Space Prize Roundup: SSR Approaches, Space Pirates Strike Back, Public Sector Prizes Forum, More

I have several updates on NASA Centennial Challenges:

Garver To Attend NASA $1.5 Million Robot Competition June 16 - NASA on the NASA-WPI Sample Return Robot Centennial Challenge

The NASA Centennial Challenges are now on Facebook: NASA Centennial Challenges.  They have a few pictures related to the SSR Challenge, and I wouldn't be surprised to see more over the next few days.

Space Florida Announces Nano-Sat Launch Challenge Logo Design Contest - Space Florida

Space Elevator conference registration now open! - The Space Elevator Blog - The conference, to be held at the Seattle Museum of Flight, includes the Strong Tether Centennial Challenge and a robotic climber competition for kids.

The Return of the Kansas City Space Pirates - The Space Elevator Blog - It sounds like the KCSP team is going to make this year's Space Elevator conference even more interesting.  Hmmm ... I wonder how LaserMotive will respond? See more information at the KCSP blog 2012- New Mission: The Dawn of Laser Powered Flight

FAQ-What are the uses for wireless power via laser? - LaserMotive

Here's an article that isn't really about Armadillo Aerospace, another former Centennial Challenge team, but that nevertheless has some Armadillo "ambiance": 'Doom 3 BFG Edition' will deliver the full Doom back catalog plus new levels


Yesterday, the Collaborative Innovation: Public Sector Prizes was held by the White House Office of Science and Technology Policy, the Case Foundation, and the Joyce Foundation.  Here are a couple related articles:

Unleashing Innovation and Deepening Democracy Through Prizes - The White House Blog

How the White House is aiming the X Prize model at big problems - CNET interviews Cristin Dorgelo, formerly of the X PRIZE Foundation and now Assistant Director of Grand Challenges in the OSTP


To round things out, I'll catch up on some other prize news:

One moonshot team buys up another - Cosmic Log on Moon Express and Next Giant Leap

Landsat Contest Offers View of Local Landscape Change from Space - NASA - The contest is at "My American Landscape" Contest: A Space Chronicle of Change.

Space Prize Roundup: Night Rover Plans, Sample Return Updates, SFF Biz Plans, Visualizing Science, Data Fusion, SPHERES, more

The Night Rover Challenge is presenting a slide presentation on its main page: Night Rover Challenge - January 2012.  In addition to the main challenge itself, they are planning a number of related events, including an innovation summit, student competitions, educational events, technology expositions and workshops, and more.  Anousheh Ansari is featured as one of the board members, along with a number of other prominent innovators.

Scientific visions that take the prize - Cosmic Log

Space Frontier Foundation and NASA Announce $110,000 in NewSpace Business Plan Competition Prizes - Space Frontier Foundation

List of Competitors
Sponsorship Opportunity from Clearpath Robotics
Proposal Review Complete - all 3 from Sample Return Robot Challenge

Candidate Gingrich Promises Space Coast Voters the Moon - Space News
Gingrich offers new goals but same philosophy in space speech - Space Politics - Prizes are featured prominently in Gingrich's proposal to overhaul NASA and encourage a thriving LEO economy, fast propulsion to Mars, and a lunar base.  Gingrich would also take a close look at alternatives to some of NASA's larger programs, such as the SLS, MPCV, and JWST.

2012 IEEE GRSS Data Fusion Contest - IEEE Geoscience and Remote Sensing Society: 

This year, participants will download three different sets of images (optical, SAR, and LIDAR) over the downtown of San Francisco and each participant will get to choose their own research topic to work with.  Participants will receive a collection of images provided by DigitalGlobe, AstriumServices, and USGS that includes very-high spatial resolution QuickBird, WorldView-2, TerraSAR-X, and LIDAR data.

ERDAS IMAGINE-DigitalGlobe 2012 Geospatial Challenge - DigitalGlobe - This contest uses DigitalGlobe WorldView-2 satellite imagery and ERDAS IMAGINE image processing software.  Winners are to be announced on February 15.

Robots go head to head, 250 miles above Earth - Third annual Zero Robotics competition pits robots against each other on the International Space Station. - MIT News

The Race to Build a Real Star Trek Tricorder - Popular Mechanics

The 19th Annual Great Moonbuggy Race will be held April 13-14.  Registration ends on February 10.

World’s largest rocket contest helps aspiring STEM leaders take off - Aerospace Industries Association

Prize Roundup: Tricorder X PRIZE, Centennial Challenge Mystery, DigitalGlobe Image Contest, Ebb and Flow, More

Here's an interesting tweet that ends with some mystery:  @NASAPrize: 2012 bring it on, Sample Return is set for June Night Rover rules out for public comment soon NSL rules in work and prepping new challenges

YouTube SpaceLab contest selects finalists - Space for All

Plans set for 'Tricorder' contest - Cosmic Log
Qualcomm Tricorder X PRIZE

The Top Image of 2011 – Announced - The DigitalGlobe blog
Satellite shot of rolling river takes the prize - Cosmic Log - DigitalGlobe's Top Image Contest of 2011 gallery includes a satellite photo of Kennedy Space Center, Merritt Island, Florida with Space Shuttle Atlantis near the VAB:

Gingrich talks up prizes in Florida - Space Politics

Montana Students Pick Winning Names for Moon Craft - NASA on the new names for the GRAIL satellites

The Crafoord Prize in Mathematics 2012 and The Crafoord Prize in Astronomy 2012 - The Crafoord Prize (link via @jeff_foust)

EXPLORAVISION 2012 - Teaching with Contests
Google launches 2012 Global Science Fair… - Teaching with Contests

FAA Trouble, YouTube Space Lab, Oil Spill Challenge, Why Do You Explore? Contest, Carmack Prize, More

Today, the Google Home Page features the YouTube Space Lab, so about a billion people should know about it by now.  Just in case that isn't enough, I'll try to push it over the edge with this mention.  The winning space experiment video will be performed on the International Space Station.

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House appropriators tell FAA to focus more on air than space - Space Politics - The affordable space access prize proposed by the FAA is one of the casualties.

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Illinois Team Wins Oil Spill Cleanup X CHALLENGE
Pictures: X PRIZE Contest Seeks Improved Oil Spill Cleanup - National Geographic

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NASA Funded Astronomer Wins Nobel Prize - NASA Watch

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Rocketry Winners Come to Washington - OSTP Blog - White House

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NASA Adds Some Numbers to Green Flight Challenge
AVweb Readers Weigh In on Electric Aircraft, Green Flight Challenge
Green Flight Challenge Winners
Green Flight Challenge – Days Three and Five
Green Flight Challenge – Day Two - CAFE Foundation Blog

The CAFE Foundation PhotoStream has pictures from the event.

NASA Contest Heralds Dawn of the Electric Plane - OSTP Blog - White House - NASA Administrator Charles Bolden

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X PRIZE Foundation Announces Three-Year, Multi-Million Dollar Sponsorship with Shell for Prizes Promoting Exploration of Space, Oceans and Land - X PRIZE Foundation press release - This includes the Why Do You Explore? video contest, with a grand prize of a $10,000 National Geographic Expedition, and 3 other prizes of Airship Ventures flights.

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Amateur Rocketeers Chase $10,000 Launch Prize Offered by John Carmack - Space.com

Prize Roundup: Heinlein Prize, International Rocketry Challenge, CanSat winners, SEDS Conference, More

Heinlein Prize Honors Elon Musk of SpaceX - Heinlein Prize Trust

06/16/2011: Swing Test - SpeedUp

NASA And DARPA Offer Students Chance To Support Future Missions - NASA - This is for the Zero Robotics competition using floating SPHERES platforms on the International Space Station

The CanSat Competition has posted their 2011 Competition Winners and 2011 Cansat Photos.  Also, the 2012 mission has already been identified: Mission: Planetary Atmospheric Entry Vehicle.

Raytheon has a number of posts about the International Rocketry Challenge at the International Paris Air Show.  You can see all of them at their 2011 Paris Air Show - Team America Rocketry Challenge tag.  The most recent post is Raytheon-Sponsored Texas High School Team Wins International Rocket Fly-Off at Paris Air Show.

Northrop Grumman Announces Student Winners of Fourth Annual Engineering Scholars Program for Woodland Hills Facility - SpaceRef

SEDS Space Vision 2011 - RLV News - The early Speakers list for the conference includes a number of people with prize connections: Bill Nye (Executive Director of the Planetary Society, which has held a number of space competitions like the Apophis Mission Design Competition and numerous contests with themes like space art and mission names), Robert Richards (a Google Lunar X PRIZE competitor), Will Pomerantz (formerly of the X PRIZE Foundation), Jon Goff (who was part of the winning Masten Space Systems Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge team), and Ben Brockert (also from the Masten NG-LLC team, and now a member of another prize-winning NG-LLC team, Armadillo Aerospace).

Team Phoenicia sells first engine - RLV News

Briefs: Masten intern jobs; Langley lifting body event; Bruce Cordell interview - RLV News

White Label Space starts testing engines - RLV News

The next 2 links are from @ChallengeGov:

Now this is a cool ride! - The White House Blog discusses the Experimental Crowd-derived Combat-support Vehicle (XC2V).

The latest International Science & Engineering Visualization Challenge opened on May 31. 

A TEA Party organization called TEA Party in Space has a platform that includes the following plank:

NASA shall use competitions and prizes whenever feasible to stimulate the private sector, including individual American inventors, to achieve innovative and affordable solutions to technological challenges.

Prize Roundup: Photonics West, NanoSail-D Photos, OSTP Role, More

Trade Show Math - LaserMotive

The LaserMotive twitter has a few tweets about the trade show, ending with

@LaserMotive: We made it! Tom and Dave have finished walking the floor at #pw11 Photonics West. Very exciting event. Now heading home.

Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup #40 - Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration

Approaching the Tipping Point: Establishing the New Airship Industry - Airship Z-Prize

We Chat With 2009-2010 Spirit Of Innovation Award Winners Shannon and Mikayla Diesch! - MTV Geek News

Still got the right stuff: the next generation of rocket scientists - Ars Technica

NanoSail-D photo contest - NASA/SpaceWeather.com - Space for All

OSTP's role expanding under new law - Federal News Radio

Roundup: Lunar Prize Site Map, COMPETES Signed, Space Art, Masten Mud, More

Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup #39 - Luna C/I

Google Lunar X PRIZE Proposed Landing Sites - EvaDot

LaserMotive: 2010 Year In Review - LaserMotive

COMPETES Passage Keeps America's Leadership on Target - The President signed the America COMPETES Act yesterday, so the Office of Science and Technology Policy reposted comments by John Holdren made when it passed Congress.  Here's an excerpt:

And in a great boost for the cause of generating novel solutions to tough national problems, COMPETES gives every department and agency the authority to conduct prize competitions. Prizes and challenges have an excellent track record of accelerating problem-solving by tapping America’s top talent and best expertise wherever it may lie. The Administration has supported this approach as part of its all-hands-on-deck approach to stimulating innovation, and under COMPETES we can expect a further blossoming of new ideas from citizen solvers across the land.

Challenge.gov in long tradition of giving prizes for solutions to tough problems - The Washington Post

@LRO_NASA: Suuuper cute. Winners of space science art contest for grades 2-4. http://fb.me/CEDznEpZ

@genomics_xprize: Genomics X PRIZE Advisor, Leroy Hood wins $500k prize 4 "for automating DNA sequencing that revolutionized biomedicine" http://bit.ly/dROa4E

Crawley wins National Academy of Engineering’s Gordon Prize - MIT News

It looks like my college dorm's field after a Rugby game:

@MdlRcktScientst: Getting ready to attempt a hold-down test. In the mud. Awesome. http://twitpic.com/3n2w6q

@ConradAwards: Conrad Foundation and Constellation Energy Group give students a new chance to win http://pitch.pe/114727

Fed Prize Authority, GLXP News Galore, Goddard Film Fest Winners, More

@ISS_NatLab: Congrats to Team ZeroBotX for their win at the Zero Robotics Competition! http://fb.me/P921Zhla

@ChallengeGov: BIG NEWS! Congress grants broad prize authority to all federal agencies http://go.usa.gov/rOm #challengegov #gov20

@astrobotic: Astrobotic has joined Twitter! Expect on-the-go updates about all our activities.

NASA awards $500k to 3 firms in lunar demo data project - RLV News

Google Lunar X PRIZE gets last minute entries before deadline - RLV News

Space Frontier to hold third TEDxMidTownNY event - RLV News - Note that Ted Southern is one of the Astronaut Glove Challenge winners.

Zephyr Aurora: Taking Shape [28] - Team Phoenicia

Winners Announced: 2010 Best of Goddard Film Festival - NASA Goddard Space Flight Center

Way out of the box... - Unreasonable Rocket

White House Science Fair, Mythbusters, Conrad Awards, and TARC

Obama Takes Science Push to ‘Mythbusters’ - New York Times Dot Earth blog

@conradawards: Team AM Rocks awards winners are meeting President Obama at The White House today. Congratulations Mikayla and Shannon! http://ow.ly/2V8jg

@lori_garver: On my way to the White House Science Fair, where President Obama is hosting student STEM competition winners.

President Obama to Host White House Science Fair - The White House:

Today, President Obama will host the White House Science Fair celebrating the winners of a broad range of science, technology, engineering and math (STEM) competitions. ... DARPA will use prize-based competitions and social networks to encourage teams of students to design and manufacture go-carts, mobile robots, and small unmanned vehicles. ... Change the Equation, with a membership of over 100 CEOs including leading media companies, will launch a viral video contest where its companies will vie to create the best video for students on the rewarding jobs they can get if they excel in math and science. ...

Winners from STEM competitions that will be part of the events include FIRST robotics, the Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award, the Team America Rocketry Challenge, and many other science and technology competitions.

Background on the White House Science Fair - The White House - In addition to Obama, senior administration officials to attend the science fair include Lori Garver, John Holdren, and many others. The Planetary Society's Bill Nye and Norm Augustine are on the list of attendees. Student exhibits include TARC, FIRST competitions, and many others.

Robots, Solar Cars and Rockets at the White House Science Fair - White House blog

Pennsylvania Student Rocketeers Exhibit at White House Science Fair - PR Newswire

Prize Roundup: NSF Robotics Competitions, Asteroid Prize Plan, Many Space Elevator Prizes, NASA Lunar Lander Data Purchase, More

Here's an excerpt from the 2011 Departments of Commerce and Justice, and Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Bill report (PDF):

Promoting STEM Education Through Competition.—The future of U.S. competitiveness rests on our ability to train the next generation of scientists and engineers. The Committee has acted on the ‘‘Rising Above the Gathering Storm’’ recommendation to improve K–12 STEM education by robustly funding the National Science Foundation and other science agencies. The Committee also recognizes the important contributions of groups and organizations that have developed nationwide STEM robotics competitions to inspire and train America’s students. The Committee directs NSF to set aside $2,000,000 for a competitive program of grants to promote STEM education through robotics competitions.

BLOG: Update on the NASA Authorization Bill - The Planetary Society - The reason that I included this here is that there's an interesting hint about a possible new Planetary Society prize at the end of the post:

A big first step will be consideration of the human asteroid mission. The Planetary Society will be participating in an upcoming NASA workshop on this subject, and we're getting ready to announce a new competition to advance the concept of humans exploring an asteroid. So stay tuned!

More Masten Space pictures
A brief glimpse of leg at Masten Space
Armadillo Aerospace flies Pixel - all 3 from RLV News

ISEC e-Newsletter #6 - August 2010 - International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) - This newsletter has a lot of information about Space Elevator Games Centennial Challenges and other prizes. Here are some excerpts, but the newsletter has many more details:

The Climber / Power-Beaming competition has been postponed until next year. ... The Strong Tether competition will be held at the upcoming Space Elevator Conference. The current schedule calls for this competition to be held on Friday, August 13th, at 4:15pm (US Pacific time) ...

In March, the International Space Elevator Consortium (ISEC) announced the Yuri Artsutanov and Jerome Pearson Prizes for Space Elevator research. ... the prize committee did not feel that any of them met the criteria; ... the prize committee did award an "Honorable Mention" to a paper submitted by Mr. Gaylen R. Hinton and he and his entry will be honored at the upcoming Space Elevator Conference. These prizes will be repeated next year. A new topic will be chosen for ... the Pearson prize ...

From August 6th-8th, the Japan Space Elevator Association (JSEA) will host it's second annual JSETEC (Japan Space Elevator Technical & Engineering Competition) event. ... The 2009 competition was held on a 150 meter tether. This year's competition will be held on a 300 meter tether. Next year, they plan on using a 600 meter tether. But, unlike the Space Elevator Games, they plan on holding the tether aloft with balloons, not a helicopter.

NASA Centennial Challenges 2010 Strong Tether Challenge - SpaceRef

Astrobotic designs excavator to recover lunar volatiles - Google Lunar X PRIZE Teams page

NASA Seeks Data from Innovative Lunar Demonstrations - NASA:

NASA has issued a Broad Agency Announcement (BAA) to purchase specific data resulting from industry efforts to test and verify vehicle capabilities through demonstrations of small robotic landers. The purpose is to inform the development of future human and robotic lander vehicles. ... The ILDD BAA challenges industry to demonstrate Earth-to-lunar surface flight system capabilities and test technologies.

Astrobotic to pursue NASA data purchase offer - RLV News

First Lindbergh Electric Aircraft Prizes Announced At AirVenture - Lindbergh Electric Aircraft Prize (LEAP) - You can find out about this year's prizes at the link. There is also some information about next year's prizes:

LEAP announced that in 2011, LEAP prizes will be awarded at Aero-Friedrichschafen in Germany as well as at AirVenture.

Fueling Innovation (100 MPGe at a time) - Energy Blog (Department of Energy)

See much, much more about the Progressive Automotive X PRIZE here.

And the winner is… Offering a cash prize to encourage innovation is all the rage. Sometimes it works rather well - The Economist

America COMPETES Includes Competitions

I recently took a look at a Senate Appropriations report that gave details on proposed funding levels for NASA Space Technology. That report didn't specify funds for Centennial Challenge prizes.

Interestingly, the same day that the Senate Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation put forth the NASA Authorization Act of 2010 that seems to have served as a model for the Senate Appropriations bill, that committee also issued the America COMPETES Reauthorization Act of 2010. Here is a working draft of the bill. There is a prize section of the bill that starts at page 15 of the draft. As noted by the OSTP blog, the Senate Advances Prizes in America COMPETES. From the OSTP comments:

The Prize Competitions section of the Committee bill would provide Federal Agencies across the Executive Branch with explicit authority to conduct prize competitions.

Here are some excerpts from the draft bill:

IN GENERAL.—Each head of an agency, or the heads of multiple agencies in cooperation, may carry out a program to award prizes competitively to stimulate innovation that has the potential to advance the mission of the respective agency.

...

INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY.—

‘‘(1) PROHIBITION ON THE GOVERNMENT ACQUIRING INTELLECTUAL PROPERTY RIGHTS.—The Federal Government may not gain an interest in intellectual property developed by a participant in a competition without the written consent of the participant.

‘‘(2) LICENSES.—The Federal Government may negotiate a license for the use of intellectual property developed by a participant for a competition.

...

LIMITATION ON AMOUNT.—
‘‘(A) NOTICE TO CONGRESS.—No prize competition under this section may offer a prize in an amount greater than $50,000,000 unless 30 days have elapsed after written notice has been transmitted to the Committee on Commerce, Science, and Transportation of the Senate and the Committee on Science and Technology of the House of Representatives.

‘‘(B) APPROVAL OF HEAD OF AGENCY.— No prize competition under this section may result in the award of more than $1,000,000 in cash prizes without the approval of the head of an agency.

...

the General Services Administration shall provide government wide services to share best practices and assist agencies in developing guidelines for issuing prize competitions. The General Services Administration shall develop a contract vehicle to provide agencies access to relevant products and services, including technical assistance in structuring and conducting prize competitions to take maximum benefit of the marketplace as they identify and pursue prize competitions to further the policy objectives of the Federal Government.

...

REPEAL OF SPACE ACT LIMITATION.—Section 314(a) of the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 (42 U.S.C. 2459f-1 is amended by striking ‘‘The Administration may carry out a program to award prizes only in conformity with this section.’’.

It will be interesting to see how this develops across the various agencies, including the agencies with an interest in space.

There is also a section of the bill on NASA starting at page 27 in the draft. Part of this section covers space technology:

It is the sense of Congress that a renewed emphasis on technology development would enhance current mission capabilities and enable future missions, while encouraging NASA, private industry, and academia to spur innovation. NASA’s Innovative Partnership Program is a valuable mechanism to accelerate technology maturation and encourage the transfer of technology into the private sector.

The bill also includes a section specifically on various cybersecurity competitions at levels appropriate for high school, undergraduate, and graduate students, and also for universities and research labs.

The Director of the National Institute of Standards and Technology, directly or through appropriate Federal entities, shall establish cybersecurity competitions and challenges with cash prizes ...

There are authorized to be appropriated to the National Institute of Standards and Technology to carry out this section $15,000,000 for each of fiscal years 2011 through 2013.

Centennial Challenges and the Senate Appropriations Report

The Senate Commerce, Justice, Science, and Related Agencies Appropriations Act, 2011 is accompanied by a report (PDF) that gives more detail on what the Appropriators intend. The NASA section of the report starts on page 115. Here are the amounts for NASA's Space Technology account. Figures are in millions of dollars:

Space Technology:
Early Stage Innovation ........................... 193,000
----Space Technology Research Grants .............. 20,000
----NIAC Phase I and Phase II ...................... 2,000
----Center Innovations Fund ....................... 10,400
----SBIR/STTR .................................... 160,600
Game Changing Technology .......................... 53,000
----Game-Changing Developments .................... 50,000
----Small Satellite Subsystem Technologies ......... 3,000
Crosscutting Capability Demonstrations ............ 64,000
----Technology Demonstration Missions ............. 42,000
----Edison Small Satellite Demonstration Missions .. 5,000
----Flight Opportunities .......................... 17,000
Partnership Development and Strategic Integration . 15,000
Subtotal, Space Technology ....................... 325,000

As with commercial space, exploration technology development and demonstrations, robotic precursor missions, and various other accounts, the Senate dramatically cuts NASA's request in certain areas to support a government heavy lift rocket, a crew vehicle, and an additional Shuttle flight. Although cut significantly, Space Technology does much better than some of the other accounts, perhaps because it is built on an existing NASA program. For comparison, here are the Space Technology figures from NASA's FY2011 budget request (PDF) for FY2011 (most amounts are considerably larger in later years in that budget's outlook):

Space Technology:
Early Stage Innovation ........................... 298,600
----Space Technology Research Grants .............. 70,000
----NIAC Phase I and Phase II ...................... 3,000
----Center Innovations Fund ....................... 50,000
----SBIR/STTR .................................... 165,600
----Centennial Challenges ......................... 10,000
Game Changing Technology ......................... 129,600
----Game-Changing Developments ................... 123,600
----Small Satellite Subsystem Technologies ......... 6,000
Crosscutting Capability Demonstrations ........... 102,000
----Technology Demonstration Missions ............. 75,000
----Edison Small Satellite Demonstration Missions . 10,000
----Flight Opportunities .......................... 17,000
Partnership Development and Strategic Integration . 42,000
Subtotal, Space Technology ....................... 572,200

The line for the Centennial Challenges space/aeronautics prize program continues at $10M per year for the 5 years covered in NASA's budget request. Note that the Senate report doesn't contain a line for Centennial Challenges.

Prizes and the new National Space Policy

I'll just briefly note the following from the new National Space Policy of the United States of America (PDF):

To promote a robust domestic commercial space industry, departments and agencies shall:
...

Cultivate increased technological innovation and entrepreneurship in the commercial space sector through the use of incentives such as prizes and competitions; ...

Opinions on Lunar Policy and Communication

Following up on my previous post, I'd like to take a bit of a detour away from prizes in this post. I'm not surprised there is so much confusion about NASA's lunar plans. With NASA's new approach, all destinations are subject to results from commercial space development, robotic precursors, technology development, international participation, and future budget decisions. That's a source of confusion that's inherent in the new approach.

To compound that confusion, however, NASA's communication concerning the Moon has not been consistent or clear. That's not surprising considering that NASA is a large, diverse organization, and some of the communication is actually from outside NASA itself.

Here is an example where NASA's plans are presented: A Bold Approach for Space Exploration and Discovery - Fact Sheet on the President’s April 15th Address in Florida (PDF) - OSTP

... a set of stepping-stone achievements in space that will take us further and faster into space, allowing us to reach a range of destinations including lunar orbit, Lagrange points, near-Earth asteroids, and the moons of Mars, and eventually Mars itself. This sequence of missions will begin with a set of crewed flights to prove the capabilities required for exploration beyond low Earth orbit. After these initial missions, our long-duration human spaceflight technologies will enable human explorers to conduct the first-ever crewed mission into deep space to an asteroid, thereby achieving an historical first; venture into deep space locations such as the Lagrange points (potential sites of fuel depots that would enable more capable future missions to the Moon, Mars, and other destinations); and then send humans to orbit Mars and return them safely to Earth.

It's obvious from this statement that NASA's astronaut plans, just like the Augustine Flexible Path, include lunar orbit, Lagrange points, NEOs, Mars moons, and ultimately Mars. However, although lunar orbit missions and Earth-Moon Lagrange point fuel depots for, among other destinations, the Moon are mentioned, the statement doesn't specify that the Moon's surface is one of NASA's destinations.

With the understanding that reaching the Moon, like reaching all of the other destinations, will be subject to future results from various efforts like technology demonstrations and robotic precursors, NASA needs to formulate a specific, if tentative, policy position on the Moon.

If the Moon is one of its destinations, NASA should find an appropriate spot for it in its tentative but official sequence of future destinations. Given the confusion about the Moon up to this point, it then should present a document that lists and explains all of the steps it is undertaking that will make it easier to reach the Moon and that will make reaching the Moon more productive. This could include technology development, Lunar Quest science missions, robotic precursor missions, early beyond-LEO missions, and more. It should be done at a detailed level. For example, this document should identify how each relevant technology demonstration mission helps us to reach the Moon.

If the Moon isn't one of the destinations, NASA representatives should consistently say so. If reaching the Moon depends to a greater extent than the other destinations on future events, and thus should be treated as a possible but not mandatory destination (as was done in the Augustine Flexible Path), NASA should consistently explain how and why this is the case.

Let's assume that NASA does intend to return to the Moon at some point. The decision making and communication I described should help NASA gain support from at least some lunar surface advocates. This high level decision making and communication may also improve lower level decision making within NASA itself.

Let's suppose NASA's roadmap includes lunar surface missions before Mars surface missions. If that is the case and it's understood by all NASA decision makers, different technical decisions consistent with the larger policy decision might be made.

NASA's 2011 exploration budget proposal (PDF) describes the initial large robotic precursor missions. The suggested missions include

• a lunar surface robot
• an asteroid or Mars moon lander
• a lunar or asteroid lander to demonstrate resource use
• a lunar resource technology demonstration is also mentioned in another section of the exploration budget

If all of these precursors were done, that would be 2 lunar surface precursors, 2 asteroid precursors, and 1 Mars moon precursor.

In contrast, the Exploration Enterprise Workshop: FY 2011 Exploration Precursor Robotic Missions (xPRM) Point of Departure Plans (PDF) presentation includes the following tentative xPRP (i.e. larger than xScout) missions:

• 2014: NEO Exploration Rendezvous Orbiter (NERO)
• 2015: Teleoperated Lunar Lander
• 2016: Mars Orbiter
• 2018: Mars Lander
• 2019: NEO TBD Mission

The ETDD Demonstration Project - Lunar Volatiles Characterization (PDF) demonstration would be flown on the 2015 lunar lander mission.

Compared to the original budget proposal, this is a big step in favor of Mars missions at the expense of the Moon (and, for that matter, Mars moons). Given the following considerations, it is likely that more emphasis would be placed on lunar precursor missions if the Moon were clearly put on NASA's roadmap:

• The Martian surface is a far future destination compared to lunar orbit, and is also probably farther in the future than the lunar surface in our hypothetical policy scenario.
• There will probably be a number of opportunities for Mars robotic precursor instruments to be hosted on NASA SMD or international Mars science missions, so dedicated Mars robotic precursors aren't quite as essential for Mars as lunar precursor missions are for the Moon. NASA has an ambitious Mars planetary science program. The Lunar Quest program is much smaller, although the Moon can also be addressed in Discovery or New Frontier missions. NASA's robotic precursor plan includes MOOs, which are Missions of Opportunity to fly precursor instruments on non-precursor missions.
• Lunar resources could potentially enable more ambitious missions. For example, fuel extracted from the lunar surface could be delivered to in-space fuel depots to be used in deep space exploration missions.

As an aside, a similar case could be made even without our hypothetical policy decision for a Mars moon precursor instead of a Mars precursor.

Similar decisions might be made in other areas.

A clear lunar policy could shift the balance of NASA science missions. For example, who will win the next New Frontiers competition: MoonRise (lunar sample return), OSIRIS-REx (asteroid mapping and sample return) or SAGE (Venus lander)? With a NEO visit early in NASA's astronaut plans and climate change as a high priority Administration concern, without a clear lunar policy decision and communication MoonRise would seem to be at a disadvantage if policy finds its way into the evaluation of the missions' science merits.

How ambitious will NASA's initial beyond-LEO astronaut mission(s) to lunar orbit be? How much solid lunar work will they do? A clear lunar policy could guide these decisions.

You get the idea.

Of course, if a policy decision and corresponding clear communication result in a shift in emphasis that is a bit more in favor of the Moon, while still maintaining the broad exploration goals of NASA's new plans, NASA is likely to win more supporters for its new plans from the lunar community.

Prize Roundup: NSF Bill, Prize Strategy Session, UK Student Contest, More

Prizes in Government and Beyond: Peter Diamandis from XPrize and the White Houses' Tom Kalil - Case Foundation - This is one of the talks from the White House strategy session "Promoting Innovation: Prizes, Challenges and Open Grantmaking" that I mentioned here.

@unrocket: Different chunk of desert same dried out feeling. Got tripoli l1 and l2 certs at plaster city. Next stop control

Richard Garriott holds "Our Space" contest for UK students - Space for All

Students in NASA's launch competition - Space for All

Briefs: UK spaceflight contest; Advanced injectors project - RLV News

Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup #17 - Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration

NSF Funding Boost Rolled into America Competes Act - GenomeWeb Daily News:

The Subcommittee additions to the America Competes Act also include a Lipinski amendment to create a pilot program that would award cash prizes in any area of NSF-funded research, particularly challenging high-risk, high-reward studies that could help boost US competitiveness and generate awareness of the NSF.

The act would fund five such competitions through the end of FY2013, and the awards would range between $1 million and $3 million. The government would not have the rights to any intellectual property developed under these awards, but it would be able to negotiate for license agreements with the prize contestants.

Subcommittee Approves NSF Reauthorization to be Rolled into America COMPETES Act - SpaceRef has a press release from the House Science and Technology Subcommittee about this.

OMB Prize Guidance, National Academies on Suborbital, SXSW, X PRIZE Benefit, More

Guidance on the Use of Challenges and Prizes to Promote Open Government (PDF) - WhiteHouse.gov (OMB):

To support agencies in the execution of prizes that further the policy objectives of the Federal Government, the Administration will make available a web-based platform for prizes and challenges within 120 days. This platform will provide a forum for agencies to post problems and invite communities of problem solvers to suggest, collaborate on, and deliver solutions. Over the longer term, the General Services Administration (GSA) will also provide government-wide services to share best practices and assist agencies in developing guidelines for issuing challenges. Additionally, GSA will develop, as expeditiously as possible, a contract vehicle to provide agency access to relevant products and services, including technical assistance in structuring and conducting contests to take maximum benefit of the marketplace as they identify and pursue contest initiatives to further the policy objectives of the Federal Government.

Revitalizing NASA's Suborbital Program: Advancing Science, Driving Innovation, and Developing Workforce - National Academies Press - This includes a chapter on commercial vehicles, as well as a lot of material on traditional suborbital access methods like balloons, sounding rockets, and planes.

Moon 2.0: The Outer Limits of Lunar Exploration - SXSW, Saturday, March 13 at 03:30 PM

02/16/2010: Hybrid Motor Holds Together - SpeedUp


Here are a few tweets I picked from many related in one way or another to prizes over the last few days:

@SpaceFellowship: REXUS 7 and 8 student research rockets launched successfully http://ping.fm/W11RC

@makerfaire: RobotFest/Mid-Atlantic 2010 Mini Maker Faire, April 24th: Gary Mauler and the folks who put on the RobotFest ... http://bit.ly/be9vD2

@LaserMotive: We are getting interest in a product we hadn't considered making. It's a prime example of listening to customers for ideas.

@PeterDiamandis: Just announcing major X PRIZE "Benefit" on May 15th -- http://www.xprize.org/email/benefitforhumanity Cameron, Page, Brin as co-Chairs. Come join!

Here are some of the event details:

Through our live auction, bid to win a trip to space on Virgin Galactic, a 2010 Tesla Roadster, have your personal genome sequenced, lunch with our VIPs and more.

Date: Saturday, May 15, 2010
Location: Lucasfilm, Letterman Arts Center, The Presidio of San Francisco

This gives some more information about what's happening at the X PRIZE Foundation:

X Prize group sets sights on next challenges (Q&A) - CNet News

@TeamPrometheus: http://www.facebook.com/photo.php?pid=5414479&l=aeecc47771&id=213171526223

@ValkyrieFed: We'll do a fundraising event, in Montreal! Maybe in April or May.

@jeff_foust: Garver: NASA very supportive of prizes, talking about potential collab on Google Lunar X Prize, such as making a data purchase.

@bonnova: New high-performance injector in development. First prototype in house today.

Panoramio and Hubble Photo Contests, Prize Winners Speak Out, Ames Software Award, More

Every now and then I like to include winning and runner-up images from the monthly Panoramio photo contests that strike me as having an "other-wordly" appearance or mood, but I haven't done that in a while. This one is from the December 2009 contest. All of the winners are geotagged, so if you follow that link you can see where they were taken using satellite imagery through Google Maps and Google Earth. The collection the photo above is from includes another geotagged photo, called Spectacular Tree, where a tree seems to be reaching out to grasp the Moon.

Here's a tweet from one Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenger about another one:

@mojaverocketguy: John Carmack says it better than I can (about the proposed NASA budget/direction): http://venturebeat.com/2010/02/25/obama-nasa/

NASA Ames wins a space prize for the NASA World Wind digital globe software used for Earth and other planets:

@NASA_Ames: [News] Ames Wins 2009 NASA Software of the Year Award http://bit.ly/9C7IZ9

Here are 3 separate and interesting Innocentive tweets:

@InnoCentiveCEO: Couple days left to exercise your creativity for NASA: $20K prize for Compact Aerobic and Resistive Exercise Device http://bit.ly/8F388H

Software meets biology. $30K competition for designing software to create plant-based molecular ontology. http://bit.ly/ahbOrx

"Cool" new InnoCentive competition: 50K for Flexible Light Weight High Temperature Fire Partition http://bit.ly/91lQsD

The American Google Lunar X PRIZE Teams - Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration

Check the NSS link on this one for the winning Hubble images:

@nss: So many wonderful Hubble images submitted..Its hard to choice but we have decided to award 5 lucky winners. #Hubble3D

To the Moon? I think not, Alice…. - True/Slant - Miles O'Brien -Part of his Congressional testimony mentions a well-known space prize:

And when it comes to human beings in space, there is insatiable interest in the effort to open space up to the rest of us. I will never forget the thrill I had covering SpaceShipOne as it captured the X-Prize in Mojave in October of 2004. The excitement in the air was palpable – for a flight that went about as high as Alan Shepard went on May of 1961.

But this time it was one of us.

Space Access'10 update - RLV News has the latest Space Access '10 update, with more presenters with prize connections. Lots of the Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge teams will be represented.

Apollo 13 - 40th Anniversary Essay Contest - Space for All

LaserMotive To Be Honored at NASA Ceremony - BusinessWire

2011 NASA Budget Proposal

There are many significant changes in the 2011 NASA budget proposal that are clarified in the detailed Fiscal Year 2011 Budget Estimates (PDF) for NASA. Instead of trying to cover all of it, I'll just point out a couple items related to prizes. First, there's the NASA Centennial Challenges prize program. The budget proposes $10M for new Centennial Challenges prizes in each year from 2011-2015. For several years, Administration budget proposals requested $4M for Centennial Challenges, but Congress didn't appropriate this money most of those years, so the program has been running off of funding from years ago. With many of the original prizes now won, it seems like it's make-or-break time for Centennial Challenges.

Google Lunar X PRIZE teams may want be aware of the robotic human spaceflight precursor program in the new budget. In addition to NASA's robotic lunar science missions in development and under consideration for development, a whole new line of potential robotic missions, following the example of LRO and LCROSS, is proposed in the new budget. Here are some excerpts:

NASA will begin funding at least two dedicated precursor missions in 2011. One will likely be a lunar mission to demonstrate tele-operation capability from Earth and potentially from the International Space Station, including the ability to transmit near-live video to Earth. This will also result in investigations for validating the availability of resources for extraction. NASA will provide opportunities to participate in the payloads and observation teams, and potentially portions of the spacecraft, through open competition.

NASA will also select at least one additional robotic precursor mission to initiate in 2011, and identify potential future missions to begin in 2012 and/or 2013. Potential missions may include:

Landing on asteroids or the moons of Mars ...

Landing a facility to test processing technologies for transforming lunar or asteroid materials for fuel ...

Additionally, a new portfolio of explorer scouts will execute small, rapid turn-around, highly competitive missions to exploration destinations. Generally budgeted at between $100M and $200M lifecycle cost, these missions will allow NASA to test new and innovative ways of doing robotic exploration of destinations of interest to future human exploration. Selected projects may provide multiple small scouting spacecraft to investigate multiple possible landing sites, or provide means of rapid-prototyping new spacecraft approaches. These missions will be fully and openly competed in a Principal Investigator mode.

A Sound Approach

Jon Goff of Masten Space Systems talks about Masten's flexible plans, and how a similar approach might apply at NASA, in a NASASpaceflight.com discussion.

Prize Roundup: Suborbital Science Conference, GLXP Updates, Dutch CanSat, Beam Teams, Moon Trails, More

@glxp: We have a new addition to the #GLXP team and today is officially her 1st day! Super excited to introduce her to all of you.

@NextGiantLeap: New direct link to our facebook page: www.facebook.com/NextGiantLeap #GLXP

@PTScientists: http://twitpic.com/13l3xq - R2 of our Rover will feature many improvements

@Suborbi_Science: Some significant announcements expected at NSRC this week! Stay tuned, or better, come & hear the news 1st hand. http://tinyurl.com/yzpj6q6

Will any of these announcements be related to Northrop Grumman Lunar Lander Challenge teams? Ansari X PRIZE follow-on businesses? Student competitions? Maybe and maybe not, but you can could on there being a lot of presentations there related to prizes and prize teams - the conference program (PDF) already shows that.

@EarthPic: Earth Science Picture of the Day: Moon Trails http://bit.ly/d6UCv5

May the Google Lunar X PRIZE teams blaze some Moon Trails of their own soon.

CanSat competition - Thomas's Blog - This blog post links to the site for one of the teams competing in the Dutch CanSat competition.

Google Lunar X PRIZE Roundup #10 - Luna C/I: Moon Colonization and Integration

Briefs: The budget wall; Lobbying for tech competition funding - RLV News

Here are a few news items on the Space Elevator Games climber/power beaming competition:

More from the KC Space Pirates… - The Space Elevator Blog

Welcome LaserMotive’s New Blogger! - LaserMotive

The Otis Diet - LaserMotive

On the automotive prize front:

Start your X Prize engines - COSMIC LOG