In previous years, all projects received seed funding from NASA’s NIAC Innovative Concepts Program, and a second round of funding will provide space technology developers with an additional $600,000 over two years.

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One of the ideas relates to development array of low-frequency radio telescopes FarView, built using local regolith on the far side of the Moon – this location will protect the observatory from atmospheric and radio interference from Earth. The team says their equipment will help them study the mysterious Dark Ages, the period of the universe’s development between the emergence of relict radiation and the formation of the first stars.

The kilometer telescope is planned to be installed in the bowl of the crater with a diameter of three to five kilometers. It will be created by DuAxel rover robots, which will stretch the grid in the corresponding ratio of the depth to the diameter of the crater and form a parabolic antenna. After that, a sensitive receiver will be suspended above the center of the telescope’s “lunar dish”.

Another grantee is the PI project, which seeks to protect Earth from asteroids and other potential impacts from space. As demonstrated by the DART mission in September of last year, the most effective method of planetary defense is to change the trajectory of such an object by ramming it – instead, the authors of the idea of ​​Planetary Defense are investigating. a method of crushing asteroids into small pieces, which will then burn up in the Earth’s atmosphere. For this, it is proposed to use an array of small hyper-speed kinetic penetrators

Although the projects don’t seem too real, they defy conventional wisdom—something NIAC’s mission focuses on.

“NASA’s story is a story of overcoming barriers and transforming technology to support our missions and benefit all of humanity. Concepts selected through the program will help researchers implement new technologies that could revolutionize space exploration and improve everyday life here on Earth,” said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson.

Here is the full list of ideas and their principal investigators that will receive additional NIAC 2023 funding:

• The Rydberg Quantum Radar for Surface, Topography, and Vegetation (Dharmindra Arumugam, NASA Southern California Jet Propulsion Laboratory);
• Silent Solid State Engine for Aeromobile Vehicle Improvements (Stephen Barrett, MIT Cambridge);
• PI – Planetary Protection (Philip Lubin, University of California, Santa Barbara);
• Nyx spacecraft – for observing the Universe from deep space, with EmberCore high specific power radioisotope electrical system (Christopher Morrison, Ultra Safe Nuclear Corporation in Seattle);
• The FarView Observatory is a large array of low-frequency radio telescopes built and located on the Moon (Ronald Polidan, Lunar Resources, Houston);
• “Astropharmacy” is a technology for creating pharmaceuticals with greater endurance in space.

The NIAC (NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts) program was launched in 1998 to stimulate ideas and projects in the fields of astronautics, solar system and deep space exploration, rocketry and satellite construction, and aeronautics that can further influence the development of the entire aerospace industry to be implemented within 10- 40 years old. As part of the first phase of NIAC 2020, the agency selected 16 projects. Only six of them made it to the second stage, and one immediately went to the third final round (the Solar Gravitational Lens (SGL) conceptual telescope).