NASA could give you $30,000 for your mini payload designs.
NASA has announced its “Honey, I Shrunk the NASA Payload” competition, in an effort to crowdsource an idea to develop mini payloads to be sent to the moon in the next few years. The payloads would send resources to support a sustained human presence on the moon, NASA said in a news release.
“Imagine a rover the size of your Roomba crawling the moon’s surface,” the website states. “These small rovers developed by NASA and commercial partners provide greater mission flexibility and allow NASA to collect key information about the lunar surface. However, existing science payloads are too big, too heavy, and require too much power for these rovers and new, miniaturized payload designs are needed.”
Payloads, the release continued, will have to be the size of a bar of soap to fit into the new rovers.
There are two award categories for the competition: lunar resource potential and lunar environment. The first-place winners for each category will be awarded $30,000.
Those interested should submit their proposals by June 8. Winners are set to be announced in mid-July.