NASA changes science fiction into science fact

By Alok Jha
THE GUARDIAN , LONDON
Sunday, Jan 08, 2006, Page 9

Bouncing capable of exploring planets, a giant pinhole camera in space, and genetically engineered crops that could grow on other worlds are just three of the ideas proposed by scientists funded by NASA's forward-thinking Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC).

Now, NIAC, the organization that first backed research into space elevators (think of a satellite tethered to Earth by a giant cable, dispensing with a rocket launch to attain orbit) has again made its annual call for revolutionary ideas lurking in the laboratories, or even just in the imaginations, of US space scientists.

"NIAC was created to identify new and revolutionary concepts for NASA that go well beyond what NASA is currently doing," said Robert Cassanova, the director of NIAC, which was set up in 1998 as an independent, brainstorming institute.

"NIAC is looking for grand ideas and grand visions -- big ideas that might inspire new enabling technologies. We state explicitly that the concept or architectural system does not have to have the enabling technology available to make it work. And the science does not have to be totally understood," Cassanova said.

The dozen or so projects chosen each year for funding tend to be long-term, perhaps coming to fruition within 10 to 40 years, according to Sharon Garrison, NIAC's co-ordinator at NASA.

The deadline for out-of-this-world proposals this year is midnight, Feb. 13.

At a recent meeting in Colorado, scientists heard about the projects funded after last year's NIAC call. One microbiologist, Amy Grunden from North Carolina State University, reported that she had been working on a way to grow food in harsh conditions on other planets. Her inspiration came from extremophiles, microscopic organisms that live in the most extreme environments on Earth.

"We can actually pinpoint particular genes that are responsible for providing adaptations for these organisms that are living in extreme environments," Grunden said. "Given our current biochemical and physiological knowledge of some of these adaptive pathways, can we put them in other plant systems to help them deal with extremes?"

Her is to put "extreme survival" genes into crops such as rye. Astronauts on long missions would take the seeds with them, saving on the cost of taking food supplies into space.

Penelope Boston, of New Mexico Tech, and Steven Dubowsky, of the Massachusetts Institute of Technology's space robotics laboratory, looked at space exploration. Their idea was to beef up the capabilities of probes orbiting planets, and of robotic rovers -- such as Spirit and Opportunity, which have been trundling across Mars for two years -- with thousands of 10cm-wide ball shaped robots scattered on the planet's surface.

"The microbots employ hopping, bouncing and rolling as a locomotion mode to reach scientifically interesting features in very rugged terrain," the scientists said.

Powered fuel cells, the microbots would explore, sharing information so as to build up a map of the planetary surface. Each robot could be customized and equipped, Dubowsky said, with "a suite of miniaturized instruments for each specific mission ... [with] imagers, spectrometers or chemical detection sensors."

The iconic but clunky spacesuit is also set for a makeover. Dava Newman, at MIT, presented the Bio-Suit System.

Cassanova "This is a spacesuit that would enable you to wear it like a wetsuit and bounce around on planetary surfaces and do extra-vehicular activities ... without this cumbersome gas bag and very heavy suit that we use now."

The idea that has generated most interest recently at NASA is the New Worlds Imager space telescope, designed to take pictures of planets outside our solar system. Taking such pictures is difficult because light coming from the planets is obscured by stars. To get around this, Webster Cash, of the University of Colorado at Boulder, planned a pair of spacecraft -- a star shade (the astronomical equivalent of sunglasses) and a collector, that works as a giant pinhole camera. The star shade would be 1km in diameter with a 10m hole at its center. It would sit more than 200,000km from the collector and would block the stars' dazzling light.

The imager is an idea that builds on previous NIAC research on formation flying.

"The [New Worlds Imager] observatory has components that are physically disconnected, and the components may be positioned over several kilometers," Cassanova said. "You can't physically tie these things together but you still have to control the spacing very accurately."

Formation is where different components in space "fly reasonably close very accurately," he said.

The imager might resolve details on distant planets, even linking up to objects about 96.6km across, giving us our first views of the clouds, oceans and continents on planets beyond our solar system.

Cash's is just one of the ideas initially funded by NIAC and then taken on by NASA.

Other like the space elevator, have become the focus of much scientific attention.

"When we funded it, about five years ago, the first reaction was, we're funding science fiction but ... typically now you'll have a number of space elevator papers submitted," Cassanova said.

Grunden that though her re-engineered food crops might not be used by astronauts for 10 years or so there could be spin-offs much earlier.

"It has applications not only to space but to Earth," she said.

Dubowsky's will be tested in New Mexico this year, and his team hopes to have prototypes built by March.

Cassanova that he hoped NIAC's latest call for ideas would stimulate people's imagination.

"We're really trying to inspire the geniuses here in the US to find different ways of doing things," he said.