NASA's NIAC Program Selects 2026 Class, Including a Plan to Dim the Sun

NASA's program for funding genuinely far-out space technology ideas has picked its latest crop of concepts, and this year's list includes a proposal ambitious enough to involve deliberately dimming the sun.

What NIAC Actually Funds

NASA's Innovative Advanced Concepts program, known as NIAC, exists specifically to fund early-stage, high-risk, high-reward space technology concepts that are too speculative or unproven for mainstream mission funding but potentially transformative if they prove out. Phase I selections represent the earliest, most exploratory stage of that funding pipeline, giving researchers initial support to develop and validate concepts that remain years, if not decades, away from any actual space application.

The Sun-Dimming Concept

Among this year's selections, researcher Saptarshi Bandyopadhyay at NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory is developing a concept called Dimming the Sun, which explores using a controllable dust cloud to reduce solar insolation, the amount of solar radiation reaching a given area. Concepts exploring deliberate solar radiation management have drawn increasing scientific interest globally as a potential, controversial tool for addressing climate change, making a NASA-funded exploratory study into a controllable, space-based version of this idea a notable addition to the broader ongoing conversation about geoengineering approaches.

Why "Controllable" Is the Key Word

The emphasis on a controllable dust cloud, rather than any deliberately permanent or uncontrolled intervention, reflects the careful, exploratory framing NIAC-funded research typically maintains around genuinely consequential concepts like solar radiation management, prioritizing understanding whether precise, adjustable control is even technically achievable before any broader application is seriously considered. That controllability question sits at the heart of why serious scientists remain divided on solar geoengineering more broadly, since an intervention that cannot be precisely managed or reversed carries substantial risk alongside its theoretical climate benefits.

Other Concepts In This Year's Class

Alongside the sun-dimming proposal, this year's Phase I selections include work from researcher David Bugby on combinatory architecture concepts, part of a broader class of selected studies spanning multiple distinct areas of speculative space technology research. NIAC's selection process typically favors a diverse portfolio of concepts across different technology areas, ensuring the program funds a genuine range of exploratory ideas rather than concentrating support too narrowly on any single research direction.

Why This Program Matters For Long-Term Innovation

NIAC-funded concepts operate on a genuinely long time horizon, with successful Phase I studies sometimes taking a decade or more to progress toward anything resembling an actual space mission application, if they progress that far at all. That long horizon is precisely the point, giving NASA a structured way to explore genuinely novel, high-risk ideas without the pressure of near-term mission deadlines that constrain more conventional space technology development programs.

What Comes Next

Bandyopadhyay and the other 2026 Phase I selectees will now begin their initial exploratory research, with the most promising concepts potentially advancing to NIAC's more developed Phase II funding track in future years if their early findings prove sufficiently compelling. Given how consequential and contested solar radiation management remains as a broader climate intervention concept, the sun-dimming study specifically is likely to draw close attention well beyond NASA's own research community as it progresses.