NASA Announces Grants For Small Businesses

National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) has announced the latest batch of small business grants. It will cover funding for crucial early-stages for more than 300 businesses, a total of $51 million. These “phase I” projects will receive up to $125,000 help to bring new technologies to the market.

Small Business Innovation Research and Technology Transfer programs will help inventors and entrepreneurs to take their work from the lab to commercial places. According to NASA the money not an investment but more like a grant. If Phase I recipients are warranted, there will be eligible for larger Phase II grants.

Similar to previous years, this year’s selections have applied to a wide range of industries and cover dozens of disciplines. In a news release, among NASA’s highlights are high-power solar arrays, a water purification system for use on the moon, a smart air traffic control system for urban flight, and improved lithium-ion batteries. One of the awards is for the company making which is making a compact sterilizer for use on spacecraft materials and could also be employed by health workers.

The list includes several neuromorphic computing efforts. Rather than employ the plasticity of actual neuronal networks, these chips and approaches utilize and accelerate machine learning methods. Last month, NASA just released the list for 2019’s. So it is safe to say that the announcements of Phase II for the year 2020 will take a while. SBIR program, which allocates billions to a dozen agencies, is considered to be the federal government’s best-kept secrets.