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2020 Moon to Mars Ice & Prospecting Challenge

Posted on: September 6th, 2019 in: National NASA

NASA and the National Institute of Aerospace (NIA) invite your teams to participate in the 2020 Moon to Mars Ice & Prospecting Challenge! Through this challenge, teams have the opportunity to demonstrate unique methods for harvesting resources on lunar and Martian surfaces.

The 2020 RASC-AL Special Edition: Moon to Mars Ice & Prospecting Challenge asks eligible undergraduate and graduate students in the U.S. to design and build prototype hardware that can extract water and assess subsurface density profiles from a simulated off-world test bed to advance critical technologies needed on the surface of the Moon and Mars.

Up to 10 teams will travel to NASA’s Langley Research Center (LaRC) in Hampton, VA during the summer of 2020 to participate in a multi-day competition where the universities’ prototypes will compete to extract the most water from an analog environment simulating lunar and Martian surfaces, while simultaneously using system telemetry to distinguish between overburden layers (i.e., prospecting) and create a digital core of the various layers. 

Interested student teams and their faculty advisors should submit an online Notice of Intent by October 4, 2019 and submit project plan proposals by November 24, 2019.

For full competition details, including submission guidelines, please visit the RASC-AL Special Edition Website.