This week a drone submarine designed to explore the methane and ethane seas on Saturn’s cold moon Titan got a great deal of attention. The proposed submarine would submerge itself in the a vast lake like Kraken Mare to gather scientific data and rise to the surface for 16 hours per day to transmit the information it had gathered back to NASA.

The proposed one ton submarine would maneuver with a piston driven turbine propulsion system powered by a radioisotope generator. A large dorsal fin with a built-in planar phased-array antenna would send back chemical readings and the first photos of an alien sea.

Previously, the Mars Rovers have captured the public imagination and fueled millions of hours of research. Despite its arid, barren appearance Mars is very much like Earth.

Titan is something else altogether, the moon is 50 percent larger than Earth’s moon, with 80 percent more mass. At the dense atmosphere, one-and-a-half as dense as Earths and that atmosphere is primarily made of methane, nitrogen and hydrogen. Titan is also very cold with temperatures dipping to -290 degrees fahrenheit.

Despite the temperatures the moon has liquid lakes, which researchers believe are made of methane or ethane.

It is very likely that one day soon, humans will walk on Earth but without a great deal of protective gear, no one will ever walk on Titan.

While the idea grabbed headlines and imaginations this week, it may never happen. The submarine is a product of NASA’s Innovate Advanced Concepts program (NIAC).

The NIAC was formed in 2011, after the closure of the NASA Institute for Advanced Concepts in 2007. Although it is driven by NASA objectives and funds projects selected with those priorities in mind, it’s focus in more on what’s possible rather than on ongoing or upcoming missions.

“Through the NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts program, NASA is taking the long-term view of technological investment and the advancement that is essential for accomplishing our missions. We are inventing the ways in which next-generation aircraft and spacecraft will change the world and inspiring Americans to take bold steps,” said Michael Gazarik, director of NASA’s Space Technology Program at the agency’s headquarters in Washington in 2012.

Each year the NIAC selects a handful of projects, usually about a dozen, for “Phase I” studies, each receiving about $100,000. If they show promise in the initial study they are continued in “Phase II” studies, generally receiving $500,000 over two years. All of these studies are selected from an open, public submission process such as the one currently ongoing.

In 2014, 12 projects were selected for Phase I studies and five were funded for Phase II.

Projects funded in this way over the last three years have included spacecraft/rover hybrids for the study of small bodies such as asteroids, printable spacecraft, propellant-less spacecraft, cavehopping rovers, and improved mapping and sensor technologies.  Aside from the open competition, the NIAC also funds additional research through a variety of programs and for a variety of real and potential missions.

Many of these technologies could eventually have useful applications for people on Earth as well as space explorers.

The NIAC also hosts an annual symposium in which ideas and research are presented and some of the latest technologies are unveiled. These symposiums are public and streamed live for anyone who wants to watch.