NASA announces 13 ideas that won $175,000 under prestigious NIAC programme

The National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA), on Thursday (Jan 4)announced the winners of Phase 1 of the 2024 NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) programme.

What is NIAC?

This programme, as per the US space agency, "fosters pioneering ideas by funding early-stage technology concept studies for future consideration and potential commercialization".

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As per NASA Associate Administrator Jim Free, "The daring missions NASA undertakes for the benefit of humanity all begin as just an idea, and NIAC is responsible for inspiring many of those ideas."

"The Ingenuity helicopter flying on Mars and instruments on the MarCO deep space CubeSats can trace their lineage back to NIAC, proving there is a path from creative idea to mission success. And, while not all these concepts will fly, NASA and our partners worldwide can learn from fresh approaches and may eventually use technologies advanced by NIAC," he added.

In phase 1, NASA is funding 13 concepts it has chosen from among companies and institutions across the United States. Each idea will receive a maximum of $175,000 in grants.

Here are some interesting, "visionary" ideas that "could transform future NASA missions with the creation of breakthroughs ".

— Mars Aerial and Ground Global Intelligent Explorer (MAGGIE)

Ge-Cheng Zha Coflow Jet, LLC proposes a novel global mobility Mars exploration platform called the Mars Aerial and Ground Intelligent Explorer (MAGGIE). Powered by solar energy, MAGGIE a compact fixed-wing aircraft will fly in the Martian atmosphere with vertical take-off/landing (VTOL) capability.

— A Revolutionary Approach to Interplanetary Space Travel: Studying Torpor in Animals for Space-health in Humans (STASH)

Mammalian hibernation is suggested as a promising way to mitigate the physical and mental health risks of space travel. An essential feature of that is 'torpor' an energy-conserving state involving an active and often deep reduction in metabolic rate. Using animals, Ryan Sprenger from Fauna Bio Inc. wants to study this.

— Add-on to Large-Scale Water Mining Operations on Mars to Screen for Introduced and Alien Life

Steven Benner from the Foundation For Applied Molecular Evolution poses that planned human missions to Mars can complicate the search for life on the alien planet. This project states that dry cached rocks aren't enough and that water mined in preparation for human missions can be used to extract genetic polymers (DNA or alien) using an “agnostic life finding” (ALF) system.

— Swarming Proxima Centauri: Coherent Picospacecraft Swarms Over Interstellar Distances

Thomas Eubanks, Space Initiatives Inc. in Florida, poses that a swarm of tiny probes pushed by a laser light could travel to another star (Proxima Centauri) this century. This swarm of 1000s of probes holds the capability to send an optical signal strong enough to send data back to Earth.

— Sample Return from the Surface of Venus

Venus with temperatures of around 450°C and atmospheric pressure of around 92 has the most hostile environment. Geoffrey Landis NASA Glenn Research Center proposes a new approach to return samples from the planet. They want to use innovations in high-temperature technology and solar aircraft for this.

Apart from these, the following ideas have won the prestigious grant:

— James Bickford, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Massachusetts: Thin Film Isotope Nuclear Engine Rocket

— Peter Cabauy, City Labs, Inc., Florida: Autonomous Tritium Micropowered Sensors

— Kenneth Carpenter, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, Maryland: A Lunar Long-Baseline Optical Imaging Interferometer: Artemis-enabled Stellar Image

— Matthew McQuinn, University of Washington, Seattle: Solar System-Scale VLBI to Dramatically Improve Cosmological Distance Measurements

— Aaswath Pattabhi Raman, University of California, Los Angeles: Electro-Luminescently Cooled Zero-Boil-Off Propellant Depots Enabling Crewed Exploration of Mars

— Alvaro Romeo-Calvo, Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta: Magnetohydrodynamic Drive for Hydrogen and Oxygen Production in Mars Transfer

— Lynn Rothschild, NASA’s Ames Research Center, California’s Silicon Valley: Detoxifying Mars: The Biocatalytic Elimination of Omnipresent Perchlorates

—Beijia Zhang, MIT’s Lincoln Lab, Massachusetts: LIFA: Lightweight Fiber-based Antenna for Small Sat-Compatible Radiometry