NASA Studying Ways to Make Star Trek 'Tractor Beams' a Reality: Ability to Trap & Move Objects Using Laser Light

""The NASA Office of the Chief Technologist (OCT) has awarded Principal Investigator Paul Stysley and team members Demetrios Poulios and Barry Coyle at NASA's Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Md., $100,000 to study three experimental methods for corralling particles and transporting them via laser light to an instrument -- akin to a vacuum using suction to collect and transport dirt to a canister or bag. Once delivered, an instrument would then characterize their composition.

 "Though a mainstay in science fiction, and Star Trek in particular, laser-based trapping isn't fanciful or beyond current technological know-how," Stysley said. The team has identified three different approaches for transporting particles, as well as single molecules, viruses, ribonucleic acid, and fully functioning cells, using the power of light.

"The original thought was that we could use tractor beams for cleaning up orbital debris," Stysley said. "But to pull something that huge would be almost impossible -- at least now. That's when it bubbled up that perhaps we could use the same approach for sample collection."

With the Phase-1 funding from OCT's recently reestablished NASA Innovative Advanced Concepts (NIAC) program designed to spur the development of "revolutionary" space technologies, the team will study the state of the technology to determine which of the three techniques would apply best to sample collection. OCT received hundreds of proposals, ultimately selecting only 30 for initial funding.""

http://www.nasa.gov/topics/technology/features/tractor-beam.html

 High-beam profile

""The team has identified three possible options to capture and gather up sample material either in future orbiting spacecraft or on planetary rovers.
Mars rover image with "tractor beams" The approach could be put to use in space and on planetary surfaces

One is an adaptation of a well-known effect called "optical tweezers" in which objects can be trapped in the focus of one or two laser beams. However, this version of the approach would require an atmosphere in which to operate.

The other two methods rely on specially shaped laser beams - instead of a beam whose intensity peaks at its centre and tails off gradually, the team is investigating two alternatives: solenoid beams and Bessel beams.

The intensity peaks within a solenoid beam are found in a spiral around the line of the beam itself, while a Bessel beam's intensity rises and falls in peaks and troughs at higher distances from the beam's line.

Solenoid beams have already proven their "tractor beam" abilities in laboratory tests published in the journal Optics Express, but the pulling power of Bessel beams, presented on the preprint server Arxiv in February, remains to be proved experimentally.

In all three cases, explained Dr Stysley, the effect is a small one - but it could in some instances outperform existing methods of sample gathering.

"[Current] techniques have proven to be largely successful, but they are limited by high costs and limited range and sample rate," he said.""

http://www.bbc.co.uk/news/science-environment-15535115