Three Ways Open Innovation is Reaching for the Stars

July 6, 2012 By IdeaConnection
Image courtesy of NASA

With a whole Universe to explore space industry scientists realise they can’t do it on their own and are increasingly turning to external sources of brainpower for the development of futuristic innovations and to tackle tough technical challenges.

Many who work in the space industry may well have brains the size of planets, but occasionally they need assistance. Here are three examples of how NASA has used open innovation to pursue its research goals:

The Lunar Lander Challenge – this was a multi-level competition in association with the X Prize Foundation to help NASA develop reusable lunar spacecraft. The challenge required teams to develop and build a rocket-powered vehicle that simulates the flight of a spacecraft on the moon.

It had to take off vertically and reach an altitude of 50 meters and fly horizontally for 100 meters before landing accurately on a designated pad. Then it had to make a return trip to its site of launch and achieve both flights within 2 hours and 15 minutes. The overall winner was Masten Space Systems from Mojave, California with their “Xoie” vehicle.

2009 NASA Lunar Regolith Excavation Challenge – a search for the next generation of robots to explore the lunar surface. The contest required participating teams to build a robot to navigate, excavate and transfer 150 kilograms of simulated regolith and deposit it in a container in thirty minutes or under.

Although the winning robot might not leave the Earth, the space agency learned a lot from the technologies developed during the competition.

Medical kits for long-duration space missions – a contest conducted by NASA, TopCoder, Harvard Business School and London Business School that challenged participants to come up with new mathematical algorithms that could determine the optimal contents of medical kits for future manned missions. More than 2,500 distinct code submissions and enhanced solutions were delivered, some of which will be adapted for use on International Space Station missions.


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