NASA is offering USD 2.25 million in prize for designing and building a 3D-printed habitat for deep space exploration, including the journey to Mars.
The multi-phase 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge is designed to advance the additive construction technology needed to create sustainable housing solutions for Earth and beyond, NASA said.
Shelter is among the most basic and crucial human needs, but packing enough materials and equipment to build a habitat on a distant planet would take up valuable cargo space that could be used for other life-sustaining provisions.
The ability to manufacture a habitat using indigenous materials, combined with material that would otherwise be waste from the spacecraft, would be invaluable, NASA said.
The first phase of the competition held by NASA and the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, runs through September 27.
This phase, a design competition, calls on participants to develop state-of-the-art architectural concepts that take advantage of the unique capabilities 3-D printing offers.
The top 30 submissions will be judged and a prize purse of USD 50,000 will be awarded at the 2015 World Maker Faire in New York.
"The future possibilities for 3-D printing are inspiring, and the technology is extremely important to deep space exploration," said Sam Ortega, NASA's Centennial Challenges programme manager.
"This challenge definitely raises the bar from what we are currently capable of, and we are excited to see what the maker community does with it," said Ortega.
The second phase of the competition is divided into two levels. The Structural Member Competition (Level 1) focuses on the fabrication technologies needed to manufacture structural components from a combination of indigenous materials and recyclables, or indigenous materials alone.
The On-Site Habitat Competition (Level 2) challenges competitors to fabricate full-scale habitats using indigenous materials or indigenous materials combined with recyclables.
Both levels open for registration on September 26, and each carries a USD 1.1 million prize.
Winning concepts and products will help NASA build the technical expertise to send habitat-manufacturing machines to distant destinations, such as Mars, to build shelters for the human explorers who follow.
On Earth, these capabilities may be used one day to construct affordable housing in remote locations with limited access to conventional building materials.
