Lunar base made with 3D printing (Credit: ESA/Foster + Partners)

PARIS, 18 January 2019 (ESA PR) — Sign up to the Metalysis–ESA Grand Challenge worth €500 000 rewarding innovation that helps us to explore space.

As ESA and other agencies prepare to send humans back to the Moon – this time to stay – technologies that make use of materials available in space (in-situ resource utilisation) are seen as key to sustainability, and a stepping stone in humankind’s adventure to Mars and farther into the Solar System.

(more…)

Charles A. Lindbergh (Credit: Library of Congress)

Part 3 of 6

by Douglas Messier
Managing Editor

At 10:22 p.m. on May 21, 1927, Charles Lindbergh brought the Spirit of St. Louis to a safe landing at Le Bourget Aerodrome in Paris. He had just completed the first non-stop New York to Paris airplane flight, a 33.5-hour journey during which he had covered 3,600 statute miles (5,800 km). As soon as the plane stopped, Lindbergh was surrounded by thousands of people who had gathered to welcome him. The exhausted pilot had been awake for 55 hours.

(more…)

KENNEDY SPACE CENTER, FL., July 13, 2012 (Space Florida PR) – Space Florida – the State of Florida’s spaceport authority and aerospace economic development agency – announced the winning logo for the Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge today after tallying votes via Facebook and the Space Florida Website.

The winning logo was designed by Mike Poller from Miami, Florida.

(more…)

The moon rising over Half Moon Bay, California on Halloween 2009. (Credit: Douglas Messier)

Alexandra Hall, Senior Director of the Google Lunar X Prize Foundation, talked about the status of the lunar rover competition during the International Space Development Conference in Washington, DC, on Sunday.

It looks like things are getting down to the wire for many of the 26 teams. With a 2015 deadline looming, a long lead time in securing a booster, and many of the teams falling significantly short on raising money, it looks like the field will be significantly smaller by the end of the year.

Highlight from her talk are after the break.

(more…)

Percy Luney
Vice President, Space Florida

Space Florida is administering NASA’s $3 million Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge through a new non-profit, the Space Florida Small Satellite Research Center. Luney was at Space Access 12 to solicit ideas and and answer questions from attendees on proposed rules set to be released for public comment on Tuesday. (more…)

PLAYA VISTA, CA / NEW YORK CITY (October 06, 2011) — The X PRIZE Foundation, the leading nonprofit organization solving the world’s Grand Challenges by creating and managing large-scale, global incentivized competitions, today announced Shell as the exclusive presenting sponsor of the X PRIZE Exploration Prize Group, which aims to foster innovation through exploration to improve life on Earth. During the three-year, nine million dollar sponsorship, the X PRIZE Foundation will address these objectives through its incentive prize model to stimulate innovation, competition and collaboration at the frontiers of space, our earth and its oceans.

NASA PR — WASHINGTON — NASA is accepting applications from teams of U.S. and international undergraduate and graduate students for the third annual Lunabotics Mining Competition. The event will be at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida May 21-26, 2012. Participants in the competition will design and build a remote controlled or autonomous robot, which could be used for future exploration on the moon. During the competition, the teams’ designs, […]

NASA PR — WASHINGTON — NASA has selected The Cleantech Open of Redwood, Calif., to manage the agency’s Night Rover Challenge that will culminate in a competition in fall 2012. The event is a new Centennial Challenges prize competition seeking revolutionary energy storage technologies for future space robotic rover missions. NASA is offering a prize purse of $1.5 million to challenge winners.

The Night Rover Challenge is to demonstrate solar energy collection and storage systems suitable for rovers to operate through several cycles of daylight and darkness. During daylight, systems can collect photons or thermal energy from the sun. During darkness, the stored energy would be used to move the rover toward a destination and to continue its exploration work.

(more…)

NASA PR — WASHINGTON — NASA and the Worcester Polytechnic Institute (WPI) in Worcester, Mass., are seeking teams to compete in a robot technology demonstration competition with a potential $1.5 million prize.

During the Sample Return Robot Challenge, teams will compete to demonstrate a robot that can locate and retrieve geologic samples from a wide and varied terrain without human control. The objective of the competition is to encourage innovations in automatic navigation and robotic manipulator technologies. Innovations stemming from this challenge may improve NASA’s capability to explore a variety of destinations in space, as well as enhance the nation’s robotic technology for use in industries and applications on Earth.

(more…)