From robots hovering through lava tubes beneath the Moon to a swarm of 10,000 tiny satellites mapping Saturn’s rings, Nasa has announced 18 early-stage concept awards worth a total of $3.2 million. The agency said the ideas seek to improve aerospace technologies across fields ranging from solar system exploration to understanding the universe.The awards are part of the Nasa Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) programme. Each Phase I award provides up to $175,000 for an initial nine-month investigation. Nasa said the projects concern early-stage concept development and are not official agency missions.“NASA has outlined an ambitious vision for the future of space exploration, we’re returning the Moon to stay, advancing to Mars, and pushing to deepen our understanding of space,” said Greg Stover, director of the Advanced Research and Technology division within the Research and Technology Mission Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “Achieving that will require more than incremental technological advancement. It means we need great leaps. These awards are the kinds of innovation the world needs NASA to help foster.”Nasa described NIAC as an innovation incubator that funds the early development of potential breakthrough technologies. Concepts considered for awards must have both transformative potential and possible feasibility for eventual implementation, the agency said.“Every innovation, every leap in technology, starts with a seed of an idea,” said Phillip Williams, NIAC’s acting program executive. “The NIAC program allows NASA to germinate those seeds and determine if there’s something that could be grown to benefit future space missions and our nation’s aerospace economy.”
Which concepts focus on the Moon?
As Nasa and its partners work towards a sustained lunar presence, some of the 2026 awardees are examining ways to explore the Moon and build infrastructure there, the agency said.The concepts include a system supporting hovering robots as they explore lava tubes beneath the Moon’s surface, a method to manage temperatures for small mobile exploration robots and a way to incorporate radioisotopic heat sources into suits to help keep astronauts warm during the Moon’s nearly two-week-long lunar nights.
What could the concepts do on Venus?
Other concepts focus on exploring some of the solar system’s most remarkable features, according to Nasa.Venus’s hot atmosphere presents a challenge for research vehicles. One NIAC awardee will therefore examine methods for hardening instruments for longer missions, the agency said.
How could they study planetary rings?
Two concepts could help study planetary rings. One would use a swarm of 10,000 tiny satellites to map and analyse Saturn’s rings. Another would create a system for collecting samples from rings such as those around Saturn, Uranus and Neptune.
Which ideas look beyond the solar system?
Some NIAC awardees will examine ways to power interstellar spacecraft, map continents on exoplanets, observe photon rings around black holes and detect subtle gravitational waves to explain how galaxies formed, Nasa said.Others will study questions directly related to life on Earth, including the potential use of spaceborne dust to reduce solar radiation and awareness of debris orbiting the planet, according to the agency.The researchers, known as NIAC Fellows, will investigate their concepts and identify potential challenges and opportunities for further development, Nasa said.
Who received the 2026 NIAC Phase I awards?
Nasa announced the following 18 selections:
- Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay, Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory, Pasadena, California: Dimming the Sun Using Controllable Dust Cloud to Reduce Solar Insolation (DimSun).
- David Bugby, Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory: Combinatory Architecture offering Neomobility, on-Venus Adaptability, and Survivability (CANVAS).
- A.C. Charania, Zeno Power Systems, Inc., Washington: Extended Astronaut Radioisotope-EVA in Nighttime and Deep-space Icy Landscapes (EARENDIL).
- Anish Damodaran, University of Central Florida, Orlando: PS21: Transforming Submillimeter Space Interferometry with Photonic Technologies.
- Artur Davoyan, University of California, Los Angeles: Coilable Stacked Solar Sails for Very High delta-V Missions.
- Daniel Drew, University of Hawaii, Honolulu: Solid-state Propulsion for Autonomous Reconnaissance of Karst (SPARK).
- Gilly Elor, Stone Aerospace, Inc., Del Valle, Texas: Power-over-Fiber to Enable a Lunar Underground eXplorer (LUX).
- Zhaoyan Liu, Nasa Ames Research Center, California’s Silicon Valley: Quantum Wind Lidar Applications for Planetary and Earth
Science Missions. - Jeff Nosanov, Orbital Velocity, LLC, Decatur, Georgia: OBLIVIAN: Observing Black hole LIght Via Intensity cOrrelatioN (OBLIVIAN).
- Keunhan Park, University of Utah, Salt Lake City: Plasmon-Enhanced Radioisotope Thermophotovoltaic (PRTPV) Power Generation for Interstellar Missions.
- Austin Phoenix, Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University, Blacksburg, Virginia: Efficient variable Conductivity Lunar Insulator for Passive Surveyor Environmental Control (ECLIPSE).
- Marco Quadrelli, Nasa Jet Propulsion Laboratory: PRAXIS: Planetary Rings Autonomous EXploration with In-situ Sampling (PRAXIS).
- Michael Rubenstein, Northwestern University, Chicago: Actively Steerable Femtosat Constellations for In-situ Exploration of Saturn’s Rings, Atmosphere, and Magnetosphere.
- Benjamin Schafer, Rarefied Technologies Inc., Albuquerque, New Mexico: Photophoretic Tracers for Near-Space Remote Sensing at 30-100 km Altitudes.
- David Smith, Duke University, Durham, North Carolina: Robotically Assembled Electromagnetic Metamaterials for Long-Range Space Situational Awareness.
- Pablo Sobron, Search for Extraterrestrial Intelligence Institute, Mountain View, California: Interworld Slingshot Resource Surveys.
- Paul Stankus, Brookhaven Science Associates, Upton, New York: Mapping Alien Continents: Achieving Optical VLBI for Exoplanet Imaging.
- Paul Stankus, Brookhaven Science Associates, Upton, New York: Precision Astrometry Using Optically Independent Spacecraft for Gravitational Wave Detection.
