3 Bizarre Projects That Could Transform Exploration | NIAC 2019

[Music] the universe is a big place and there's a lot to explore out there there are distant icy moons and fiery atmospheres and everything in between and understanding how all these places work can teach us more about earth and open our eyes to some wonder along the way except exploring space is not easy and the most groundbreaking missions usually require some really creative engineering so that's where the Nyack program comes in it stands for the NASA innovative advanced concepts program and it gives scientists and engineers a chance to explore ideas that can transform future missions in an earlier episode we talked about some of 2019 s most advanced Nyack projects but it's worth giving some attention to the other concepts too because even though they're in the early stages of development it could mean big things for our future else they're just really cool for context vinayak program is broken into three phases when a researcher thinks they have a good idea they can apply to phase one if they get accepted they 125 thousand dollars and get nine months to figure out if their idea is actually feasible if it is they can apply to phase two in this phase researchers are given $500,000 and two years to start to develop their project and finally if all that goes well they can apply to Phase three in this last stage they're given two million dollars and another two years to work and by the end of this phase NASA or another organization should be able to pick up their project for further development every year there's a new class of phase one two and three concepts but no matter what phase they're in all of the projects are fascinating take one of 2019 s phase 1 projects called breeze it stands for bio-inspired ray for extreme environments and zonal exploration and it's a flyer designed to withstand the harsh winds of Venus that also looks a lot like a cute little stingray although Venus is our closest neighbor and about earth sized its atmosphere is vastly different around the planet winds blow at hurricane force and because of all the greenhouse gases that trap the sun's heat surface temperatures can reach more than 470 degrees Celsius that's hot enough to melt lead venus is kind of a barren wasteland but scientists believe that studying it may help us better understand the effect of greenhouse gases as well as how planets evolve in general and with a maneuverable fire like breeze we could say the areas all around the planet this concept is currently being developed by an associate professor at the University of Buffalo and it would for similarly to how birds fly over the ocean birds take advantage of the fact that wind speed changes at different altitudes with air moving faster the higher you go to increase velocity they fly downward picking up speed from the descent and wind at their tail then they loop around to fly back into the faster moving air using their higher velocity and tail wind to create lift it's a pretty efficient flying method so it makes sense the engineers would want to adapt it for their spacecraft to in this case breeze would use the zonal winds that travel around Venus parallel to its equator internal cables would control its altitude and flap its wings and the planet's atmosphere would do the rest using a variety of instruments breeze would travel around and collect data on weather patterns chemistry volcanoes and even the planets geography we'll need to wait until 2020 to see if the mission pans out but even if it doesn't the physics it uses could someday be incorporated into future missions another phase one concept taking inspiration from nature is called MP for AE which stands for micro probes propelled and powered by planetary atmospheric electricity it's being developed by a West Virginia University associate professor and its ultimate goal is to study planets atmospheres by deploying thousands of tiny probes since this is only a phase one study the project doesn't have a specific planet in mind but the researcher does have an idea about how they would work these probes would imitate a flying technique that some species of spider use it's called ballooning and evidence suggests it happens from the spiders spin a sail like trail of a web and use it to ride the wind and the atmospheres electric field the fact that the atmosphere has its own electric field might seem a little weird at first but it's because the Earth's surface and its upper atmosphere actually have different charges the surface of the planet has a slight negative charge well the higher region of the atmosphere called the ionosphere has a positive charge this creates a global electric circuit that's maintained by thunderstorms and varies and strength depending on the weather you almost definitely won't notice it during your daily life but some spiders take advantage of it all the time because spiders silk has a negative charge it's repelled by the ground and actually generates enough lift to propel the spider upwards this seems to allow these spiders to travel kilometers through the air and these phase 1 micro probes are hoping to do the same thing the 50-milligram probes would consist of a small payload pod hanging from a 200 meter loop of string the string would provide drag which would slow the probes and cause them to drop to the air an electrostatic lift would raise them up researchers would even be able to control their altitude at least somewhat by regulating the strings electric charge through a device on the probe today if we're going to study a planet's atmosphere we typically use a space telescope or a single orbiting satellite the MP for AE would allow us to study huge chunks of an atmosphere at once and in a lot more detail these concepts are inspired by animals but this last one seems like something straight out of science fiction it's a propulsion method where the spacecraft is powered by lasers it's being developed by a member of the Texas AM Engineering Experiment Station and it was accepted as a phase to study in April of 2019 it's called Proxima and while it could someday help spacecraft travel to places like Pluto and the outer solar system it's specifically designed to go to Proxima Centauri B this is a planet orbiting the closest star to our Sun and if Proxima works it would enable humanity's first trip to a planet outside of our solar system this project is a form of beamed energy propulsion which is pretty much what it sounds like some kind of remote power source beams energy to the spacecraft and that heats up the spacecraft's propellant and creates thrust since Proxima is only a phase to project there's a lot left to figure out like we're in space that remote power source would go but ultimately this method offers a big advantage for long-distance spacecraft since not having an onboard power source will make them much lighter the researcher even has a strategy for how to keep próximas laser beam narrow and focused over long distances using a few types of beams so maybe when we send the first spacecraft to another solar system it could be powered by a method like this at the end of the day there's a chance that none of these phase 1 or 2 projects will make it to the next round but even if this is the last you hear of them they're worth knowing about creative ideas like this and programs like Nyack are shaping the future of space exploration one mission concept at a time every amazing mission you know about today started off as an idea like this so whether these missions get fully developed or just inspire future concepts we're glad people are thinking about them developing a new mission obviously takes a lot of engineering talent but it also takes soft skills you might not think of things like how to communicate well and honestly those skills apply to any field not just space exploration if you want to work on your soft skills you can check out crash course business soft skills a show produced by complexly this series is hosted by Evelyn from the Internet's and over the course of 17 episodes she'll teach you how to tackle the job search and use skills you already have to stand out in the workplace check out the first video about the key to all things business building trust link is in the description [Music] you [Music]

Channel: SciShow Space

Views: 119,028

Rating: 4.9057732 out of 5

Keywords: scishow, scishow space, Space, Science, hank green, astrophysics, astronomy, NIAC, NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts, NASA, BREEZE, Bio-inspired Ray for Extreme Environments and Zonal Exploration, MP4AE, Micro-Probes Propelled and Powered by Planetary Atmospheric Electricity, ballooning, PROCSIMA, Proxima Centauri b, Photon-paRticle Optically Coupled Soliton Interstellar Mission Accelerator, beamed-energy propulsion

Id: YBZ0x6QOPjE

Length: 7min 2sec (422 seconds)

Published: Tue Aug 06 2019