NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC)
Phase III Award
Amount: $2 million

Direct Multipixel Imaging and Spectroscopy of an Exoplanet with a Solar Gravitational Lens Mission

Slava Turyshev
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory

The solar gravitational lens (SGL) is characterized by remarkable properties: it offers brightness amplification of up to a factor of ~1e11 (at 1 um) and extreme angular resolution (~1e-10 arcsec). As such, it allows for extraordinary observational capabilities for direct high-resolution imaging and spectroscopy of Earth-like exoplanets.

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program has made the following awards for 2020.

PHASE I

Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay
Lunar Crater Radio Telescope (LCRT) on the Far-Side of the Moon
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory     
Pasadena, CA

John Christian
StarNAV: An Architecture for Autonomous Spacecraft Navigation by the Relativistic Perturbation of Starlight
Rensselaer Polytechnic Institute     
Troy, NY

WASHINGTON (NASA PR) — Future technologies that could enable quicker trips to Mars and robotic exploration of ocean worlds might have started out as NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC). The program, which invests in early-stage technology ideas from NASA, industry and academic researchers across the country, has selected 23 potentially revolutionary concepts with a total award value of $7 million.