In 2007 a little-known organization, the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts (NIAC), was quietly terminated by NASA. For nine years the organization spent about $4 million a year supporing the earliest stages of development of technologies that could, in decades’ time, have a “significant impact” on future NASA missions. NIAC died because it had been shifted over time into the agency’s Exploration Systems Mission Directorate, where many programs not closely aligned with the implementation of the Vision for Space Exploration were eliminated. However, a new report is calling on NASA to recreate NIAC.
The 2008 NASA appopriations bill included a provision directing NASA to request the National Research Council to undertake a study on the effectiveness of NIAC and make corresponding recommendations. The final report on that study, released today (and now available online), finds that the original NIAC met its goals in developing technologies that could benefit future NASA missions. It notes in particular three technologies or mission concepts originally supported by NIAC, a mini-magnetospheric plasma propulsion technology, an x-ray interferometry imaging mission concept, and a extrasolar planetary systems imager, that won additional support from NASA after their NIAC work was completed.
Concluding that the original NIAC was a success, the report calls on NASA to “reestablish a NIAC-like entity” to undertake the same cutting-edge research the original NIAC performed. This organization, which the report dubs “NIAC2″, would be located in the office of the NASA administrator, rather than one of the mission directorates (avoiding the problems with ESMD that led to the original NIAC’s demise). It would be similar to the original NIAC, although NIAC2 would be open to proposals from internal NASA teams (rather than exclusively fund outside proposals, as NIAC did) and include concepts that could “provide major benefit to a future NASA mission” in as little as 10 years.