As an astronaut traverses the lunar South Pole, tribocharging from walking on the lunar surface and plasma charging from the ambient plasma generate electric charge on the spacesuit. This problem is severely compounded when entering lunar shadows and Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSRs). In these dark zones, the spacesuit can buildup a substantial negative potential due […]
NASA’s 2027 Human Lander Challenge is seeking ideas from college and university students to help address one of the most critical needs for sustained lunar exploration: reliable communications. As NASA prepares for long-term human presence on the Moon through the Artemis and Moon Base programs, communications systems will be just as important as spacecraft and […]
Following a successful inaugural year of ingenuity and career building, NASA ORBIT (Opportunities in Research, Business, Innovation, and Technology) has officially returned for a second season to bring university and college student innovation to the forefront of Earth technology development and deep-space exploration. Registration for the 2026–2027 challenge is open through Monday, Nov. 16, 2026, […]
The NASA ORBIT (Opportunities in Research, Business, Innovation, and Technology for the Workforce) Challenge invites university and community college students nationwide to work with real NASA intellectual property and mission challenges. Choose your path: develop commercial applications of NASA patents that solve problems here on Earth (ORBIT Earth), or design next-generation technologies for space exploration […]
NASA named a team from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (MIT) as the first prize winner for Phase 2 of the agency’s LunaRecycle Challenge, which focused on developing solutions for reducing waste during missions to the Moon or deep space by recycling common materials, like fabrics, plastics, foam, and metals. The Composites for Extraterrestrial Recycling By Engineering the Reuse and Upcycling of Zotek (CERBERUZ) team, comprised of undergraduate, graduate, and doctoral students at MIT, received a total of $775,000 in awards. The technology grinds mixed trash into a fine powder, […]
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 […]
NASA is asking U.S.-based collegiate teams to submit bold, original concepts to the 2027 edition of a student challenge focused on aerospace innovation that could help the agency envision a future on the Moon shaped by new technology. The latest NASA Revolutionary Aerospace Systems Concepts – Academic Linkage (RASC-AL) competition invites student teams to explore new operations paradigms and advance the technologies needed to […]
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 […]