Self-healing space suits among 18 ideas to receive NASA funding – Engadget

In Fragment I, there are 12 ideas, including a dapper spacesuit with delicate robotics and self-healing pores and skin. There’s moreover a principle for microprobes impressed by spiders that would reduction us gawk planetary atmospheres. Assorted ideas consist of lunar ice mining outposts (pictured above), an inflatable flier designed to explore the ambiance of Venus and nuclear electric propulsion systems that would scheme it feasible to fly through water plumes on the ground of Europa, one of many moons of Jupiter.

NASA moreover chosen six Fragment II ideas, which in principle, are a dinky bit closer to implementation. Those consist of a flexible telescope that can perhaps even be deployed in a cylindrical roll and mounted on a 3D-printed structure as soon because it is in problem. There’s moreover a gawk to investigate fabric shields that would engage us closer to the Sun than ever ahead of.

Every of the Fragment I awards is price $125,000, and if the ideas demonstrate promise after the nine-month feasibility section, they’ll come up with the option to reveal for Fragment II, which comes with as a lot as $500,000 over two years. This summer, the NIAC program will exhaust one challenge for a Fragment III gawk price $2 million. These kinds of ideas will require on the least a decade of setting up, so it is no longer seemingly we are going to see spider-impressed problem probes anytime almost right now.