NASA SBIR 2007 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Flight Landata, Inc.
One Parker Street
Lawrence, MA 01843 - 1548
(978) 682-7764

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Xiuhong Sun
xhsun1@aol.com
One Parker Street
Lawrence, MA 01843 - 1548
(978) 682-7767

Expected Technology Readiness Level (TRL) upon completion of contract: 6 to 7

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
The innovation is a miniaturized airborne imaging central server system (MAICSS). MAICSS is designed as a high-performance-computer-based electronic backend that integrates a complete set of power and signal interfaces to serve a suite of advanced LWIR, MWIR, EO, and hyperspectral imaging sensors and an inertial measurement unit for atmospheric and surface remote sensing. MAICSS records continuous precision geo-referenced and time-tagged multi-sensor throughputs to mass storage devices at a high aggregate rate, typically 60 Megabytes/sec. MAICSS compatible sensor packages include 1) NASA's 1024 x 1024 pixel MWIR/LWIR dual band QWIP imager, 2) a 39 Megapixel BuckEye EO camera, and 3) a fast (e.g. 200+ scanlines/sec) and wide swathwidth (e.g. 1920+ pixels) CCD/InGaAs imager based VNIR and SWIR imaging spectrometer. MAICSS consists of a suite of interchangeable and interconnected modules in precision-machined boxes for flexible system deployment. It has a total solid state compact design with a typical volume of 0.02 m3 and a mass of 16kg. Without hard drives and other moving parts, it is operational at high altitudes and survivable in high vibration environments. MAICSS is a complete standalone imaging server instrument with an easy-to-use software package for either autonomous data collection or interactive airborne operation.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
MAICSS is a cost-efficient multi-sensor imaging instrument server for high performance reflective and emissive spectral imaging and stereovision data collection. These multi-sensor data are valuable to retrieve the Earth surface, atmospheric, and oceanic geo-physical and geo-spatial parameters.
Its near term NASA commercial applications include:
1) Location and mapping of water-harboring subsurface caves and new sources of spring waters in the southwestern United States (Arizona, California, Colorado, Nevada, New Mexico and Utah);
2) NASA-aided international Earth remote sensing program in Thailand for airborne atmospheric aerosol optical property retrieval and agricultural environment studies;
3) Deployment in a UAV/Airship for either field-expedient or persistent launch range surveillance/intrusion data collection;
4) Mapping of river, river delta, and coastal water thermal gradients, color gradients, and pollution.
Its long term NASA applications include:
1) Exploration of Martian water-harboring subsurface caves;
2) Mapping the extent of certain Moon/Mars surface resources and identifying promising outpost/science sites and traversable terrains.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
MAICSS can be fit into light aircraft, UAVs, and airship for low-cost commercial geophysical and geospatial remote sensing. Its competitive advantages include its simultaneous geo-referenced foot resolution hyperspectral, inch resolution stereovision, and 0.02 K thermal images. It is capable of performing challenging remote sensing missions, including and pertaining to:
• High-resolution aerial thermal mapping over a wide variety of industrial, commercial, and residential areas to detect thermal anomalies, including insulation deterioration of a powerline and rooftop thermal leakage;
• Thermal and pollution effluents from mining and other industrial operations such as paper mills and power plants;
• Mapping of homeland and national and international border security;
• Disaster and emergency response;
• Forest fires and residual warm spots and other forest/park services;
• Law enforcement;
• Aerial IED detection;
• Aerial deer and seabird counts;
• Precision agriculture, crop growing status monitoring, and vegetation specie mapping;
• Coastal and river environment monitoring.

NASA's technology taxonomy has been developed by the SBIR-STTR program to disseminate awareness of proposed and awarded R/R&D in the agency. It is a listing of over 100 technologies, sorted into broad categories, of interest to NASA.

TECHNOLOGY TAXONOMY MAPPING

Data Acquisition and End-to-End-Management Data Input/Output Devices Highly-Reconfigurable Human-Computer Interfaces Optical Photonics Portable Data Acquisition or Analysis Tools