NASA Selects Innovative Ideas for Study

NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts in Atlanta has selected five fellows to receive its 2005 Phase II research awards. Created in 1998, the institute solicits innovative concepts from people and organizations outside of NASA that could have a significant impact on space exploration missions.

In Phase I, the researchers validated the viability of their proposals and demonstrated their project’s potential to fit into NASA’s plans. Phase II grants can be as much as $400,000 for up to two years of research into feasibility issues such as cost, performance, technology and development time.

The proposal titles, principal investigators and academic institutions of the Phase II award winners are: redesigning living organisms to survive on Mars, Wendy F. Boss, North Carolina State University, Raleigh; the new worlds imager, Webster Cash, University of Colorado at Boulder; microbots for large-scale planetary surface and subsurface exploration, Steven Dubowsky, Massachusetts Institute of Technology, Cambridge; investigation of the feasibility of laser trapped mirrors in space, Elizabeth McCormack, Bryn Mawr College in Pennsylvania; and a deep-field infrared observatory near the lunar pole, Simon P. Worden, University of Arizona, Tucson.