Moon Work Design Contest Offers NASA Internships to Winners

/PRNewswire/ -- Talented engineering students who have ideas on how future explorers might live on the moon could find themselves working at NASA as paid interns.

The 2010 NASA Moon Work engineering design challenge seeks to motivate college students by giving them first-hand experience with the process of developing new technologies. To participate in the contest, students will submit their original design for tools or instruments that can help astronauts live and work on the moon. Top-ranked students will be offered a chance to intern with a team from NASA's Exploration Technology Development Program.

The Exploration Technology Development Program develops new technologies that will enable NASA to conduct future human exploration missions while reducing mission risk and cost. The program is maturing near-term technologies to help enable the first flight of the Orion crew exploration vehicle and developing long-lead technologies needed for possible lunar exploration missions.

Winning Moon Work contestants also will have a chance to attend field tests conducted by the Desert Research and Technology Studies Program, managed by NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston. The program conducts annual tests of new technologies in landscapes that are close analogs of the moon and other harsh space environments.

Students should submit a notice of intent to enter the contest by Dec. 15. Final entries for the Moon Work challenge are due May 15, 2010. All entries must be from students at U.S. colleges or universities. Although non-citizens may be part of a team, only U.S. citizens may win NASA internships or travel awards.

For complete details and to enter the contest, visit:
http://moonwork.larc.nasa.gov/

Christopher Newport University in Newport News, Va., manages the student contest for NASA's Exploration Systems Mission Directorate and NASA's Langley Research Center in Hampton, Va.

Through this and NASA's other college and university programs, the agency is developing student skills in science, technology, engineering and mathematics -- disciplines critical to achieving the agency's space exploration missions.

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