Photo: NASA

NASA issued early-stage Phase II ‘s Small Business Innovation Research (SBIR) financing to 110 U.S. small businesses to support technology development on a range of projects spanning foldable solar arrays to satellite internet service enhancements.

This Phase II round of NASA SBIR awards distributed 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. Among the awardees are nine women-owned small businesses, five veteran-owned small business, and 36 first-time Phase II recipients.

“NASA is working toward ambitious, world-changing missions – missions that require innovative solutions from a variety of innovators, including small businesses,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Pam Melroy. “It’s crucial that we 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.”

“It is both a program mission and passion to increase the diversity of collaborators we’re bringing into the agency’s work,” said Gynelle Steele, deputy program executive for NASA’s SBIR and Small Business Technology Transfer (STTR) programs at the agency’s headquarters in Washington. “We are especially excited about the chance to work alongside our first-time companies as they bring their ideas from paper to prototype in Phase II.”

NASA posted the full list of Phase II recipients on its website.