When the first woman and the next man land on the moon in 2024, they will explore the permanently shaded and extremely cold regions of the moon’s south pole. Astronauts on Artemis missions must contain samples and transport them in multiple spacecraft during return to Earth. To support the effort, the NASA The Lunar Deep Freeze Challenge, led by NASA Tournament Lab, seeks information on how to return cold samples collected in these regions with temperatures below -150 ° C, while keeping them in their original, frozen state, back to Earth for further analysis.
Samples from the lunar south pole have significant scientific and technological value and can provide important insights that will benefit future lunar missions. The challenge is to find novel solutions to enable or enable long-term cryogenic containment through a small, lightweight, and efficient approach.
“Analysis of these ultra-cold lunar samples will allow a new generation of scientists and curators to refine their techniques and prepare us for future missions to the moon and beyond, while scientific secrets are revealed about the evolution of the Earth, Moon and Sun system. We rely on the global community of innovators to provide valuable ideas for the challenge of keeping these samples cold and transporting them back to Earth, ”said Chad Hammons, manager for the Lunar Deep Freeze Challenge at the Gateway Operations Integration and Utilization Office the NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston.
While a universal cryogenic single system solution that can be transported in the Human Landing System, at the lunar outpost Gateway in Orion and on board ground-based recovery vehicles is ideal, all innovative approaches, processes and systems that can provide a solution to this challenge are significant Interest. The minimum expected time from collection on the moon to hosed down on earth is approximately two weeks. Therefore, NASA is looking for a cold storage system that will maintain the cryogenic temperatures for at least that long.
Submissions will be judged in two categories: small transportable cryogenic restraint systems; and innovations for long term cryogenic stowage and transportation. Challenge winners will receive a total prize pool of up to $ 40,000, with $ 20,000 allocated to each challenge category. The participants have until November 12, 2020 to submit their ideas.
Further information on the challenge and how to participate can be found at: https://l1.techconnectventures.com/
NASA’s Artemis program includes sending a range of new scientific instruments and technological demonstrations to study the moon, landing the first woman and next man on the lunar surface by 2024, and creating a sustained presence by the end of the decade. The agency will use its Artemis experience and technology to prepare for the next big leap – sending astronauts to Mars.
The NASA Tournament Lab is part of the NASA Awards and Challenges Program in the Agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The program supports the use of public competitions and crowdsourcing as tools to advance NASA research and development and other mission needs.
