Coalition of NASA, Army, Academic Researchers Wins Contract to Develop Innovative Flight Navigation Technology

NASA has tapped a team of aerospace, military and academic researchers for a three-year project that could dramatically improve in-flight navigation capabilities for space vehicles, military air and sea assets and commercial vehicles.

The project, "Fast Light Optical Gyroscopes for Precision Inertial Navigation," includes researchers from NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Ala.; the U.S. Army Aviation and Missile Research, Development and Engineering Center (AMRDEC) at Redstone Arsenal in Huntsville; and Northwestern University in Evanston, Ill.

Their work is intended to enhance the performance of a vehicle's inertial guidance system by refining the optical gyroscopes that drive it. These highly sensitive gyroscopes, paired with accelerometers, measure a vehicle's attitude or orientation based on its angular or rotational momentum in flight, and track its velocity and acceleration to precisely determine its position, flight path and attitude, or its orientation relative to the direction of travel.