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NASA Adds $5M Prizes For Robots, Solar Spacecraft

Posted by CmdrTaco on from the harvesting-the-day-star dept.

coondoggie writes "NASA today significantly expanded its Centennial Challenges program to include $5 million worth of new competitions to develop robots, small satellites, and solar powered spacecraft. One of the new competitions is the Sample Return Robot Challenge. Its purpose is to demonstrate a robot that can locate and retrieve geologic samples from wide and varied terrain without human control. This challenge has a prize purse of $1.5 million. The objectives are to encourage innovations in automatic navigation and robotic manipulator technologies."

3 of 17 comments (clear)

  1. NASA Has Money? by BiggoronSword · · Score: 2, Informative

    Since when does NASA have any money? I thought all their budgets had been hacked and slashed by the gov't and other bureaucracies.

    --
    interactive hologram, or it didn't happen.
    1. Re:NASA Has Money? by FleaPlus · · Score: 4, Informative

      Since when does NASA have any money? I thought all their budgets had been hacked and slashed by the gov't and other bureaucracies.

      The White House actually proposed a budget increase for NASA this year, making it one of the only non-defense discretionary spending agencies to have such an increase proposed for it. The White House wants to use the increase for space technology (including Centennial Challenges), precursor robotic missions, and commercial crew transportation, although a number of folks in Congress want to just use to money to build a multi-billion dollar mega-rocket favoring particular congressional districts instead. Be sure to call up your congresspeople and let them know which you prefer.

  2. More info on Centennial Challenges, tech webcast by FleaPlus · · Score: 4, Informative

    Oh bummer, I actually just submitted a story on this a few minutes ago, oops. ;) The linked article above has a decent summary, but for the curious the summary below has some links to the original NASA sources:

    NASA has announced three new 'Centennial Challenge' technology prizes totaling $5M, awarded via competitions to achieve technological goals important to NASA: The $2M Nano-Satellite Launch Challenge for launching small satellites (at least 1kg) into orbit twice in one week, the $1.5M Night Rover Challenge for demonstrating a rover capable of storing and using solar energy over day/night cycles, and the $1.5M Sample Return Robot Challenge for a robot capable of locating and retrieving identifiable geologic samples in varied terrain without human control or GPS. This is in addition to the ongoing Strong Tether, Power Beaming, and Green Flight Challenges. The White House is currently seeking to boost funding for Centennial Challenges and other NASA technology programs, although many in Congress have other plans.

    The NASA Chief Technologist Robert Braun is currently hosting an industry day, and you can view the webcast live (they're currently on lunch break) and read the presentation PDFs here:

    http://www.nasa.gov/offices/oct/industry_day_info.html

    You can also submit questions relative to whatever the current presentation is via their official twitter account, which has been updated regularly throughout the day:

    http://twitter.com/NASA_Technology