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There are many challenges facing the NASA Artemis mission that will return humans to the moon for the first time in decades. While many aspects of the Artemis mission are still undecided, NASA is hard at work gathering data and companies to help it tackle the obstacles to accomplishing the missions. The space agency recently offered a $ 25,000 stock exchange prize to help design systems that astronauts will use to unload cargo on the lunar surface.
The NASA Lunar Delivery Challenge $ 25,000 prize pool can be shared with up to six winning entrants. NASA wants to help understand how astronauts will unload the supplies needed to build their base camp and conduct science experiments on the moon. Existing cargo unloading systems used on Earth are too bulky for the moon and are not designed to be sent into space.
The systems will also need to be designed to work on the moon, which has a much wider gravity – about six times lower than Earth’s. The systems NASA wants to design will be brought to the moon’s south pole using commercial lenders of various sizes. Once in their position, they will be subjected to 17% of the gravity felt on earth.
NASA wants practical and affordable solutions flexible enough to support a variety of payloads. NASA hosts the competition on the HeroX crowdsourcing social network. Teams wishing to participate have until January 19th. NASA notes and its overview of the challenge that the systems could also be used on the surface of Mars.
NASA is currently aiming to bring humans back to the moon by 2024. The agency shared the image at the beginning of the story showing three different landers to give contest entrants a better idea of the constraints they are working with. The landers come from Blue Origins, Dynetics and SpaceX.
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