The NASA SBIR and STTR programs fund the research, development, and demonstration of innovative technologies that fulfill NASA needs as described in the annual Solicitations and have significant potential for successful commercialization. If you are a small business concern (SBC) with 500 or fewer employees or a non-profit RI such as a university or a research laboratory with ties to an SBC, then NASA encourages you to learn more about the SBIR and STTR programs as a potential source of seed funding for the development of your innovations.
The SBIR and STTR programs have 3 phases:
The SBIR and STTR Phase I contracts last for 6 months with a maximum funding of $125,000, and Phase II contracts last for 24 months with a maximum funding of $750,000 - $1.5 million.
Opportunity for Continued Technology Development Post-Phase II:
The NASA SBIR/STTR Program currently has in place two initiatives for supporting its small business partners past the basic Phase I and Phase II elements of the program that emphasize opportunities for commercialization. Specifically, the NASA SBIR/STTR Program has the Phase II Enhancement (Phase II-E) and Phase II eXpanded (Phase II-X) contract options.
Please review the links below to obtain more information on the SBIR/STTR programs.
Provides an overview of the SBIR and STTR programs as implemented by NASA
Provides access to the annual SBIR/STTR Solicitations containing detailed information on the program eligibility requirements, proposal instructions and research topics and subtopics
Schedule and links for the SBIR/STTR solicitations and selection announcements
Federal and non-Federal sources of assistance for small business
Search our complete archive of awarded project abstracts to learn about what NASA has funded
Still have questions? Visit the program FAQs
","parentProgram":{"ableToSelect":false,"isActive":true,"description":"Catalyst is a portfolio of early stage programs that specialize in different innovation constituencies and mechanisms to push the state of the art in aerospace technology development","programId":92327,"responsibleMd":{"canUserEdit":false,"locationEdit":false,"organizationRolePretty":"","organizationTypePretty":""},"title":"Catalyst","manageGaps":false,"acronymOrTitle":"Catalyst"},"parentProgramId":92327,"programId":73,"responsibleMd":{"organizationId":4875,"organizationName":"Space Technology Mission Directorate","acronym":"STMD","organizationType":"NASA_Mission_Directorate","canUserEdit":false,"locationEdit":false,"organizationRolePretty":"","organizationTypePretty":"NASA Mission Directorate"},"responsibleMdOffice":4875,"stockImageFileId":36648,"title":"Small Business Innovation Research/Small Business Tech Transfer","manageGaps":false,"acronymOrTitle":"SBIR/STTR"},"description":"Formation flight can provide the benefits of a large effective telescope using precision formation flying of smaller, lower cost, collaborating telescopes. A decentralized architecture for estimation and control provides several key advantages including reduced communication and processing overheads as well as increased tolerance to a single point of failure. Since a decentralized design relies on communicating information between individual spacecraft, it becomes critical to enumerate and quantify the effect of information sharing on estimation, control and guidance systems performance for the entire formation. The goal of this project is to analyze these interactions between information communication, estimation, control and guidance systems as well as to develop analysis tools to help the TPFI team evaluate various trade-offs involved in designing these systems. During the proposed effort, we will bring together new advances in the fields of Robust Control, Risk Sensitive Optimal (RSO) control, and Covariance Intersection (CI) to combine information shared across the formation. We will study the impact of communications topologies on estimation performance, develop methods to reduce disagreements between parallel estimators, design control and guidance laws that are robust to estimation disagreements and study scalability issues for formations with large number of spacecraft. Phase I effort will also deliver a software analysis tool to help the NASA TPFI team evaluate trade-offs for candidate TPFI architectures. ","releaseStatus":"Released","status":"Completed","viewCount":859,"destinationType":[],"lastUpdated":"01/27/25","favorited":false,"detailedFunding":false,"projectContacts":[{"contactId":294200,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Lingji","lastName":"Chen","fullName":"Lingji Chen","fullNameInverted":"Chen, Lingji","receiveEmail":"Subscribed_User","projectContactRole":"Principal_Investigator","projectContactId":26187,"projectId":6759,"programContactRolePretty":"","projectContactRolePretty":"Principal Investigator"}],"programContacts":[{"contactId":206378,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Jason","lastName":"Kessler","fullName":"Jason L Kessler","fullNameInverted":"Kessler, Jason L","middleInitial":"L","email":"jason.l.kessler@nasa.gov","receiveEmail":"Subscribed_User","programContactRole":"Program_Director","programContactId":143,"programId":73,"programContactRolePretty":"Program Director","projectContactRolePretty":""},{"contactId":62051,"canUserEdit":false,"firstName":"Carlos","lastName":"Torrez","fullName":"Carlos Torrez","fullNameInverted":"Torrez, Carlos","email":"carlos.torrez@nasa.gov","receiveEmail":"Subscribed_User","programContactRole":"Program_Manager","programContactId":194,"programId":73,"programContactRolePretty":"Program Manager","projectContactRolePretty":""}],"leadOrganization":{"organizationId":4946,"organizationName":"Jet Propulsion Laboratory","acronym":"JPL","organizationType":"FFRDC_2fUARC","city":"Pasadena","stateTerritoryId":59,"stateTerritory":{"abbreviation":"CA","country":{"abbreviation":"US","countryId":236,"name":"United States"},"countryId":236,"name":"California","stateTerritoryId":59,"isTerritory":false},"country":{"abbreviation":"US","countryId":236,"name":"United States"},"countryId":236,"zipCode":"91109","projectId":6759,"projectOrganizationId":22650,"organizationRole":"Lead_Organization","canUserEdit":false,"locationEdit":false,"organizationRolePretty":"Lead Organization","organizationTypePretty":"FFRDC/UARC"},"otherOrganizations":[{"organizationId":4946,"organizationName":"Jet Propulsion Laboratory","acronym":"JPL","organizationType":"FFRDC_2fUARC","city":"Pasadena","stateTerritoryId":59,"stateTerritory":{"abbreviation":"CA","country":{"abbreviation":"US","countryId":236,"name":"United States"},"countryId":236,"name":"California","stateTerritoryId":59,"isTerritory":false},"country":{"abbreviation":"US","countryId":236,"name":"United States"},"countryId":236,"zipCode":"91109","projectId":6759,"projectOrganizationId":22650,"organizationRole":"Lead_Organization","canUserEdit":false,"locationEdit":false,"organizationRolePretty":"Lead Organization","organizationTypePretty":"FFRDC/UARC"},{"organizationId":4445,"organizationName":"Scientific Systems Company, Inc.","organizationType":"Industry","city":"Woburn","stateTerritoryId":30,"stateTerritory":{"abbreviation":"MA","country":{"abbreviation":"US","countryId":236,"name":"United States"},"countryId":236,"name":"Massachusetts","stateTerritoryId":30,"isTerritory":false},"country":{"abbreviation":"US","countryId":236,"name":"United States"},"countryId":236,"zipCode":"01801-2122","dunsNumber":"859244204","uei":"C12TQVKF5413","cageCode":"0KT97","congressionalDistrict":"Massachusetts 05","projectId":6759,"projectOrganizationId":20105,"organizationRole":"Supporting_Organization","canUserEdit":false,"locationEdit":false,"organizationRolePretty":"Supporting Organization","organizationTypePretty":"Industry"}],"primaryTx":{"taxonomyNodeId":11267,"taxonomyRootId":8817,"parentNodeId":11265,"code":"TX10.1.2","title":"State Estimation and Monitoring","description":"State estimation and monitoring technologies estimate internal and external states from raw or processed inputs generated by multiple sensors/instruments, ascertainment, and continual comparison to expected states.","exampleTechnologies":"Pose estimation for a rover, pose estimation for an in-space robotic-assembly arm, velocity estimation for an aerial vehicle, oxygen-level estimation and monitoring, battery health-state estimation, wind-speed estimation for a balloon explorer, tools that assess data validity and manage uncertainty","level":3,"hasChildren":false,"selected":false,"isPrimary":true,"hasInteriorContent":true},"primaryTxTree":[[{"taxonomyNodeId":11264,"taxonomyRootId":8817,"code":"TX10","title":"Autonomous Systems","level":1,"hasChildren":true,"selected":false,"hasInteriorContent":true},{"taxonomyNodeId":11265,"taxonomyRootId":8817,"parentNodeId":11264,"code":"TX10.1","title":"Situational and Self-Awareness Technologies","description":"Situational and self-awareness technologies interrogate, identify, and evaluate both the state of the environment and the state of the system. Examples include artificial neural networks (including deep learning), unsupervised learning, supervised learning, reinforcement learning, feature learning, and support vector machines.","level":2,"hasChildren":true,"selected":false,"hasInteriorContent":true},{"taxonomyNodeId":11267,"taxonomyRootId":8817,"parentNodeId":11265,"code":"TX10.1.2","title":"State Estimation and Monitoring","description":"State estimation and monitoring technologies estimate internal and external states from raw or processed inputs generated by multiple sensors/instruments, ascertainment, and continual comparison to expected states.","exampleTechnologies":"Pose estimation for a rover, pose estimation for an in-space robotic-assembly arm, velocity estimation for an aerial vehicle, oxygen-level estimation and monitoring, battery health-state estimation, wind-speed estimation for a balloon explorer, tools that assess data validity and manage uncertainty","level":3,"hasChildren":false,"selected":true,"hasInteriorContent":true}]],"technologyOutcomes":[],"libraryItems":[],"states":[{"abbreviation":"CA","country":{"abbreviation":"US","countryId":236,"name":"United States"},"countryId":236,"name":"California","stateTerritoryId":59,"isTerritory":false},{"abbreviation":"MA","country":{"abbreviation":"US","countryId":236,"name":"United States"},"countryId":236,"name":"Massachusetts","stateTerritoryId":30,"isTerritory":false}],"startDateString":"Feb 2008","endDateString":"Aug 2008"}}