With the academic year just around the corner, scholarships and competitions are orbiting closer and closer. This month, two NASA internship-based programs will see their applications close and we have the return of TSGC’s Design Challenge for the Fall 2024 semester.

Fall 2024 Design Challenge Applications Now Open

TSGC is happy to announce applications for the Fall 2024 Design Challenge is now open! Design Challenge offers undergraduate students the opportunity to propose, design, and fabricate a solution surrounding NASA’s research objectives.

NASA Pathways Internship Program Applications Due

NASA Pathways Internship Program prepares students for a career at NASA and offers a direct pipeline to full-time employment at NASA upon graduation. Applications are now open and will close on August 21.

To learn more or to apply, click here.

NASA Spring 2025 Internship Applications Due

NASA’s paid internships allow high school and college students to contribute to the agency’s missions to advance science, technology, aeronautics, and space exploration. Spring 2025 Internship Applications are due August 23.

To learn more or to apply, click here.

Design Challenge Topics Announced

Sponsored by NASA, students work in teams to complete their design objectives over one or two semesters while working with their faculty advisor and a NASA workplace mentor.

To read more about the topics including deliverables and project scopes, check out our Fall 2024 Design Challenge Topics page.

The topics are as follows:

Choose Your Own Adventure

Teams may work on any NASA or space-related project approved by their faculty advisor, provided that they also secure their own mentor. Note: topics must be reviewed and approved by JSC.

NASA Micro-g NExT Challenge

Micro-g Neutral Buoyancy Experiment Design Teams (Micro-g NExT) challenges undergraduate students to design, build, and test a tool or device that addresses an authentic, current space exploration challenge.

NASA Big Idea Challenge

The Breakthrough, Innovative and Game-changing (BIG) Idea Challenge is an initiative supporting NASA’s Space Technology Mission Directorate’s (STMD’s) Game Changing Development Program’s (GCD) efforts to rapidly mature innovative and high-impact capabilities and technologies for infusion in a broad array of future NASA missions.

NASA SUITS Challenge

NASA Spacesuit User Interface Technologies for Students (NASA SUITS) is a design challenge in which college students from across the country help design user interface solutions for future spaceflight needs. 

Integrated Camera Lighting System Optical Optimization Project

Assume you are responsible for developing an integrated lighting and camera system for a lunar surface rover. Your system needs to operate under total darkness, with other artificial lighting systems in the area, with direct high intensity sunlight, and produce quality imagery even of targets that are in shadow, even though other parts of the camera image are not. Additionally, your system needs to produce quality imagery, even though the surface materials within the image could be dark like asphalt, as diffuse white as canvas, as shiny as polished aluminum, or behave like retroreflectors.

IV FLuid Generation (IVGen) Mini pH Correction

The scope of the project is to design and build an engineering prototype that enables inline measurement and correction of pH of potable water, that is optimized for mass and volume, and that can buffer a minimum of 20L of ISS potable water in one batch. Consideration should also be given to operation of the device in microgravity.

NASA MITTIC

The NASA Minority University Research and Education Project (MUREP) Innovation and Tech Transfer Idea Competition (MITTIC) is seeking Historically Black Colleges and Universities (HBCU) and Minority Serving Institutions (MSI) teams of students from all fields of study to rise to the challenge of creating new and innovative technologies to benefit your community and the world.

Laying Power or Fiber Optic Cable on the Moon

Making reasonable assumptions about natural lunar regolith, consider how it would be feasible to bury a lightweight cable at a reasonable depth to give it some protection from wheeled vehicle and foot traffic.

Lunar Washer/Dryer

Design a clothes washer-dryer combo machine derived from existing terrestrial combo washer-dryer technology but optimized to operate in Lunar gravity (1/6 earth-g). Various adjustments may be needed for optimum washing and drying of clothes under reduced gravity conditions.

Radiation-Tolerant Crew Laptop

The primary goal of this project is to prototype a radiation-tolerant laptop for the astronauts to use in deep space. Laptops have prior use on the International Space Station and will continue to be used on the new lunar space station – the Gateway.

Lunar Surface Nuclear Reactor Conceptual Designs & CONOPS

NASA’s Fission Surface Power Project aims to develop a small, safe, clean, and reliable nuclear fission reactor that can generate electricity for use on the moon. The reactor would be designed to prioritize safety, including during launch and landing, and to operate without human intervention.

Students will research and develop conceptual designs and CONOPS for future lunar surface operations.

Lunar Rescue Concept for Incapacitated EVA Crew

NASA EHP is seeking an innovative design and operational solution to provide crew rescue capability to a fully incapacitated EVA-suited crew member during a Lunar Surface EVA, without a lunar surface rover.

NASA Lunabotics Challenge

Lunabotics provides accredited institutions of higher learning students an opportunity to apply the NASA systems engineering process to design and build a prototype Lunar construction robot. This robot would be capable of performing the proposed operations on the Lunar surface in support of future Artemis Campaign goals.

NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge (HERC)

The NASA Human Exploration Rover Challenge (HERC) will encourage research and development of new technologies for future mission planning and crewed space missions to other worlds.

NASA Human Lander Challenge (HULC)

The 2025 Human Lander Challenge asks teams of students and their faculty advisors to design innovative solutions and technology developments addressing in-space cryogenic liquid storage and transfer systems for long duration NASA missions to the Moon.

Teams are invited to develop innovative, systems-level solutions to understand, mitigate potential problems, and mature advanced cryogenic fluid technologies that can be implemented within 3-5 years.

This Month in Space

AUG. 23, 1966
First photo of Earth as seen from lunar orbit
Lunar Orbiter 1 snaps the first photo of Earth as seen from lunar orbit. The full resolution image was never retrieved from the mission’s data. In 2008, the Earthrise image was restored by the Lunar Orbiter Image Recovery Project.

AUG. 30, 1983
First African American in space
Guion Bluford becomes the first African American in space when launching into low Earth orbit aboard the Space Shuttle Challenger.