NASA Promotes New Round Of Centennial Challenges
From October 19-21, more than 20
teams from across the nation and around the world will compete for
a total of $1,000,000 from NASA for the development of cutting-edge
technologies. The Beam Power Challenge and Tether Challenge, two of
NASA's seven Centennial Challenges, will take place at the 2007
Space Elevator Games at the Davis County Event Center in Salt Lake
City, UT.
"The innovations from these competitions will help support
advances in aerospace materials and structures, new approaches to
robotic and human planetary surface operations, and even futuristic
concepts," said Ken Davidian, program manager for NASA's Centennial
Challenges, Headquarters, Washington.
The Spaceward Foundation is conducting the challenges as part of
the Space Elevator Games, at no cost to NASA.
The Beam Power Challenge promotes the development of new power
distribution technologies that can be applied to space exploration.
This competition requires teams to design and build a climber
machine that can travel up and down a ribbon while carrying a
payload. Power will be beamed from a transmitter to a receiver on
the climber.
Each climber must scale a height of approximately 330 feet
traveling at a minimum speed of two meters per second. As many as
three teams with the highest qualifying scores could win the
competition and share the $500,000 purse. Technologies demonstrated
in this competition could have applications for future planetary
surface operation with robots or humans.
The purpose of the Tether Challenge is to develop very strong,
lightweight material. Super-strong tethers could enable advances in
aerospace capability, including rocket weight reduction, habitable
space structures, solar sails, or tether-based propulsion
systems.
The challenge will be conducted in two rounds that test the
strength of each team's tether. As many as three teams could share
the $500,000 prize. The winners must demonstrate a technology at
least 50 percent stronger than a baseline, state-of-the-art tether
that uses off-the-shelf materials.
The space elevator is an Earth-to-space transportation system
proposed in the 1960s, and revised in 2000 by Dr. Bradley Edwards
of Los Alamos National Laboratory in New Mexico. The system is
comprised of a stationary cable moving in unison with the Earth,
with one end anchored to the surface of the planet and the other in
space.
Electric cars then would travel up and down the cable, carrying
cargo and people.
Centennial Challenges, an element of NASA's Innovative
Partnerships Program, promotes technical innovation through prize
competitions to make revolutionary advances to support NASA's
mission, including the return to the moon and journey to Mars.
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