Get Involved – NeRDs Moonbase

Submit Your 2025 Event Proposal to NASA

October 23, 2024 NeRD

3 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Shauntina Lilly, a NASA Glenn public affairs officer, smiles as she speaks to students about NASA’s available internships and educational resources during the STEM Goes Red for Girls event at Great Lakes Science Center, home of the NASA Glenn Visitor Center, on October 21. Credit: NASA/Debbie Welch NASA is making event plans for the 2025 calendar year, and we want to pencil you in! We are looking for the Midwest’s biggest and best community events with the broadest audiences…

NASA, Collaborators Announce a New Student Lunar Autonomy Challenge!

October 8, 2024 NeRD

3 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) This video shows NASA’s IPEx Excavator in a digital simulation environment. Credit: Johns Hopkins Applied Physics Laboratory (APL) Space is hard, but it’s not all hardware. The new Lunar Autonomy Challenge invites teams of students from U.S. colleges and universities to test their software development skills. Working entirely in virtual simulations of the Moon’s surface, teams will develop an autonomous agent using software that can accomplish pre-defined tasks without help from humans. These agents will be used to navigate…

NASA, US Department of Education Bring STEM to After-School Programs

September 23, 2024 NeRD

Office of STEM Engagement Deputy Associate Administrator Kris Brown, right, and U.S. Department of Education Deputy Secretary Cindy Marten, left, watch as a student operates a robot during a STEM event to kickoff the 21st Century Community Learning Centers NASA and U.S. Department of Education partnership, Monday, Sept. 23, 2024, at Wheatley Education Campus in Washington. Students engaged in NASA hands-on activities and an engineering design challenge. Photo Credit: (NASA/Aubrey Gemignani) NASA and the U.S. Department of Education are teaming up to engage students in science, technology, engineering, and math…

NASA Airport Throughput Prediction Challenge

September 13, 2024 NeRD

Image Credit: BitGrit The Digital Information Platform (DIP) Sub-Project of Air Traffic Management – eXploration (ATM-X) is seeking to make available in the National Airspace System a variety of live data feeds and services built on that data. The goal is to allow external partners to build advanced, data-driven services using this data and to make these services available to flight operators, who will use these capabilities to save fuel and avoid delays. Different wind directions, weather conditions at or near the airport, inoperative runway, etc., affects the runway configurations…

NASA Moon to Mars Architecture Art Challenge

September 12, 2024 NeRD

This image — developed by a team of artists from the Advanced Concepts Lab at NASA’s Langley Research Center — features astronauts performing science on the surface of the Moon and Mars. The team developed the image with a blend of digital 2D illustration and 3D techniques to mimic a retro science fiction painting. Credit: NASA NASA wants you to visualize the future of space exploration! This art challenge is looking for creative, artistic images to represent NASA’s Moon to Mars Architecture, the agency’s roadmap for crewed exploration of deep…

6 Ways Students Can Engage With NASA Glenn

September 4, 2024 NeRD

4 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Students take a tour of NASA Glenn’s Telescience Support Center, where researchers operate International Space Station experiments. Credit: NASA/Jef Janis School is back in session, and the joy of learning is back on students’ minds. Teachers and parents seeking ways to extend students’ academic excitement outside of the classroom should know NASA’s Glenn Research Center in Cleveland offers various opportunities to engage with NASA. NASA educators encourage Ohio students and teachers to take part in the incredible space and…

2025 Human Lander Challenge

August 21, 2024 NeRD

2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) In-space propulsion systems utilizing cryogenic liquids as propellants are necessary to achieve NASA’s exploration missions to the Moon, and later to Mars. In current state of the art (SOA) human scale, in-space propulsion vehicles, cryogenic liquids can be stored for several hours. For the planned HLS mission architecture to close, cryogenic liquids must be stored on-orbit on the order of several months. NASA’s 2025 HuLC Competition asks student teams to develop innovative, systems-level solutions to understand, mitigate potential problems,…

2025 Gateways to Blue Skies Competition

August 20, 2024 NeRD

2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) Credit from left to right: Stijn Te Strake/Unsplash, Yamaha Motor Corp USA, Maja Petric/Unsplash, Adele Payman/Unsplash The agriculture industry faces several challenges, including limited resources and growing demands to reduce agriculture’s environmental impact while increasing its climate resilience. NASA Aeronautics is dedicated to expanding its efforts to assist commercial, industry, and government partners in advancing aviation systems that could modernize capabilities in agriculture. In NASA’s 2025 Gateways to Blue Skies Competition: AgAir (Aviation Solutions for Agriculture) collegiate student teams…

Calling All Innovators: Apply for NASA’s 2025 Lunabotics Challenge

August 8, 2024 NeRD

A college team dressed in protective clean room suits prepares their robotic rover to compete in the final round of NASA’s annual Lunabotics competition on Thursday, May 16, 2024. Teams score points when their rover completes challenging tasks inside the Artemis Arena – a simulated lunar landscape inside The Astronauts Memorial Foundation’s Center for Space Education at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida. NASA/Derrol Nail NASA invites teams from colleges, universities, as well as technical and vocational schools around the country to test their engineering skills in the 2025…

2025 RASC-AL Competition

August 5, 2024 NeRD

2 min read Preparations for Next Moonwalk Simulations Underway (and Underwater) The 2025 RASC-AL Competition is seeking undergraduate and graduate teams to develop new concepts that leverage innovation to improve our ability to operate on the Moon, Mars and beyond. Each team’s response should address novel and robust technologies, capabilities, and operational models that support expanding humanity’s ability to thrive beyond Earth. In this year’s RASC-AL Competition, teams and their faculty advisors are invited to design and propose innovative solutions with supporting original engineering and analysis in response to one…