(ORDO NEWS) — NASA on January 10 awarded $175,000 in grants to 14 unusual project authors.
This happened as part of the Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, which promotes innovation and funds research into unusual concepts for experimental space technologies.
It is not a fact that at least one project will ever be implemented, but this does not mean that you should not get acquainted with the most interesting of them.
Researcher Mary Knapp of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology proposed the idea of a new type of space observatory, consisting of thousands of small devices, similar to a swarm of drones, which could be located in a certain configuration and scan space in the radio range.
Quinn Morley of Planet Enterprises proposed the concept of the TitanAir craft, which could fly in the atmosphere of Saturn’s moon Titan and sail its methane lakes and seas.
Arthur Davoyan from the University of California proposed to accelerate spacecraft using microscopic high-speed particles obtained after converting the radiation of a powerful laser located on Earth.
The particles, he estimates, will be able to travel at speeds of up to 120 kilometers per second, allowing a one-tonne spacecraft to cover a distance of 100 astronomical units in just three years.
Let me remind you that the Voyager 1 probe took at least 30 years to overcome this distance.
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