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NASA Taps X-Hab Challenge Participants

• By Joshua Bolkan
• 07/09/13

Seven teams from six universities will take part in NASA's 2014 Exploration Habitat (X-Hab) Academic Innovation Challenge.

The teams "will work in close cooperation with members of the NASA Advanced Exploration Systems (AES) Program's Deep Space Habitat Project team" in an effort to "meet a series of milestones to design, manufacture, assemble and test systems and concepts that could be used in future deep-space habitats," according to information released by NASA.

Chosen by NASA and the National Space Grant Foundation, the winning projects are:

• Horizontal Habitability Layout Studies, from Oklahoma State University;
• Plant Anywhere: Plants Growing in Free Habitat Spaces, from the University of Colorado at Boulder;
• SpaceRing: a Versatile, Scalable Power-Generation and Cooling System, of Rice University;
• Closed Environment Air Revitalization System Based on Metal Organic Framework Adsorbents, from the University of South Alabama;
• Badger Compartmentalized Onboard Material Extrusion Technology, of the University of Wisconsin, Madison;
• Vertical Habitability Layout Studies, from the University of Maryland; and
• Neutral Buoyancy/Parabolic Flight Habitat Studies, also from the University of Maryland.

Designed to encourage a multidisciplinary approach and contribute to NASA's "efforts to train and develop a highly skilled scientific, engineering and technical workforce for the future," the challenge asks participating teams "to explore NASA's work on development of deep-space habitats and help the agency gather new ideas to complement its current research and development," according to an agency news release.

"The new X-Hab Academic Innovation Challenge projects reflect the great creativity and innovation of the nation's university students and faculty," said Barry Epstein, NASA's AES Habitat Systems domain lead at NASA Headquarters in Washington, in a prepared statement. "Their energy and ideas expand the reach of our project engineers and of our deep-space human exploration technology development program."

More information about X-Hab Academic Innovation Challenge is available at spacegrant.org.