{
  "id": 2792196,
  "title": "Launching 10,000 tiny 'femtosats' to Saturn? NASA funds 18 futuristic spaceflight ideas",
  "url": "https://urgent.news/2026/08/23/launching-10-000-tiny-femtosats-to-saturn-nasa-funds-18-futuristic",
  "topic": "science",
  "section": "Science",
  "published": "2026-08-23T12:00:00.000Z",
  "source": {
    "name": "Space.com",
    "slug": "space-com",
    "url": "https://www.space.com/technology/launching-10-000-tiny-femtosats-to-saturn-nasa-funds-18-futuristic-spaceflight-ideas"
  },
  "original_language": "en",
  "account": "The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program has chosen 18 innovative spaceflight concepts for funding in its latest Phase I awards, totaling $3.2 million. These proposals, though not actual missions, represent transformative technologies that could benefit future NASA missions, such as establishing a moon base within the Artemis program.\n\nAmong the selected projects, the Lunar Underground eXplorer (LUX) concept from Stone Aerospace in Texas stands out. LUX would deploy drones to map lunar lava tubes, using tethered, laser-powered probes to navigate these underground caverns.\n\nAnother intriguing concept involves mapping the surfaces of exoplanets orbiting nearby stars. Brookhaven Science Associates' Paul Stankus proposes a new \"nulling interferometer\" technology, which would use data from multiple telescopes to cancel out a star's light and reveal surface features on these distant worlds.\n\nThe most audacious proposal might be Northwestern University's plan to launch 10,000 tiny spacecraft, known as femtosats, into Saturn's rings. The idea, led by Michael Rubenstein, aims to perform in-situ surveys of the rings, acknowledging that a significant number of these miniature probes are likely to be lost in the process. The distributed nature of the mission allows for a higher risk tolerance, as the collective data gathered could provide valuable insights into Saturn's enigmatic rings.",
  "summary": "NASA has chosen 18 technology proposals for its Innovative Advanced Concepts awards to help turn some out-of-the-box ideas into out-of-this-world research.",
  "key_points": [],
  "editors_take": null,
  "illustration": null,
  "coverage": {
    "outlets": 1,
    "also_reported_by": []
  },
  "ai_generated": true,
  "disclaimer": "Summaries, key points and the editor’s take are written by software from other outlets’ reporting and may contain errors — always check the linked original."
}