NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program

The NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) Program nurtures visionary ideas that could transform future aerospace missions with the creation of breakthroughs — radically better or entirely new aerospace concepts — while engaging America's innovators and entrepreneurs as partners in the journey. NIAC is unique within NASA. It is a program that values both technical acumen and imagination, inspired by curiosity and the quest for knowledge. We encourage innovators to be creative and attempt great leaps forward in aerospace. NIAC studies explore innovative, technically credible, advanced concepts that could one day “Change the Possible” in aerospace. NIAC is open to all categories of U.S. organizations. Non-U.S. organizations may partner in, or lead, NIAC studies on a no-exchange-of-funds basis, and subject to NASA’s policy on foreign participation. NIAC supports innovative research through multiple phases of study, all competitively awarded. Phase I studies are nine-month efforts to explore the overall viability of visionary concepts. Phase II studies further develop the most promising Phase I concepts for up to two years, addressing key challenges and developing a technology roadmap for eventual implementation. Phase III studies further advance, for up to two years, those technologies which uniquely require NIAC support to facilitate transition into other NASA, government, or commercial programs. A NIAC concept must be relevant to NASA’s Vision and Mission, innovative, of high potential impact, credible and reasonable, and examined in a reference mission. The reference mission is a key feature of NIAC studies, facilitating concept assessment in a space or aeronautics mission context to demonstrate that it would be worth further development. This paper provides an update to NIAC’s history and current role including process, additional summary statistics about its selections, status of outreach, and examples of some visionary and credible studies and impacts.