful theories in physics. It describes the very small, such as atoms and their formation into the complex molecules necessary for life, to structures as large as cosmic strings. The behavior of exotic matter such as superfluids and neutron stars is explained by quantum mechanics, as are everyday phenomena such as the transmission of electricity and heat by metals. The frontline of modern quantum science involves cross-cutting fundamental and applied research. For example, world-wide efforts concentrate on harnessing quantum coherence and entanglement for applications such as the enhanced sensing of electromagnetic fields, secure communications, and the exponential speed-up of quantum computing. This area is tightly coupled to research on the foundations of quantum mechanics, which involves exotica such as many-worlds theory and the interface between classical and quantum behavior. Another frontier encompasses understanding how novel quantum matter— such as high-temperature superconductivity and topological states—emerges from the interactions between many quantum particles. Quantum science is also central to the field of precision measurement, which seeks to expand our knowledge of the underlying principles and symmetries of the universe by testing ideas such as the equivalence between gravitational and inertial mass.

Quantum physics is a cornerstone of our understanding of the universe. The importance of quantum mechanics is extraordinarily wide ranging, from explaining emergent phenomena such as superconductivity, to underpinning next-generation technologies such as quantum computers, quantum communication networks, and sensor technologies. Laser-cooled cold atoms are a versatile platform for quantum physics on Earth, and one that can greatly benefit from space-based research. The virtual elimination of gravity in the reference frame of a free-flying space vehicle enables cold atom experiments to achieve longer observation times and colder temperatures than are possible on Earth.

Soft Matter/Complex Fluids

Group Contact: agency-epscor@mail.nasa.gov

Research Focus Areas:

• Quantum coherence and entanglement
• Quantum interferometry and precision measurements
• Properties of quantum matter
• Quantum phenomena in many-body systems
• Particle Physics
• General Relativity

Description:

Investigate the fundamental principles that organize the structure and functionality of materials such as active and soft matter, and to study the fundamental laws that govern the behavior of systems that are far from equilibrium.

Soft Matter comprises a large class of deformable materials, including colloids, microemulsions, foams, liquid crystals, and granular material. Studying these systems focuses on gaining insight into many diverse fields such as phase transitions, nucleation and crystal growth, coarsening, glass formation, chaos, field theory, dusty plasmas and much more. Complex fluids are a subset of soft materials that can flow and exhibit non-Newtonian rheology. Research in soft matter and complex fluids can provide foundational knowledge for NASA’s exploration of planetary surfaces such as, forces on particles, particle charging and agglomeration in complex plasmas or the complex rheology during the flow of a lunar regolith derived slurry to produce construction materials. Furthermore, terrestrial applications are relevant in industries such as pharmaceutical, chemical, plastics, soap and detergent, electronic display, and petroleum. Because of the relatively large size of the basic structures, gravitational forces dominate and cause sedimentation, buoyancy-driven convective flows, hydrostatic pressure gradients, jamming, drainage, etc. Weaker forces such as surface tension and entropic forces, completely masked on Earth, can become dominant in space. In addition, particles can remain suspended without gravitational forces. In weightlessness external fields such as thermal, magnetic, electric and acoustic can be used without the impediments of gravity to create and investigate tunable soft matter (e.g. colloidal) systems.

Materials Science

Group Contact: agency-epscor@mail.nasa.gov

Research Focus Areas:

• Glasses and ceramics
• Granular materials
• Composite materials
• Metals
• Polymers and organics
• Semiconductors

Description:

Improve the understanding of materials properties that will enable the development of higher-performing materials and processes for use both in space and on Earth.

Demonstrate the feasibility of creating lunar construction “concrete” materials.

The unique features of the microgravity environment, where gravity-driven phenomena, such as sedimentation and thermosolutal convection, are nearly negligible. On Earth, natural convection leads to dendrite deformation and clustering, whereas in microgravity, in the absence of buoyant flow, the dendritic structure is nearly uniform. Major types of research that can be investigated include solidification effects and the resulting morphology, as well as accurate and precise measurement of thermophysical property data. This data can be used to develop computational models. The ability to predict microstructures accurately is a promising computational tool for advancing materials science and manufacturing.

Demonstrate the feasibility of creating lunar construction “concrete” materials: alkali-activation of regolith simulant. Specifically, to conduct 1-g ground studies to understand the solidification, microstructure and properties of the construction material using alternative binders (regolith simulant replacing cement) and alkaline solution (replacing water) to form a geopolymer. Also, to measure the mechanical properties of the solidified material. Future applications of lunar construction materials include launch pads, habitats, and other components of lunar infrastructure.

Science Mission Directorate (SMD)

Earth Science

Developing an end-to-end lightning and thunderstorm simulation framework to support optically based lightning observations

Points of Contact: Patrick Gatlin, patrick.gatlin@nasa.gov | Timothy Lang, timothy.j.lang@nasa.gov

NASA is interested in developing an end-to-end Observing System Simulation Experiment (OSSE) framework that incorporates multispectral optical observations of lightning from spaceborne and airborne platforms within numerical simulations of convective storms. This effort falls within a broader community-based effort to develop an end-to-end lightning modeling framework (E2EL). Multiple models exist within the community that simulate separate components of the overall lightning process (e.g., cloud models with electrification parameterizations, discharge models, optical scattering models, sensor models, etc.), but these are not yet tied together in a unified form that could be implemented within an OSSE. NASA seeks solutions for linking together existing community lightning-related models into an end-to-end framework suitable for performing OSSEs in support of a new multispectral lightning instrument. Specifically, NASA is seeking to link a cloud-resolving model with electrification to a realistic lightning discharge model or parameterization, with further linking of the discharge simulation to an optical source and propagation model that can incorporate the cloud model’s microphysics and simulate quantitatively realistic optical output at cloud top. The key needs are the development of computationally efficient two-way links between separate, already-existing community models. The proposed project may address one or more of these links. The cloud model must incorporate multiple different charge separation parameterizations. The discharge model or parametrization must realistically simulate the observed branched structure of lightning channels, and this branched structure must be represented within the optical source and propagation model.

Key Objectives and Priorities:

Develop software code to link a cloud-resolving model with electrification to a realistic lightning discharge model or parameterization, including two-way feedback on simulated electric fields. Develop software code to link the lightning discharge simulation to an optical source and propagation model that can incorporate the cloud model’s microphysics and simulate quantitatively realistic optical output at cloud top. Demonstrate successful end-to-end execution of the linked models for one or more realistic thunderstorm simulations.

Specific Requirements or Constraints:

Highest priority optical outputs to simulate are the well-known 777-nm and 337-nm lightning emission bands. Secondary priorities are known lightning emission bands near 391 nm, 400 nm, 500 nm, and 868 nm. The linking module between the cloud model and lightning discharge model/parameterization must include two-way feedbacks on electric fields (i.e., cloud model’s simulated electric field initiating a discharge, discharge then affecting cloud model’s simulated electric field via charge transfer/neutralization). Optical source and propagation model must incorporate microphysical field information from the cloud model itself. Awardees are expected to collaborate with the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center Lightning Team during end-to-end model development. Any software code developed is expected to be made open source by the end of the project.

Resources:

• Lightning Modeling Grand Challenge Journal Article (Open Access): doi.org/10.1175/BAMS-D-25-0021.1 Lightning Modeling Grand Challenge Roadmap Document: doi.org/10.5281/zenodo.14624043

Earth Science Division

Points of Contact: Yaitza Luna-Cruz, yaitza.luna-cruz@nasa.gov | Laura Lorenzoni, laura.lorenzoni@nasa.gov

Requirements:

For Earth Science, the proposals must include the following two requirements:

• Propose innovative research that uses the following recently launched Earth Science missions (SWOT, TEMPO, PACE, and NISAR).
• Include a collaboration with the Early Career Research First Immersion in Earth Science to Action (FIES2A).

***NOTE: Please see Earth System Science Scope Appendix***

Description:

Requirement A: Propose innovative research that uses the recently launched Earth Science missions listed below

Proposers should leverage products and algorithms previously developed by science teams for the mission(s) previously listed to ensure proposed investigations are unique and build on the existing capabilities of the sensor(s). The proposed science should advance state-of-the-art approaches and should include a brief description of risk mitigation to the approach. Only minor (not to exceed 20% of the total budget) and well justified laboratory and/or field data collection to support specific science questions will be considered. It is recommended that proposers place emphasis on addressing science gaps rather than the development of new products, although developing new products is permissible so long as it is novel, while enabling the team to answer their stated science questions

It is strongly suggested that proposers review the mission home pages, listed below in alphabetical order.

• NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR)
• Plankton, Aerosol, Cloud, ocean Ecosystem (PACE)
• Surface Water and Ocean Topography (SWOT)
• Tropospheric Emissions: Monitoring of Pollution (TEMPO)

Proposals submitted in response to this program element will be expected to characterize uncertainties and quantify errors associated with data, analytical approaches, model results, and scientific interpretations, and must do so within the body of the proposal; a description in the Open Science and Data Management Plan should include how proposers will be reported with the data and products to be shared and archived.
Proposals that incorporate non-NASA data, including international satellite data, commercial satellite data, and social science data are also welcome but the main source must be NASA data from the missions mentioned above. Proposals may also utilize data acquired via NASA’s Commercial SmallSat Data Acquisition (CSDA) Program (available at no cost to U.S. Government-funded researchers). Any data proposed to be analyzed from any source, including NASA and other satellite data, ancillary data, and data from commercial sources, must be publicly available, in the sense that these data are openly accessible. Proposals should reflect the principles of Open Science as described on the Earthdata website.

Proposals planning to request High-End Computing (HEC) should follow the HEC Program guidance. The HEC program provides a specialized computational infrastructure to support NASA’s research community. Any need for HEC resources must be justified by completing a request for resources for inclusion with the proposal. The PI completes and submits a request in the HEC Request Management System (RMS). The purpose of this step is to inform reviewers at NASA of your computational needs, and if the proposal is selected, establish eligibility to use HEC resources. The form includes a written justification of how the computational resources would support the investigation as well as a multi-year resource-phasing plan, in annual increments, identifying the computing time and data storage requirements covering the duration of the proposed award period. If your proposal is selected for funding, your HEC request will be evaluated by the SMD’s HEC Allocation Authority. SMD allocates quarterly in October, January, April and July. Out-of-cycle allocation requests are handled on a case-by-case basis. The HEC program will then issue letters identifying yearly allocations of HEC resources for the duration of the project, which again may differ from your request due to limited availability of resources. However, PIs may submit requests to increase or decrease allocations of HEC resources if there are unexpected changes to computational needs.

Requirement B: Collaboration with Earth Science Division (ESD) Early Career Research (ECR) First Immersion in Earth Science to Action (FIES2A)

ESD is committed to enabling early engagement to cultivate a variety of Earth science communities and to support workforce development. The ESD Early Career Research Program (ECR) creates opportunities to advance the development and implementation of the Earth Science to Action Strategy. ECR is striving for excellence in Earth science by supporting outstanding and innovative scientific research, enabling greater participation through scientific leadership, fostering a sense of community through sustained relationships, and making Earth science data more usable and impactful for all. One of several ECR opportunities includes the First Immersion in Earth Science to Action (FIES2A). FIES2A provides an opportunity for young Earth science-interested students, including community college and early undergraduate students, to get immersed in a workforce development experience to conduct Earth science research. By providing this first immersion, ECR is exposing students to NASA Earth science information, data, and resources highlighting these as national assets and contributing to training the future workforce.

Proposers must host and allocate funds for 3 students over each summer to be part of a FIES2A Summer Cohort (each summer for the duration of the grant). Proposers must work in collaboration with ECR for planning and logistics. Proposals must include a summer project plan, which includes the feasibility of the proposed research, alignment with requirement A of this solicitation, an appropriate scope for undergraduate capabilities and mentorship responsibilities, and a timeline reasonability (10-week interns with additional time for mentor planning)

FIES2A/EPSCoR Requirements:

• Students research projects must be aligned with proposed research in requirement A.
• Institution must allocate a stipend of $8,200 per student per summer in the budget, a computer (if applicable), and physical space (lab or office).
• Institution should follow OSTEM intern eligibility and selection criteria.
• Institution should assign a mentor to guide and oversee the 3 students over the summer and be the liaison between the institution and ECR.
• ECR will assign a NASA FIES2A Mentor to provide additional scientific and technical support from the appropriate ESD mission/sphere.
• FIES2A Summer Cohort dates vary per year. Here is an estimated timeline for 2027 (Start June 7 and end August 6). Additional dates:
  • ECR FIES2A Team Meeting: ~Early December
  • Student selection by: ~Early May
  • Final FIES2A Cohort Presentations: August 6

Science Mission Directorate (SMD)

Heliophysics

Point of Contact: Patrick Koehn, patrick.koehn@nasa.gov

Heliophysics encompasses science that improves our understanding of fundamental physical processes throughout the solar system, and enables us to understand how the Sun, as the major driver of the energy throughout the solar system, impacts our technological society. The scope of heliophysics is vast, spanning from the Sun’s interior to Earth’s upper atmosphere, throughout interplanetary space, to the edges of the heliosphere, where the solar wind interacts with the local interstellar medium. Heliophysics incorporates studies of the interconnected elements in a single system that produces dynamic space weather and that evolves in response to solar, planetary, and interstellar conditions.

In this framework, the Heliophysics Research Program is guided by Science 2020-2024: A Vision for Scientific Excellence and any more up to date versions of the Science Plan and by the 2013 National Research Council Decadal Strategy for Solar and Space Physics report, Solar and Space Physics: A Science for a Technological Society.

The decadal survey articulates the scientific challenges for this field of study and recommends a slate of design reference missions to meet them, to culminate in the achievement of a predictive capability to aid human endeavors on Earth and in space. The fundamental science questions are:

• What causes the Sun to vary?
• How do the geospace, planetary space environments and the heliosphere respond?
• What are the impacts on humanity?

To answer these questions, the Heliophysics Division implements a program to achieve three overarching objectives:

• Explore and characterize the physical processes in the space environment from the Sun to the heliopause and throughout the universe
• Advance our understanding of the Sun’s activity, and the connections between solar variability and Earth and planetary space environments, the outer reaches of our solar system, and the interstellar medium
• Develop the knowledge and capability to detect and predict extreme conditions in space to protect life and society and to safeguard human and robotic explorers beyond Earth

The program supports theory, modeling, and data analysis utilizing remote sensing and in situ measurements from a fleet of missions; the Heliophysics System Observatory (HSO). Frequent CubeSats, suborbital rockets, balloons, and ground-based instruments add to the observational base. Investigations that develop new observables and technologies for heliophysics science are sought.

Supported research activities include projects that address understanding of the Sun and planetary space environments, including the origin, evolution, and interactions of space plasmas and electromagnetic fields throughout the heliosphere. The program seeks to characterize these phenomena on a broad range of spatial and temporal scales, to understand the fundamental processes that drive them, to understand how these processes combine to create space weather events, and to enable a capability for predicting future space weather events.

The program supports investigations of the Sun, including processes taking place throughout the solar interior and atmosphere and the evolution and cyclic activity of the Sun. It supports investigations of the origin and behavior of the solar wind, energetic particles, and magnetic fields in the heliosphere and their interaction with the Earth and other planets, as well as with the interstellar medium.

The program also supports investigations of the physics of magnetospheres, including their formation and fundamental interactions with plasmas, fields, and particles and the physics of the terrestrial mesosphere, thermosphere, ionosphere, and auroras, including the coupling of these phenomena to the lower atmosphere and magnetosphere. Proposers may also review the information in the ROSES-24 Heliophysics Research Program Overview B.01_Helio Overview.pdf (nasaprs.com) for further information about the Heliophysics Research Program: https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/grant-solicitations/

Science Mission Directorate (SMD)

Planetary Science

Points of Contact: Erica Montbach, erica.n.montbach@nasa.gov | Michael Lienhard, michael.a.lienhard@nasa.gov

The Planetary Science Exploration Technology Office (PESTO), managed by the Planetary Science Division, sponsors technology development that addresses the broad strategic objective to “Ascertain the content, origin, and evolution of the Solar System and the potential for life elsewhere.” To pursue this objective, the Planetary Science Division has strategic goals and objectives that guide the focus of the division’s science research and technology development activities. As described in the NASA 2023 Science Strategic Plan, these are:

• Discover:
  • Expand human knowledge through new scientific discoveries
    • 1.2: Understand the Sun, solar system, and universe
• Explore:
  • Extend human presence to the Moon and on towards Mars for sustainable long-term exploration, development, and utilization
    • 2.1: Explore the surface of the Moon and deep space
• Innovate:
  • Catalyze economic growth and drive innovation to address national challenges
    • 3.1: Innovate and advance transformational space technologies 

The NASA Planetary Science strategic objective is to advance scientific knowledge of the origin and history of the solar system, the potential for life elsewhere, and the hazards and resources present as humans explore space.

In order to address these goals and objectives, PESTO invites a wide range of planetary science and astrobiology technology development investigations. Example topics for technology developments include, but are not limited to the following:

• Technology developments for supporting the understanding the formation and evolution of the Solar System and (exo) planetary systems in general, and of the planetary bodies, satellites, and small bodies in these systems;
• Technology developments for supporting the understanding materials present, and processes occurring, in the early stages of Solar System history, including the protoplanetary disk;
• Technology developments the supporting the understanding planetary differentiation processes;
• Technology developments for supporting evaluation of extraterrestrial materials, including meteorites, cosmic dust, presolar grains, and samples returned by the Apollo, Stardust, Genesis, and Hayabusa missions;
• Technology developments for supporting the understanding of properties of planets, satellites (including the Moon), satellite and ring systems, and smaller Solar System bodies such as asteroids and comets;
• Technology developments for supporting the understanding of the coupling of a planetary body’s intrinsic magnetic field, atmosphere, surface, and interior with each other, with other planetary bodies, and with the local plasma environment;
• Technology developments for supporting the understanding of the origins, evolution, and properties of the atmospheres of planetary bodies (including satellites, small bodies, and exoplanets);
• Technology developments for supporting the understanding of the knowledge of the history of the Earth and the life upon it as a guide for determining the processes and conditions that create and maintain habitable environments and to search for ancient and contemporary habitable environments and explore the possibility of extant life beyond the Earth;
• Technology developments for supporting the understanding of the origin and early evolution of life, the potential of life to adapt to different environments, and the implications for life elsewhere;
• Technology developments for supporting the understanding to provide the fundamental research and analysis necessary to characterize exoplanetary systems;
• Technology developments for supporting the understanding of the chemistry, astrobiology, dynamics, and energetics of exoplanetary systems;
• Technology developments for supporting astronomical observations of our Solar System that contribute to the understanding of the nature and evolution of the Solar System and its individual constituents;
• Technology developments for supporting the inventory and characterization of the population of Near-Earth Objects (NEOs) or mitigate the risk of NEOs impacting the Earth;
• Technology developments for evaluating and preventing forward and backward contamination during planetary exploration, methods to minimize such contamination, and standards in these areas for spacecraft preparation and operating procedures;
• Technology developments for supporting the enhancement of the scientific return of NASA Planetary Science Division missions through the analysis of data collected by those missions;
• Advancement of laboratory- or spacecraft-based (including small satellites, e.g., CubeSats) instrument technologies that show promise for use in scientific investigations on future planetary missions;
• Analog studies, laboratory experiments, or fieldwork to increase our understanding of Solar System bodies or processes and/or to prepare for future missions.

The technologies needed to support NASA Planetary Science Division may be found in the Planetary Science Technology Strategy document, which includes the Planetary Science Prioritized Technology Focus Areas:

• Instrumentation, with an emphasis on:
  • In Situ Search for Life/Astrobiology
• Sample Containment and Return
  • Planetary Protection and Contamination Control
  • Thermal Protection and Control
  • Sample Manipulation
• Autonomy
  • Global Positioning System (GPS) deprived navigation
  • Surface (planetary) operations
  • On-board science data processing
  • Ground Operations
• Robotics, with an emphasis on Advanced Mobility for:
  • Aerial Rovers in Extreme Environments
  • Subsurface Access (including drilling)
• Higher-efficiency power conversion technology for radioisotope system

Proposers may also review the information in the ROSES Planetary Science Research Program Overview for further information about the Planetary Science Research Programs: https://science.nasa.gov/researchers/sara/grant-solicitations/

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