NEW YORK: NASA is offering up to $2.8 million dollars for someone who can successfully design a habitat that can be 3D-printed on Mars.
The US space agency has been rolling out Mars challenges with cash prizes on almost a weekly basis.
In the past fortnight, the public have been invited to submit ideas for how astronauts can reduce their exposure to radiation ($US29,000) and what the first colony would need to survive ($US5000).
With its latest offer, the crowdsourcing element of NASA’s Journey to Mars program has entered serious cash territory, funded by NASA’s Centennial Challenges program, which in 2005 saw $US4 million a year freed up in the US budget for NASA to “directly engage the public” in driving new technology.
First of all, here’s what you need to design:
Their new adopted home should contain everything needed to comfortably sustain human life, including cooking areas, sleeping quarters and bathroom facilities. Their jobs as geologists, land surveyors, prospectors, scientists, biologists, & engineers should also be considered while creating this structure, as it will act as a prototype for the one that they’ll reside in while on Mars.
The hard part is, the habitat has to be able to build itself from waste spacecraft parts and indigenous materials from the surface of Mars. It has to provide a minimum of 92 square metres of living space. And you also have to suggest a spot on Mars for it to build itself as well as a corresponding test site on Earth.
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