OCTOBER 29, 2020
NASA issued a call Thursday for ideas that address how to unload payloads from lunar landers. The Lunar Delivery Challenge launched on crowdsourcing platform HeroX with total available prize money of $25,000 (approximately £19,318, AU$35,559) for the top concepts.
“Payloads of varying mass and volume will be sent to the moon in one of several commercial landers and once they arrive at the lunar South Pole, they need to be unloaded,” the challenge says. “These landers will range in size depending on the program requirements, so ideally the solution should be flexible enough to handle a variety of payloads being off-loaded from a range of different vehicles.”
Do you have what it takes to enter the NASA Lunar Delivery Challenge? – NASA
NASA offered an extensive set of guidelines for the challenge. Ideas will be judged based on the quality of the proposal, the degree to which the technique can work autonomously and be able to offload payloads, and the extent to which the design could work with a variety of payloads and landers.
The challenge is open to individuals and teams, with a submission deadline of January 19, 2021. Winners will be announced on March 16, 2021.
Earlier his year, NASA asked space fans to help design a payload for a mini-moon rover in its Honey, I Shrunk the NASA Payload challenge.
Courtesy/Source: c|net
