14 DAY TRIAL // Representatives of the American space agency announce that NASA has just awarded 30 new research grants, to study teams investigating advanced concepts related to the exploration of space. The agency gets involved in such endeavors in order to foster innovation in this important field of research.
The projects are funded under the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. According to NASA officials, the final selections were made based on their potential to transform our future space missions into something more.
This means that the proposals could enable new capabilities or significantly alter current approaches to launching, building and operating space systems. At this time, launching a rocket or a satellite is extremely expensive, and also polluting.
After more than 50 years of launching rockets by igniting them at the bottom, it may be time to move forward to other launch options, which would enable easy and continuous access to space at a moment's notice. This is not the case today, when a launch costs hundreds of millions of dollars.
The NAIC grants are worth about $100,000 each, and are awarded for a single years. The teams who got the accolades need to advanced their technology concepts as much as possible during this interval.
“These innovative concepts have the potential to mature into the transformative capabilities NASA needs to improve our current space mission operations, seeding the technology breakthroughs needed for the challenging space missions in NASA's future,” Bobby D. Braun explains.
The NASA official holds an appointment as the space agency's Chief Technologist. HE says that many of the new selections have tremendous potential in improving or advancing space flight and space exploration as we know it.
The proposals include methods of altering the path of space junk, creating flywheel-based spacesuits capable of helping astronauts remain stable during spacewalks, developing 3D printing technologies that work in microgravity, as well as developing innovative propulsion and power concepts,
“NASA's early investment and partnership with creative scientists, engineers and citizen inventors from across the nation will pay huge technological dividends and help maintain America's leadership in the global technology economy,” a press release from the space agency reads.
“The portfolio of diverse and innovative ideas represented multiple technology areas, including power, propulsion, structures, and avionics, as identified in NASA's Technology Roadmaps. The roadmaps provide technology paths needed to meet NASA's strategic goals,” the document concludes.