NASA’s BIG Idea Challenge
The Breakthrough, Innovative, and Game-Changing (BIG) Idea Challenge is an engineering design competition that seeks innovative ideas from teams of undergraduate and graduate students, tackling new themes each year that support technologies needed to develop technology needed to support NASA’s exploration goals. Finalist teams receive up to $150,000 to build and test their concepts before presenting their projects to a panel of NASA and industry experts.
NASA’s BIG Idea Challenge
Each year, the BIG Idea Challenge offers a real-world experience for college students and their advisors to develop technology needed to support NASA’s exploration goals.
Learn More“The BIG Idea Challenge proves time and time again
that engaging the academic community in complex technology
challenges is a worthwhile endeavor for everyone involved.”
— Niki Werkheiser, Director of Technology Maturation,
NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate
2024 BIG Idea Challenge: Lunar Inflatable Systems
Learn more about the 2024 Challenge about 2024 BIG Idea Challenge: Lunar Inflatable Systems
NASA’s 2024 BIG Idea Challenge invites student innovators to build and demonstrate how their concepts can benefit future missions to the Moon and beyond. Inflatable systems could greatly reduce the mass and stowed volume of science and exploration payloads, which is critical for lowering delivery costs to deep space destinations. Student innovators have been invited to develop concepts for truly novel solutions for future space exploration.
Finalists will be selected by a panel of NASA and industry experts based on a proposal and video package that includes a specific, compelling mission scenario/use case where an inflatable system would be applicable and advantageous. The proposal package is due February 1, 2024, and non-binding notices of intent (NOI) can be submitted on a rolling basis until that deadline.
NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate sponsors the BIG Idea Challenge through a collaboration between its Game Changing Development program, in coordination with the Lunar Surface Innovation Initiative, and NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement’s Space Grant project. The BIG Idea Challenge is managed by a partnership between the National Institute of Aerospace and the Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory on behalf of NASA.
Learn more about STMD Solicitations and Opportunities
Past Challenges
Lunar Forge: Producing Metal Products on the Moon
NASA’s 2023 BIG Idea Challenge
The 2023 BIG Idea Challenge provided undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to design, develop, and demonstrate technologies that could enable the production of lunar infrastructure from ISRU-derived metals found on the Moon. Teams were invited to submit proposals that focused on any part of the metal product production pipeline from prospecting to testing. Key infrastructure products desired included storage vessels for liquids and gases, extrusions, pipes, power cables, and supporting structures (i.e., roads, landing pads, etc.).
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Extreme Terrain Access for Mobility
NASA’s 2022 BIG Idea Challenge
The 2022 BIG Idea Challenge provided undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to design, develop, and demonstrate robotic systems with alternative rover locomotion modalities for use in off-world extreme lunar terrain applications. This competition was an open innovation challenge with minimal constraints so that proposing teams could genuinely create and develop out-of-the-box solutions. Teams were invited to submit proposals for robots with new mobility solutions in operating scenarios that required access to extreme terrain categories.
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Lunar Dust Mitigation
NASA’s 2021 BIG Idea Challenge
NASA asked university and college students around the country to help solve the pesky problem of lunar dust as the agency plans for sustainable human exploration of the Moon. Through the 2021 competitive BIG Idea Challenge and the Space Grant project, NASA awarded nearly $1 million to seven university teams to develop their innovative lunar dust mitigation solutions.
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Capabilities to Study Dark Regions on the Moon
NASA’s 2020 BIG Idea Challenge
During the 2020 BIG Idea Challenge, NASA asked Space Grant-affiliated universities to submit strong proposals for sample lunar payloads that can demonstrate technology systems needed for exploration and science in the Permanently Shadowed Regions (PSRs) in and near the Moon’s polar regions
that have remained dark for billions of years.
Marsboreal Greenhouse Design
NASA’s 2019 BIG Idea Challenge
The 2019 BIG Idea Challenge provided undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to design, develop, and demonstrate innovative ideas for the installation and sustainable operation of a habitat-sized Mars greenhouse, with the primary purpose of food production. An efficient and safe greenhouse design could not only assist with Mars missions, but also long-term lunar missions with Artemis.
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Solar Power Systems for Mars
NASA’s 2018 BIG Idea Challenge
The 2018 BIG Idea Challenge provided undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to design, develop, and demonstrate concepts for a reliable operating power source that could be put in place on Mars ahead of the arrival of the first humans. The challenge sought concepts for unique designs, installation and sustainable operation of a large solar-power system.
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In-Space Assembly of Spacecraft
NASA’s 2017 BIG Idea Challenge
The 2017 BIG Idea Challenge provided undergraduate and graduate students the opportunity to design, develop, and demonstrate modular concepts and systems that could provide the ability for in-space assembly of spacecraft – particularly tugs, propelled by solar electric propulsion (SEP) – that can transfer payloads for low-Earth orbit to a lunar distant retrograde orbit.
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Deployable Aeroshell Technology
NASA’s 2016 BIG Idea Challenge
NASA’s inaugural BIG Idea Challenge invited proposals for innovative ideas for generating lift using inflatable spacecraft heat shields or hypersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator (HIAD) technology. Interested teams of undergraduate and/or graduate students were asked to submit white papers describing their concepts outlining new approaches such as shape morphing and pneumatic actuation to dynamically alter the HIAD inflatable structure.
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