EL SEGUNDO, Calif., Apr. 20 2020 (The Aerospace Corporation PR) – The Solar Gravity Lens (SGL) concept to send a fleet of optical telescopes to image habitable planets far beyond our solar system received a $2 million grant by NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program
This two-year grant will support the further maturation of SGL technologies. The mission is led by NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) with The Aerospace Corporation (Aerospace) as the mission architect.
(more…)
Xplore’s advanced solar sail design will be the fastest spacecraft ever made
SEATTLE (Xplore PR) — Xplore Inc., a commercial space exploration company providing Space as a ServiceTM today announced they and their teammates won a NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase III award for a two-year, $2M NASA grant to further mature the Solar Gravity Lens Focus (SGLF) architecture to image planets in orbit around distant stars starting with a Technology Demonstration Mission (TDM).
Dr. Slava G. Turyshev, a NIAC Fellow and Senior Research Scientist at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) is the Principal Investigator leading the SGLF mission which includes Xplore, JPL and The Aerospace Corporation. The SGLF mission study is only the third Phase III award granted in the NIAC program ever.
(more…)
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC)
Phase I Award
Amount: $125,000
High Irradiance Peltier Operated Tungsten Exo-Reflector (HI-POWER)
Troy Howe
Howe Industries LLC
One issue that arises with spacecraft in almost every mission is thermal management. Computers, instruments, and housing may heat up in space, as a combination of solar energy and poor heat rejection causes temperatures to rise to hundreds of degrees. This can be fought by advanced radiators or may require specialized cooling systems.
(more…)
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I Award
Amount: $125,000
StarNAV: An Architecture for Autonomous Spacecraft Navigation by the Relativistic Perturbation of Starlight
John Christian
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute
StarNAV is a novel architecture for navigating anywhere in the Solar System or beyond using the relativistic perturbation of starlight. The proposed StarNAV technique measures the change in inter-star angle due to stellar aberration to estimate vehicle velocity. These velocity estimates may be used for navigation.
(more…)
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC)
Phase I Award
Amount: $125,000
An Astropharmacy
Lynn Rothschild
NASA Ames Research Center
Disease is an inherent part of being alive, and thus disease prevention, diagnosis and treatment will be critical to human deep space missions. Pharmaceuticals are used to diagnose, treat, cure or prevent disease, but suffer from lack of stability on Earth and even more so in the space environment.
(more…)
NASA Innovative Advance Concepts (NIAC)
Phase I Award
Amount: $125,000
Extreme Metamaterial Solar Sails for Breakthrough Space Exploration
Artur Davoyan
University of California, Los Angeles
Understanding the beginnings of the Universe and life itself is NASA’s long term vision and one of humanities’ grand challenges. Missions to the edge of our solar system and to space between stars in our galaxy – the interstellar medium – are of a great promise to shed light on these questions.
(more…)
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase II Award
Amount: $500,000
Gravity Observation and Dark Energy Detection Explorer in the Solar System
Nan Yu
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
We propose further develop and mature the mission concept for direct detection of dark energy, the cause of the accelerating expansion of the universe, using the solar system as a laboratory.
(more…)
NASA Innovative Advance Concepts (NIAC)
Phase I Award
Amount: $125,000
Deceleration of Interstellar Spacecraft Utilizing Antimatter
Gerald Jackson
Hbar Technologies, LLC
Antimatter-based propulsion and power has emerged as a leading technology capable of enabling science missions to the exoplanet Proxima b. In stark contrast to other mission proposals involving beamed energy, this mission assumes prompt and continuous science return during the entire voyage, deceleration at Proxima Centauri, and decades-long exploration and scientific data return. Scientific data from Kuiper Belt and Oort Cloud object weekly flybys are anticipated starting within a few years of launch.
(more…)
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC)
Phase I Award
Amount: $125,000
Magneto-Inductive Communications for Ocean Worlds
Robert Romanofsky
NASA Glenn Research Center
A mission to the under-ice ocean of Europa is one of the highest priority missions for NASA. Galileo magnetometer measurements and other observations suggest a deep layer of electrically conductive fluid beneath the surface. Concepts for a probe to melt through the 5 to 10 km thickness of briny ice to reach the buried ocean have been proposed.
Model predictions for magnesium sulfide concentrations vary but a conductivity range between 0.1 and 3 S/m seems reasonable. Conventional communications links that rely on propagation of an electromagnetic field cannot penetrate – even if the sea ice conductivity is only 0.1 S/m. The electric field attenuation would exceed 100 dB/km even at very low frequencies.
(more…)
NASA Innovative Advance Concepts (NIAC) Phase I Award
Amount: $125,000
Fueling a Human Mission to Mars
Caroline Genzale
Georgia Tech Research Corporation
As a multidisciplinary team of mechanical, aerospace, and biological engineers, we propose to co-develop a renewable, liquid, storage stable rocket propellant that can be produced and burned on Mars using bioorganisms to perform atmospheric in-situ resource utilization (ISRU).
(more…)
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC)
Phase I Award
Amount: $125,000
Flat Fabrication of Progressively Self-Assembling Space Systems
Davide Guzzetti
Auburn University
This project aims to study the feasibility of integrating an array of microchips with space satellite functions, or ChipSats, on a multifunctional shape memory polymer (SMP) bus that is capable of self-folding when exposed to solar radiation.
This technology may enable the flat fabrication of kilometer-sized antenna arrays for radio astronomy that self-transform into the operative configuration once in orbit.
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC)
Phase I Award
Amount: $125,000
Gravity Poppers: Hopping Probes for the Interior Mapping of Small Solar System Bodies
Benjamin Hockman
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory
The goal of this effort is to develop a robust and affordable mission architecture that enables the gravimetric density reconstruction of small body interiors to unprecedented precision.
(more…)
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC)
Phase I Award
Amount: $125,000
Heat Exchange-Driven Aircraft for Low Altitude and Surface Exploration of Venus
Eldar Noe Dobrea
Planetary Science Institute
We propose to investigate a fixed wing aircraft platform concept capable of flying over multiple sites in close proximity to the surface of Venus in a cyclic manner. Central to this investigation is the development of a system capable of using the heat from the Venusian atmosphere to power a heat engine capable of supplying propulsion and power to the aircraft.
(more…)
NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I Award
Amount: $125,000
Pulsed Plasma Rocket: Shielded, Fast Transits for Humans to Mars
Steven Howe
Howe Industries LLC
Development of a space faring civilization will depend on the ability to move cargo efficiently and humans rapidly. Due to the large distances involved in space travel, the ships must reach a high velocity for reasonable mission transit times. Thus, propulsion systems with high specific impulse (Isp) AND high thrust are required.
(more…)
NASA Innovative Advance Concept (NIAC)
Phase I Award
Amount: $125,000
Aqua Factorem: Ultra Low-Energy Lunar Water Extraction
Philip Metzger
University of Central Florida
We propose a new method we call Aqua Factorem to extract lunar water. It will drastically reduce energy and complexity of lunar mining operations helping to establish this industry.
(more…)
