Here you will find highlights of those flights and links to additional information about the tested innovations tested aboard.

The NASA TechLeap Prize’s Nighttime Precision Landing Challenge is advancing the affordability and reducing the complexity of precision landing capabilities to deliver spacecraft to safe landing locations, particularly when the terrain is hazardous and lighting conditions are challenging. Flight testing of the technologies developed by the three winners took place over a lunar surface proving ground at night to simulate the shadowed and dark surface regions of the Moon.

One payload was a University of Florida technology that helps researchers understand the biological effects of changes in gravity by analyzing patterns of gene expression in plant samples. Principal investigator Robert Ferl conducted this experiment himself, representing the first time a NASA-funded researcher is flying with their payload on a suborbital rocket.
 
The other payload is evaluating the ability of new materials for TPS (thermal protection systems) – developed by HeetShield of Flagstaff, Arizona, under the SBIR (Small Business Innovation Research) program – to withstand the rigors of launch and descent.

A three-day parabolic flight campaign in Santa Maria, California, conducted by Zero Gravity Corporation, tested a half-dozen technology payloads from NASA, the University of Florida, and the University of California, Davis. Many of these payloads previously flew on parabolic flights, enabling the researchers to advance their technologies based on those findings and retest.
 
One of the technologies aboard was a laser-welding technology from NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center. The team performed high-power fiber laser beam welding under high vacuum and micro- and lunar gravity conditions, which provided a validation dataset that will anchor computational models.

Challenges with line-of-sight radio communications in rugged terrain and limited cell phone coverage in remote areas hamper the sharing of critical information between wildland firefighters in the field and the incident command post miles away. Designed to address these communications challenges, the STRATO (Strategic Tactical Radio and Tactical Overwatch) technology combines a variety of sensors with two key connections to keep the incident command post in continuous contact with firefighters wherever they are in the field. STRATO flew aboard Aerostar’s Thunderhead high-altitude balloon for testing over the West Mountain Complex fires in Idaho.

The teams’ experiments flew on one of two commercial suborbital flight platforms: Astrobotic’s Xodiac rocket-powered lander or a high-altitude balloon operated by World View. 

On the Xodiac rocket-powered lander, student payloads collected information on the features of the simulated surface, discovered hidden projects placed on the surface of the moonscape, and examined environmental characteristics of the lander’s flight.

Payloads on the World View balloon experienced the stratosphere’s unique thermal and atmospheric environment, providing conditions that ground-based testing cannot replicate. 

A payload from University of California, Berkeley tested a multi-material manufacturing technique known as computed axial lithography, a new type of 3D printing. Rather than printing in layers, this device uses light to solidify liquid and gel materials in a single step in microgravity. Future uses could range from printing spare parts for spacecraft to addressing medical-related issues during long-duration missions — all necessary to enable future long-duration space missions for NASA and the world.
 
A Purdue University payload studied how the sloshing of liquid propellant affects spacecraft pointing — maneuvers that orient a vehicle for docking or Earth reentry and help optimize imaging satellites orbiting the Earth, Moon, and Mars. The measurements made during this flight test could improve precise modeling of slosh in microgravity, which can’t be done through testing on Earth and could meet an essential need for future space flights that use liquid propellant.

These parabolic campaigns ran February 26-March 1, March 5-8, and April 14-25. Researchers collected data for payloads that address several technology shortfalls across the civil space ecosystem – from advanced manufacturing and entry, descent, and landing technologies to cryogenic fluid management needed for long-duration space missions and more.

The payloads reached altitude of 351,248 feet, which exposed them to about three minutes of microgravity. Such flight conditions enabled research teams to collect data that will help them evaluate the performance of their technologies and make any necessary improvements before potential future use in space. The suborbital flight test included a range of technology capabilities for space exploration, discovery, and commerce.

When spacecraft land on the Moon or Mars, the rocket exhaust plume interacts with the surface. This interaction creates regolith ejecta – abrasive dust and large particles moving at high speeds – that can damage the lander and surrounding structures. Understanding how a rocket engine’s exhaust affects this ejecta will help mission designers plan more effectively for lunar landings. Researchers at the University of Central Florida developed an instrument named Ejecta STORM (Sheet Tracking, Opacity, and Regolith Maturity) to answer this need while embracing the Flight Opportunities program’s “fly, fix, fly” ethos to quickly advance the technology. After flight tests in 2020, researchers tested the Ejecta STORM technology’s integration with a lander and operation in flight conditions that simulated the plume effects of a lunar lander.

In a series of flight tests, a Purdue University team completed an experiment that tested how rocket plume temperatures heated up a simulated leg of a lunar lander. The campaign demonstrated Purdue’s image-based, whole-field temperature map system in a relevant environment, which will advance and ready the technology for lander development and operations use (e.g., for the design of lander vehicles for Earth-based entry, descent, and landing research flights).

In an example of other government agencies’ leveraging support and flight provider contracts from Flight Opportunities, Naval Information Warfare Center Pacific successfully demonstrated an optical communication link from the ground to a high-altitude balloon as part of the Stratospheric Optical Link Demonstration (SOLD) project with essential support and collaboration from NASA’s Ames Research Center. SOLD is designed to explore optical communications in the stratosphere and demonstrate the supporting capabilities needed to achieve such optical links while also overcoming the challenges of operating in the stratospheric environment.

NASA’s TechRise Student Challenge invites teams of sixth to 12th-grade students to design, build, and launch science and technology experiments for space exploration and Earth observation on suborbital flights. Sponsored and managed by Flight Opportunities, the challenge flight tested student payloads on commercial suborbital rocket-powered vehicles and high-altitude balloons. Summer 2023 marked a series of flight tests that successfully flew 80 student payloads on high-altitude balloons – supporting data collection on a wide range of experiments in areas such as remote sensing, machine learning in low-Earth orbit, climate, agriculture, and human health.

This marks the second flight for the payloads – less than a year after their first individual flight tests – allowing winning teams to fix issues prior to re-flight. Selected through the TechLeap Autonomous Observation Challenge No. 1, teams developed technologies to autonomously detect, locate, track, and collect data on short-lived events, such as wildfires, unique aerosol dispersions like dust and steam plumes, or events on other planetary bodies such as geysers on the icy moons of Saturn and Jupiter. This second high-altitude balloon flight with all three payloads aboard cost-efficiently gave the teams a longer sensing and data collection opportunity. The teams included the SEAK (Systems Engineering, Architecture, and Knowledge) Lab at Texas A&M University in College Station; Bronco Space at Cal Poly Pomona in California; and Orion Labs, a small applied robotic research institution in Nunn, Colorado.

This series of parabolic flights provided testing for several Flight Opportunities–supported technologies. The flights featured brief periods of microgravity that allowed teams to test the performance of their payloads in a space environment. Some of those payloads included space-based medical innovations, such as the integration of suction and surgical technologies from Purdue University and the University of Louisville as well as lab-on-a-chip technology from the University of California, Berkeley. These flights also tested autonomous sampling for biological research, cryogenic fluid management and modeling, an affordable small spacecraft innovation, 3D printing techniques, space-based development of optical components, and devices to monitor for spaceflight-associated neuro-ocular syndrome (SANS) and to maintain sensorimotor conditioning.

Developed by TechLeap Prize-winning students at Texas A&M’s Systems Engineering, Architecture, and Knowledge (SEAK) Lab, the Satellite for Natural and Artificial Plumes (SNAP) uses gimbaled cameras to collect image data and a computing system to process the data using a trained neural network to identify and track Earth-based plumes. This balloon flight enabled image collection and testing of SNAP’s plume tracking capability as well as identification of necessary improvements to its onboard computing system in advance of a second flight slated for 2023.

TechLeap Prize winner Orion Labs developed and tested the Quantum Earth Observatory (QEOBS) – a four unit-sized CubeSat designed to demonstrate how onboard data processing and quantum machine learning can result in reduced downlink requirements. During the flight, QEOBS collected thousands of images of small dams and waterways, processing the image data onboard and efficiently downlinking only data about confirmed dam detections to the ground. The flight results will help the team identify specific Earth observation use cases for the technology and prepare for a potential future demonstration on a small spacecraft.

Student members of TechLeap Prize winner Bronco Space Lab at Cal Poly Pomona developed and launched a wildfire detection system called Bronco Ember. Combining a short-wave infrared camera with artificial intelligence, the system is designed to provide potentially faster, more accurate aerial detection of nascent wildfires, which often go undetected by current geolocation methods. This balloon flight enabled the team to evaluate the technology’s efficacy and identify necessary improvements to its detection and tracking consistency – refinements they plan for the next generation of Bronco Ember.

This flight campaign provided two flights on consecutive days, allowing research teams supported by NASA’s TechFlights awards from both industry and academia to test technologies designed for a range of space-based capabilities. Exposure to both zero gravity and lunar gravity enabled teams to evaluate the performance of their payloads and make adjustments between flights.

These two parabolic flight campaigns provided testing aboard the G-FORCE ONE aircraft for innovations designed for space-based biotech, surgery, 3D printing, power systems, and propellant gauging. Flights were funded by Flight Opportunities though a wide variety of NASA mechanisms (e.g., TechFlights awards, SBIR, Tipping Point awards).

This flight enabled testing of a small, lightweight, efficient 3D imaging sensor designed for weather forecasting from Arizona State University. The sensors probe the sky vertically for details on temperature, moisture, and water vapor to reveal subtle changes in the Earth’s atmosphere. In this first of two NASA-supported flight tests for the technology, World View’s Stratollite balloon reached a stratospheric altitude of approximately 70,000 feet. Over more than 100 hours of flight time, the CubeSounder collected atmospheric temperature and humidity data as 3D images – data that could ultimately be downlinked at high speeds from CubeSats or weather balloons and compared with that of other weather satellites and ground stations.

This week of parabolic flights provided testing for a wide range of Flight Opportunities–supported technologies. Research teams leveraged periods of microgravity to test innovations designed for space-based first aid, 3D printing, robotics, and more. Several technologies were also able to apply lessons learned from parabolic flights in November and rapidly refly on these flights just one month later.

These flights provided a unique testing environment for space innovations supported by Flight Opportunities. Technologies designed for space farming, 3D printing, on-orbit refueling, and more were put to the test during these flights that provide brief periods of microgravity.

This flight enabled testing of a payload return capsule called the Re-entry Device 4U (RED-4U). The capsule was suspended under a high-altitude balloon and released at an altitude of 103,000 feet. It landed within 250 feet of the target touch-down destination, thanks to a guided parafoil. The demonstration was a milestone for evaluating the capsule’s altitude-detection capabilities and the parafoil’s autonomous guidance and control and brings the technology a step closer to potential space-based uses. Approximately 20 inches in diameter, the guided re-entry capsule could one day be used for on-demand transport back to Earth of payloads up to about 18 pounds. It could carry materials manufactured in space for use on Earth, small instruments and tools, biological samples, and science experiments from low-Earth orbit destinations.

Video capture during future lunar landings could play an important role in contributing to researchers’ understanding of disturbances in lunar surface materials – called regolith – caused by the lander’s rocket plume. This flight test leveraged Masten’s vertical takeoff vertical landing (VTVL) platform to simulate the movement of a lunar lander, enabling researchers to test an ejection mechanism to jettison a high-tech camera and regolith sensor onto the desert surface at specific altitudes just before landing. Once on the ground, the payload’s camera captured video footage from the unique vantage point of the desert surface – a stand-in for the surface of the Moon.

In Blue Origin’s 17th New Shepard mission, the fully reusable launch vehicle carried technologies from NASA, industry, and academia aboard for just over 10 minutes. The vehicle reached an apogee of nearly 350,000 feet, exposing the payloads aboard to some of the conditions they will need to withstand in potential future orbital missions. Key milestones included the second suborbital flight test of NASA’s trash-to-gas technology, OSCAR, as well as the third suborbital flight test for a University of Florida experiment designed to understand shifts in biological organisms as they transition between varying levels of gravity.

Two high-altitude balloon flights enabled researchers to test a radiation-tolerant computing system called RadPC. The innovation is designed to replace failed processors in real time – and testing was needed to make sure the computing system can withstand the high-energy radiation particles emitted by the Sun and other celestial bodies. During more than 80 hours of flight time, researchers tested the computing technology against more than 3,000 injected system faults; the RadPC recovered from all of them successfully. The flights added to data collected during many other suborbital flights facilitated by Flight Opportunities, including sounding rocket and other balloon flights. The testing and validation were also critical preparation for a planned 2023 lunar demonstration of RadPC, which will enable assessment of its functionality for long-duration space missions.

This flight test enabled researchers to assess a new nephelometer called NephEx, a sensor that measures light scattering by airborne particles, including cloud droplets and ice particles. NephEx could also supplement common techniques for cloud and climate monitoring, such as remote sensing via satellite. The high-altitude balloon flight provided an important step in maturing the technology and assessing its capabilities to measure the size, concentration, and distribution of cloud particles – data critical to understanding the impact of clouds on a planet’s climate.

This series of flights provided by Stratodynamics Inc. of Lewes, Delaware, leveraged the company’s HiDRON stratospheric glider. The glider launched from a high-altitude balloon at Spaceport America in New Mexico, carrying technology supported by NASA’s Flight Opportunities program for the first time. The flights aimed to help researchers assess the performance of both a wind probe developed by the University of Kentucky in Lexington and an infrasonic microphone sensor, developed by researchers at Langley and licensed by Stratodynamics in 2020. The flights enabled cross validation of the sensor with the wind probe. The HiDRON glider enabled the instruments to capture wind velocity, direction, magnitude, and low-frequency sound waves.

Taking off for the first time from New Mexico’s Spaceport America and reaching an altitude of more than 50 miles (80 kilometers), Virgin Galactic’s SpaceShipTwo exposed several Flight Opportunities-supported payloads to more than two minutes of microgravity, enabling researchers to assess performance and make necessary design updates based on the data collected. The technologies aboard included a sensor suite designed to provide suborbital researchers with vital information about the environmental conditions inside a spacecraft; a dust experiment that aims to advance our understanding of the behavior of dust and fine particles in response to human and robotic activities in space; and a space-based surgical system designed to help facilitate wound care in microgravity conditions.

This series of parabolic flights provided testing for a wide range of Flight Opportunities-supported technologies. Research teams leveraged brief periods of microgravity to test innovations designed for structural inspections and servicing, space-based blood transfusions, propellant management, surgical fluid management, space-based manufacturing, and more.

This series of parabolic flights provided testing for several Flight Opportunities-supported technologies. The experiment is designed to study the formation of potentially destructive amyloid fibrils, or protein clusters, like those found in the brain tissue of patients with neurodegenerative diseases such as Alzheimer’s and Parkinson’s. Conducting the experiment in microgravity enables researchers to “pin” a droplet of liquid between two rings and cultivate amyloid fibrils for study. The flights enabled the research team to demonstrate that their hardware is capable of deploying and pinning each of the protein solutions that will be used on the station to help advance neurodegenerative disease research.

This balloon flight enabled testing of an 11-inch diameter small payload delivery system called the KREPE capsule (previously referred to as the KRUPS capsule) designed to carry research samples and other small payloads from astronauts on the International Space Station back to Earth. Although the balloon reached an altitude of approximately 100,000 feet, the conditions did not expose KRUPS to the temperatures needed to test its thermal protection system (TPS). However, the test did provide an important preparatory step in advance of a subsequent orbital test of the capsule and its TPS.

Specifically, the flight allowed researchers to evaluate V-R3x’s advanced swarm communications by forming a mesh network between multiple spacecraft and ground stations. The flight data was to be added to that of an orbital flight test of three V-R3x CubeSats that launched to space in January 2021.