From glass habitats on the moon to starshades that could reveal new Earths, this week on Planetary Radio.

I'm Sarah Al-Ahmed of the Planetary Society, with more of the human adventure across our solar system and beyond.

This week, we're taking you inside NASA's innovative Advanced Concept Symposium,

where visionary thinkers share ideas that sound like science fiction,

but could become the next great space missions.

This was my third year hosting the webcast at the symposium,

this time in Philadelphia, Pennsylvania,

from September 9th through the 11th. I had the chance to speak with some of the scientists and

engineers that are daring to push the limits of what's possible. This is going to be the first

of two episodes highlighting projects from the 2025 NIAC symposium. In this episode, we're going to

explore bold ideas on space structures and observation.

The next week, we're going to turn to robotic exploration and some brilliant ways of studying

worlds like Venus.

First, we'll meet Martin Bermudez, CEO of Skyport's LLC and principal investigator of the

Lung's project, alongside Josh Simpson, who's a glass

artist and co-investigator. Together, they're exploring how we could one day build lunar habitats by

melting and blowing moon dust into massive glass structures. Then Christine Gregg, who's a research

engineer at NASA Ames Research Center, is going to share how architected

metamaterials could stabilize enormous lightweight space structures.

It's technology that could help us one day build giant telescopes and star shades that are

more efficient and dynamically stable.

And finally, John Mather, Nobel laureate and senior astrophysicist at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center.

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