Centennial Challenges
NASA's prize contests for non-government technological achievements.
The Centennial Challenges are a series of inducement prize contests run by NASA for non-government-funded technological achievements by American teams. They are designed to directly engage the public in advanced technology development of value to NASA's missions and the aerospace community. The name honors the 100 years since the Wright brothers' first flight in 1903.
Quick Facts
- Sample return robot winner
- Team Mountaineers from West Virginia University
- Green flight challenge prize
- US$1,650,000
- Green flight challenge dates
- Sept 25 - Oct 1, 2011
Facts from the source article.
Origin
NASA’s Centennial Challenge Program uses public competitions to push forward advanced technology that matters to the agency and the aerospace field. These prize contests are named to mark a century since the Wright brothers’ first flight. Money goes only to teams that hit the target, which sets prizes apart from standard grants. The idea builds on earlier contests like the Longitude prize, the Orteig Prize, the Ansari X PRIZE, and the DARPA Grand Challenge. A 1999 National Academy of Engineering report urged Congress to have federal agencies try more inducement prizes. A 2003 NASA study, with help from the X PRIZE Foundation, created the Centennial Challenges. NASA holds one of the three biggest federal procurement budgets, along with the Department of Energy and the Defense Department. The Department of Energy is now set to join NASA and DARPA in backing this shift toward technology innovators that traditional contractors often miss.
Current challenges
The Sample Return Robot Challenge requires building an autonomous rough-terrain robot that can find and retrieve geologic samples, aiming to advance autonomic robotics and remote manipulator technology. The prize is US$1.5 million, and Worcester Polytechnic Institute in Worcester, Massachusetts, is the Allied Organization partnering with NASA. Team registration began in Summer 2011, and the first competition was held June 16, 2012. Eleven teams registered, six showed up, and all but one failed weigh-in or inspection; Team SpacePride competed in level one but did not succeed. The second running took place June 6–8, 2013, at WPI, with ten teams competing; Team Survey of Los Angeles won $5,000 for completing Level 1, and no teams advanced to Level 2. The third running was June 9–14, 2014, at WPI, with 17 teams; Team Mountaineers from West Virginia University, led by Dr. Yu Gu, completed Level 1, but no team completed Level 2. The fourth competition was June 8–12, 2015, at WPI, with 16 teams; Team Mountaineers completed Level 2 with two samples (3 points) and won $100,000. The fifth year had two events: Level 1 on June 6–11, 2016, where five new teams completed it, and the final Level 2 challenge on September 4 and 5, where Team Mountaineers collected 5 samples (11 points) and won $750,000. Efforts were coordinated by NASA and the WPI Robotics Center.
Completed challenges
The Google-sponsored Green Flight Challenge tasked teams with building an aircraft capable of traveling 200 miles in less than two hours while using the energy equivalent of one gallon of gasoline per passenger. The $1,650,000 prize was contested from September 25 to October 1, 2011, at the Charles M. Schulz Sonoma County Airport in Santa Rosa, California. The CAFE Foundation ran the event in partnership with NASA’s Centennial Challenges Program. On October 1, CAFE hosted a public open house, and the Google Green Flight Challenge Exposition was held at NASA Ames Research Center in Sunnyvale, California on October 3, 2011. A different challenge, the Strong Tether competition, began in 2005 with a $50,000 prize for the strongest tether, but no entry beat the commercial baseline. The prize increased to $200,000 in 2006 and $500,000 in 2007. The 2011 Strong Tether Centennial Challenge took place at the Space Elevator Conference in Redmond, Washington on August 12, 2011, and still no winner has been declared. Power Beam competitions occurred in 2005, 2006, 2007, and 2009, focusing on space elevator technology. Teams built mechanical climbers that ascended a vertical cable using power transmitted from the ground, rather than an onboard power source.
Other proposals
Proposed but not finalized challenges include very low cost spacecraft missions, micro reentry vehicles, lunar robotic landings, Mars and asteroid microspacecraft missions, solar sail missions, breakthrough robotic capability competitions, a robotic triathlon, a telerobotic construction race, robotic insects, a rover survivor challenge, an Antarctic rover traverse, revolutionary technology demonstrations, lunar resource utilization, long-term propellant storage, precision landers, autonomous drills, a battery breakthrough, an in situ life detector, an extreme environment computer, carbon nanotube-based materials, tether propulsion, and very low cost suborbital launch. Challenges are organized into four categories: Flagship Challenges, Keystone Challenges, Alliance Challenges, and Quest Challenges.
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