The Orbital Clarity Challenge — the sixth in the NASA TechLeap Prize series — is a collaborative effort between NASA’s Heliophysics Division, Flight Opportunities program, and Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation. The Heliophysics Division studies space weather, including how it heats and expands Earth’s outer atmosphere during intense solar activity, creating orbital drag through atmospheric density changes. The […]
NASA’s next Gateways to Blue Skies competition invites collegiate teams to imagine innovative new ways aircraft could inspect land-based infrastructure, such as bridges and tunnels, to improve safety, reliability, and costs by 2035 or sooner. Infrastructure is the foundation of the nation’s strong economy, global competitiveness, and daily quality of life. When that infrastructure is […]
As NASA prepares to establish the Moon Base, advancing surface mobility will be key to helping crews and robotic systems travel farther across the lunar surface. To help advance that capability, the Rock and Roll with NASA Challenge invited public innovators to design and build next-generation lunar rover wheels. Five teams from 128 submissions and 49 countries advanced to the final phase of the […]
NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) assists in the use of crowdsourcing across the federal government. CoECI’s NASA Tournament Lab offers the contract capability to run external crowdsourced challenges on behalf of NASA and other agencies. Sponsored by the Administration for Strategic Preparedness and Response (ASPR), a division of the U.S. Department of […]
NASA announced the Massachusetts Institute of Technology project, Exploration-Class Lunar Integrated Power SystEm, as the first place winner for the 2026 Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) competition, which challenges students to bridge gaps in aerospace technology by innovating new system concepts and prototypes. Another team from the same university won second place overall for their project, Mars Exploration Layered Infrastructure for Operations, Research, and Advancement, while Virginia Polytechnic Institute and State University took third place with the Mars […]
The Fly Foundational Robots (FFR) mission will launch a robotic arm, with seven degrees of freedom, to low Earth orbit. NASA is opening access to the robotic arm to a select group of U.S. researchers — principal investigators, post-doctoral researchers, professors, and highly qualified graduate students — who have a compelling experiment and the capability […]
NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) assists in the use of crowdsourcing across the federal government. CoECI’s NASA Tournament Lab offers the contract capability to run external crowdsourced challenges on behalf of NASA and other agencies. The National Institutes of Health (NIH) Office of Nutrition Research (ONR) invites U.S.-based, accredited, non-profit academic institutions […]
The South Dakota State University team took first place at NASA’s fifth annual Gateways to Blue Skies Competition, which challenged student teams to address a critical element of U.S. aviation: aircraft maintenance. This year’s competition, RepAir: Advancing Aircraft Maintenance, asked teams of postsecondary students to develop innovative systems and practices that could advance commercial aircraft […]
The Robotically Manipulated Payload Challenge — the fifth in the NASA TechLeap Prize series — is a competition to advance persistent infrastructure for in-space servicing, assembly, and manufacturing. NASA Flight Opportunities invites applicants to propose a payload that can be manipulated by a robotic arm in low Earth orbit. Up to three winners will each receive up […]
NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI) assists in the use of crowdsourcing across the federal government. CoECI’s NASA Tournament Lab offers the contract capability to run external crowdsourced challenges on behalf of NASA and other agencies. The Council on Environmental Quality (CEQ), within the Executive Office of the President established by the National […]