We might learn more about Venus, the sun thanks to new NASA funding
Every year, NASA offers preliminary funding to several unusual projects. The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program “nurtures visionary ideas that could transform future NASA missions with the creation of breakthroughs — radically better or entirely new aerospace concepts.” Some of the past NIAC award-winning ideas that became reality include the Ingenuity helicopter now flying on Mars and Cubesats, small one-foot cube satellites that can use smartphones as the onboard computers. You’ve always heard how powerful of a computer your iPhone is!
Other funded NIAC proposals include such diverse projects as 3-D printing of biomaterials such as arrays of cells and a proposal to use the sun as a gravitational lens to study exoplanet surfaces. One idea proposes using bacteria and fungi brought from Earth plus known gases and soil materials on Mars to create bioengineered building materials. This dramatically reduces the weight needed to be sent to Mars to create safe habitats for future Martian astronauts.
NASA awarded 13 new NIAC awards in 2023 for projects beginning this year. For me, the two most exciting are a Venus Sample Return mission and sending a cluster of microsatellites to study the nearest exoplanet.
Over four decades ago, the Soviet Union landed multiple Venera probes on Venus. But conditions on Venus easily overwhelmed them. Surface temperatures reach nearly 900 degrees, hot enough to melt lead. Atmospheric pressure is ninety times that on Earth. Although each of the 10 landers provided valuable information about the planet, the longest-lasting probe, Venera 12, only lasted 110 minutes.
One NIAC award went to a team that wants to use the high-temperature technology developed for probes that study the sun up close plus an innovative rocket engine design that can use fuel created from the gasses in the Venusian atmosphere to return samples from the surface of the planet. Venus may once have been much like Earth, but the runaway greenhouse conditions turned it into a hellish environment. This mission might allow us to better understand the conditions on Venus before that change.
The closest star to us, Proxima Centauri, is 4.2 light years, 25 trillion miles, distant. Using our current fastest rocket technology, it would take us more than 50,000 years to reach it. A roughly Earth-sized planet, Proxima Centauri B, orbits the star. One NIAC award went to a group to study the feasibility of sending thousands of tiny spacecraft to study that planet. They plan to power it by using a 100-gigawatt laser beamed at the swarm from Earth. The tiny crafts would work together creating the equivalent of a giant dish antenna to send signals back to Earth. They estimate the trip would take only 20 years and data returned at the speed of light requires only 4.2 years.
Only a handful of NIAC awards lead to actual NASA missions. I hope these two come to full fruition.
Hitting the bull’s eye
Go outside at 8 p.m. Feb 16. Find the moon high in the western sky. Just west of the moon sits the Pleiades star cluster. A bit farther south of the moon, you can find the V shape of the head of Taurus the Bull. Except for the bright star Aldebaran marking one of the bull’s eyes, all the other stars in his head are part of the Hyades star cluster. These are the two brightest star clusters visible from Oklahoma. With the half-full moon’s glare so bright, binoculars will let you see the fainter stars of both more easily.
Planet Visibility Report
February begins with Venus and Mars close together in the morning twilight. Mars may not be very obvious, but brilliant Venus will float just above it. Mercury will be lost in the morning twilight glow halfway between those two and the sun. Mars slowly moves farther from the sun in the morning sky while Venus creeps deeper into dawn as does Mercury. Saturn is lost in the evening twilight and moves even closer to the sun all month. Saturn and Mercury nearly coalesce into a single point of light on Feb. 28, but they will sit almost touching the disk of the sun. Jupiter remains high in the night sky after sunset all month. The new moon occurs on Feb. 9, with the full moon following on Feb. 24.