NASA’s Technology Transfer Program solicits inquiries from companies interested in obtaining license rights to commercialize, manufacture and market the following technology. License rights may be issued on an exclusive or nonexclusive basis and may include specific fields of use. NASA provides no funding in conjunction with these potential licenses.

THE TECHNOLOGY:

NASA Goddard Space Flight Center has developed SpOC Cube, a complete coronagraph that fits into a 6U CubeSat. It will fly in formation with a CubeSat equipped with an imaging spectrograph and study the suns corona, and more particularly, coronal mass ejections. These are bubbles of charged particles speed across the solar system and can disrupt electronics on low-Earth-orbiting satellites and damage terrestrial power grids when they slam into Earth’s protective magnetosphere.

SpoC Cube is designed to minimize noise from the coronagraph that can interfere with data collection and analysis. One way to avoid this light contamination is to place the occulter as far away from the instrument as possible. SpoC Cubes occulter is a full 7 feet away, nearly twice as far as in the STEREO spacecraft which collects similar data. Additional noise is reduction is achieved by using a spherical shaped occulter rather than a flat disk (think natures most effective occulter, the moon). A tennis ball sized occulter made from titanium is the current design but in the future, it may be a larger inflatable design that can be positioned even further away from the instrument.

To express interest in this opportunity, please submit a license application through NASA’s Automated Technology Licensing Application System (ATLAS) by visiting https://technology.nasa.gov/patent/GSC-TOPS-160

If you have any questions, please e-mail NASA’s Technology Transfer Program at [email protected] with the title of this Technology Transfer Opportunity as listed in this beta.SAM.gov notice and your preferred contact information. For more information about licensing other NASA-developed technologies, please visit the NASA Technology Transfer Portal at https://technology.nasa.gov/

These responses are provided to members of NASA’s Technology Transfer Program for the purpose of promoting public awareness of NASA-developed technology products, and conducting preliminary market research to determine public interest in and potential for future licensing opportunities. No follow-on procurement is expected to result from responses to this Notice.