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":"LaunchPoint Technologies, Inc. (LaunchPoint) proposes to develop synthesis methods and design architectures for distributed control systems in precision spacecraft formations. Implementation of precision spacecraft formations requires distribution of sensing, communication, and actuation capabilities between the spacecraft composing formation. Distributed architecture demands that each spacecraft maintains an estimate of states of other members of the formation for mission coordination, reconfiguration, and collision avoidance. We propose to design distributed estimation architectures that are able to provide a formation control system with reliable formation state estimates and monitor the formation components for faults and failures. LaunchPoint will extend the existing state-of-the-art techniques and tailor them to the specific NASA needs. The proposed design methods will provide the distributed estimators with a well-defined level of accuracy and guarantee stability of the complete distributed closed-loop system. Communication constraints and uncertainties for inter-spacecraft communication links will be explicitly considered and the developed design methods will allow trade-off between communication complexity and the formation performance. The developed methods will be applied for design of the distributed system for one of the NASA missions. The designed estimator will be tested in simulations for the practical mission scenarios and with the presence of realistic disturbances, communication, and sensor noises.","benefits":"Design methods for distributed formation control architectures can find their applications in many commercial and military technologies. Precision flying formation spacecraft can be used in synthetic aperture radars for high-resolution surveillance of ground targets. They can also implement synthetic communication satellites for high-quality service of specified geographical regions. Synthetic formation implemented with several satellites will offer a unique flexibility in implementation of various data collection tasks. The distributed sensing nature of the spacecraft formation will increase system robustness, allow replacement, reconfiguration, and upgrades of new functional units to the synthetic data collection instrument. It will further increase mission life and allow for a graceful degradation of the system performance.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":"LaunchPoint Technologies, Inc. (LaunchPoint) proposes to develop synthesis methods and design architectures for distributed control systems in precision spacecraft formations. Implementation of precision spacecraft formations requires distribution of sensing, communication, and actuation capabilities between the spacecraft composing formation. Distributed architecture demands that each spacecraft maintains an estimate of states of other members of the formation for mission coordination, reconfiguration, and collision avoidance. We propose to design distributed estimation architectures that are able to provide a formation control system with reliable formation state estimates and monitor the formation components for faults and failures. LaunchPoint will extend the existing state-of-the-art techniques and tailor them to the specific NASA needs. The proposed design methods will provide the distributed estimators with a well-defined level of accuracy and guarantee stability of the complete distributed closed-loop system. Communication constraints and uncertainties for inter-spacecraft communication links will be explicitly considered and the developed design methods will allow trade-off between communication complexity and the formation performance. The developed methods will be applied for design of the distributed system for one of the NASA missions. The designed estimator will be tested in simulations for the practical mission scenarios and with the presence of realistic disturbances, communication, and sensor noises.","benefits":"Design methods for distributed formation control architectures can find their applications in many commercial and military technologies. Precision flying formation spacecraft can be used in synthetic aperture radars for high-resolution surveillance of ground targets. They can also implement synthetic communication satellites for high-quality service of specified geographical regions. Synthetic formation implemented with several satellites will offer a unique flexibility in implementation of various data collection tasks. The distributed sensing nature of the spacecraft formation will increase system robustness, allow replacement, reconfiguration, and upgrades of new functional units to the synthetic data collection instrument. It will further increase mission life and allow for a graceful degradation of the system performance.