NASA has selected 2024 Phase One award winners for its program to fund ideas that can be innovative for the benefit of everyone and transform the agency’s future missions. From proposals to explore low Earth orbit to the stars, the 13 selected concepts come from companies and institutions across the United States.

NASA’s NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) program supports innovative ideas by funding research into early-stage technology concepts for further evaluation and potential commercialization. The total award is a maximum of $175,000 in grants to evaluate technologies that could enable future space missions.

“The bold missions that NASA undertakes to benefit humanity begin with a simple idea, and NIAC is responsible for inspiring many of these ideas,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Jim Free. “The Ingenuity helicopter flying to Mars and the deep space vehicles in MarCO CubeSats can trace their origins to NIAC and prove a path from creative idea to mission success. “And even if not all of these concepts work, NASA and our partners around the world can learn from new approaches and ultimately use the technologies developed by NIAC.”

This year’s course will explore the return of samples from the surface of Venus, a flight to Mars, a swarm of probes traveling through interstellar space, and more. All NIAC studies are in the early stages of conceptual development and are not considered official NASA missions.

Ge-Cheng Zha of Coflow Jet LLC in Florida has proposed flying the first electric fixed-wing vertical takeoff and landing vehicle to Mars. Nicknamed “MAGGY,” the vehicle could expand humanity’s ability to explore the Red Planet and conduct scientific research.

Thomas Eubanks, Space Enterprises Inc. Scientists in Florida believe a small swarm of spacecraft could travel to Proxima Centauri this century and send back data about the sun’s closest interstellar neighbor with the help of a new laser sail and laser communications.

Jeff Landis of NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland has proposed a spacecraft that could survive the harsh conditions of Venus while also returning a sample from the surface using innovations in high-temperature technology and solar-powered vehicles.

“The diversity of this year’s Phase I projects—from quantum sensors observing Earth’s atmosphere to a coordinated suite of spacecraft communicating with the next star—is a testament to the truly innovative community embraced by NIAC,” said Mike LaPointe, NASA’s NIAC program manager. . . Headquarters is in Washington. “NIAC awards underscore NASA’s commitment to continuing to push the boundaries of what is possible.”

Using NIAC grants, researchers known as fellows will explore the fundamentals behind their concepts, plan the necessary technology development, identify potential challenges, and seek opportunities to bring these concepts to life.

In addition to the projects mentioned above, other projects selected for 2024 NIAC Phase I grants include:

• Steven Benner, Foundation for Applied Molecular Evolution, Florida: Supporting Large-Scale Water Mining on Mars to Detect Newcomer and Alien Life
• James Bickford, Charles Stark Draper Laboratory, Massachusetts: Thin Film Isotope Nuclear Propulsion Rocket
• Peter Kabaui, City Labs, Inc., Florida: Autonomous Tritium Microsensors
• Kenneth Carpenter, NASA Goddard Space Flight Center, Greenbelt, MD: Interferometer for Long Baseline Optical Imaging of the Moon: Stellar Image of Artemis
• Matthew McQueen, University of Washington, Seattle: Solar system-scale VLBI to vastly improve cosmological distance measurements
• Aaswat Pattabhi Raman, University of California, Los Angeles: Electroluminescence-Cooled, Boil-Free Fuel Storage Allows Crew to Explore Mars
• Alvaro Romeo-Calvo, Georgia Tech Research Corporation, Atlanta: Magnetohydrodynamic propulsion for hydrogen and oxygen production during transfer to Mars
• Lynn Rothschild, NASA Ames Research Center, California Silicon Valley: Detoxification of Mars: Biocatalytic Removal of Ubiquitous Perchlorates
• Ryan Sprenger, Fauna Bio Inc., CA: A Revolutionary Approach to Interplanetary Space Travel: Examining Animal Torpor for Human Space Health
• Beijia Zhang, MIT Lincoln Laboratory, MA: LIFA: A Lightweight Fiber Optic Antenna for Small Satellite Radiometry

NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate funds the NIAC program because it is responsible for developing new end-to-end technologies and capabilities for the agency’s current and future missions. Source