Contract · Federal

TECHNOLOGY TRANSFER OPPORTUNITY: 3D Lidar for Autonomous Landing Site Selection (GSC-TOPS-353)

NATIONAL AERONAUTICS AND SPACE ADMINISTRATION Nationwide

Status Closes in 299 days
Amount Amount not listed
Set-aside None (open competition)

Scope

NASA’s Technology Transfer Program solicits inquiries from companies interested in obtaining license rights to commercialize, manufacture and market the following technology.

License rights may be issued on an exclusive or nonexclusive basis and may include specific fields of use.

NASA provides no funding in conjunction with these potential licenses.

THE TECHNOLOGY: Next generation autonomous planetary exploration missions require advanced sensing capabilities for choosing proper landing areas for the vehicles.

Current tools do not have the capability to allow vehicles outside the range of terrestrial control to autonomously perform safe landing operations.

The Ocellus 3D lidar developed by the NASA Goddard Space Flight Center is a lightweight, small-footprint 3D lidar system for planetary and lunar exploration.

The new 3D lidar can perform both altimetry (or range-finding) measurements from high altitudes and, at lower altitudes, terrain mapping and imaging.

These measurements provide the necessary data for autonomous systems to select safe landing areas for planetary exploration vehicles.

Developed to aid in the safe landing and navigation of the rotocopter for the Dragonfly mission to explore Titan, the Ocellus 3D lidar may be used for a wide variety of altimetry and terrain mapping purposes both in space and terrestrially.

Aerial planetary exploration spacecraft require lightweight, compact, and low power sensing systems to enable successful landing operations.

The Ocellus 3D lidar meets those criteria as well as being able to withstand harsh planetary environments.

Further, the new tool is based on space-qualified components and lidar technology previously developed at NASA Goddard (i.e., the Kodiak 3D lidar) as shown in the figure below.

The Ocellus 3D lidar quickly scans a n...

Typical award value

No award history yet for this category (NAICS 927110).

Timeline

Posted

Aug 24, 2026
Listing updated

Oct 20, 2026
Status

Open now

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