We are building a vertical takeoff and landing drone that flies in the Martian sky and collects data, and launching a cluster of micro-vehicles to explore Proxima Centauri, the closest star to the sun.
This is an example of an adventurous space research project newly supported by the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA).
NASA launched the ‘NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC)’ project on the 4th (local time). Selected 13 support tasksannounced.
NASA has selected this year’s first target project for the NIAC program to support innovative space development research ideas. (Photo = NASA)
NIAC is a project that provides initial support for challenging research that has great potential to contribute to space exploration and research and has commercialization potential. If selected, you can receive up to $175,000 in funding to verify your technology and identify tasks needed for actual development. The ‘Ingenuity’ helicopter, which performs a Mars exploration mission, and the micro-satellite ‘Marco CubeSat’ for deep space exploration are also projects started at NIAC.
The U.S. Coflow Jet proposed the development of ‘MAGGIE’, a fixed-wing vertical takeoff and landing electric vehicle (eVTOL) that will fly over Mars and perform various observation missions. It flies at a speed of Mach 0.25 at an altitude of 1,000 m and can fly 16,048 km per year.
Mars exploration fixed-wing eVOLT drone imaginary (data = NASA)
Space Initiative proposed a technology that uses laser technology to launch a group of probes weighing less than 1 kg toward Centaur Proxima. The plan is to develop a 100GW laser beam generator by the middle of this century by improving the technology for transmitting energy through lasers, and to send a colony of 1,000 small probes to Centaur Proxima b in the second half of this century.
NASA’s Glenn Research Center presented an idea to develop a vehicle that could overcome the harsh environment of Venus and collect samples and return. Nuclear rocket engines using radioisotope thin films and equipment to search for traces of life, such as chemicals that make up DNA in water obtained from Mars, were also selected for support.
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“Every mission NASA performs starts out as an idea, and many of them are inspired by NIAC,” said NASA Deputy Administrator Jim Free. “Not all selected tasks will be successful, but NASA and its partners around the world will “We will be able to learn from this new approach and take advantage of it further,” he said.
The full list of tasks selected this time can be found on the NIAC website (https://www.nasa.gov/general/niac-2024-selections/) can be found here.
