An airplane on Titan and pipelines on the Moon: what space projects is NASA preparing?

The future of space exploration sometimes requires very unusual technological solutions, and NASA turns to various companies and scientists to present their space projects. To date, NASA has selected 14 artifacts worthy of initial work for which research money has been allocated. Edition Gizmodo offers to meet some of them.

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NASA selected 14 space projects, each of which received $175,000 for further development. Some of these projects will receive additional funding within 9 months. And only after 2 years, only the best technological solutions will be selected for further possible applications in space. So, what technological innovations do scientists propose to apply to other planets and moons of the solar system?

airplane on titan

The AirTitan project was proposed by scientist Quinn Morley and involves the creation of an autonomous aircraft that will fly on Saturn’s moon Titan. According to the project, this aircraft will be able to swim in methane lakes as well as sail through Titan’s dense atmosphere.

This device will be able to conduct scientific research, including looking for potential signs of organic chemistry that could indicate the origin of living organisms. NASA is interested in this project, although the space agency is preparing the DaragonFly helicopter to fly to Titan. about this project Focus already written in detail.

Satellites will search for a new Earth

The new GO-LoW space observatory project was proposed by Mary Knapp of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology. This space observatory will consist of thousands of identical satellites located at the fifth Lagrangian point of the Earth-Sun system.

This satellite array will be able to study the magnetic fields of distant exoplanets and find rocky Earth-like planets.

Oxygen pipeline to the moon

As early as 2025, NASA plans to land astronauts on the Moon and then begin creating the first permanent base on our satellite. For a long-term human presence on the Moon, it is necessary to use local resources. For example, it is possible to extract oxygen from lunar regolith or water ice.

But this process of transporting oxygen can be very expensive. For example, this concerns the transport of oxygen from the extraction site using lunar rovers in special tanks to the base itself or to a facility for processing.

That’s why engineer Peter Curreri of Lunar Resources is proposing to build a pipeline to the Moon’s South Pole, where most of the water ice is. Such a pipeline would provide the settlers with continuous oxygen access, and would also be able to connect different bases and all lunar settlements.

Bricks growing on Mars

University of Nebraska scientist Kongrui Grace Jean suggests growing building materials on Mars instead of shipping them from Earth. Settlers will need to build structures on Mars, but that will require constantly sending space cargo ships with everything they need, and that’s very expensive. A scientist proposes Mars-growing microbes that can produce biominerals and polymers to glue Martian regolith to building bricks.

These concepts are still in the initial evaluation phase at NASA, and if experts decide they cannot be implemented, they will remain at the level of ideas only.

As for planets of similar size to Earth, scientists have discovered such a new object. There may be water on this planet, only 5% smaller than Earth, and it’s almost nearby – 100 light-years from us, as I wrote earlier. Focus.

And on Mars, another spacecraft ran into a serious problem. As already written FocusThe China traveler did not wake up from sleep mode, where he stayed for six months. What happened to him is not yet known, but there are some assumptions.

same Focus He wrote about an ambitious new NASA project that will begin construction of the first space station near the moon in a few years. However, it turned out to be not ideal and comfortable for astronauts.