WASHINGTON (dpa-AFX) - NASA's inventions that use new structures to harness sunlight for space travel, enable communications with spacecraft at record-breaking distances, and determine the habitability of a moon of Jupiter, were named among TIME's Inventions of 2024.
'The NASA workforce - wizards, as I call them - have been at the forefront of invention and technology for more than 65 years,' said NASA Administrator Bill Nelson. 'From developing Europa Clipper, the largest satellite for a planetary mission that NASA has ever launched, to the Advanced Composite Solar Sail System, and communicating with lasers from deep space, NASA is improving our understanding of life on Earth - and the cosmos - for the benefit of all.'
NASA's Advanced Composite Solar Sail System is testing technologies that could allow spacecraft to 'sail on sunlight,' using the Sun's rays for propulsion. Results from this mission could provide an alternative to chemical and electric propulsion systems and inform the design of future larger-scale missions that require unique vantage points, such as space weather early warning satellites.
Since launching aboard NASA's Psyche spacecraft on Oct. 13, 2023, a Deep Space Optical Communications technology demonstration has delivered record-breaking downlink data rates to ground stations as the Psyche spacecraft travels through deep space. The mission, which is managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory in Southern California, has also sent and received optical communications out to Mars' farthest distance from Earth, fulfilling one of the project's primary goals.
The largest NASA spacecraft ever built for a mission headed to another planet, Europa Clipper also is the agency's first mission dedicated to studying an ocean world beyond Earth. Managed by NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory, the spacecraft launched on Oct. 14, and will begin orbiting Jupiter in 2030, flying by the icy moon 49 times to learn more about it.
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