You are invited to attend the 2009 Regolith Excavation Challenge, a national prize competition under NASA Centennial Challenges to promote the development of new technologies to excavate lunar regolith. Excavation is a necessary first step towards lunar in-situ resource utilization (ISRU), and the unique physical properties of lunar regolith make excavation a difficult technical challenge. Advances in lunar regolith excavation have the potential to contribute significantly to the nation’s space exploration operations. Teams will compete to build the mobile excavator that can extract the most simulated lunar regolith within power, mass, and time constraints.

There are 23 teams competing for the $750,000 prize purse, provided by the NASA Centennial Challenges program.

The Regolith Excavation Challenge will be open to the public with no admission fee. There will be exhibits and speakers focused on highlighting hands-on education projects, robotics, and space exploration. One of our goals is to raise awareness of STEM careers by providing an opportunity to see, in person, the results of hands-on projects in space exploration and robotics. The competition attempts will be taking place at NASA Ames Research Center.

The Regolith Excavation Challenge is being organized by the California Space Education and Workforce Institute, co-hosted by the California Space Authority, in collaboration with the NASA Lunar Science Institute.

http://regolith.csewi.org