NASA exploring Centennial Challenge for airship concepts Credit: Reuters NASA this week said it was considering a new Centennial Challenge: Build and airship capable of long duration flight for scientific missions. The agency issued a Request For information to see if there was enough industry interest in the challenge and to further develop rules for the competition. You may recall that NASA’s Centennial Challenges Program sets up challenging contests for the public, academia, and industry with an eye towards developing innovative technologies. +More on Network World: + In this case the so-called 20-20-20 Airship Challenge would award seed money to the first 10 Teams to present and pass an Airship scalability review (~$20K per team). The Challenge would award prizes for successful demonstration of a stratospheric airship that would be required to accomplish the following: • Reach a minimum altitude of 20 km. • Maintain the altitude for 20 hours (200 hours for Tier 2 competition) • Remain within a 20 km diameter station area (and navigate between two designated points for Tier 2) • Successfully return the 20 kg payload (200 kg for Tier 2 competition) and payload data. • Show Airship scalability for longer duration flights with larger payloads through a scalability review. “There are few opportunities for space missions in astronomy and Earth science. Airships (powered, maneuverable, lighter-than-air vehicles that can navigate a designated course) could offer significant gains in observational persistence over local and regional areas, sky and ground coverage, data downlink capability, payload flexibility, and over existing suborbital options at competitive prices. We seek to spur a demonstration of the capability for sustained airship flights as astronomy and Earth science platforms in a way that is complementary with broad industry interests,” NASA stated. +More on Network World: NASA pondering two public contests to build small space exploration satellites+ The proposed prize structure for this competition is: Award 1– A proposed $1.0M will be split between teams successfully completing Tier 1 within 3 years of the challenge initiation. A possible scenario for splitting the Tier 1 prize money is 4 prizes of $500k, $250k, $125k and $125k, starting from the first to demonstrate to the fourth. Award 2: A proposed $1.5M will be awarded to the first successful demonstration of Tier 2 within four years of challenge initiation. Check out these other hot stories: FBI grows “Cyber Most Wanted” list with Syrian Electronic Army members IRS: Top 10 2015 identity theft busts FBI warning puts car hacking on bigger radar screen NASA’s IG tells space agency to bolster space network security Air Force faces challenges managing drone force DARPA: Show us how to weaponize benign technologies Boeing’s self-cleaning aircraft bathroom lets you use loo without touching anything (mostly) US national lab advances wireless charging for electric cars DARPA moves ahead with radical vertical takeoff aircraft Related content news analysis FBI/IC3: Vile $5B business e-mail scam continues to breed FBI/IC3 reports over 40,000 worldwide victims and $5 billion in the latest reckoning By Michael Cooney May 08, 2017 5 mins Security news analysis Ultimate geek dream? NASA challenges you to jump on the FORTRAN bandwagon! NASA opens High Performance Fast Computing Challenge By Michael Cooney May 05, 2017 4 mins Government Open Source Enterprise Applications news analysis Fragmented, disorganized IT systems thwart feds ability to track visas DHS OIG says ineffective IT process has contributed to a backlog of more than 1.2 million visa overstay cases. By Michael Cooney May 04, 2017 5 mins Analytics Data Center Security news analysis TSA: “As you can imagine, live anti-tank rounds are strictly prohibited altogether.” TSA finds live anti-tank round in carry-on bag By Michael Cooney Apr 28, 2017 2 mins Security PODCASTS VIDEOS RESOURCES EVENTS NEWSLETTERS Newsletter Promo Module Test Description for newsletter promo module. Please enter a valid email address Subscribe