NASA TESTS QUALTECH SYSTEMS’ BATTERY PROGNOSTICS TECHNOLOGY FOR USE ABOARD SPACE FLIGHTS; U.S. Space Agency Needs Precise Calculations of Battery health and remaining useful life for Batteries That Will Power Mars Spacecraft and Rovers

 

WETHERSFIELD, CONN. (June 14, 2007) A breakthrough battery impedance measuring technology, developed by researchers at Qualtech Systems’ (QSI) and Montana Tech, capable of dramatically speeding measurement of the internal state in batteries, is being tested by NASA for use on future space missions to Mars. 

Testing began as part of Phase II funding under NASA’s Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) research program.  According to NASA, Phase II continues development of the most promising Phase I projects.

NASA’s goal is to develop methodologies and monitoring techniques for accurately determining the health of rechargeable batteries in space applications. 

Traveling the two hundred million miles between Earth and Mars on a spacecraft with mission critical systems dependent on rechargeable batteries as a significant source of power makes issues such as remaining battery capacity, called State of Charge (SOC), and overall battery State of Health (SOH) critical. That is especially true for crewed flights that will require advance warning of battery power loss in order to safely reconfigure mission expectations in the event of unexpected power loss.

“Our technology eliminates, to the highest degree possible, the uncertainty in battery power energy storage,” said Qualtech Systems’ President Chuck Vallurupalli.  “We believe our technology will allow the crew to determine whether remaining battery capacity is enough to complete a mission as planned, reconfigure the mission, or cut it short and return to Earth safely.”

By analyzing specific algorithms and battery performance factors such as age, temperature and cycle patterns, a simple procedure performed by astronauts will provide a prognosis as to the current health of a battery, or how much longer the battery will be able to perform its critical function.

The Qualtech prognostics measuring techniques is believed to be a significant advancement over what NASA and other government sectors are currently operating with. Unexpected battery failures have been linked to mission delays in the past, including one that prevented astronauts from ejecting metal spheres intended to help track small space debris that could pose a threat to NASA operations.

The technology is expected to have applications in the private sector where the portable electronic devices, aircraft and ground transportation industries and especially the hybrid vehicle sector are considered potential markets.  Future testing could lead to applications with fuel cells and ultra-capacitors.

QSI, a field service maintenance company, has a long association with NASA. Most recently, NASA contracted QSI to develop an automated process that will identify faults within specific software-based systems onboard NASA spacecraft, determine how serious the problems are, and provide immediate instructions on how to recover from system failures.  By automating much of the process and employing the use of “run-time” diagnostics, QSI’s Integrated Systems Health Management (ISHM) solution will enable the spacecraft to recover from a system failure quickly and on its own, thereby reducing dependence on manual intervention by NASA ground personnel.

 

About Qualtech Systems, Inc:

Qualtech Systems, Inc. (QSI) offers field service intelligence solutions to OEMs and end-users in the defense and commercial space. Qualtech Systems' customers have consistently achieved higher customer satisfaction and improved profitability by optimizing field service operational metrics such as lead time to act, mean time to repair, first time fix rate, spares consumption rate and work force training costs. Qualtech's solutions span the entire product lifecycle and can be deployed in a flexible manner to fit customer needs and business processes.  Qualtech's diagnostic tools are currently being used in military and commercial applications on three continents.

 

For more information visit http://www.teamqsi.com

 

Contact:

Jas Singh

860-257-8014 x 1122