Small Business/SBIR

Contamination Monitoring Technology Commercialized

The Aerospace Engineering Group (AEG) of IDEA, LLC in Beltsville, Maryland, is working with Kennedy Space Center (KSC) in a Cooperative Agreement to commercialize a KSC-developed automated fallout monitoring contamination detection system to benefit both NASA and private industry.

The Florida/NASA Business Incubation Center provided AEG an office and laboratory operations at the Palm Bay, Florida Open Access Cleanroom. The company has experience in developing contamination-sensitive spaceflight hardware and is aware of the potential problems that can result from fallout. AEG is interested in helping not only the aerospace community, but commercial industries as well, including computer manufacturers and medical research and equipment industries. The Agreement's purpose is to jointly develop a manufacturing prototype Active Particle Fallout Monitor (APFM) system based on the NASA-developed prototype capable of measuring particulate fallout accumulation in KSC cleanrooms.

The one-year agreement calls for IDEA to evaluate the system capability and performance, its market potential, quantify system reliability, and improve system performance. This work will culminate in production of a manufacturing prototype and accumulation of data contained in a final project report that will be furnished to NASA.

NASA developed and patented a particulate fallout contamination detection instrument that directly images, sizes, and counts contamination particles. IDEA has obtained license rights to it and another patented KSC-developed technology to help them with the project. One is an exclusive license to commercialize the "Detector for Particulate Surface Contamination" (now called the APFM), developed by the NASA Contamination Monitoring Laboratory (CML) and the former KSC Engineering Support Contractor I-NET, Inc. The second license is non-exclusive, for the "Particle Fallout/Activity Sensor," also developed by the CML and I-NET.

Particle fallout is a contamination source that concerns NASA and aerospace-related industries. Depending on the type and size of the particles, fallout can be a source of contamination that could affect the performance of sensitive spaceborn instruments and support equipment. KSC and other centers have been aware of this issue for several years and have sought to develop different types of monitoring systems that are designed to alert spacecraft and spaceflight hardware developers and customers of possible fallout problems.

Historically, particle fallout has been measured by placing witness plates in several areas near critical spaceflight hardware, and then, collecting the plates after a determined period of exposure. These plates are then subjected to examination under a microscope, where trained technicians count and size the particles over the covered area. This method is painstakingly slow and requires many hours of personnel resources. AEG hopes to further develop the NASA prototypes into an automatic system.

The first licensed technology is a real-time monitor that can quantitatively measure (count and size) particulate fallout contamination. This device distinguishes between particles and fibers (aspect ration greater than 10:1) and counts them as well as measuring and reporting their dimensions. The device directly images each particle and uses image processing algorithms in order to locate and size particles as well as to compensate for optical "holes" in particles, as well as "spiraled" fibers.

The second technology, also called the Real-time Optical Fallout Monitor (OFM), is a portable, optoelectronic instrument that uses a light scattering technique to measure the accumulation of particles. The OFM was developed in response to a NASA need to accurately detect and monitor the accumulation of potentially damaging environmental contamination (e.g., dust, fibers, or condensing vapor) on sensitive payload components in real time. This improves NASA's ability to mitigate, avoid, and/or explain mission-compromising incidents of contamination occurring during ground processing and, potentially, flight operations.