Centennial Challenges
The Centennial Challenges are NASA space competition inducement prize contests for non-government-funded technological achievements by American teams.
A 1999 National Academy of Engineering committee report[1] 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.
With the subsequent proposal in Congress of "H Prize" funding for breakthroughs in hydrogen fuel-related technology,[2] 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.
[6] Team Mountaineers from West Virginia University (WVU), led by Dr. Yu Gu, successfully completed Level 1 challenge.
Team Mountaineers[7] from West Virginia University successfully completed Level 2 challenge (with two collected samples or 3 points) and brought home a $100,000 prize.
Team Mountaineers from West Virginia University collected 5 samples with a total score of 11 points, and won the challenge with a $750,000 prize.
The Ground Tournaments will be held every four to six months, leading to an opportunity to earn a spot on the first integrated flight of Orion and SLS.
[12] 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 US$1,650,000 prize was competed for Sept 25 - Oct 1, 2011 at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport, Santa Rosa, California.
The Google Green Flight Challenge Exposition[15] was at NASA Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, California on October 3, 2011.
This competition presented the challenge of constructing super-strong tethers, a crucial component of a space elevator.
[citation needed] The 2011 Strong Tether Centennial Challenge was held at the Space Elevator Conference in Redmond, Washington on August 12, 2011.
[citation needed] In the 2009 competition, the competitors drove their laser-powered devices up a cable one kilometer high, suspended from a helicopter.
[citation needed] The initial MoonROx challenge was announced in 2005 with the intent to award a US$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.
[20] For the initial announcement of the challenge, the competition was to be administered by the Florida Space Research Institute (FSRI) in collaboration with NASA.
NASA offered a total of US$200,000 for the team that could design and manufacture the best astronaut glove that exceeded minimum requirements.
[25] NASA's page 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 more aggressive Lunar Lander Challenge increases that to 180s of flight time and landing on a rocky surface.
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.
[27] In this Challenge, teams designed and built robotic machines to excavate simulated lunar soil (regolith).
In October 2012 NASA announced a challenge with the goal of developing some of the key technologies that will make it possible to integrate unmanned aerial vehicles into the National Airspace System.
[31] The challenge's focus was on demonstrating a high level of operational robustness and the ability to "sense and avoid" other air traffic.
NASA Centennial Challenges have historically been high-risk and leveraged activities conducted with minimal government funding.
NASA reviewed the intended outcomes of the AOC and determined that the competition was no longer timely or cost-effective to execute as planned.
[35] The CO2 conversion challenge is a competition to convert carbon dioxide into sugars to be used as feedstock for biomanufacturing in space and on Mars.
