NASA announces a Lunar Base student challenge with a million dollars in prizes

NASA announced a student call on November 8, 2026, to develop proposals related to its Lunar Base project. The challenge offers a million dollars and is aimed at teams of students from U.S. high schools and higher education institutions, according to the agency. Registration will remain open until January 25, 2027; therefore, the announcement describes an ongoing call, not results already achieved.

The competition asks for designs in six areas related to operations on the lunar surface: power generation and storage, construction, life support systems, mobility, communications, and astronaut safety. NASA presents the initiative as an opportunity for participants to develop conceptual proposals and skills relevant to the aerospace sector, even without prior experience in engineering or technical fields.

A call linked to human presence on the Moon

The agency places the challenge within its plans to establish a Lunar Base near the lunar South Pole, where astronauts would live, work, and explore. The program’s institutional page describes phased development, with crewed and uncrewed missions and the gradual construction of infrastructure to support a lasting human presence. That context explains why the call encompasses everything from power and construction to safety, but does not in itself demonstrate that student proposals will be incorporated into the base.

NASA suggests that the capabilities and operational experience gained on the Moon could help prepare for future human missions to Mars. It also notes that the South Pole region offers opportunities for exploration and research and could contain resources useful for future expeditions. This is a planning perspective: the available material does not specify which challenge proposals will be selected or which technologies might be tested or deployed.

Six areas for designing solutions

The competition categories cover different needs for an operation on the lunar surface. The call presents them as problems for teams to develop solutions for, not as systems that have already been built or validated. The table summarizes these areas and their general relationship to living and working on the Moon, as conveyed in NASA’s description.

NASA states that the work may include comparative studies, conceptual proposals, and presentations to stakeholders. It adds that the challenge is open to participants with technical, vocational, and diverse academic backgrounds, and that no prior experience in engineering or technology is required. The available information does not detail the evaluation criteria, specific phases, allocation of the million dollars, or number of teams that will receive awards.

Challenge registration and organization

Teams must register through the NASA STEM Gateway platform, available in English, before January 25, 2027. NASA says its Office of STEM Engagement designed the challenge in collaboration with the Lunar Base program. It is managed by the Institute of Competition Sciences under a contract with NASA’s Center of Excellence for Collaborative Innovation, which is part of the agency’s Science and Technology Mission Directorate.

The announcement attributes a dual purpose to the challenge: to build technical skills among future aerospace professionals and gather new concepts for the Lunar Base. However, the call is not an independent evaluation of those concepts and does not confirm that they will be integrated into missions. The general Lunar Base page presents the program as a gradual effort, while the Commercial Lunar Payload Services initiative focuses on commercial services to deliver scientific, exploration, and technology payloads to the lunar surface and orbit. These are institutional references that help place NASA’s lunar activities in context, but they do not independently corroborate the details of the student challenge.

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