NASA has awarded the top three design finalists in the 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge.
A total of $40,000 was awarded to teams during the New York Maker Faire on Sunday, September 27th.
The competition is part of NASA’s Centennial Challenges program and is managed by America Makes, a partnership of organizations focused on accelerating capabilities and adoption of additive manufacturing technology.
Judging factors
The first-place award of $25,000 went to Team Space Exploration Architecture and Clouds Architecture Office in New York, New York for their design, Mars Ice House.
Second place and $15,000 was awarded to Team Gamma of Foster + Partners.
Third place was awarded to Team LavaHive of Vienna, Austria.
Teams were judged on many factors, including architectural concept, design approach, habitability, innovation, functionality, Mars site selection and 3-D print constructability.
First milestone
The design competition is the first milestone of the 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge, which seeks to foster the development of new technologies necessary to additively manufacture a habitat using local indigenous materials with, or without, recyclable materials, in space and on Earth.
NASA’s Centennial Challenges Program is part of the agency’s Space Technology Mission Directorate. The program is managed at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Additional information
More than 165 submissions were received, and the 30 highest-scoring entries were judged, displayed at the Maker Faire event in New York.
For more information about the winning team and Mars Ice House, go to:
Additional information on the competition can be found here: