Welcome To Innovation

The NASA Sensors Initiative

By Larry Viterna
Chief, Commercial Technology Office
NASA Glenn Research Center

It may sound like a cliché, but sensors are the future and the future is now! This fact has not gone unnoticed by the NASA Commercial Technology Program’s Marketing Team, who developed and wrote the agency’s marketing plan. One of the team’s recommendations was to create industry-focused initiatives, and to emphasize much of the marketing efforts on strategic sector partnerships by facilitating participation of all NASA centers. This concentration is on industry sectors that work with NASA core capabilities and investment areas. The marketing team has agreed to deliver companies and negotiate partnerships that will add industry dollars to NASA research funding. A stronger base of industry proposers for NASA solicitations is to be established, and one important focus area is geared towards the sensors industry.

Why Sensors?

A market assessment was performed to determine the needs of industry in the sensors areas and to study the overall trends. It was found that 75 percent of sensors are made in the United States. In the instrumentation industry, growth is reportedly 13.5 percent per year, with sales of approximately $49 billion in 2000. The industry employs 150,000 people worldwide. Sales in the sensors segment amount to $24 billion a year, with a 15 percent growth rate. The U.S. sensors industry employs 80,000 people.

NASA’s Technology Needs

NASA, in turn, has identified technology needs of its own. It is anticipated that these needs can be met via industry partnerships and cooperative research, as well as development efforts with U.S. corporations and academia. Several of the identified needs are for low-speed gas velocity sensors, multifunctional chemical sensors, temperature and pressure sensors for harsh environments, embedded fiber Bragg sensors, NO_x sensors, opto-electronics for space application, combustion gas sensor for microgravity environments and low-speed gas velocity sensors.

Workshops and Conferences

To kick off the Sensors Initiative at NASA Glenn Research Center, the IDEAS (Innovations, Demonstrations, Exhibits, Applications, and Spinoffs) conference focusing on microsystems was held in Cleveland in November 1999. This forum brought together experts from industry, government and academia to discuss industry requirements; the packaging and fabrication of sensors, motors/actuators and fluidics; and simulation and analysis. Showcased technologies included those dealing with health monitoring in harsh environments, including sensors, actuators, microelectronics, packaging and micromachining.

The Glennan Microsystems Initiative

NASA Glenn Research Center’s Glennan Microsystem Initiative (GMI) is an endeavor involving Case Western Reserve University and Glenn to develop microsystem applications. The Battelle Memorial Institute, a non-profit organization that promotes new technology developments, manages the initiative. GMI recently received a $1.15 million Technology Action Fund Grant from the state of Ohio.

Microsystems are miniaturized electrical and mechanical devices as small as a human hair that will not only help ensure NASA’s future missions are faster, better and cheaper, but also give Ohio’s companies cutting-edge technology to compete in the international marketplace.

MEMS Revolution

Unique microsystems, or micro-electromechancial systems (MEMS), are designed to work in harsh environments. Microsystems are integrated, miniaturized, electrical and mechanical devices, such as sensors, motors, gears, valves and microprocessors, made from a silicon carbide-based material. Building on semiconductor manufacturing techniques, the devices can be made as small as the diameter of a human hair, combined with other devices in large numbers, and manufactured together on a single semiconductor chip. The results are devices that will operate in the harshest environments.

NASA’s Goal

NASA hopes to create technology development partnerships through marketing our most promising sensor technologies to industry. These partnerships should leverage NASA and industry resources to yield win/win results. NASA hopes to then be recognized and valued as a “business partnering unit” for the agency’s enterprises and programs. The ultimate goal is to establish high impact partnerships, benefiting both industry and the agency.

This issue of Innovation highlights NASA-sponsored sensors research that can play a role in everyday life.

The search for development partners within the sensors industry is just beginning.