Researchers at Draper Laboratory in Cambridge, Massachusetts, and MIT are developing a vehicle that could explore the moon, Mars or an asteroid by taking giant propulsive leaps.

Known as "the hopper," the vehicle could leap over craters, cliffs, and other obstacles, covering as much as a kilometer at a time. While in the air, the hopper would be able to map the ground below, to ensure that it lands safely.

"It's a plane-car hybrid," says Bobby Cohanim, principal investigator of the hopper at MIT. The hopper could drive around and then take a rocket propelled hop when it meets an obstacle or wants to move quickly to a new location, he says. The hopper could explore more of Mars in a few days than NASA's current rovers have explored in six years, he adds.

The hopper, which is autonomously controlled, uses guidance, navigation and control, and avionics systems built by Draper. The structure and propulsion system for hopping--a ducted fan propulsion system with a cold-gas control system--is being developed by MIT. The plan is to use the hopper for the Google Lunar X Prize as part of the Next Giant Leap team.

I recently visited Draper and got a look at the hopper in its current state of development. Here's a video of my visit:

An artist's impression of an electric rocket powered by an array of solar panels that can deliver 30 kilowatts. Courtesy NASA.

At the American Institute for Aeronautics and Astronautics' 2010 Space conference currently underway in Anaheim, California, NASA announced the latest revision of its programs to develop new technologies that will transform human spaceflight. NASA first began developing these plans in February following the Obama administration's unveiling of its new space policy, and revealed them to the space community in May. Already however, significant changes have been made, in small part due to feedback from the space community, but mostly due to Congressional opposition to the White House's policy. The House and Senate are fashioning a compromise, but NASA's representatives cautioned that the impasse over the 2011 Financial Year budget is not likely to be resolved until several months into FY2011, and so even more changes are likely in the near future.

However, at least in broad strokes, the agency's commitment to developing and demonstrating certain technologies it believes are critical to its future are clear, with four test missions slated for launch between 2014 and 2018 by NASA's new Flagship Technology Demonstration program.

The first mission is a Solar Electric Propulsion test flight, scheduled for 2014--a large solar array fitted to a small unmanned spacecraft will generate 30 kilowatts of power that will be used to drive an electric rocket. The mission will last two years, first visiting a dead satellite in geosynchrous orbit to test new proximity sensors for an automated rendevous and docking system NASA hopes to build, and then the spacecraft will go on to visit a near Earth asteroid, studying it with a small set of science instruments. NASA hopes such a propulsion system will let them build efficient space tugs, or power space debris removal vehicles.

The second mission will launch a satellite that will demonstrate the ability to store cryogenic propellants such as liquid oxygen, and then transfer propellants from one spacecraft to another. The 200-day mission is targeted for 2015 and will demonstrate the technologies needed to build in-space refueling depots. Such depots could make it much easier and cheaper to send manned and unmanned spacecraft beyond low Earth orbit, as the fuel for long journeys won't have to be brought up all in one go, meaning smaller rockets can be used.

NASA hopes to launch the third mission in 2016; this would be an inflatable habitat module more or less permanently attached to the International Space Station, similar to the modules currently being developed by Bigelow Aerospace for a private space station. In 2018, NASA would use the inflatable module as a test bed for an advanced life support system intended for long-duration manned missions.

The fourth and final mission planned would also launch in 2018, and demonstrate how NASA can use aerocapture and other techniques to land large payloads on Mars. With current technology, NASA can't land more than 1,000 kilograms on the Martian surface at a time, far too little for a human mission. It hasn't yet been determined if the flight test would actually take place at Mars, or if useful results could be obtained by testing the technology with Earth's atmosphere.

Researchers at the U.S. Department of Energy's Idaho National Laboratory (INL) have developed a way to make mass spectrometers, which are used to detect signs of life in martian soil, more efficient. These instruments work by taking a soil sample and turning it into gas and then ionizing it. The ions are then sent through a channel to be trapped and identified--proteins and amino acids are considered signs of life.

Spectrometers currently use air flow created by pumps, which are heavy and energy intensive, to channel the ions into the trap. If ions hit the walls of the channel they will die. The new technology uses electric fields to guide the ions directly into the trap instead.

"This is a novel way to shape electric fields for moving ions around," said Tim McJunkin, an engineer at INL, in the press release. Called the total ion control method, the new technology could be used on devices like the Mars Organic Molecule Analyzer (MOMA), which will be part of a Mars mission in 2018. The researchers have been in communications with the MOMA team leader, LuAnn Becker, who is also a scientist at Johns Hopkins University. "This is an enabling technology," she said in the release. "If you want to move ions around cheaply and robustly, and without much weight, this is the way to do it."

The device uses only 100 miliwatts of power and during testing was able to guide 10 times as many ions into the trap as commercially available devices. The new method could also be used in instruments that analyze explosives in airports.