NASA Centennial Challenges Program: A crowdsourcing tool to advance life support technologies for future NASA missions

Historically, competitions and prizes such as those executed by the NASA Centennial Challenges (CC) Program have created broader avenues through which to spur innovation from unlikely sources. Examples of past successful competitions include the Orteig Prize that in 1920s offered $25,000 for any person who could fly across the Atlantic Ocean, won by Charles Lindberg and the Ansari X Prize that in 2004 awarded to Mojave Aerospace Ventures for their SpaceShipOne $10,000,000 for the first non-government organization to launch a reusable manned spacecraft into space twice within two weeks. With these historic examples in mind that in 2005, Congress amended the National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958 to authorize NASA to create challenges through which prizes could be awarded to United States citizens or entities that succeeded in meeting the challenge objectives. The Centennial Challenges (CC) program, currently part of NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD), open the first challenge competition in 2005. Challenges selected by the CC program are thoroughly deliberated through broad consultations with subject matter experts (SME), both inside and outside the federal government. In the past 13 years, the CC program has initiated more than 19 challenges in a variety of technology areas, including: propulsion, robotics, communications and navigation, human health, science instrumentation, nanotech, materials/structures and aerodynamics. This paper will discuss the status and the accomplishments of the CC program and discuss results of an Ideation Workshop designed to brainstorm and formulate topics for the potential StarHab Centennial Challenge competition focused on targeting life support technology gaps for future long-term exploration missions. The workshop brought together experts from NASA, the private sector, and academia to brainstorm and formulate topic ideas and concepts for a competition. Status of the challenge and information on how to use crowdsourcing tools will also be discussed.