Flywheel-Augmented Spacesuits, 3D-Printed Planetary Outposts Among Ideas

NASA has selected 30 proposals for funding under its Innovative Advanced Concepts, or NIAC, program. The proposals were chosen based on their potential to transform future space missions, enable new capabilities or significantly alter current approaches to launching, building and operating space systems.

Each proposal will receive approximately $100,000 for one year to advance the innovative space technology concept and help NASA meet operational and future mission requirements.

Proposals include a broad range of imaginative and creative ideas, such as: changing the course of dangerous orbital debris; a spacesuit that uses flywheels to stabilize and assist astronauts as they work in microgravity; the use of 3-D printing to create a planetary outpost; and multiple innovative propulsion and power concepts needed for future space missions.

The original NIAC program, known as the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts, served agency needs from 1998 to 2007. It was an independent open forum for the external analysis and definition of revolutionary space and aeronautics concepts to complement the advanced concepts activities conducted within NASA.

In 2008, Congress directed the National Research Council to conduct a review of NIAC’s effectiveness and to make recommendations concerning the importance of such a program. Chief among the council's recommendations was a mechanism to investigate visionary, far-reaching, advanced concepts as part of the agency's mission. NASA re-established the NIAC program during fiscal year 2011.

"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," said NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun.

NASA's Office of the Chief Technologist manages the NIAC program.

FMI: www.nasa.gov/oct