NASA SBIR 2015 Solicitation

SMALL BUSINESS CONCERN (Firm Name, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Aerodyne Research, Inc.
45 Manning Road
Billerica, MA 01821 - 3976
(978) 663-9500

PRINCIPAL INVESTIGATOR/PROJECT MANAGER (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Zhenhong Yu
zyu@aerodyne.com
45 Manning Road
Billerica, MA 01821 - 3976
(978) 932-0265

CORPORATE/BUSINESS OFFICIAL (Name, E-mail, Mail Address, City/State/Zip, Phone)
Mr. George Wittreich
gnw@aerodyne.com
45 Manning Road
Billerica, MA 01821 - 3976
(978) 663-9500 Extension :217

Estimated Technology Readiness Level (TRL) at beginning and end of contract:
Begin: 4
End: 8

Technology Available (TAV) Subtopics
Airborne Measurement Systems is a Technology Available (TAV) subtopic that includes NASA Intellectual Property (IP). Do you plan to use the NASA IP under the award?
No

TECHNICAL ABSTRACT (Limit 2000 characters, approximately 200 words)
We propose to develop a highly sensitive and compact RGB DPAS aerosol absorption monitor for NASA's Airborne Measurement Program. It will measure aerosol light absorption simultaneous at three spectral regions: blue, green and red. The proposed measurement technique takes advantage of the current rapid development on high-power semiconductor lasers MEMS microphones. It will eventually weigh less than 25 pounds and consume approximately 300W electrical power. It will also be capable of being remotely controlled and being operated at a variety of sampling pressure conditions for the airborne measurements. Since majority of the electronic and optical components of the proposed system are commercially available except the home-designed acoustic cells, its total manufacturing cost could be less than $20,000 per unit.

POTENTIAL NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
The primary NASA need for this technology is to measure spectrally resolved light absorption by atmospheric aerosols for its Airborne Measurement program. At present, aerosol light absorption is measured by collecting sample on a filter subtract and measuring light extinction and scattering of the collected samples during the airborne measurements. This method suffers from a number of intrinsic errors. The proposed RGB DPAS technique will be far more sensitive than the filter-based techniques, and is capable of providing 1s data acquisition measurement. Additionally, past NASA programs such as EXCAVATE, APEX, UNA-UNA, and AAFEX have had as a major focus, on the measurement of black carbon emissions from civilian aircraft engines. Since mass absorption coefficient of black carbon is known at several visible wavelengths, the proposed DPAS aerosol absorption monitor can be used as a black carbon emission monitor.

POTENTIAL NON-NASA COMMERCIAL APPLICATIONS (Limit 1500 characters, approximately 150 words)
We expect that the 3-color RGB DPAS aerosol absorption monitor developed under this program will significantly benefit the atmospheric science community in characterizing the radiative properties of ambient aerosols. The ability of the proposed instrument to simultaneously measure particle absorption with good time resolution and high precision in three colors will enable continuous measurements of the particle optical absorption that can be directly used by regional and global climate forcing models. In combination with the Cavity Attenuated Phase-Shift (CAPS) extinction monitor, which represents a dramatic improvement on current particle extinction measurement technology, single particle albedo of ambient aerosols could be directly determined. Since aerosol scattering of solar radiation causes atmospheric cooling, whereas absorption can cause atmospheric warming, direct measurements on single particle albedo of ambient aerosols are critical in understanding aerosol effect on the Earth radiative balance.