Late concept post, with four instead of the usual six. Sorry about that, but here you go.

The `once upon a time’ science fiction concept of a space elevator has been envisioned and studied as a real mass transportation system in the latter part of the 21st century. David Smitherman of NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center’s Advanced Projects Office has compiled plans for such an elevator. The space elevator concept is a structure extending from the surface of the Earth to geostationary Earth orbit (GEO) at 35,786 km in altitude. The tower would be approximately 50 km tall with a cable tethered to the top. Its center mass would be at GEO such that the entire structure orbits the Earth in sync with the Earth’s rotation maintaining a stationary position over its base attachment at the equator. Electromagnetic vehicles traveling along the cable could serve as a mass transportation system for transporting people, payloads, and power between space and Earth. This illustration by artist Pat Rawling shows the concept of a space elevator as viewed from the geostationary transfer station looking down the length of the elevator towards the Earth.

This artist rendering shows a proposed ice-penetrating cryobot and a submersible hydrobot that could be used to explore the ice-covered ocean on Jupiter’s large satellite, Europa. Scientists propose first testing these instrument-ladened robots by sending them to Lake Vostok, a subglacial lake in Antarctica. The cryobot would melt its way through the ice cover and then deploy a hydrobot, a self-propelled underwater vehicle that would analyze the chemical composition of the ice and water in a search for signs of life. This proposed mission to Lake Vostok and Europa is being discussed by scientists and engineers at JPL, NASA, the National Science Foundation and universities and other agencies around the world.

This artists concept depicts a Magnetic Launch Assist vehicle clearing the track and shifting to rocket engines for launch into orbit. The system, formerly referred as the Magnetic Levitation (MagLev) system, is a launch system developed and tested by Engineers at the Marshall Space Flight Center (MSFC) that could levitate and accelerate a launch vehicle along a track at high speeds before it leaves the ground. Using an off-board electric energy source and magnetic fields, a Magnetic Launch Assist system would drive a spacecraft along a horizontal track until it reaches desired speeds. The system is similar to high-speed trains and roller coasters that use high-strength magnets to lift and propel a vehicle a couple of inches above a guideway. A full-scale, operational track would be about 1.5-miles long, capable of accelerating a vehicle to 600 mph in 9.5 seconds, and the vehicle would then shift to rocket engines for launch into orbit. The major advantages of launch assist for NASA launch vehicles is that it reduces the weight of the take-off, the landing gear, the wing size, and less propellant resulting in significant cost savings. The US Navy and the British MOD (Ministry of Defense) are planning to use magnetic launch assist for their next generation aircraft carriers as the aircraft launch system. The US Army is considering using this technology for launching target drones for anti-aircraft training.

Aerial Regional-scale Environmental Surveyor, future Mars scout possibility.