About Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing

NASA has historically sought solutions to challenging research questions and engineering problems by looking within the ranks of its own workforce, the U.S. aerospace industry, academic institutions, and certain other non-governmental organizations. While we continue that practice today, we also recognize that NASA’s work in space and aeronautics continues to be of great interest to the worldwide public and that good ideas can come from anywhere. NASA’s prizes, challenges, and crowdsourcing opportunities are one way for the agency to engage the public’s interest and ingenuity, making space exploration and other avenues of NASA research an endeavor of and by people everywhere.

Opportunities within the Prizes, Challenges, and Crowdsourcing program are distributed through Centennial Challenges and the Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation (CoECI). The program also helps to promote other agency-wide opportunities to foster a community of “solvers” supporting NASA.

Frequently Asked Questions

How does NASA define a prize competition? According to NASA Policy Directive 1090.1, prize competitions competitively award prizes to stimulate innovation in a manner that has the potential to advance the mission of NASA.

How does NASA define a challenge activity? According to NASA Policy Directive 1090.1, challenges use a focused problem-statement approach to obtain solutions and/or stimulate innovation from a broad, sometimes undefined, public rather than a specific, named group or individual.

How does NASA define crowdsourcing? According to NASA Policy Directive 1090.1, crowdsourcing solicits products, services, ideas, or content contributions from many people, usually (but not necessarily) through the Internet and may result in the making of award(s). Crowdsourcing is different from ordinary outsourcing because a task or problem is outsourced to an undefined public rather than to a specific, named group or individual.

If you have additional questions, email us at hq-solve@mail.nasa.gov.