NASA Backs Wild Plan for a Laser-Powered Drone to Explore Giant Caves Below the Moon's Surface
NASA awarded Stone Aerospace $175,000 to test a tethered drone that could transmit data, power and thrust through fiber optics.
10 Articles
10 Articles
NASA Backs Wild Plan for a Laser-Powered Drone to Explore Giant Caves Below the Moon's Surface
NASA awarded $175,000 for preliminary research into lunar cave-spelunking drones as part of $3.2 million dispersed via its “innovative advanced concepts” awards this summer.
NASA has approved one of its strangest missions yet: Dragonfly, a nuclear-powered drone the size of a car that will fly across Saturn's moon Titan, the one place beyond Earth with rain, rivers and seas, hunting for the chemistry that comes before life
NASA has committed to something that still sounds like science fiction when you say it plainly. It is going to fly a drone around another world. Not drive a rover, not drop a lander and hope it survives, but fly, hopping from place to place across the surface of a moon nearly a billion and a half kilometres away. The world is Titan, the largest of Saturn’s moons, and the machine is called Dragonfly. Of all the places we might have chosen to atte…
Under the moon's surface there are huge cave systems. It is difficult to explore. US company Stone Aerospace tinkers with a solution.
The scientists believe that these spaces can become refuges for future human bases.
NASA has announced its intention to support an initiative to explore the Moon's subterranean voids using unmanned aerial vehicles and laser systems, with the goal of determining the feasibility of establishing human settlements there. The program will employ equipment designed to traverse previously unexplored areas beyond our planet. The project will be carried out by Stone Aerospace, which plans to use an autonomous vehicle equipped with laser…
A Hair-Thin Fiber Carrying Laser Light Could Unlock the Moon’s Hidden Caves
NASA handed Stone Aerospace a $175,000 check in July 2026 to fund a nine-month research on a hovering robot that would have the opportunity to explore one of the Moon’s most intriguing features. The proposal is named the Lunar Underground eXplorer (LUX), and it is based on power-over-fiber technology. A large hole in the ground [...]
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