The M2M X-Hab Academic Innovation Challenge seeks to provide university students with the opportunity to be on the forefront of innovation. NASA identifies necessary technologies and studies for deep space missions and invites universities from around the country to develop concepts, prototypes, and lessons learned that will help shape future space missions.
Universities propose on a variety of proposed projects and judged on technical merit, academic integration, leveraged funding, and outreach.
Each of the universities assembles a multi-discipline team of students that invest months working together, developing concepts, and frequently producing working prototypes. Not only are students able to gain quality experience, working real world problems that have the possibility to be implemented, but they work closely with subject matter experts from NASA who guide them through an official engineering development process.
The National Space Grant Foundation (NSGF) administers the challenge by managing the contracts with the schools, hosting the solicitation, collecting the proposals, and assisting with winning awards. For more information on the X-Hab Academic Innovation Challenge, along with the most recent solicitation for proposals, go to the NSGF X-Hab site:
https://spacegrant.org/programs/xhab/