NASA on the Lookout for Moon Tools

NASA is running a challenge to college students to design tool packages for the upcoming moon rover which will go on the missions for NASA's return to the moon. Details can be found on the NASA Moontasks page.

The following list, from the design challenge page, provides ideas for the sorts of tools and instruments that NASA is looking for:

• Navigation in the darkness around the Moon's south pole
• Power supplies for rovers in the dark
• Sample retrieval and on-site analysis
• Radiation detection and avoidance
• Communication with lunar outpost, with orbiters, and with Earth
• Video capture of sorties for transmission back to Earth
• Astronaut recovery and transport back to outpost
• Lunar regolith mitigation strategies for rover and space suit

The NASA site invites prospective contestants in the competition to return and see if more possible tasks are added to the list.

To participate in the challenge, college students (or teams of students) must submit a notice of intent by Dec. 15, 2008.

The final entry is due on or before May 15, 2009. Results should be announced on or before June 15, 2009.

The prize is a stipend to allow the winning students to attend the next set of lunar technology mission tests in the summer or fall of 2009.

Opening up design challenges like this is, I think, a brilliant way to help innovation in a cost effective fashion for government institutes like NASA. It gives students a chance to shine, buff up their resumes a bit, and in exchange NASA widens the pool of available talent which can be generating their ideas.