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NASA Launches Million-Dollar Public Competition

September 3, 2018

By Lora Snow

Nasa Launched a million-dollar public competition to convert carbon dioxide into sugar on August 30. Through the CO2 Conversion Challenge, conducted under the Centennial Challenges program, NASA seeks to develop technologies that will enable humans to live and thrive on Mars.

Picture of Mars taken on June 26. 2001. Credit: NASA/The Hubble Heritage Team (STScl/AURA)

Carbon dioxide is abundant in the Mars atmosphere. Technology that could enable it to be it used as the sole carbon source to generate glucose will enable on site manufacturing of many products on Mars.

“Enabling sustained human life on another planet will require a great deal of resources and we cannot possibly bring everything we will need. We have to get creative.” said Monsi Roman, program manager of NASA’s Centennial Challenges program. “If we can transform an existing and plentiful resource like carbon dioxide into a variety of useful products, the space – and terrestrial – applications are endless.”

The competition will have two phases with a total prize purse of up to $1 million. The registration deadline for Phase 1 is January 24, 2019. During Phase 1, the Concept Phase, individuals, teams, and organizations may submit a design and description of a conversion system that includes details of the physical-chemical approaches to convert carbon dioxide into glucose. NASA will award up to five teams $50,000 each to build a functioning system according to the proposals, for a total prize purse of up to $250,000.

Phase 2, a Demonstration Challenge, is contingent upon promising submissions in Phase 1 that offer a viable approach to achieving the Challenge goals. The prize purse for Phase 2 is up to $750,000.

More information about the challenge can be found here: https://www.co2conversionchallenge.org/