Challenges Brainstorm

Prizes, Challenges and CrowdsourcingJenn GusteticPrizes and Challenges Program ExecutiveNASA HQ, OCT@jenngustetic

From the Centennial Challenges Program, to the NASA Open Innovation Pavilion, to the NASA Tournament Lab, NASA leads the public sector in the breadth and depth of experience and experimentation with prizes and challenges.

--White House Office of Science and Technology Policy Report to Congress on Government Prize Use, 20122

Engaging the Public in Solving Tough ProblemsBuilding Hardware.Developing Software and Algorithms

Sharing Ideas and Methods3

Upper left: In this image, the pad crew takes a group photo with the vehicle. On Sept. 12, 2009, Armadillo Aerospace successfully conducted flights at the Armadillo Aerospace test facility in Caddo Mills, Texas. Armadillo met the Level 2 requirements for the Centennial Challenges - Lunar Lander Challenge and qualified to win a million dollar first place prize. To qualify for the Level 2 prize, Armadillo Aerospace's rocket vehicle took off from one concrete pad, ascended to approximately 50 meters, moved 60 meters horizontally, then landed on a second pad that featured boulders and craters to simulate the lunar surface. After refueling at that pad, the vehicle then repeated the flight back and landed at the original pad. The vehicle completed the round trip, including fueling and refueling operations, in one hour and 47 minutes. That was well within the two and half hour time limit for the challenge. Under the Lunar Lander Challenge this year, teams had until Oct. 31, 2009 to complete flight attempts and qualify for the remaining prizes. The Lunar Lander Challenge is divided into two levels. Level 1 requires a rocket to take off from a designated launch area, climb to a low, fixed altitude, and fly for at least 90 seconds before landing precisely on a different landing pad. The flight must then be repeated in reverse. Both flights, along with all of the necessary preparation for each, must take place within a two and a half hour period. The more challenging Level 2 competition requires a rocket to fly for 180 seconds before landing precisely on a simulated lunar surface constructed with craters and boulders. The minimum flight times are calculated so the Level 2 mission closely simulates a real descent from lunar orbit to the surface of the Moon. The winners of Level 2 will be awarded a million first place prize and a ,000 second place prize. NASA Identifier: 386659main_jsc2009e205929 Read more: http://www.dvidshub.net/image/845932/centennial-challenge-armadillo-aerospace#.UfA1t-CWfcY#ixzz2ZzoTiCPT

Bottom Right: Mary Louise Stepan, 21, used to be a waitress. She has a brother in the air corps. She is working on transport parts in the hand mill, Consolidated Aircraft Corp., Fort Worth, TexasDigital ID: (digital file from original transparency) fsac 1a34943 http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/fsac.1a34943Reproduction Number: LC-DIG-fsac-1a34943 (digital file from original transparency) LC-USW361-292 (color film copy slide)Repository: Library of Congress Prints and Photographs Division Washington, D.C. 20540 USA http://hdl.loc.gov/loc.pnp/pp.print

Top Right: From Random Hacks of Kindess

Shine a spotlight on a problem or opportunityPay only for resultsExplore a wide breadth and depth of potential solutionsTarget an ambitious goal without predicting which team or approach is most likely to succeed Reach beyond usual suspects to tap top talentStimulate private sector investment many times greater than the prize purse Bring out-of-discipline perspectives to bearInspire risk-taking by offering a level playing fieldBenefits of Challenges to NASAPrize Competitions are not right for solving EVERY problem, but could be transformative for the right problem. They are another tool in NASAs toolkit for solving problems.4

Discover a wide breadth and depth of potential solutions.5

Reach Beyond the Usual Suspects.

4056 registered solvers, 459 competitors, 2185 submissions, and ten winners selectedThe ISS longeron challenge launched in January 2013 and ran for 3 weeks with its completion in early February 2013For this challenge, awards ranged from $150 - $30,000 for a total of $40,452TopCoder costs, including awards, were $80,000. Government personnel costs were not separately tracked and are estimated at as about 0.06 FTE and 0.02 WYE. NASA estimated that a similar internal effort (a six month study using three to four personnel) would have cost over $240,000.While the detailed power analysis was not better than our current implementation, the solutions give us ideas for the future if issues arise with some of our solar arrays.The NASA challenge lead was impressed that it took a three-week challenge to result in the near optimal solutions that NASA has today.

Explore a wide breadth and depth of potential solutions.

Currently, known measurement technologies are either invasive or too inaccurate to be acceptable for repeated measurements over time. Their goal was to advance the current state of research, understand the sufficiency of their current approaches and/or enlarge the understanding of the solution space.InnoCentive Participants: There were a total of 636 solvers/teams, 72 total proposed submissions, with 57 submissions evaluated.Yet2.com Participants: This tech scout challenge identified 81 leads, three high interest solutions, five other interesting solutions, six potential complementary technologies and 63 rejected leads.contest itself ran from September to November 2013For the InnoCentive challenge, one award was made for $15,000The results of these challenges will be used by the team to advance their research efforts. NASA identified new solutions in the current marketplace that were previously not known and have three high interest solutions and an additional five leads on developing technology.Additionally, We learned that we should have revisited technologies that we rejected earlier people learn & technology improves with time & data.

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Pay only for results.7

NASA Success Story: Kevlar and Vectran Strain Measurement Challenge

Saving taxpayer dollars through open innovation

The Challenge: A repeatable test for measuring the strain of Kevlar and Vectran straps made of any material and having varying tensile strengths Platform: NASAs Innovation PavilionSolver Community: 347 solvers from 40+ countries Winner(s): Two solutions were from the United States and one solution from Serbia. The winning solutions suggested adding a strip of elastomeric material (a rubber strap) along with the woven strap in the test jig. The measurements are then taken off of the rubber strap and correlated back to the woven strap. Outcome: These solutions can be used immediately by the analysis team and are applicable to multiple projects outside of Lightweight Materials and Structuresquick solutions and immediate infusion back into NASA!

Issued: 10/25/12 Ended 1/9/13Awarded March, 2013$5000 to Oliver Jovanovic from SerbiaAdd a second sample on the same jig$5000 to Peter Haaland from Washington DCReplace the speckle paint with polydimethylsiloxane based paint$10,000 to Dmitriy Tipikin of Hanover, NHAdd Polyethylene strap attached in parallel

The team had an I could have had a V8 Moment! This solution was extremely elegant, simple and repeatable-- it took a fresh perspective to cultivate a potential gem. By approaching this problem through open innovation, NASA saved the taxpayer dollars by not contracting out a lengthy research program to seek an answer.

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Encourage the emerging commercial space industry.8

Lunar Lander Challenge (to build and fly a rocket-powered vehicle that simulates the flight of a vehicle on the Moon).Masten Space Systems and Armadillo Aerospace won $1.15M and $750K respectively in the 2008/2009 Lunar Lander Challenge. Both companies were founded before the Lunar Lander Challenge was announced and both have taken advantage of the ability to compete and leverage their Challenge success. Both received contracts in 2011 along with 5 other companies to provide NASA with sub-orbital payload integration and delivery.

Armadillo has gone on to expand in the commercial space world contracting with Space Adventures to provide civilian access to suborbital space.

Masten is in discussions with the DOD for suborbital access as well. Masten wanted to change the way suborbital research was conducted with fully reusable suborbital launch vehicles with vertical takeoff and vertical landing capability. The timing of the Lunar Landing Challenge lined up with technical goals we already needed to achieve in the development of our vehicles, and we decided to pursue the challenge along the way. With a lot of hard work and a little bit of luck, we managed to take home the grand prize. When we won the challenge, our only "customer" was the challenge. We had two great rocket vehicles with fantastic guidance and control, but an extremely limited sales funnel. Since the challenge, we've spent significant time building a business around a primary focus on customers. We received multiple awards from NASA to fly suborbital payloads in this time as well as established NASA's Jet Propulsion Laboratory (JPL) and other major aerospace contractors as customers. http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/centennial_challenges/after_challenge/masten.html#.UfFOoOCWfcY

The prize was announced in May 2006, and 2006, 2007 and 2008 was offered to teams only on a fixed date (generally late October) and in a fixed location (Southern New Mexico, with the generous support of our friends at partners at Spaceport America). At the conclusion of the 2008, the $350,000 Level One, First Place prize was claimed by Armadillo Aerospace. In 2009, the competition was altered to allow teams to compete at a date and a location of their choosing at any point between early August and the end of October. At the end of that period, teams that have met the all of the requirements for the prize will be ranked according to the landing accuracy displayed on their two flights.

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After the ChallengeLaserMotive Flagsuit LLC Final Frontier Masten Space SystemsArmadillo AerospaceSynergy AircraftPipistrel USA

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http://www.nasa.gov/directorates/spacetech/centennial_challenges/after_challenge/

LaserMotive competed in the 2007 and 2009 Power Beaming Challenges and is currently partnering with NASA on other projects.Flagsuit LLC took home first-prize winnings for the 2007 and 2009 Astronaut Glove Challenges.Final Frontier took home the second-place prize of $100,000 at the 2009 Astronaut Glove Challenge.Synergy Aircraft exhibited a quarter-scale prototype of Synergy, a box-tailed five-seater, at the 2011 Green Flight Challenge.Masten Space Systems won the $1 million first place prize in the 2009 Lunar Lander Challenge.

Pipistrel won the green flight challenge in 2011. They have also produced an electric version of the Taurusthe Taurus Electro which is capable of climbing to 6,000 feet (1800 m) after self-launching. The American magazine Popular Science named the Taurus Electro as one of the ten most important aerospace innovations of the year in 2008. In 2010, the Taurus Electro won the gold medal for innovative design at the Biennial of Industrial Design awards and in 2011, it won the Lindbergh Prize for the best electric aircraft. The Pipistrel Taurus G4, a modified double-fuselage Taurus also won the prestigious NASA Green Flight Challenge in 2011.

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Stimulate new commercial productsand cross sector collaborations.http://marblar.com/nasa

240 Ideas on 34 technologies from 30 countries1572 contributions from 34 countries

The image above demonstrates how image stabilization technology developed to study solar flares might be used to clarify images in a variety of applications like license plate recognition from traffic cameras or clarifying security footage for anti-terrorism efforts.

The technologies NASA develops don't just blast off into space. They also improve our lives here on Earth. Life-saving search-and-rescue tools, implantable medical devices, advances in commercial aircraft safety and efficiency, increased accuracy in weather forecasting, even the miniature cameras in our cell phones. For over fifty years, NASA has transferred its cutting-edge aerospace technologies to the private sector, helping create new commercial products, improve existing products, and boost the competitiveness of the U.S. economy.Now NASA has joined forces with the product development startup Marblar (www.marblar.com) for a pilot program allowing the public to crowdsource product ideas for forty of NASAs patents. This initiative will allow Marblars online community to use a portion of NASAs diverse portfolio of patented technologies as the basis of new product ideas.Starting today, 14 NASA technologies will be available on Marblar. Over the next four weeks, 26 additional patents will be posted on the website. Anyone can submit ideas and contribute to other submitted ideas over the next year. Commercial partners will study the ideas for potential new products and services, with contributors to successful ideas sharing in their ownership.NASAs Marshall Space Flight Center Technology Transfer Office will lead the pilot program. We are excited about partnering with Marblar to reach new audiences. By using crowdsourcing as a way to generate new assessments of NASA technologies, we hope to work with the global community to identify transformative commercial products, said Terry Taylor, Manager of the MSFC Technology Transfer Office.Crowdsourcing has allowed NASA to tap into more than the usual suspects to get ideas and solutions that address an assortment of NASA needs, said Jenn Gustetic, NASAs Prizes and Challenges Program Executive. Reaching out to innovators in a variety of fields through online crowdsourcing may provide a 21st century way for NASA to expand the reach of its technology portfolio for commercialization and use right here on EarthMarblar is a platform that curates patented science from the worlds top research labs, and allows anyone to submit new product ideas based upon these technologies. The technologies NASA will be making available to the platform range from advanced satellite optics, to micro-sensors, to materials, devices, and manufacturing techniques developed for the shuttle program. These technologies represent a handful of the over 1000 patented technologies and 400 software codes and analysis tools NASA has available for transfer to the public.By engaging a global communitytowards re-imagining NASAs patents, along with the half-billion dollars worth of patents from other institutions world-wide available on Marblar, were aiming to create a pivot point and redefine product development for the 21stcentury, said Daniel Perez, Marblar CEO.NASAs Technology Transfer Program, managed by the Office of the Chief Technologist at NASA Headquarters, ensures that technologies developed for missions in exploration and discovery are broadly available to the public. To view the entire NASA patent portfolio, visit: technology.nasa.gov.10

Stimulate new research through citizen scienceand create a role for many.

http://www.diskdetective.org

We reached 500,000 classifications: Sort of. We have 4027 registered users. But to register, it takes time and you have to giveaway your email address, etc. And we try to keep barriers to entry as low as possible. So most users do not register. For example, we had more than 100,000 people visit the website during the first month of the project.We won 4 nights of observing time: The Disk Detective team was awarded 4 nights of observing time at the Fred Lawrence Whipple Observatory to follow up disk candidates spotted by citizen scientists. The way it works is that each (professional) telescope has a time allocation committee. If you want to use the telescope, you have to submit a proposal to that committee. That's what we did (the science team). No money changes hands--just data! But we only asked for two nights, and the committee was so impressed that they awarded us four. Technically I was the PI of the proposal. So in a sense, you could say that NASA won the time.

WISE is a NASA mission surveying the whole sky in infrared. This project is looking at stars to find dusty debris disks, similar to our asteroid field. These disks suggest that these stars are in the early stages of forming planetary systems. Learning more about these stars can tell us how our Solar System formed.65 published papers: SPACEGalaxy Zoo (42)Moon ZooSolar Stormwatch (2)Galaxy Zoo - MergersGalaxy Zoo - Supernova (5)Planet Hunters (6)Milky Way Project (2)Ice Hunters (1)Andromeda ProjectPlanet FourSpace WarpsRadio Galaxy ZooStardate M83Disk DetectiveSunspotter11

Protect our planetthrough public private partnerships.

#asteroidhunterswww.topcoder.com/asteroids

1. Out of the 382 total registrants for the contest, 329 are brand new members (registered on or after 03/10/14, which is when we announced the challenge).

2. We received a total of 24 submissions - 5 failed screening, and 19 went on for review. We typically get 2 to 4 submissions for content creation / problem statement contests.

3. Out of the top 5 submissions, 4 of the members registered after we announced the contest (including the 1st place winner).

5. The top 5 winners (in order of placement) are from: Romania, Poland, Spain, the United States & the United Kingdom.

The winner of the problem statement contest for the Asteroid Data Hunter contest on topcoder (total of 382 registrants / 25 submissions) works for the Centre for Climate & Air Pollution Studies (C-CAPS)

Looking at his ResearchGate profile, under the "Topics" section, he has tagged: Computational Fluid Dynamics, Meteorology, Climatology, Fluid Dynamics and Thermodynamics.

This is a great example of a member of the community who has contributed towards a project where the skill set may not be in his/her core expertise - he beat actual astronomers!

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For more information

http://www.nasa.gov/content/prizes-and-open-innovation/

http://marblar.com/nasa

http://www.diskdetective.org

www.topcoder.com/asteroids

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