Christine Thropp
NASA has made 140 new awards to 127 U.S. small businesses to help them develop, demonstrate and deliver technologies under the second phase of the space agency's Small Business Innovation Research program.
The $105 million investment will provide awardees with up to $750,000 funding each to advance the technologies they presented to NASA as part of the SBIR Phase I contracts and prepare it for potential commercialization, the space agency said Friday.
The program seeks to field technologies capable of supporting NASA's exploration efforts as well as its initiatives in space technology, science and aeronautics.
“The selected technologies have displayed great potential impacts for their respective sectors, and we are proud to continually invest in today’s booming aerospace economy through these small businesses,” said Jason Kessler, SBIR Program executive at NASA.
Thirty-three of the 140 Phase II awardees are women-owned, minority-owned and veteran-owned small businesses.
Houston, Texas-based Tietronix Software, one of the program participants, will mature an artificial intelligence- and augmented reality-based system that could provide astronauts with medical resources and support, and could inform them of procedural guidance.
