NASA’s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) program has selected 110 U.S. small businesses to support technology development on a range of projects – from foldable solar arrays to satellite internet service enhancements.
NASA’s SBIR program provides early-stage funding and other non-monetary support to small businesses with pioneering ideas to help advance NASA’s missions and the aerospace ecosystem.
The new round of awards – SIBR’s second such phase of awards – gives almost $95 million to small businesses across 123 projects. Each winner received up to $750,000 to develop, demonstrate, and deliver their technologies to NASA over two years. The SBIR program selected 450 proposals from 309 small technology firms in the first phase of awards that totaled $45 million.
“NASA is working toward ambitious, world-changing missions … that require innovative solutions from several innovators, including small businesses,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy in a press release. “[We must continue] to find imaginative small businesses that have the expertise to help our agency solve our common challenges, and the SBIR program is one of the key ways we do that.”
Among the awardees are nine women-owned small businesses and five veteran-owned small businesses. Thirty-six of the organizations are first-time recipients of the awards.
