NASA wants to build a squid robot, develop deep space cryogenic storage, and use quasars to guide spacecraft. These and 12 other proposals will receive $100,000 each for development in Phase I of the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts. As NASA describes it, the program "aims to turn science fiction into science fact."
The squid robot, proposed by Mason Peck of Cornell, is a "soft-robotic rover" designed to go where conventionally powered robots can't—like Europa, a moon of Jupiter thought to house a subsurface ocean. Peck says the robot could "assess whether any life... may be powered by electromagnetic energy."
The robot uses its tentacles both to move and to harvest power from nearby magnetic fields. Some of that energy is used for water electrolysis, which creates a mix of H2 and O2 gas. When ignited, that mixture moves the squid—either in liquid or along the surface of a planetary body—by changing its shape. As the squid explores, it captures images of its surrounds, which it lights up with stretchy electroluminescent "skin."
In another project, a scientist from Johns Hopkins proposes to put micro-seismometers on the surface of asteroids and comets. When those bodies get pummeled by projectiles, the seismometers could pick up data that reveals how the insides of these bodies are arranged—whether they're "rubble piles or...solid interiors with a fragmental surface layer."
Space travel is limited not only by technology but by cost; sending tons of water, oxygen, and rocket fuel off-planet is absurdly expensive. Engineer Joel Sercel proposes a system that can gather water from an asteroid using one SpaceX Falcon 9 rocket. The description of how the system works sounds like classic science fiction: "After the asteroid has been encapsulated and the system de-spun, an inflatable solar concentrator in an advanced non-imaging configuration, provides direct solar-thermal energy through Winston Cones and light tubes to the asteroid surface."
Researchers will get nine months to conduct feasibility studies or their, and if they're successful, they can then apply for Phase II awards, which provide up to $500,000, over two years for further refinements. So here's hoping squidbot becomes reality.