CentennialChallenge
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NASA challenge searches for a solar-powered 'Night Rover'
NASA regularly opens up challenges to foster development of new and exciting space technology, and it looks like it's come up with a particularly challenging one recently -- it's asking interested parties to develop a solar-powered "Night Rover" that can store up enough energy during the day to continue to work throughout the night. That's as opposed to the more recent crop of rovers that must do most of their work during the day, which NASA says forces them to pick and choose what tasks the rovers perform, thereby greatly reducing the chance for discoveries. It also notes that simply adding more batteries isn't an option, since every tiny weight increase significantly adds to the cost of sending something into space. Think you've got what it takes? There's a $1.5 million dollar prize in store for the winner.
NASA competition finds a better space glove
Wow, that was fast. We checked in on the NASA competition to design a better space glove just a few days ago, and they've already crowned a winner. Peter Homer, an engineer from Southwest Harbor, Maine, beat out three other competitors and the current NASA Phase VI glove to bag the $200,000 prize with his design made with off-the-shelf kitchen cleaning gloves and "a cloth material he found on eBay." The achievement is all the more remarkable for occurring in the contest's first year, since NASA doesn't usually see very many winners in these challenges -- in fact, this is the first time anyone has ever won. Expect to see NASA trolling eBay for ISS parts in the near future.[Via NewScientist]
NASA turns to competition to find a better astronaut glove
It may not be quite as exciting as the X-Prize competitions, but NASA's latest Centennial Challenge looks like it could prove to be fairly consequential in its own right, tasking competitors to build a better astronaut glove, NewScientist reports. Set to go down on May 2nd and 3rd, the challenge will pit six teams against each other, with $250,000 in prize money up for grabs, not to mention the possibility of the winning design actually being put into use in space. From the looks of it, the entrants themselves will also face more than a few challenges, with one test requiring a team member wearing their glove to squeeze a ball inside a pressurized box for 30 minutes -- if blood starts dripping out, they're disqualified. As with its other challenges, however, NASA isn't expecting to find a winner in its first year, so those that missed out this time 'round may still get a shot at making the cut for next year's competition [Photo courtesy of NASA]
