Tag: Artur Davoyan

NASA Funds Breakthrough Research into Extreme Solar Sailing for Interstellar Missions

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Credit: Artur Davoyan

NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts 2021 Phase II Award
Amount: $500,000

Artur Davoyan
University of California, Los Angeles

As of date, deep space exploration has been hindered by the limitations of existing propulsion technologies. In contrast, solar sails appear to allow a low cost pathway to high speed and ubiquitous exploration of the outer solar system and interstellar space. By performing a slingshot maneuver in the vicinity of the sun, just ~2-5 solar radii distant from the sun, solar sails can propel light-weight CubeSat class spacecraft to near-relativistic speeds, >0.1% of the speed of light (>300 km/s or >60AU/year characteristic velocities). Such a technology would markedly transform space exploration, enabling fast missions to distant worlds, effectively turning our sun into a launch pad.

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NASA Selects Innovative, Early-Stage Tech Concepts for Continued Study

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Notional view of LCRT on the far-side of the Moon. (Credits: Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay)

WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — NASA encourages researchers to develop and study unexpected approaches for traveling through, understanding, and exploring space. To further these goals, the agency has selected seven studies for additional funding – totaling $5 million – from the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program. The researchers previously received at least one NIAC award related to their proposals.

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NIAC Award: Extreme Metamaterial Solar Sails for Breakthrough Space Exploration

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Image depicting the Extreme Metamaterial Solar Sails for Breakthrough Space Exploration concept. (Credits: Artur Davoyan)

NASA Innovative Advance Concepts (NIAC)
Phase I Award
Amount: $125,000

Extreme Metamaterial Solar Sails for Breakthrough Space Exploration

Artur Davoyan
University of California, Los Angeles

Understanding the beginnings of the Universe and life itself is NASA’s long term vision and one of humanities’ grand challenges. Missions to the edge of our solar system and to space between stars in our galaxy – the interstellar medium – are of a great promise to shed light on these questions.

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