The partner organizations would have the opportunity to contribute cash or non-monetary resources to one or more prize competitions that support the Bush administration's Vision for Space Exploration, as well as ongoing NASA programs.

In exchange, NASA expects individual challenges to demonstrate technologies or operational capabilities, and to produce what it calls highly visible competition events of interest to the partnering organizations. Partners may suggest the structure of and rules for the challenges to which they contribute, NASA said in an announcement released Wednesday.

Partner organizations may include for-profit companies, universities and other non-profit or educational organizations, and professional or public organizations associated with space or aeronautics - but partners may not compete in the challenges to which they contribute, the agency said.

In addition, NASA said, all challenges remain in the formative stage, and the agency has not decided whether to initiate the challenges. It will make such decisions "at later dates."

NASA established its Centennial Challenges to conduct prize competitions to support the Vision for Space Exploration and other ongoing programs. The challenges are modeled on past prize competitions, including the 18th century British Longitude Prize; early 20th century aviation competitions - such as the Orteig Prize won by Charles Lindbergh, the Defense Advanced Research Projects Agency Grand Challenge, and the more recent Ansari X Prize, for the first privately funded spacecraft.

NASA said it anticipates two types of challenge partners: co-sponsor organizations and allied organizations. Co-sponsors include challenge partners that contribute cash toward prizes. In return, NASA would associate co-sponsors to specific challenges, and the agency might require winners to grant certain rights to intellectual property or capabilities produced in the course of the competition to the co-sponsor organization - and/or the federal government.

NASA will determine other details in negotiations with specific partners, but those partners will not be able to compete in the challenges that they sponsor.

Allied organizations are challenge partners that provide in-kind services to enhance the competition. NASA will set the details of these arrangements through the partner-selection process and the specific agreements, but allied organizations likewise cannot compete in the challenges for which they are partners.

Individual Challenges would take one of two forms:

1) "first-to-demonstrate competitions," such as the Longitude Prize, Orteig Prize, and Ansari X PRIZE; and

2) "repeatable contests," such as the DARPA Grand Challenge.

"It is important to differentiate between these types of challenges because each will make different demands on challenge partners," NASA said in its announcement.

In addition, NASA is considering flagship challenges, intended to encourage external teams to design, develop, launch and operate space missions independently. The idea is to "generate innovative and/or low-cost approaches to various civil space goals that would not otherwise be pursued."

Flagship challenges should be in the "first-to-demonstrate" variety and are meant to offer cash purses ranging from millions to tens of millions of dollars to the winners. NASA said it intends to pursue this type of challenge as soon as Congress provides the necessary authority.

The flagship challenges will be open to competitors from private sector companies, non-profit research institutions, university researchers, student teams, hobbyists and any combination. Specific flagship challenges could include a fuel depot demonstration challenge, a micro re-entry vehicle challenge, or a station-keeping solar sail challenge, for examples.

Specific keystone challenges could include the human lunar all-terrain vehicle challenge, the lunar night power source challenge and the low-cost space pressure suit challenge.

NASA has established a link on its Exploration Systems Web Site, here, and officials invite potential sponsors and others to submit challenge ideas to [email protected]

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