[meteorite-list] NASA Opens Cube Quest Challenge for Largest-Ever Prize of $5 Million

[Ron Baalke]

November 24, 2014
     
NASA Opens Cube Quest Challenge for Largest-Ever Prize of $5 Million

Registration now is open for NASA's Cube Quest Challenge, the agency's 
first in-space competition that offers the agency's largest-ever prize 
purse.

Competitors have a shot at a share of $5 million in prize money and an 
opportunity to participate in space exploration and technology development, 
to include a chance at flying their very own CubeSat to the moon and beyond 
as secondary payload on the first integrated flight of NASA's Orion 
spacecraft and Space Launch System (SLS) rocket.

"NASA's Cube Quest Challenge will engage teams in the development of the new 
technologies that will advance the state of the art of CubeSats and 
demonstrate their capabilities as viable deep space explorers," said Michael 
Gazarik, associate administrator for NASA's Space Technology Mission 
Directorate at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "Prize competitions like this 
engage the general public and directly contribute to NASA's goals while 
serving as a tool for open innovation."

Challenge objectives include designing, building and delivering 
flight-qualified, small satellites capable of advanced operations near and 
beyond the moon. The challenge and prize purse are divided into three major 
areas:

 * Ground Tournaments: $500,000 in the four qualifying ground tournaments
   to determine who will have the ability to fly on the first SLS flight;

 * Lunar Derby: $1.5 million for demonstrating communication and CubeSat
   durability at a distance greater than almost 2.5 million miles (4,000,000
   km), 10 times the distance from the Earth to the moon; and

 * Deep Space Derby: $3 million for demonstrating the ability to place a
   CubeSat in a stable lunar orbit and demonstrate communication and
   durability near the moon.

The Cube Quest Challenge seeks to develop and test subsystems necessary to 
perform deep space exploration using small spacecraft. Advancements in small 
spacecraft capabilities will provide benefits to future missions and also may 
enable entirely new mission scenarios, including future investigations of 
near-Earth asteroids.

"Cube Quest is an important competition for the agency as well as the 
commercial space sector," said Eric Eberly, deputy program manager for 
Centennial Challenges at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, 
Alabama. "If we can produce capabilities usually associated with larger 
spacecraft in the much smaller platform of CubeSats, a dramatic improvement 
in the affordability of space missions will result, greatly increasing 
science and research possibilities."

All teams may compete in any one of the four ground tournaments. Teams that 
rate high on mission safety and probability of success will receive 
incremental awards. The ground tournaments will be held every four to six 
months and participation is required to earn a secondary payload spot on SLS.

The Lunar Derby focuses primarily on propulsion for small spacecraft and 
near-Earth communications, while the Deep Space Derby focuses on finding 
innovative solutions to deep space communications using small spacecraft. 
Together, these competitions will contribute to opening deep space 
exploration to non-government spacecraft.

NASA's Centennial Challenges drive progress in aerospace technology -- of 
significant value to the agency's missions -- and encourage broad-based 
participation in aerospace research and development. The challenges help find 
the most innovative solutions to technical challenges through competition and 
cooperation. There have been 24 Centennial Challenges events since 2005. NASA 
has awarded more than $6 million to 16 challenge-winning teams.

NASA's Centennial Challenges Program is part of the agency's Space Technology 
Mission Directorate, which is responsible for innovating, developing, testing 
and flying hardware for use on future NASA missions. During the next 18 
months, the directorate will make significant new investments to address 
several high-priority challenges for achieving safe and affordable deep space 
exploration. For more information about the directorate, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/spacetech

The Centennial Challenges Program is managed at Marshall and the Cube Quest 
Challenge is administered by the agency's Ames Research Center in Mountain 
View, California. For more information on the Cube Quest Challenge, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/cubequest 

To learn more about NASA's challenges and citizen science efforts, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov/solve 

-end-

David E. Steitz
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1730
david.steitz at nasa.gov 

Janet Anderson
Marshall Space Flight Center, Huntsville, Ala.
256-544-0034
janet.l.anderson at nasa.gov