Image via Ferenc Gál

MiniSpaceWorld aims to create a spectacular scale model world for space flight and astronomy. Light and sound effects, day and night simulations in the different Worlds, historical and modern vehicles in motion, and representation of future life scenes will enrich the visitors’ experience. Under the motto “Space for Everybody”, MiniSpaceWorld will also explicitly feature products already use in our everyday life today that originated from space activities.

The MSW Design Contest is a contest open for participants worldwide about imagining various parts of MiniSpaceWorld, a lively scale model exhibit about spaceflight and astronomy. Participants shall create a high-level content design including a theme description, map and graphical representations. The themes covered by MSW are extremely rich and vivid, with billions of lovely facets: this is without doubt true also for our closest celestial companion – our Moon, which is the topic of the 2010 Design Contest. The themes of the design are free to choose: they can feature historical missions like the Apollo flights or the Lunokhod, imagine first permanent colonies, show a complete “Moon city” with all the necessary facilities, or present future activities like regolith processing and mining of various minerals.

Project owners + coordinators:
Dr. Tibor Pacher

To learn more and participate by September 30, 2010, visit: the MSW Design Contest Overview

Team FREDNET is an open source, open participation and officially registered competitor in the Google Lunar X PRIZE. Everybody regardless of background and past experience can join the effort and contribute with whatever they can contribute with. There is always room and need for one more.

Project owners + coordinators:
Fred J. Bourgeois, III, systems
Richard D. Core, software
Daniel F. Smith, hardware
Alex Ceste, communications
Ryan Weed, propulsion
Joseph M. Stevenson, education liason
Alex Core, web site

To learn more, visit: http://frednet.org

To participate, email: signup@teamfrednet.org

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• follow @teamfrednet
• read teamfrednet.blogspot.com
• join forum.xprize.frednet.com
• explore wiki.xprize.frednet.org

This project is divided into two challenges: Power Beaming and Tether Strength. The Space Elevator vision will not only further space exploration and knowledge, but has the potential to shape the existential future of the human race for centuries to come. Elevator:2010 is designed to address the “social engineering” of the Space Elevator. Taking their cue from the X-prize, solar car races, and various other competitive ventures, Elevator:2010 uses engineering competitions as a tool to capture mind-share in academia, space enthusiast community, and the general public. Prize money is provided by NASA’s Centennial Challenges program – a total of $4,000,000 over 5 years!

The Power Beaming challenge will continue to influence public perception of the Space Elevator project by demonstrating progressively more accurate (and more impressive!) prototypes of the Space Elevator system. By participating, you get the opportunity to partner in writing this unique chapter of history. In this challenge, the Spaceward Foundation provides the race track, in the form of a vertically-suspended tether, and the competing teams provide Space Elevator prototypes, featuring climbers that have to scale the tether using only power that is transferred to them from the ground using beamed power.

The Tether Strength challenge is the single most difficult task in building the Space Elevator — developing a material that is both strong enough and light enough to support the 60,000 mile long tether. Compared to the best commercially available tether, the challenge needs a material that is almost 25 times better – about as great a leap as from wood to metal. In order to encourage CNT laboratories to pay more attention to the Space Elevator we have posted an open dare to industry and academia: We will award the teams that can come up with the best Space Elevator tether sample, provided that they can beat the best commercial tether on the market by a factor of 2.

Project owners + coordinators:
The Spaceward Foundation

To learn more, visit: http://spaceward.org/elevator2010

To register to participate, email: inbox@spaceward.org

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• read spaceelevatorblog.com

The Google Lunar X PRIZE is a $30 million international competition to safely land a robot on the surface of the Moon, travel 500 meters over the lunar surface, and send images and data back to the Earth. Teams must be at least 90% privately funded and must be registered to compete by December 31, 2010. The first team to land on the Moon and complete the mission objectives will be awarded $20 million; the full first prize is available until December 31, 2012. After that date, the first prize will drop to $15 million. The second team to do so will be awarded $5 million. Another $5 million will awarded in bonus prizes. The final deadline for winning the prize is December 31, 2014.

Spacehack tip: Team Frednet is an open source, international GLXP team that you can participate in, regardless of background. Lunar Numbat is a team of Australians and New Zealanders who use open source technologies to partner with the GLXP team White Label Space and are open to new participants.

robot prototype by Team Italia, view more teams here

Project owners + coordinators:
William Pomerantz, senior director – space projects
Nicole Jordan, manager – rocket operations
Amanda Stiles, online community manager
X Prize Foundation contact form

To learn more and participate, visit: http://googlelunarxprize.org

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• follow @glxp
• read thelaunchpad.xprize.org
• watch youtube.com/user/googlelunarxprize
• connect with facebook.com/googlelunarxprize

Photo by Andrew Gerrand (Noisebridge)

Inspired by many recent amateur weather balloon endeavors across the U.S., Hackerspaces in Space aims to turn this phenomenon into a full- fledged competition. The First Annual Space Blimp Competition challenges international hackerspaces to send a weather balloon, with payload, into near-space to capture pictures of Earth’s horizon, to return the payload safely to the ground, and to retrieve the payload.

The launches will begin in earnest on June 1, 2010 and end on August 31, 2010. At the end of competition teams will post their results and pictures on the web where they will be judged on a variety of criteria like: retrieval time, weight of payload, and total cost of the project.

The competition is being coordinated by Workshop 88, Chicago’s only suburban hackerspace.

Project owners + coordinators:
Kevin Roof, teams organizer
Jay Margalus, event organizer
Allyson Wienc, marketing representative

THE DEADLINE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS PROJECT HAS PASSED.

To learn more and register by March 1, 2010, visit: http://workshop88.com/space/

(NASA/MSFC)

The 17th Annual Great Moonbuggy Race will be held April 9-10, 2010 in Huntsville, Alabama, at the U.S. Space & Rocket Center. Participating students will design a vehicle that addresses a series of engineering problems that are similar to problems faced by the original Moonbuggy team.

Each Moonbuggy will be human powered and carry two students, one female and one male, over a half-mile simulated lunar terrain course including “craters”, rocks, “lava” ridges, inclines and “lunar” soil.

Moonbuggy entries are expected to be of “proof-of-concept” and engineering test model nature, rather than final production models. Each student team of six members is responsible for building their own buggy, and the course drivers, who are chosen from each team, must also be builders of the vehicle.

Project owners + coordinators:
Sabrina Pearson

THE DEADLINE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS PROJECT HAS PASSED.

To learn more, visit: http://moonbuggy.msfc.nasa.gov/index.html

To participate, register by February 1, 2010 (January 1, 2010 if outside the U.S.) at: http://moonbuggy.msfc.nasa.gov/register.cfm

The Spirit of Innovation Awards: Aerospace Exploration category challenges teams of 1-5 domestic or international high school students to solve real-world problems by creating an innovative product for use in aerospace exploration. The Aerospace Exploration category encompasses a wide variety of topics ranging from vehicles to spacesuits to planetary exploration to satellites, and many other related subjects including space medicine. There is much opportunity for innovative ideas and solutions to the many challenges involved with space exploration.

Competing students will be guided through a phased pathway incorporating science, technology, design, marketing and business in an interdisciplinary, project-based product development experience. Teams will be provided the opportunity to meet with and learn from professional scientists and entrepreneurs who will advise them on how to commercialize their products for general market use. Awards are provided to the schools, teachers, and students for the top product designs. If selected as a finalist, you will be invited to attend the Innovation Summit at NASA and present your ideas to world level venture capitalists, angel investors, business leaders, and scientists. Selected teams will receive funding to continue the development of their products and may go on to participate in The Portal where they may choose to patent their product and have an opportunity to enter the commercial marketplace.

By December 15, 2009:

1. Register individually and create or join a team
2. Use online resources to learn about aerospace products and exploration
3. Submit competition documents: Technical Concept Report, Business Plan, and Graphic Concept Representation. Finalists will be selected and notified by January 8, 2010

Project owners + coordinators:
Joshua Neubert, Executive Director

THE DEADLINE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS PROJECT HAS PASSED.

To learn more and participate by December 15, 2009, visit: http://conradawards.org/index.php?option=com_content&view=article&id=151&Itemid=182

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• follow @conradawards
• join facebook.com/group.php?gid=41640026679
• watch youtube.com/ConradAwards

The 2009 Astronaut Glove Challenge is designed to promote the development of glove joint technology, resulting in a highly dexterous and flexible glove that can be used by astronauts over long periods of time for space or planetary surface excursions.

The challenge is conducted by Volanz Aerospace Inc. in a format that brings all competitors to a single location for a “head to head” competition to determine the winning team(s). Each team is required pass a series of minimum performance requirements and perform a variety of tasks.

For the 2009 Challenge, teams must provide a complete glove, which consists of the thermal micrometeoroid garment (TMG), unpowered bladder and bladder-restraint portion of the space suit that covers the hand of an astronaut up to and including the wrist joint. Prizes will be awarded for overall First Place and Second Place in the challenge, and the winner of the Joint Force Test. Prizes provided by NASA Centennial Challenges Program. Team Agreement, prize information and competition dates will be announced at a later time.

Project owners + coordinators:
Alan Hayes

THE DEADLINE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS PROJECT HAS PASSED.

To learn more and participate by November 10, 2009, visit: http://astronaut-glove.us

Join NASA’s mission to bring us to the Moon, Mars and beyond by submitting a research paper on one of the four ESMD topics listed below. Your research may be used as the solution to current NASA challenges. Open to students who are United States citizens in an undergraduate or graduate studies program.

1. Spacecraft Landing and Recovery Architecture: Historical Approaches and Ideas for the Future
2. Synergistic degradation effects of materials exposed to radiation, micrometeors, thermal sinks and lunar dust
3. Loading of Cryogenic Propellant in Space Launch Vehicle
4. Determination of the Optimum Internal Cockpit Layout

Exploration Systems Mission Directorate (ESMD) was developed by NASA specifically to create a constellation of new capabilities, supporting technologies and foundational research that enables sustained and affordable human and robotic exploration.

Project owners + coordinators:
Diane Ingraham
Gloria Murphy

THE DEADLINE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS PROJECT HAS PASSED.

To learn more and participate by January 25, 2010, visit: http://education.ksc.nasa.gov/esmdspacegrant/ResearchPaper.htm

An annual competition for college students to design and build the next generation of Mars rovers that will one day work alongside astronauts on the Red Planet. Former students and community members alike are encouraged to reach out to their alma matters and local universities to help form teams.

The 2010 Mars Society’s University Rover Challenge (URC) will be held June 3-5, 2010 at the Mars Desert Research Station (MDRS) in Utah.  Teams and their rovers will compete in four events: an equipment servicing task, a site survey task, a sample return task, and an emergency navigation task that will require rovers to search for a distressed astronaut who is lost and disabled in the field.

Project owners + coordinators:
Kevin Sloan

THE DEADLINE TO PARTICIPATE IN THIS PROJECT HAS PASSED.

To learn more and participate by February 1, 2010, visit: http://marssociety.org/urc

To stay up-to-date on this project:
• join facebook.com/group.php?gid=32010099179