A photo of the moon taken by the International Space Station and released by NASA.

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SIPA

NASA launched the “Watts on the Moon” competition on Friday, September 25.

The goal: to help it accomplish its future missions on the Moon by finding a way to distribute, manage and store energy once on the ground of our natural satellite, explains

Numerama

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This competition has a prize of $ 5 million that the winners will receive in the form of scholarships.

Can you create a solution that would distribute, manage, and store power on the Moon?

You should check out the NASA Watts on the Moon Challenge!

https://t.co/tKtnhQJvt8 pic.twitter.com/ykJrwxwYI6

- HeroX (@Iamherox) September 25, 2020

Constraints to be resolved

Finding a solution will not be easy.

The Sun can be a good source of energy.

But on the Moon, the nights are long and correspond to 15 days on Earth.

During this period, solar panels will therefore not be able to produce energy.

Candidates will also have to take into account the temperature differences between day and night on the Moon.

To obtain a scholarship, participants will have to propose systems that can respond to three lunar activities: bringing energy to a mobile platform operating inside a crater, bringing energy to an extraction plant. water located inside a crater, bring energy to an oxygen-producing plant.

It is possible to resolve one or more of these cases.

Two phases until 2023

To participate, you must be linked to the United States, whether it is an individual or collective application, within a team or an organization.

It is therefore possible to apply for a foreigner employed in an American company or a student studying in a school on the other side of the Atlantic, specifies

Numerama

.

The competition has two phases.

The first ends on March 25, 2021 and will allow you to pocket $ 500,000.

Those who have proposed a convincing project in phase 1 will participate in phase 2, which will end in September 2023. The amount of grants for this final stage reaches 4.5 million dollars.

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  • Space

  • Moon

  • Science

  • Nasa

  • Competition