While NASA is the leader in fundamental research for advancing aerospace technology within the United States, commercial entities are also working to advance the state-of-the-art in high and low-speed propulsion, flight vehicles, and fundamental aerospace sciences. The technology developed during this project will enable commercial air and spacecraft developers to obtain vital data which will improve vehicle design, safety, and efficiency. In addition, the distributed strain sensing system developed during this program will be applicable across industry to all structural monitoring applications in which electrical gauges are too cumbersome to use and do not provide sufficient speed, spatial resolution, and survivability. A configurable, versatile distributed fiber optic system provides a non-intrusive method of accurately measuring thermally compensated forces and moments, as opposed to electrical gauges, remaining EMI-resistant. Luna expects this system will act as a significant upgrade to existing facilities in which no current instrumentation exists with these capabilities. The implementation of distributed fiber optic sensing technology into current and future NASA projects will enable improved accuracy in aerodynamic measurements made across NASA facilities under a variety of test conditions and at a reduced cost. Operating at a reduced cost will allow more extensive testing of design features and system level designs in support of the next generation CEV, Lunar and Mars landing modules, and advanced propulsion systems. Fiber optic sensors are the only platform capable of accurately and reliably spanning the temperature range that is tested in the various NASA facilities from the National Transonics Facility to the HTT. It will also provide NASA with the capability of embedding the sensing system into composite structures for the purpose of monitoring key parameters without affecting the performance of the composite material. This technology will demonstrate itself as being vital to increasing the future design and testing capabilities of NASA.
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