[NIAC 2023] NASA Develops Flying Saucers. Literally

There's an effect called photophoretic propulsion. You could have seen it in a Crookes radiometer. One of the NIAC awards of 2023 was granted to a team that hopes to use this effect to develop a propulsion system. This can allow flying in altitudes nothing else can fly and possibly even explore other worlds. 🦄 Support us on Patreon: https://patreon.com/universetoday 👉 More about the NIAC grant: https://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/niac/2023/PhotophoreticPropulsionEnablingMesosphereExploration/ https://bargatin.seas.upenn.edu/ 00:00 Intro 01:19 Levitation in science 05:47 Coming up with a design 11:33 Testing the design 15:34 Potential applications 23:10 Challenges 28:03 Other worlds 33:18 Outro 📺 VIDEO VERSION https://youtu.be/BzG64g4UEHo 📰 EMAIL NEWSLETTER Read by 60,000 people every Friday. Written by Fraser. No ads. Subscribe. It's FREE: https://universetoday.com/newsletter 🎧 PODCASTS Universe Today: https://universetoday.fireside.fm/ Astronomy Cast: http://www.astronomycast.com/ 🤳 OTHER SOCIAL MEDIA Twitter: https://twitter.com/fcain Twitter: https://twitter.com/universetoday Facebook: https://facebook.com/universetoday Instagram: https://instagram.com/universetoday 📩 CONTACT FRASER frasercain@gmail.com ⚖️ LICENSE Creative Commons Attribution 4.0 International (CC BY 4.0)