NASA Awards AstraQua $1.27 Million Phase II Contract for Electric Aircraft Propulsion Monitoring Software
WASHINGTON — NASA has awarded AstraQua Inc. a $1.27 million Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) Phase II contract to develop AstraSense, software that monitors electric aircraft propulsion systems and identifies potential equipment failures. The company announced the award on October 21, and trade publication Military & Aerospace Electronics reported the contract details on October 27.
AstraSense processes sensor information directly on board an aircraft or autonomous platform rather than relying on a continuous connection to external computing systems. The software looks at operating conditions to uncover changes that may indicate developing problems, diagnoses faults and estimates how much operating capability remains before equipment needs attention, so that autonomous systems can decide whether to continue operating, adjust a mission or return for maintenance. The approach builds on conventional health monitoring by estimating how equipment degradation could affect future operation, rather than relying solely on alarms triggered after a measurement crosses a specified threshold.
The Phase II contract follows an earlier SBIR Phase I effort involving health management and sensing technologies for sustainable aviation and autonomous systems. AstraQua plans to evaluate AstraSense using hardware testbeds, with an emphasis on verifying fault-prediction performance and assessing how the software responds to changing operating conditions. The funded work focuses on hybrid-electric and all-electric aircraft propulsion. The company is also considering applications in planetary exploration vehicles and industrial robotics, although those uses fall outside the current contract's primary scope.
AstraQua founder and CEO Loay Elbasyouni previously served as lead electrical engineer for NASA's Ingenuity Mars helicopter and worked on Perseverance rover mission systems. The company has not reported completed Phase II validation results or announced a deployment schedule for AstraSense.
Source: GSM · USA (original Chinese edition)
Photo: 图：NASA 的 Ingenuity 火星直升机在火星表面，由 Perseverance 漫游车的 Mastcam-Z 于2023年4月18日拍摄（NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/Simeon Schmauß，CC BY 2.0，经 Wikimedia Commons 使用）；AstraQua 创始人 Loay Elbasyouni 曾任这架直升机的首席电气工程师。Image: NASA's Ingenuity helicopter on the surface of Mars, photographed by the Perseverance rover's Mastcam-Z on April 18, 2023 (NASA/JPL-Caltech/ASU/Simeon Schmauß, CC BY 2.0, via Wikimedia Commons); AstraQua founder Loay Elbasyouni served as the helicopter's lead electrical engineer.
