The first round of feedback from NASA in response to the CI-GRS (Ground Recording System) project was received. Crystal Instruments delivered five prototype GRS units to NASA in mid-October 2021. By March 1st, NASA returned a highly detailed response totaling more than 80 pages. That feedback was accompanied by more than one thousand pages of supporting documentation including white papers and peer reviewed journal citations as well as graphical measurements made with the GRS systems.
NASA’s response to Crystal Instruments addressed items NASA found beneficial, items NASA wanted changed, and items NASA benchmark tested on the prototype units. The Crystal Instruments prototype GRS systems were delivered according to a contractual agreement and performed well when tested for each listed specification with some areas of improvement.
“This was an exciting response to see from NASA”, noted Crystal Instruments CEO, Dr. James Zhuge. “It really illustrates how detail-oriented NASA is as an organization and the emphasis they place on obtaining accurate measurements for the sonic boom testing they plan to conduct”.
Crystal Instruments returned with a 100-page reply confirming NASA’s findings and updating designs to meet NASA’s change requests. This round of prototype delivery and subsequent testing was pre-planned by NASA and built into the contract line items known as CLINs (Contract Line-Item Numbers). NASA knew from experience that the desired adjustments and feature functions of the analyzers would be obtained after receiving a set of units to try out.
Upcoming deliveries for the next CLINs will take place late this year and early into the next year. More than 125 units in total will be delivered for the GRS sonic boom study with an optional 50 units should the test plan grow to require more systems.