NASA has been increasing the use of challenges to encourage innovation along the lines they could use for their future missions. The NASA challenges now 9 open challenges including the: beam power challenge and the astronaut glove challenge.
These centennial challenges provide a small monetary award to encourage solutions to challenges.
By making awards based on actual achievements, instead of proposals, Centennial Challenges seeks novel solutions to NASA’s mission challenges from non-traditional sources of innovation in academia, industry and the public.
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Like to Tinker? NASA’s Looking for You by Noah Shachtman
Many of NASA’s contests also center on robotics. The Telerobotic Construction Challenge, scheduled for August 2007, requires a team of machines to assemble items with minimal human supervision. The idea is to let robots, instead of astronauts, build shelters and machinery on the moon and Mars.
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