With the Artemis program, NASA will send the first woman and next man to the surface of the Moon, construct a lunar orbiting outpost, and establish a sustainable presence. This will require deliveries of supplies and equipment to the lunar surface, but how to unload the cargo once it arrives is an open question. NASA created the Lunar Delivery Challenge to seek ideas from the public for practical and cost-effective solutions to unload payloads onto the surface of the Moon.
“Seeing some of these new concepts is actually pretty eye-opening,” said Paul Kessler, an aerospace engineer at NASA’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia, and one of the judges for the challenge. “It’s brought to light some ideas that we had not considered before.”
The challenge received 224 entries before the submission period closed Jan. 19, 2021. The ideas came from various types of space enthusiasts who share a passion for human space exploration, and participants varied from student teams, to individuals from the private sector, to parent-child duos.
www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-announces-lunar-delivery-challenge-winners
