NIAC
A Helicopter is Going to Titan. Could an Airplane be Next?
What are the hydrocarbon seas on Titan really like? While the upcoming Dragonfly helicopter mission to Saturn’s hazy and frigid…
An Extremely Lightweight Fission Rocket Could Reach the Solar Gravitational Lens in 15 Years
Novel propulsion ideas for moving around space seem like they're a dime a dozen recently. Besides the typical argument between…
If an Earthlike Planet is Within 30 Light-Years, This Space Telescope Will Find it
There has long been a limiting factor in the development of space-based telescopes - launch fairings. These capsules essentially limit…
Future Space Telescopes Could be 100 Meters Across, Constructed in Space, and Then Bent Into a Precise Shape
An MIT team proposes a new method for in-space assembly to built a self-adjusting 100 m (328 ft) space telescope
Study Shows How Cells Could Help Artemis Astronauts Exercise
New research aims to ensure astronauts' health by mimicking the human body's response to exercise.
A Novel Propulsion System Would Hurl Hypervelocity Pellets at a Spacecraft to Speed it up
A new proposal for a pellet-beam spacecraft could enable interstellar missions and a Solar Gravitational Lens in a matter of…
A new way to Peer Into the Permanently Shadowed Craters on the Moon, Searching for Deposits of Water ice
Not all flashlights are created equal. Some are stronger, consume more power, or have features such as blinking or strobes.…
A Mission to Reach the Solar Gravitational Lens in 30 Years
NASA's Institute for Advanced Concepts is famous for supporting outlandish ideas in the astronomy and space exploration fields. Since being…
A Huge Rotating Kilometer-Scale Space Station Could be Launched From a Single Rocket
Artificial gravity remains the stuff of science fiction. But dealing with no gravity causes significant problems in many astronauts, ranging…
The Best way to Leave the Solar System Might be to fly Uncomfortably Close to the Sun
We’ve reported before on the conceptual mission known as the Interstellar Probe. This ambitious mission would visit the interstellar medium…