Prizes: Reports
Endorsements Coming In for Obama's Space Plan
"President Obama’s new plan for NASA, released February 1st, is endorsed by bipartisan groups representing governors, former legislators, astronauts, and former NASA senior managers and a half dozen editorial boards." See the Commercial Space Federation's links to all and the good news for commercial space.
NASA Chief Onboard with Commercial Spaceflight, Suborbital Science & Innovation Prizes
Bolden says NASA must leverage the power and innovation of American industry and the American entrepreneur as it is tasked to do.
Lunar Science: Window to the Past and Stepping Stone to the Future | NLSI
This recent white paper sent to the Augustine Panel by NASA describes how "the NLSI will bring together scientists and engineers from the academic community and NASA Centers to advance lunar science, support both human and robotic missions to the Moon, train the next generation of lunar scientists and communicate the excitement of this scientific exploration to the public." The Google Lunar X-prize announced in Sept '07 has galvanized the emerging entrepreneurial space community. Nineteen international teams are registered and this will inevitably spur development of a commercial lunar industry. NASA is having policy discussions focused on allowing NASA to buy services including payload transport to the Moon from these companies once reliable capabilities are demonstrated. NLSI is pursuing options to contribute small science payloads to private missions to the Moon". Stay tuned.
Microgravity Research Competition
The Heinlein Prize Trust announces the Microgravity Research Competition (with option for commercial partners) to reward innovation in the use of microgravity to advance biotech, nanotech, combustion, metallurgy, and other fields. Sponsored by the Trust and Space Exploration Technologies (SpaceX), the competition offers a $25,000 prize and transportation to and from Low Earth Orbit for the winning experiment aboard a SpaceX Dragon spacecraft.
The Conrad Awards
The former astronaut, Pete Conrad, is still impacting students via a website devoted to his Spirit of Innovation Awards. This competition is for high school teams creating products derived from science and technology with commercial potential.