Launching 10,000 tiny ‘femtosats’ to Saturn? NASA funds 18 futuristic spaceflight ideas

Space missions matter less for the spectacle and more for what they enable: experiments, data, and research that can’t be done on Earth.

Reporting

Space.com reports that Launching 10,000 tiny 'femtosats' to Saturn? NASA funds 18 futuristic spaceflight ideas. NASA is giving a financial boost to nearly 20 technology investigations to help fuel the incubation of tomorrow's spaceflight research capabilities. The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts ( NIAC ) program has selected 18 projects for this year's Phase I awards, which will each split a total of $3.2 million in development funding. NIAC is designed to bolster… The key issue is what the mission or observation makes possible next: better data, stronger hardware, new experiments, or clearer science.

The Details

• Space.com: Launching 10,000 tiny 'femtosats' to Saturn? NASA funds 18 futuristic spaceflight ideas
• NASA is giving a financial boost to nearly 20 technology investigations to help fuel the incubation of tomorrow's spaceflight research capabilities. The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (

A few details give the story its shape: $3.2. Those are the pieces that keep this from feeling like a vague headline and make it easier to see where the real impact may land.

Next Developments

• scientific results from the mission
• follow-up research publications
• practical applications on Earth