OUR
PROJECTS
"Every great and deep difficulty bears in itself its own solution. It forces us to change our thinking in order to find it."
- Niels Bohr
CURRENT
PROJECTS
TitanAir: Leading-Edge Liquid Collection to Enable Cutting-Edge Science
This Titan Flyer concept aims to "drink" in methane condensation and organic material through a permeable section of leading edge wing skin. Capillary features on the inside of the wing will collect this ingested material and combine it into a continuous fluid stream, which can then be routed to science instruments inside the flyer. To enable intermittent low altitude flight, the flyer will land on the seas of Titan like a flying boat -- except "boat" implies water, and on Titan the lakes are made of methane. We're calling it a "flying laker."
2023 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I Award Winner.
Read the white paper here. Check out the TitanAir project page here.
Autonomous Robotic Demonstrator for Deep Drilling (ARD3)
This project's main goal is to rapidly advance Mars deep ice drilling technology. ARD3 is designed to drive up and down the bore hole with flexible tracks that are "squish-fit" against the bore wall. When one unit comes up from the bore, the next can be sent down while the first unit is serviced. The units are nicknamed borebots.
2021 NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Phase I Award Winner.
Read our NIAC Phase I final report here. or click here for the project page.
