The Innovative Technology Initiative will enhance NASA’s efforts to nurture new technologies and novel ideas to revolutionize aeronautical and space enterprises for the benefit of the nation and the world. An initial step in this effort is to establish a NASA Innovation Fund.
NASA Innovation Fund
The NASA Innovation Fund is being established to provide support to NASA innovators in the early stages of formulating concepts for novel technologies and new processes that have the potential to revolutionize the way NASA performs its missions or to enable whole new capabilities in space flight, science, aeronautics and exploration. New technologies or processes for NASA that have the potential to also address other national and global challenges are of particular interest for this program. The projects being sought are those that are too early in their development to compete for support from other NASA funding sources. The projects should be novel but grounded in sound science and engineering principles and offer reasonable potential for concrete applications of interest and value to NASA.
An internal call for proposals was issued on May 21 and each Center must submit no more than five proposals to NASA Headquarters by June 19, 2009. An announcement of projects selected for funding is expected by June 30. The projects are to be conducted primarily with civil service labor and the work must be completed by September 30, 2009.
On July 6, 2009, twenty projects were selected out of over 230 proposals for the 2009 Innovation Fund. These selected projects along with the project leader and home center are listed below. › NIF Selection 2009
For other questions and comments contact: Andrew Petro, Innovative Partnerships Program Office, NASA Headquarters by email at andrew.j.petro@nasa.gov.
