April 2024 - Physical Sciences Inc.

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Air Force to develop a Flash LiDAR Compressive Sensing (FLiCS)system as a potential alternative to a traditional scanned lidar for use in a Passively Augmented LiDAR (PAL) system.

Physical Sciences, Inc will develop a Passively Augmented LiDAR (PAL) using a Flash LiDAR Compressive Sensing (FLiCS) architecture. This system is designed to support enhanced target detection and identification in a low SWaP-C package by pairing a wide field of view (FOV) passive polarimetric long-wave infrared imager with the narrower FOV FLiCS. Key benefits of the PAL-FLiCS architecture include: 100% fill factor coverage and increased spatio-temporal diversity of measurements (both of which increase potential for obscurant penetration), reduced data volume, increased immunity to hot spots, background, and air column backscatter rejection. The Phase I program will focus on evaluating the efficacy of PAL-FLiCS sensing modalities via analytical modeling in the context of target detection and identification. This work will culminate with the development of a conceptual design for the prototype to be built under the Phase II effort.

For more information contact:

Elizabeth C. Schundler
Group Leader, Optical Systems Technologies
eschundler@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory (AFRL), Eglin AFB. This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Space Force to develop a propulsion system to showcase the benefits of a rotating detonation rocket engine in a flight-representative LOX/RP-2 hotfire test.

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) will develop and demonstrate a rotating detonation rocket engine (RDRE) propulsion pathfinder vehicle for a future hypersonic testbed. PSI and our vehicle integration partner will hotfire test a flight-representative propulsion system with thrust levels, burn duration, and SWaP metrics that match those of a specific hypersonic mission that stands to benefit from RDREs. The vehicle will interface with a 1000 lbf pressure-fed RDRE using LOX/RP-2 propellants. In Phase I, the team will define the propulsion pathfinder hardware to be used for the RDRE demonstration, including conceptual designs, a draft test plan, interface control drawing (ICD) for the engine, evaluation of potential test sites, and definition of budget and schedule for Phase II. In Phase II, flight hardware for tanks, feed systems, thrust vector control (TVC), thrust frame structures, and electrical controls will be used for the 1000 lbf LOX/RP-2 pathfinder demonstration that is directly applicable to the hypersonic flight to be conducted in Phase III.

For more information contact:

Dr. Jeffrey Wegener
Area Manager, Propulsion & Energetics
jwegener@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the Air Force / Space Force, Edwards AFB. This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a contract by the U.S Air Force to develop a software capability to detect generated by logistics operations in publicly available information (PAI) and to mitigate the risk of exposure of DoD operations.

Physical Sciences Inc (PSI) proposes to develop a data analytics and visualization platform to enable DOD logistics officers to improve Operations Security (OPSEC) by understanding their operational exposure in publicly available information (PAI). The proposed Graph Analysis for Predicting and Preventing Logistics Exposure (GRAPPLE) system will ingest, align and analyze multiple diverse streams of PAI to automatically detect anomalies and patterns that are most indicative of military logistics operations. Graph analytics techniques will enable efficient discovery of relevant patterns from individually benign data sources by building connectivity between related entities and events in different data channels. Further, GRAPPLE will guide logistics officers in applying countermeasures to optimally disguise operations within benign streams of commerce. GRAPPLE will leverage transitioned, operational graph capabilities for entity alignment, anomaly detection, and graph pattern search, developed by PSI under the DARPA SIGMA+ program. The proposed development will improve OPSEC by providing comprehensive tools to visualize and mitigate the unintentional exposure of DOD operations against intelligent adversaries, proposing countermeasure that will reduce the probability of exposure by at least 30%.

For more information contact:

Dr. John Wright
Area Manager, Advanced Sensing Technologies
jwright@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the U.S. Air Force, Wright Patterson AFB. This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Air Force to develop high-extinction on-chip optical isolators that are compatible with mass-manufacturing and foundry fabrication.

The development of foundry-compatible optical isolators is critical for ensuring the robust manufacturing of quantum sensor and position, navigation, and timing instrumentation within the defense industry. Precision measurements rely on laser systems that require optical isolators to prevent unwanted back-reflections from destabilizing or even damaging the laser component. As the size, weight, power and cost (SWaP-C) of laser systems decrease with the advent of mass-manufacturable photonic chip technologies, the development of on-chip optical isolators are of critical importance. To address this issue, Physical Sciences, Inc. (PSI) and Harvard University will demonstrate Foundry-compatible Isolators based on a Lithium-niobate Electro-optic Transducer (FILET). Our FILET units will be fabricated using commercial wafer-scale processing and demonstrate ultra-broadband optical isolators with low insertion loss and high back-reflection extinction.

For more information, contact:

Dr. Christopher Evans
Group Leader, Scalable Photonic Technologies
cevans@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the Air Force Research Laboratory, Wright Patterson AFB. This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc (PSI) has recently been awarded a contract to develop a next generation digital night vision system for the US Air Force.

Physical Sciences Inc (PSI) will develop Broadband, Extended use, and Perception-matched Digital Night Vision (BEP-DNV) for the US Air Force to enhance binocular situational awareness and operating efficacy of fixed wing pilots. The BEP-DNV system will balance human visual system (HVS) matched spatial resolution with low temporal latency of rendering and high frame rate. PSI will leverage its experience in delivering integrated optical systems and developing custom optical components for night vision architectures. Flat optics will aid in delivery of compact, high performance eyepiece and objective lenses, and enable other system components to better match HVS perception requirements. PSI will present optical, display, sensor, and electronics for the BEP-DNV and a system trade study for HVS-matched performance for fixed wing pilot applications.

For more information contact:

Dr. David Woolf
Group Leader, Structured Optical Materials
dwoolf@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the U.S. Air Force, AFRL. This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a program from the Department of Energy to develop a reusable and remotely handled turnkey absorber system to efficiently capture, store, and recover chlorine and metal chlorides produced in the molten chloride reactor fuel cycle.

Molten salt reactors offer lower operating pressure, higher operating temperature, and closed fuel cycle compared to other types of nuclear reactors. Many sorbents have been shown to be viable to capture the chlorine and metal chloride by-products, however, they oftentimes consist of expensive precious metals, demonstrate low performance, and/or is non-reusable (i.e., disposal). In order to reduce waste production, recycling the decomposed products for reusage down-stream is essential. This illustrates the need to develop a regenerative, scrubbing technology that can efficiently capture chlorine and metal chlorides from the nuclear off-gas stream.

PSI’s sorbents will selectively capture and release the high purity chlorine over many cycles. The production of the sorbent materials will create new business opportunities by integrating them into a value-chain of industrial and/or commercial processes that generate chlorine. PSI’s innovation is a Smart Sorbent technology platform with high surface area that is engineered with surface functionalities which enables selective chlorine capture from nuclear waste and regeneration of the sorbent.

PSI’s approach will demonstrate economically viable process to produce high performance, regenerative sorbent material to capture, store, and recycle chlorine and chloride compounds from nuclear reactors. This in turn, will ensure safe and continuous operation of nuclear reactors.

For more information contact:

Dr. Dorin Preda
Area Manager, Materials Technologies
dpreda@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the Department of Energy. This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a contract from the U.S. Army to develop an airborne optical payload for surface and subsurface mine and obstacle detection in support of remote breaching operations.

The mine and obstacle detection optical payload (MOD-OP) will be coupled with custom algorithms tailored for detection of anti-personnel and anti-tank mines and common obstacles including concertina wire and tetrahedrons. The payload hardware covers a broad spectral range (0.4-2.5 μm and 7.5‑13.5 μm) with three distinct channels including a hyperspectral channel that captures a variety of surface and subsurface target phenomenologies s that the algorithms will exploit to enable detection even in highly cluttered and camouflaged environments. The MOD-OP sensor will operate from a commercial UAS at 250 m altitude and will cover a 4.5×150 m breaching lane in less than 10 s, supporting covert and fast missions that remove the soldier from direct mine-related hazards. The Phase I effort will develop a system model that fully describes the MOD-OP hardware. Test imagery over the relevant spectral ranges will be acquired with an existing sensor and used to modify mine detection algorithms previously developed by PSI. Requirements and a preliminary design for a Phase II prototype will also be generated.

For more information contact:

Elizabeth Schundler
Group Leader, Optical Systems Technologies
eschundler@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the U.S. Army. This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.

Press Release

Physical Sciences Inc. (PSI) has been awarded a contract by the U.S. Navy to develop a sensor for early warning of battery failures through the detection of vent gases.

PSI will adapt and combine two previously demonstrated, mature technologies to provide a comprehensive solution to this problem. The resulting technology will support rapid, sensitive and selective detection of vent gases spanning 1‑1000 ppm. This is accomplished by first encoding the source spectrum across the MWIR and LWIR spectra range, supporting robust discrimination between chemicals and an enhanced signal to noise ratio due to the multiplexed measurement. The spectrally modulated source is used to make sample transmission measurements over the full spectral range and a 50x range of pathlengths leveraging a compact open-path sample cell. This data is fit along two dimensions (pathlength and wavelength) to Beer’s Law, resulting in a quantification and discrimination immune to source instability or other common mode noise. Under the Phase I, PSI will leverage in-house hardware to demonstrate the key features of the two parent technologies as applied to the battery thermal runaway problem. These two technologies will then be integrated under the Phase II to produce a complete solution for early vent gas detection that can be used to improve the reliability, cost and safety of battery powered vehicles for Navy applications.

For more information contact:

Elizabeth C. Schundler
Group Leader, Optical Systems Technologies
eschundler@psicorp.com
Physical Sciences Inc.
Office: (978) 689-0003

Acknowledgement of Sponsorship: This work is supported under a contract with the Naval Sea Systems Command. This support does not constitute an express or implied endorsement on the part of the Government.

Press Release

FOR IMMEDIATE RELEASE
Physical Sciences, Inc. lauds GAO review of leading recipients of SBIR awards

ANDOVER, Mass., April 1, 2024 — Physical Sciences, Inc., a leading technology company, commends the Government Accountability Office for a thorough and carefully considered assessment of recipients of multiple awards under the Small Business Innovation Research and Small Business technology Transfer (SBIR/STTR) programs.

The oversight report, Small Business Research Programs: Increased Performance Standards
Likely Affect Few Businesses Receiving Multiple Awards, was mandated by the SBIR and
STTR Extension Act of 2022. It evaluated the performance of recipients that received 50 or more Phase II awards to develop prototypes or demonstrate other advancements between fiscal years 2011 and 2020.

PSI was among 10 companies interviewed by GAO. The report’s main conclusions reflect the company’s long experience executing SBIR awards for the Departments of Defense, Energy, Homeland Security, and other participating federal agencies. They also correspond with PSI’s recent public observations, in Defense News, National Defense, and in a public briefing for congressional staff hosted by Rep. Seth Moulton (D-MA).

“We are very pleased that the report captured the ‘combinatorial innovation’ approaches used by companies like ours that integrate SBIR technologies to address multiple applications and serve as the system innovators to the larger system integrators,” PSI President and CEO Bill Marinelli stated.

Among GAO’s findings:
– SBIR-derived technologies for mission-oriented agencies such as the Department of Defense have a lower adoption rate due to their specialty applications, longer timelines for development, and the changing needs of sponsoring agencies.

– The higher rates of competitive SBIR awards to multi-award winners at DoD are in large measure due to their dedicated testing, training, contracting, IT, and business processes, which spread the cost of the investments over multiple programs.

– Multi-award winners are regularly selected to research and develop technologies that meet specific agency or warfighter needs without wider applications, which limits their potential to be commercialized and attract private investment compared to other awardees.

– The number of patents and commercialization rates by multi-award winners often do not present a comprehensive view of outcomes, due to the acquisition of their innovations by larger businesses, the transition of knowledge to other programs, and principal investigators who often apply their SBIR discoveries to other businesses or industries.

– There are no specific barriers to entry in the SBIR/STTR programs for other small businesses, which GAO found to have similar Phase II award rates as multi-award winners, and
multi-award winners do not crowd out other businesses by any accepted measure of market concentration.

– The ability of most multi-award winners to meet the enhanced participation metrics included in the recent legislation that reauthorized SBIR/STTR programs indicates the intent of the program is being met.

Overall, the GAO review emphasizes the critical role played by small innovators that the federal government has repeatedly turned to for help in solving difficult technological challenges. And it underscores that multi-award winners are not crowding out other applicants.

Marinelli concluded: “The report’s findings regarding the lack of program barriers to small business entry is supported by other publicly available data that show that companies in underserved states submit far fewer proposals, even while having higher award rates. We hope this report ends the debate about multi-award winners and that the program can be permanently authorized so companies like ours can invest in these important technologies for the future.”

Physical Sciences, Inc., develops electro-optical/infrared sensing systems and other technologies for the defense, homeland security, medical and energy sectors.