Challenges
Challenge Mission: This challenge originated in 2007 as the Personal Air Vehicle Challenge and in 2008 it was called the General Aviation Technology Challenge. In those challenges the teams demonstrated light aircraft that incorporate improvements to maximize fuel efficiency, reduce noise and improve safety. These innovations are intended to result in aircraft with less negative impacts on the environment and on their communities. The next aviation challenge will focus more directly on efficiency and will be called the Green Flight Challenge. The aircraft will still need to meet stringent safety and noise requirements as well as reasonable speed and range.
Technical Specs: The driving requirement will be to exceed an equivalent fuel-efficiency of 200 passenger miles per gallon. To compute the equivalence, the energy content of the electricity or fuel will be compared to one gallon of gasoline. The expectation is that electric, bio-fueled and hybrid-powered aircraft will compete.
Prize Recognition: The prize purse is $1,650,000, and will be held in July 2011 in Santa Rosa, CA.
Challenge Mission: In this challenge, teams design and build robotic machines to excavate simulated lunar soil (regolith). Excavating regolith will be an important part of any construction projects or processing of natural resources on the Moon.
Technical Specs: The robots are tested in box containing eight tons of simulated lunar regolith that is about 4 meters square and about one-half meter deep. In order to qualify for a prize, a robot must dig up and then dump at least 150 kg of regolith into a container in 30 minutes.
Prize Recognition: The teams with the robots that move the most regolith will claim the three cash prizes: $500,000 first place prize, $150,000 second place prize, and $100,000 third place prize.
Website: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ipp/innovation_incubator/centennial_challenges/regolith/index.html
Challenge Mission: The Power Beaming Challenge is a demonstration of wireless power transmission in which teams build and demonstrate systems to beam energy from the ground to a robotic device that climbs a vertical cable.
Technical Specs: To compete, teams must integrate a complex set of technical skills for optical beam forming, electro-mechanical beam tracking, photovoltaic beam conversion, power capture electronics, and mechanical drive. To win a prize, the climber must reach the top of the cable at a height of one kilometer.
Prize Recognition: Teams that can reach the top share in the prize purse of $2,000,000 based on their vertical speed and payload mass. LaserMotive’s average speed on their best of several successful climbs was 3.9 meters per second and by exceeding the average speed of 2 meters per second and being the only team to reach the top, they claimed the entire $900,000 prize for that level. Teams had to exceed an average speed of 5 meters per second to qualify for a share of the remaining prize purse of $1,100,000. That amount will remain available for the next Power Beaming competition.
Website: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ipp/innovation_incubator/centennial_challenges/beaming_tether/index.html
Challenge Mission: This is a challenge in materials engineering in which the tether provided by each team is subjected to a pull test. A tether that can win this challenge would be a major step forward in materials technology. Such improved materials would have wide range of applications in space and on Earth. In past years the Tether Challenge was held in conjunction with the Power Beaming Challenge at an event called the Space Elevator Games. In 2009 the events will be separate. Some space enthusiasts see the potential of wireless power transmission and high-strength tethers being combined to realize the space elevator, a concept that would bring about a revolution in space activity. The space elevator and even space solar power may be many years away, but dramatic improvements in power beaming and tether materials that result from these challenges can lead to many near-term innovations in a wide range of fields. The 2010 Tether Challenge will be conducted at approximately August 14.
Technical Specs/ Prize Recognition: In order to win the $2 million prize, the tether must exceed the strength of the best available commercial tether by 50 percent with no increase in mass.
Website: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ipp/innovation_incubator/centennial_challenges/tether/index.html
Challenge Mission: Students are required to design a vehicle that addresses a series of engineering problems that are similar to problems faced by the original Moonbuggy team.
Technical Specs: Each Moonbuggy will be human powered and carry two students, one female and one male, over a half-mile simulated lunar terrain course including “craters”, rocks, “lava” ridges, inclines and “lunar” soil. Moonbuggy entries are expected to be of “proof-of-concept” and engineering test model nature, rather than final production models. Each student team of six members is responsible for building their own buggy, and the course drivers, who are chosen from each team, must also be builders of the vehicle. As a part of the competition, and prior to course testing, the un-assembled Moonbuggy entries must be carried to the course starting line, with the unassembled components contained in a volume of 4′x 4′x 4′ (dimension requirements similar to those for the original Lunar Roving Vehicle). At the starting line, the entries will be assembled and readied for course testing and evaluated for safety. Assembly occurs one time prior to the first course run.
Prize Recognition: The top three winning teams in each division (one high school division and one college division) will be those having the shortest total times in assembling their moonbuggies and traversing the terrain course. Each team is permitted two runs of the terrain course, and the shortest course time will be added to the assembly time for the final total event time. The prizes include awards, trophies, commemorative medals, and more.
Website: http://moonbuggy.msfc.nasa.gov/
Challenge Mission: In the pressure suits that astronauts must wear while performing a spacewalk, one of the toughest parts to design are the gloves. Like an inflated balloon, the fingers of the gloves resist the effort to bend them. Astronauts must fight that pressure with every movement of their hand, which is exhausting and sometimes results in injury. Furthermore, the joints of the glove are subject to wear that can lead to life-threatening leaks.
Technical Specs: The Astronaut Glove Challenge seeks improvements to glove design that reduce the effort needed to perform tasks in space and improve the durability of the glove. In this challenge, competitors demonstrate their glove design by performing a range of tasks with the glove in an evacuated chamber. The gloves are also tested to ensure that they do not leak.
Prize Recognition: Peter Homer of Southwest Harbor, Maine won the first place prize of $250,000 and Ted Southern of Brooklyn, NY won the second place prize of $100,000. The competition was held on Nov. 19, 2009 at the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Titusville, Florida near NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
Challenge Mission: The Lunar Lander Challenge involves building and flying a rocket-powered vehicle that simulates the flight of a vehicle on the Moon. The lander must take off vertically then travel horizontally and land accurately at another spot. Then the same vehicle must take off again, travel horizontally back to the original take off point and land successfully.
Technical Specs: The prize purse is divided into first and second prizes for Level One and Level Two, which require a flight duration of at least 90 seconds on each flight and 180 seconds, respectively. Furthermore, one of the landings for a Level Two attempt must be made on a simulated lunar terrain with rocks and craters.
Prize Recognition: The $2 million prize purse, with part of it already awarded to Armadillo Aerospace in 2008, is the largest incentivized prize awarded by the X PRIZE Foundation since the winning of the $10M Ansari X PRIZE in 2004.
Website: http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ipp/innovation_incubator/centennial_challenges/lunar_lander/index.html
Mission: NASA’s Aerospace Directorate has operated this competition on an annual basis since 2003. Graduate and undergraduate students submit their designs for a highly efficient, environmentally friendly, low boom, commercial aircraft.
Prize Recognition: Students win trophies and first place receives $5,000 second place received $3,500, and third place receives $2,000.
Challenge Mission: Today’s current generation of aircraft benefit from past NASA investments in aeronautical research that have improved fuel efficiencies, lowered noise levels and lessened harmful emissions. Although substantial progress has been made, much more needs to be done. The nation’s air transportation system will continue to expand by an average of two to three percent per year over the next couple of decades, potentially increasing aviation’s contribution to climate change. Therefore, the next generation of environmentally responsible airliners should have lower noise, lower emissions, and less fuel burn than today’s aircraft.
The NASA Environmentally Responsible Aviation (ERA) project explores and documents the feasibility, benefits, and technical risks associated with vehicle concepts and enabling technologies that will help mitigate the impact of aviation on the environment. Through system-level analysis, promising vehicle and propulsion concepts and technologies will be developed based on their potential benefit toward simultaneously achieving fuel burn, noise and emissions metrics as shown in the green outlined area of the table below (N+2, 2020 timeframe).
Technical Specs: Students are invited to submit their ideas and designs for vehicle or propulsion concepts and technologies that will assist in meeting the N+2 goals. Those include: (a) non-conventional aircraft architectures that enable simultaneous achievement of noise, Landing Take Off (LTO) NOx and fuel burn metrics in the N+2 timeframe, (b) drag reduction through laminar flow, ( c) advanced propulsion architectures (open rotor, geared and direct drive turbofans), (d) advanced composite structural concepts for weight reduction, (e) low NOx, fuel-flexible combustors, and (f) propulsion and airframe integration for noise reduction and fuel burn improvements .
Website: http://aero.larc.nasa.gov/era_univ/competitions_univ_era.htm
Challenge Mission: The role of rotorcraft in relief operations of man-made and natural disasters cannot be understated. Whether fighting fires in California, providing relief after the 2004 tsunami, or rescuing people after Hurricane Katrina in 2005, the utility of rotorcraft in saving lives and property has been demonstrated over and over. When roads, runways, railways, and harbors are damaged, rotorcraft are the only lifeline for stranded survivors. In addition, distressed ships at sea are limited to rotorcraft or other ships for assistance. The Subsonic Rotary Wing (SRW) project of the Fundamental Aeronautics Program aims to radically improve the capabilities and civil benefits of rotorcraft. To this end, the SRW project offers the challenge of designing an amphibious tiltrotor for a wide range of rescue operations, including fire fighting.
Technical Specs: The challenge for University students is to (a) submit a conceptual design for an amphibious tiltrotor that meets or exceeds the design goals and capabilities; (b) describe the technical issues associated with water landings and take-offs; (c) describe the design trade-offs considered to accommodate marinization; and (d) follow the format and content guidelines stated on the web site, paying close attention to reference citations. Contestants must design an Amphibious Tiltrotor vehicle for civilian rescue missions that can carry up to 50 passengers, cruise at 300 kts, Range 800nm, land and take off in water or on land, and siphon water into an internal tank and expel water while airborne.
Website: http://aero.larc.nasa.gov/competitions_univ.htm
Challenge Mission: NASA’s Education program sponsors this competition that seeks to challenge university-level students to design, build and fly a reusable rocket with scientific payload to one mile in altitude. Since 2007, 19 unique Universities/Colleges have competed in this program. The NASA University Student Launch Initiative, or USLI, is a competition that challenges university-level students to design, build and fly a reusable rocket with scientific payload to one mile in altitude. The project engages students in scientific research and real-world engineering processes with NASA engineers. Students propose to participate in USLI during the fall. Once selected, teams design their rocket and payload throughout the school year. USLI requires a NASA review of the teams’ preliminary and critical designs. The project also requires flight readiness and safety reviews before the rockets and payloads are approved for launch. After launch, teams complete a final report to include conclusions from their science experiment and the overall flight performance. The Preliminary Design Review, Critical Design Review, and Flight Readiness Review are conducted by panels of scientists and engineers from NASA and from NASA contactors and external partners.
Prize Recognition: The top scoring team wins $5,000.
Technical Specs: The prizes sponsored by JSC will be awarded for the best business plans representing an engineering technology that has applications to both the NASA space program and to earth-based activities.
Prize Recognition: Johnson Space Center (JSC) has partnered with Rice University to offer three $20,000 prizes within the University’s 2009 nation-wide business plan contest.
Website: http://www.alliance.rice.edu/alliance/rbpc.asp?snid=49786723
