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

NASA invites teams from colleges, universities, as well as technical and vocational schools around the country to test their engineering skills in the 2025 Lunabotics Challenge. Applications open at 5 p.m. EDT on Friday, Sept. 6. The competition is aimed at inspiring Artemis Generation students to explore science, technology, engineering, and math (STEM) for the benefit of humanity.

Managed by NASA’s Office of STEM Engagement, the Lunabotics Challenge asks teams to design and build an autonomous or telerobotic robot capable of navigating a simulated lunar surface and completing the assigned construction task. The robots will have to master the complexities of regolith, or lunar soil, simulants used to excavate and construct berm structures in a lunar environment, be capable of operating by remote control or through autonomous operations, and account for weight and size limitations.

By participating in one of NASA’s Artemis Student Challenges, students have the opportunity to provide data on robotic excavator and builder design and operations, helping shape future missions at the Moon and ultimately Mars. NASA encourages creative construction techniques and evaluates student designs and data just like it does for its own prototypes, increasing the chances of finding smart solutions for the challenges the agency may encounter at the Moon under the Artemis campaign.

Additionally, the competition will educate college students in the NASA systems engineering process, the agency’s methodical, multi-disciplinary approach for the design, realization, technical management, operations, and retirement of a system.

The competition will close on Thursday, Sept. 12, and NASA will announce selected teams on Friday, Sept. 20. These teams will put their robots to the test during the University of Central Florida’s Lunabotics Qualification Challenge in May 2025, with the highest scoring teams invited to the culminating event at NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida later that month.

Lunabotics takes place annually, running since 2010, and is one of several Artemis Student Challenges reflecting the goals of the Artemis campaign, which seeks to land the first woman, first person of color, and first international astronaut on the Moon where NASA will establish a long-term presence and prepare for future science and exploration of Mars.

More than 7,000 students have participated in Lunabotics on-site or at their schools, with many former students now working at NASA or within the aerospace industry.   

To learn more about LUNABOTICS, visit:

https://go.nasa.gov/4dcsjVg

–end–

Abbey Donaldson
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1600
abbey.a.donaldson@nasa.gov

Derrol Nail
Kennedy Space Center, Florida
321-289-9513
derrol.j.nail@nasa.gov

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Abbey A. Donaldson

Sedimentary and Planetary Geologist Dr. Michael Thorpe

“I didn’t always grow up knowing that I was going to be working for NASA. It was just the way my life unfolded, and I couldn’t be more grateful and lucky to have this opportunity to be here. I think hiking is what really got me into my passion for wanting to have this outdoors kind of career. I’ve always pursued environmental science and geology, and still at that point in time, I had no idea that I could apply that kind of science to outer space and work for NASA one day.

“It wasn’t until I had these amazing mentors in front of me who were showing me, ‘Hey, what you’re doing, you can apply this to, for instance, Mars.’ And that’s what sparked my inspiration — [realizing] Mars had these ancient lakes and [wondering], ‘How can I use what I’m doing here on Earth to understand what was going on with those ancient lakes on Mars?’

“I’m kind of lucky. It’s less of a job and more of this exciting career opportunity where I get to go out into the field and even hike for a good portion of [my workday]. For instance, I just got back from Iceland where I was for 10 days. On these field trips, I’m in my comfort zone wearing a flannel and winter hat, backpacking with my rock hammer and shovel, hiking for a few hours to pick up samples, and then come back home to analyze them in the lab. I couldn’t have written a better story for me to continue doing the stuff that I enjoyed as a child and now to be doing it now for NASA is something I couldn’t have even dreamed of.

“Hiking and being in the field is the fun part. But then I get to come back to the lab and compare it to what Martian rovers are doing. They’re our hikers, our pioneers, our explorers, our geologists who are collecting samples for us on other planets.  It’s remarkable, often mind-blowing, to be able to work directly with our planetary geologists as well as the amazing people on the rover teams from around the globe to understand the surface of Mars and then eventually, compare it to what I see in the field here on Earth.

“So, I’m still that young boy at heart with my backpack and flannel on and headed out into the field.”

– Dr. Michael Thrope, Sedimentary and Planetary Geologist, NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center

Image Credit: Iceland Space Agency/Daniel Leeb
Interviewer: NASA/Tahira Allen

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Tahira S. Allen

Communications Strategist Thalia Patrinos

“The public perception of NASA has a lot to do with our technological successes and the discoveries that we’ve made, but none of that is possible without the people. 

“In the six or so years that I’ve worked at NASA, I’ve learned a lot of incredible stories — not just of the struggles that different spacecraft encounter on their journeys throughout the universe. There are so many problems that need to be solved and fixes that need to be made, but there are also so many stories of teams that had to work together to accomplish their goals. And a lot of time, these teams are working after hours, on weekends, working late nights and early mornings. These are people who have other problems in their lives that they have to solve, and they’re still showing up and making magic happen.

“This is why [Aubrey Gemignani] and I started Faces of NASA: We wanted to make that connection. It’s not just rockets, astronauts, and telescopes. Hundreds of thousands of people come together to make these missions possible, and that’s the part that’s really interesting for me.

“I like to hold a mirror to other people, and in every Faces of NASA interview, I try to hold a mirror up to what the person has accomplished to get them to be proud of it. For many of those people, it’s the first time they have to self-reflect.

“That’s what’s really nice about [the Faces of NASA project]. Everyone who works here is just living day-to-day, so when they have an opportunity to stop for a moment and look back on how far they’ve come… it’s the best feeling for both of us. They’re like, ‘Wow, I’ve never really stopped to think about how much I’ve accomplished or how far I’ve come.’ And I get to share that moment with them. That’s my favorite part of Faces of NASA.”

– Thalia Patrinos, Communications Strategist, PCI Productions, NASA Headquarters

Image Credit: NASA/Aubrey Gemignani
Interviewer: NASA/Tahira Allen

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Tahira S. Allen

How NASA Citizen Science Fuels Future Exoplanet Research

NASA’s upcoming flagship astrophysics missions, the Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope and the Habitable Worlds Observatory, will study planets outside our solar system, known as exoplanets. Over 5,000 exoplanets have been confirmed to date — and given that scientists estimate at least one exoplanet exists for every star in the sky, the hunt has just begun. Exoplanet discoveries from Roman and the Habitable Worlds Observatory may not be made only by professional researchers, but also by interested members of the public, known as citizen scientists.

Exoplanet research has a long involvement with citizen science. NASA’s TESS (Transiting Exoplanet Survey Satellite) mission and now-retired Kepler mission, which are responsible for the vast majority of exoplanet discoveries to date, both made observations freely available to the public immediately after processing. This open science policy paved the way for the public to get involved with NASA’s exoplanet science. 

NASA’s Planet Hunters TESS project invites the public to classify exoplanet light curves from TESS online. Another project, Exoplanet Watch, allows citizen scientists to gather data about known exoplanets, submit their observations to NASA’s public data archive, and receive credit if their observation is used in a scientific paper. Participants don’t even need their own telescope — Exoplanet Watch also curates data from robotic telescopes for users to process. 

“Anyone across the world who has access to a smartphone or a laptop can fully participate in a lot of these citizen science efforts to help us learn more about the cosmos,” said Rob Zellem, the project lead and project scientist for Exoplanet Watch and astrophysicist at NASA’s Goddard Space Flight Center in Greenbelt, Maryland. 

NASA’s citizen science projects have discovered several new planets from Kepler and TESS data. They have also helped scientists refine the best time to observe important targets, saving hours of precious observation time on current flagship missions like NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope. 

Roman and the Habitable Worlds Observatory provide even more possibilities for citizen science. Expected to launch by May 2027, Roman will discover exoplanets through direct imaging, transits, and gravitational microlensing. Following that, the Habitable Worlds Observatory will take direct images of stars in our solar neighborhood to find potentially habitable planets and study their atmospheres. 

The general public can get Roman data as quickly as I can as a scientist working on the mission.

Rob Zellem

Exoplanet Watch Project Lead and Project Scientist; Nancy Grace Roman Space Telescope Deputy Project Scientist for Communications

Like Kepler and TESS before them, data from Roman and the Habitable Worlds Observatory will be available to both the scientific community and the public immediately after processing. With Roman’s surveys expected to deliver a terabyte of data to Earth every day — over 17 times as much as Webb — there is a huge opportunity for the public to help sift through the information. 

“The general public can get Roman data as quickly as I can as a scientist working on the mission,” said Zellem, who also serves as Roman’s deputy project scientist for communications at NASA Goddard. “It truly makes Roman a mission for everyone and anyone.” 

Although the Habitable Worlds Observatory’s full capabilities and instrumentation have yet to be finalized, the inclusion of citizen science is expected to continue. The team behind the mission is embracing a community-oriented planning approach by opening up working groups to volunteers who want to contribute. 

“It’s already setting the tone for open science with the Habitable Worlds Observatory,” said Megan Ansdell, the program scientist for the mission at NASA Headquarters in Washington. “The process is as open as possible, and these working groups are open to anybody in the world who wants to join.” There are already over 1,000 community working group members participating, some of whom are citizen scientists. 

Future citizen science initiatives may be combined with cutting-edge tools such as artificial intelligence (AI) for greater efficacy. “AI can be exceptionally powerful in terms of classification and identifying anomalous things,” said Joshua Pepper, the deputy program scientist for the Habitable Worlds Observatory at NASA Headquarters. “But the evaluation of what those anomalous things are often requires human insight, intervention, and review, and I think that could be a really fantastic area for citizen scientists to participate.” 

Before Roman and the Habitable Worlds Observatory launch, exoplanet citizen scientists still have plenty of data to analyze from the Kepler and TESS satellites, but the contributions of the community will become even more important when data begin pouring in from the new missions. As Zellem said, “We’re in a golden age of exoplanet science right now.” 

NASA’s citizen science projects are collaborations between scientists and interested members of the public and do not require U.S. citizenship. Through these collaborations, volunteers (known as citizen scientists) have helped make thousands of important scientific discoveries. To get involved with a project, visit NASA’s Citizen Science page.

By Lauren Leese 
Web Content Strategist for the Office of the Chief Science Data Officer 

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Sols 4266-4267: Happy ‘Landiversary,’ Curiosity

Earth planning date: Monday, Aug. 5, 2024

After the usual morning routine of doing some engineering housekeeping, Curiosity continues to take some remote science observations. We take a ChemCam LIBS observation  and a Mastcam image of the “Peeler Lake” target, a dark, nodular target that appears to be more erosion-resistant than nearby rocks. By comparing Peeler Lake to “Kings Canyon” (which also has some nodules), the science team may be able to determine more about their relative compositions. ChemCam also takes RMI images of the Kings Canyon drill tailings. There is also a ChemCam RMI mosaic of Gediz Vallis and a Mastcam of the “Sky High Lake” target, which is a rock with a gray coating. The last thing in this science block is an image down the CheMin inlet before we deliver sample to the instrument. After a long nap, in the late afternoon we have the first part of a large Mastcam mosaic of “Milestone Peak” channel deposits and we add some more frames to our ongoing 360-degree panorama. This late afternoon lighting helps highlight layers and textures. We also have our normal DAN and REMS observations throughout the plan.

After another nap, Curiosity wakes up to deliver sample to CheMin. We do this by pointing the drill bit over the open CheMin inlet and using a tiny bit of percussion and rotation to release some sample from the drill. We do this late in the afternoon to reduce the time between delivering the sample and starting the analysis (which has to happen in the cooler temperatures of nighttime) to minimize the degradation of the sample. After allowing CheMin to analyze the sample for most of the night, Curiosity wakes up and dumps out the sample to avoid it sticking too much inside the instrument.

On the second sol of the plan, Curiosity is taking more remote-sensing observations. Navcam atmospheric dust observations kick off first. ChemCam then takes a LIBS observation of “Sky High Lake” followed by RMI images inside the drill hole (to take a look at the interior layers of the rock) and Gediz Vallis. Last in this morning block, there are Mastcam images of Sky High Lake and a post-dropoff image of the open CheMin inlet to look for any sample that may be stuck there. In the late afternoon, we finish up the Milestone Peak mosaic.

Written by Ashley Stroupe, Mission Operations Engineer at NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory

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