Centennial Challenges

Centennial Challenges

The Centennial Challenges are NASA space competition prize contests for non-government-funded technological achievements by American teams.

Contents

Current Challenges

As of April 2007, seven Challenges have been announced: the Tether Challenge, the Beam Power challenge, the Moon Regolith Oxygen (MoonROx) Challenge, the Regolith Excavation Challenge, the Personal Air Vehicle Challenge, the Lunar Lander Challenge and the Astronaut Glove Challenge.[citation needed] Each of these challenges are being done in collaboration with an outside organization. Three new challenges were announced in July 2010, the Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge, the Night Rover Challenge, and the Sample Return Robot Challenge.[1][2]

Tether & beam power challenge

Main article: Elevator:2010

Both the Tether and Beam Power Challenges are a part of the Elevator:2010 competition to further space elevator and space elevator related technologies. The Elevator:2010 competition is operated by a partnership between Spaceward Foundation and the NASA Centennial Challenges, and were the first two challenges announced on March 23, 2005.[citation needed]

Tether challenge

This competition presents the challenge of constructing super-strong tethers, a crucial component of a space elevator.[3] The 2005 contest was to award US$50,000 to the team which constructed the strongest tether, with contests in future years requiring that each winner outperform that of the previous year by 50%. No competing tether surpassed the commercial off-the-shelf baseline and the prize was increased to $200,000 in 2006.

In 2007 the prize money was raised to $500,000 USD for this competition.[citation needed]

Beam power challenge

This is a competition to build a wirelessly-powered ribbon-climbing robot. The contest involves having the robot lift a large payload within a limited timeframe. The first competition in 2005 would have awarded US$50,000, US$20,000, and US$10,000 to the three best-performing teams, meeting the minimum benchmark of 1 m/s. However, no team met this standard, with only two teams climbing under beam power. This prize also increased to $200,000 in 2006, but no team was able to accomplish the full set of requirements.

In 2007 the prize money was raised to $500,000 USD for this competition.[citation needed]

See Elevator:2010 for more information on the Tether Challenge, and the Beam Power Challenge as well as other challenges related to space elevator technologies.

Green Flight Challenge

CAFE Foundation Hanger Boss Mike Fenn waves the speed competition chequered flag for the e-Genius aircraft during the 2011 Green Flight Challenge.

The Green Flight Challenge sponsored by Google is to build an aircraft which can fly 200 miles in under two hours using the energy equivalent of a gallon of gasoline per passenger. The $1,650,000 prize was competed for Sept 25 - Oct 1, 2011 at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport, Santa Rosa, CA. The CAFE Foundation was the Allied Organization which partnered with NASA's Centennial Challenges Program to conduct the challenge. On October 1, 2011 CAFE had a competition open house for the public to see the aircraft and meet the competing teams. The Google Green Flight Challenge Exposition hosted by NASA was at NASA Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, CA on October 3, 2011. Tickets for entrance were available at the Expo website for no cost. The Expo had the competition aircraft on display, presented winner checks and additional displays of green energy technology.

Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge

The Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge is to place a small satellite into low earth orbit twice within one week. The intent is to spur development of low-cost launch technology and commercial nano-sat delivery. The prize for completion is $2 million.[2] NASA is currently seeking a non-profit organization to partner with for this challenge. Requirements for proposal submission are here.

Night Rover Challenge

The Night Rover Challenge is to build a solar-powered robot which can operate on stored energy for a significant portion of time. The intent is to spur development of extreme environment battery technology for use in space missions. The prize is $1.5 million.[2] NASA is currently seeking a non-profit organization to partner with for this challenge. Requirements for proposal submission are here.

Sample Return Robot Challenge

The Sample Return Robot Challenge is to build an autonomous rough-terrain robot which can find and retrieve geologic samples. The intent is to advance autonomic robotics and remote manipulator technology. The prize is $1.5 million.[2] The Allied Organization selected to partner with NASA to conduct this challenge is Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, MA. Team registration will began Summer 2011 with the competition to occur in Summer 2012. The WPI Robotics Center coordinates the details of the competition.

Suborbital payload challenge (announced)

Announced at the XPrize Cup Expo, this challenge will be run by the X PRIZE Foundation once the NASA authorization bill has passed and the purse size has been allocated. This will be the first prize where the purse is over $250,000. The goal is to achieve suborbital altitudes that provide enough linger time for the kind of microgravity research NASA needs.[4]

Other proposals

The Challenges have not been finalized. Candidates include:

Challenges will be organized into one of four categories:[5]

  • Flagship Challenges: "To encourage major private space missions," these are expected to be multi-million dollar prizes for more major goals, such as robotic lunar landers or human orbital spaceflight. (Flagship technology demonstration program is more explicitly described by NASA here.)
  • Keystone Challenges: "To address technology priorities"
  • Alliance Challenges: "To leverage partnerships," contests organized in collaboration with non-government partners
  • Quest Challenges: "To promote science, technology, engineering and math outreach"

Completed Challenges

Moon regolith oxygen (MoonROx) challenge

This head-to-head competition was for a system capable of extracting 2.5 kilograms of oxygen from 100 kilograms of artificial lunar regolith in 4 hours or less using at most 10 kW of energy[6][dead link]. This $1 million prize expired in June 2009 without a winner.[citation needed]

The initial MoonROx challenge was announced in 2005 with the intent to award a $250,000 prize to the first team to develop the capability to extract 5 kilograms of breathable oxygen from simulated lunar soil in an eight-hour period. The prize expired in June 2008.[7]

For the initial announcement of the challenge, the competition was to be administered by the Florida Space Research Institute (FSRI) in collaboration with NASA.[7] The next year the California Space Education and Workforce Institute (CSEWI) was selected to administer the challenge when FSRI was dissolved and Space Florida was created to take its place.[8]

Since extracting oxygen from silicates is difficult, and the oxygen electrochemically bound into the silicates at high temperature, it is likely that a solar-furnace may be part of the solution.[citation needed]

Astronaut glove challenge

2009 Competition

In the 2007 competition, only the pressure-restraining layer part of the glove was required. But for the 2009 challenge, teams had to provide a complete glove, including the outer, thermal-micrometeoroid-protection layer. This competition rewarded US$200,000 in May 2007 to the team which constructed the best-performing astronaut glove.[9] The basic idea for the competition was first proposed in Rand Simberg's Transterrestrial Musings blog.[10]

The first competition took place May 2 and May 3, 2007 at the New England Air Museum in Windsor Locks, Connecticut. NASA offered a total of $200,000 for the team that could design and manufacture the best astronaut glove that exceeded minimum requirements. An additional $50,000 was offered to the team that best demonstrated Mechanical Counter Pressure gloves [3]. The $200,000 prize was awarded to Peter K. Homer, an engineer from Southwest Harbor, Maine;[11] the $50,000 prize went unclaimed and rolled to the next competition.[12]

The 2009 competition was held on November 18 and 19 at the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Titusville, Florida. In the 2009 competition Peter K. Homer of Maine won $250,000 and Ted Southern of New York won $100,000, both had competed previously. Another challenge is planned and the date is yet to be announced.[13]

NASA's page

Official Website

Vertical lander challenge and lunar lander challenge

Main article: Lunar Lander Challenge
Armadillo Aerospace technicians on the launch pad performing a vehicle inspection.

Also announced at the XPrize Cup Expo and run by the XPrize Foundation, this prize is for a VTVL (vertical take-off, vertical landing) suborbital rocket that can achieve the altitudes and launch energies that are equivalent to what would be needed for a lunar lander. The Vertical Lander Challenge requires 50 meter minimum altitude, horizontal distance of 100 meters, flight time of 90 seconds, and landing on a smooth surface and after refueling, return to its original location. The more aggressive Lunar Lander Challenge increases that to 180s of flight time and landing on a rocky surface. The VLC has a first prize of $350,000, while the LLC has a first prize in excess of this. For 2006 at the Wirefly X PRIZE Cup, Armadillo Aerospace was the only team able to compete. Their vehicle "Pixel" completed one leg of the trip on its third try but crashed shortly after takeoff on the return, leaving all prizes unclaimed.

In 2008, Armadillo Aerospace successfully completed the easier level one VLC prize.[14]

In 2009, the level two first prize was won by Masten Space Systems, while Armadillo Aerospace took the level two second prize.[citation needed]

Regolith Excavation Challenge

In this Challenge, teams designed and built robotic machines to excavate simulated lunar soil (regolith).[15] The Challenge was managed by the California Space Authority[16] and was competed in 2007, 2008, and 2009, at which time the Challenge was won by a team from Worcester Polytechnic Institute, which won the $500,000 prize purse.[17]

NASA page

Regolith Challenge Excavation

Origin

The Centennial Challenges are based on a long history of technology prize contests, including the Longitude prize (won by John Harrison), the Orteig Prize (won by Charles Lindbergh), the Ansari X PRIZE (won by Scaled Composites), and the DARPA Grand Challenge (won by Stanford University in 2005 and Carnegie Mellon University in 2007). A key advantage of prizes over traditional grants is that money is only paid when the goal is achieved. A 1999 National Academy of Engineering committee report[18] recommended that "Congress encourage federal agencies to experiment more extensively with inducement prize contests in science and technology". A 2003 NASA Space Architect study, assisted by the X PRIZE Foundation, led to the establishment of the Centennial Challenges. The prize contests were named "Centennial" in honor of the 100 years since the Wright brothers' first flight in 1903.

As a federal agency, NASA has one of the federal government's three largest procurement budgets. The Energy Department (DOE) and the Defense Department (DOD) round out the trio. With the subsequent proposal in Congress of "H Prize" funding for breakthroughs in hydrogen fuel-related technology,[19] the Department of Energy is poised to join NASA and DARPA's Defense Department in fortifying this paradigm shift favoring a growing quantity of technology experimenters who might otherwise be neglected by traditional government contractors and federal procurement officials.

See also

See additionally

References

  1. ^ "NASA - Centennial Challenges". NASA. http://www.nasa.gov/offices/ipp/innovation_incubator/centennial_challenges/index.html. Retrieved 4 August 2010. 
  2. ^ a b c d "NASA Announces Three New Centennial Challenges". NASA. 13 July 2010. http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2010/jul/HQ_10-162_New_Centennial_Challenges.html. Retrieved 4 August 2010. 
  3. ^ [1][dead link]
  4. ^ NASA's Centennial Challenges Collaborates With Foundation
  5. ^ Exploration Systems Mission Directorate
  6. ^ http://www.fsri.org/space_research_Moon_ROx.htm
  7. ^ a b "NASA Announces New Centennial Challenge". 2005-05-19. http://www.nasa.gov/home/hqnews/2005/may/HQ_05128_Centennial_Challenge.html. Retrieved 2010-09-18. 
  8. ^ "Centennial Challenges Update — October 2006" (PDF). http://ipp.nasa.gov/documents/cc_update_10-2006.pdf. Retrieved 2010-09-18. 
  9. ^ astronaut-glove.us
  10. ^ Transterrestrial Musings
  11. ^ Hitt, Jack (July 1, 2007). "The Amateur Future of Space Travel". The New York Times. http://www.nytimes.com/2007/07/01/magazine/01nasa-t.html. Retrieved April 28, 2010. 
  12. ^ SPACE.com - Homemade Space Glove Wins NASA Contest
  13. ^ Astronaut Glove Challenge Website
  14. ^ [2]
  15. ^ NASA-Regolith Excavation Challenge
  16. ^ Regolith Excavation Challenge
  17. ^ College Team Wins NASA Lunar Robot Prize
  18. ^ Concerning Federally Sponsored Inducement Prizes in Engineering and Science
  19. ^ Hope, hype and hydrogen - Cosmic Log - msnbc.com

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