The Fellow will research another NIAC Phase I study in parallel: swimming micro-robots for exploring ocean worlds.Ī researcher at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, will look into a concept for generating and distributing power on the Moon. ![]() The tracks would unroll on the lunar surface, forgoing major on-site construction associated with building roads and railways on Earth. They are not considered and may never become NASA missions.Īmong the selections is a robotics engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, offering an infrastructure idea for autonomously transporting cargo on the Moon using magnetic robots that would levitate over a flexible track. All NIAC studies, regardless of phase, are early-stage technology development efforts. ![]() If their initial 9-month feasibility studies are successful, NIAC Fellows can apply for Phase II awards. Each selected proposal will receive a grant from NASA up to $125,000. “We don’t expect them all to come to fruition but recognize that providing a small amount of seed-funding for early research could benefit NASA greatly in the long run.”įor 2021, STMD selected 16 Phase I NIAC proposals, which offer a range of inventions and applications. “NIAC Fellows are known to dream big, proposing technologies that may appear to border science fiction and are unlike research being funded by other agency programs,” said Jenn Gustetic, director of early-stage innovations and partnerships within NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). More than a dozen researchers from within the agency, industry, and academia will receive grants from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program to study their concepts’ feasibility. Early-stage research into futuristic space ideas – a lunar levitation track system, light bending lunar power system, method for making soil from asteroid material, and more – could help revolutionize NASA’s technology toolbox and pioneer new kinds of missions.
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