Designing Habitat For The Next Generation Of Space
Exploration
NASA and the National Space Grant Foundation have selected
university teams from Maryland, Oklahoma and Wisconsin as finalists
in a competition to design, manufacture, assemble and test an
inflatable loft.
NASA is challenging college students to design and rapidly
develop prototype concepts for inflatable habitat lofts for the
next generation of space explorers. The loft will be integrated
onto an existing NASA operational hard-shell prototype habitat. The
winning concepts may be applied to space exploration habitats of
the future.
"This competition gives these students the opportunity of a
lifetime," said NASA Chief Technologist Bobby Braun at NASA
Headquarters in Washington. "They'll design and build new hardware.
If their team wins, they'll get the chance to integrate their
designs into a NASA hard shell habitat and see it field tested next
summer."
The inaugural eXploration Habitat, or X-Hab, Academic Innovation
Challenge finalists are:
- Oklahoma State University
- University of Wisconsin-Madison
- University of Maryland
The competition is a university-level challenge designed to
encourage studies in spaceflight-related engineering and
architecture disciplines. This design competition requires
undergraduate and graduate students to explore NASA's work to
develop space habitats, while also helping the agency gather new
and innovative ideas to complement current research and
development.
In June 2011 at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston, the
NASA-Habitat Demonstration Unit project will conduct a head-to-head
competition among the three teams to successfully demonstrate an
attachable inflatable habitat "loft" concept, based on a list of
NASA requirements for the design. The Houston competition will
determine the winning team, which will be awarded additional funds
to integrate their design with the NASA habitat during field
testing in August and September 2011.
The National Space Grant Foundation will award the three teams
$48,000 each to cover the costs of their design development and
participation in the head-to-head competition. An additional
$10,000 will be awarded to the team that wins the competition to
offset their costs of participating in the integrated field
testing.
NASA's Exploration Mission Directorate and the Innovative
Partnerships Program are sponsoring this new technology challenge.
NASA is dedicated to supporting research that enables sustained and
affordable human and robotic exploration. This educational
competition contributes to the agency's efforts to train and
develop a highly skilled scientific, engineering and technical
workforce for the future.