NASA, within the framework of its NIAC program (NASA’s Innovative Advanced Concepts) has selected six innovative projects, for now only in the study phase, to grant them additional funding and allow more work to be done on their theoretical development. The six projects, which enter the stage called “phase 2”, are the following:
FLOAT (Flexible Levitation on a Track) would be a kind of magnetic levitation railway system to transport cargo reliably, autonomously and efficiently on the Moon. This rail system could support the daily operations of a sustainable lunar base in the 2030s. Ethan Schaler directs FLOAT at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) in the United States.
The FLOAT system would use motorless magnetic robots capable of levitating on a carpet-like track. The track would be made of a flexible three-layer material. One layer would allow the robots to passively float above the track using diamagnetic levitation. Another layer would generate electromagnetic thrust to propel the robots controllably along each track. And a third layer would have thin-film solar panels, generating energy by receiving sunlight. The FLOAT system robots would have no moving parts. By levitating on the track, the abrasion and wear exerted by lunar dust would be minimized, which does affect any lunar robot that circulates on the surface with wheels, legs or track chains.
The FLOAT system’s tracks unroll directly like long carpets over reasonably flat sections of lunar terrain rich in lunar regolith. This avoids having to carry out works, which on the Moon would be much more cumbersome and difficult than building roads or installing train tracks on Earth.
Individual FLOAT robots will be able to carry payloads of different shapes and sizes, and a large-scale FLOAT system will be capable of moving up to 100,000 kilograms of regolith or other payload several kilometers per day.
FLOAT will operate autonomously in the dusty and inhospitable lunar environment with minimal site preparation, and its track network can be expanded and reconfigured over time to adapt to the changing requirements of lunar base missions.
Artistic recreation of a section of the magnetic levitation lunar railway installed in a future era. (Image: Ethan Schaler)
The FLUTE (Fluidic Telescope) project belongs to a future generation of large astronomical observatories located in space. FLUTE would be a huge space telescope equipped with an optical system based on ionic liquids, which would allow a flexibility of reconfiguration, adjustment and correction of deformities that is out of the reach of conventional telescopes with a solid optical structure,
FLUTE and other space observatories like it would allow great progress to be made in the search for exoplanets (planets outside our solar system) similar to the Earth, first generation stars (those born exclusively from chemical elements created by the Big Bang (hydrogen and a little helium, essentially)), and the first galaxies formed in the universe. The FLUTE project is led by Edward Balaban, from the NASA Ames Research Center in the United States.
Another space astronomy project is GO-LoW (Great Observatory for Long Wavelengths) and could constitute a revolution in radio astronomy. It would be a kind of interferometric network made up of thousands of tiny satellites with which the magnetic fields generated by exoplanets and those related to archaic epochs of the universe could be measured. GO-LoW is led by Mary Knapp at the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) in the United States.
In the field of propulsion, work is underway on a nuclear rocket project, under the direction of Brianna Clements of the American company Howe Industries, which would propel ships by expelling bursts of plasma. The great efficiency of the system would allow the journey between Earth and Mars to be made in just two months, instead of the approximate year that is the typical duration of such trips today.
This nuclear rocket would also make it possible to propel interplanetary ships much larger and heavier than any used until now. Such large ships could house everything needed for a human crew to travel beyond Mars, including a shield against galactic cosmic rays.
Another project focuses on the generation of electricity for the onboard systems of a ship that cannot use solar panels. The concept on which the project is based goes beyond conventional radioisotope thermoelectric generators. The system would achieve much higher efficiency than those thanks to a radically different design. The system would use thermoradiative cells. A thermoradiative cell works like a solar cell in reverse; It converts the heat generated by the radioactive material into infrared light that it emits into space and, in this process, electricity is generated. The research work on this project is led by Stephen Polly of the Rochester Institute of Technology in the United States.
The SCOPE (ScienceCraft for Outer Planet Exploration) project aims to distribute sensors based on quantum dots on the surface of a solar sail, so that the sail itself also serves as a camera with which to take photos or a spectrometer with which to scrutinize the composition. of the captured light. A solar sail is like a boat sail but powered by the impact of photons instead of the impact of the wind. Solar sails must be extremely light for the Sun’s light to push them and therefore cannot drag much weight. This significantly limits the inclusion of scientific instruments on board. Quantum dots, also being extremely light, could make viable a solar sailboat capable of using a spectrometer or recording images during its journey without adding a significant amount of extra weight. This project is led by Mahmooda Sultana of NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center. (Fountain: NCYT by Amazings)
