14 Oct 2020

NASA has selected 31 promising space technologies for testing aboard parabolic aircraft, high-altitude balloons, and suborbital rocket-powered systems. By exposing the innovations to many of the rigors and characteristics of spaceflight – without the expense of an orbital flight – NASA can help ensure these technologies work correctly when they are deployed on future missions.

“By supporting suborbital flight testing, our Flight Opportunities program aims to help ensure that these innovations are well-positioned to address challenges and enable NASA to achieve its lunar ambitions, while also contributing to a growing and vibrant commercial space industry,” said Jim Reuter, associate administrator of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD). The Flight Opportunities program is part of STMD.

As part of the latest cohort of selections under NASA’s 2020 Tech Flights solicitation, the organizations developing the selected technologies will receive a grant or collaborative agreement allowing them to purchase flights from a U.S. commercial flight vendor that best meets their needs – a process that can help shorten the timeline for bringing innovation from lab-based testing to flight. This year, the solicitation included for the first time the option for researchers from industry and academia to accompany and tend to their payloads on suborbital space flights. As with all selections, researchers with human-tended payloads will need to ensure that they meet NASA’s requirements laid out in the solicitation prior to funds being awarded.

“We are excited to have selected more technologies for Flight Opportunities than we have in any prior year,” said Christopher Baker, program executive for the program at NASA’s Headquarters in Washington, D.C. “We are leaning forward into the future with some of these selections, including our first of a researcher-tended payload on a suborbital space flight.”

The selected technologies address two topics that reflect current NASA priorities. The topics helped NASA identify technologies that could further the agency’s lunar exploration goals under the Artemis program as well as utilization of commercial suborbital flight and low-Earth orbit platforms for research applications.