NASA has just announced the projects that will be getting money from its NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) programme, which aims to support ideas for game-changing mission designs and never-before-seen space exploration tech. Here we look at five of the concepts and how they will be used. Astronauts venturing to the moon or Mars in the future are likely to face a barrage of hazardous space radiation during their trips, including high-energy particles and nuclei known as cosmic rays. To protect crews, one NIAC study is exploring the idea of what the project's lead, Elena D'Onghia at the University of Wisconsin-Madison, calls a "deployable magnetic shield device". The CREW HaT system would consist of a ring of electrical coils positioned on arms roughly 5 metres from the spacecraft's main body.

NASA has selected a number of futuristic technology concepts, that could be used to help humanity spread throughout the solar system and beyond. A total of 17 researchers from nine states will share in a $5.1 million grant from NASA, allowing them to run early-stage studies into the yet-to-be-developed technologies. Among the ideas given a share of the funding are space suits that can generate oxygen from the Martian atmosphere, and bird-like drones that can fly on Venus. Known as the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program, it was launched to nurture visionary ideas that could transform future space missions'with the creation of breakthroughs, radically better, or entirely new aerospace concepts'. If they come to fruition the technologies could also allow NASA to explore the moons of the gas giant world's, or look into the atmosphere of an exoplanet.