2009 PISCES Lunar Outpost
Student Design Competition

A cutaway drawing of a proposed NASA designed lunar habitation

Objectives

[INFORMATION ON THE 2010 COMPETITION WILL BE FORTHCOMING SOON]

PISCES announces its third annual Student Design Competition and invites team from universities to participate. More information about PISCES can be found on our HOME page. Finalists will be awarded fully paid trips to Hawai’i for the faculty advisor and two students to participate in the third annual PISCES conference, to be held in Hilo, Hawai’i in November, 2009.

The PISCES design program provides an opportunity to engage students in a rich and meaningful educational experience, derived from working on design problems of current interest, on important technical and programmatic issues that are central to the settlement of space. NASA and JAXA now have serious plans for the future of humans in space, including the continued construction of the International Space Station and human and robotic lunar exploration. Students now in university design programs will be the professionals who will implement the decisions.

The PISCES University Design Competition is a means of establishing a relationship between PISCES and the academic community in a manner that will foster dialogue and interaction in an exciting new area of space exploration. PISCES intends to become a center for demonstration, testing, and operational development of the skills and technologies that will be used to establish permanent human footholds on other planets, first the Moon, later Mars and beyond. PISCES will become a focus for new ideas, for the education of students, including those that will make up its own staff, and for the training of people who will venture to the Moon and beyond. Attached to the University of Hawaii at Hilo, PISCES will have facilities set in an environment as close to a planetary surface environment as may be accomplished on the Earth, on the flanks of one of Hawaii’s immense volcanoes. PISCES is an international undertaking, its concept was developed by members of the Japan – U.S. Space Technology, Science and Applications Program (JUSTSAP), a bilateral coordination body established with the encouragement of NASA (U. S. National Aeronautics and Space Administration, www.NASA.com) and JAXA (Japan Aerospace Exploration Agency, www.jaxa.jp) over 16 years ago.For the space agencies, the goals of the design program are to bring fresh views on how to accomplish human exploration objectives, knowledge of technical capabilities that exist in the universities, and an opportunity to meet students who are about to enter the workforce.

As the PISCES facility becomes more defined, students are invited to participate by the development of concepts and designs for planetary habitats and the systems that support them. The second annual PISCES student design competition was completed in November 2008, with presentations at the PISCES conference by teams from the Massachusetts Institute of Technology (Analog facility operations) and Virginia Polytechnic Institute (Production of Structural Materials from the Lunar Regolith). A wide range of projects are eligible for consideration in the PISCES competition. We are particularly interested in those that might lead to future collaborations between PISCES and the submitting university.

Design Competition Opportunity

Contributions from student teams are invited in the following areas:

overall habitat design (architecture). Teams considering submissions should review last year’s reports, which can be found on the PISCES web site http://pisces.hilo.hawaii.edu/.
lunar resource utilization. This could include work in finding, extracting and utilizing lunar materials for support of a lunar outpost or for commercial purposes. This is of particular interest to NASA, who is supporting up to three awards in this area. NASA has requested that design studies in this area focus on the problems/solutions for extracting water from deposits in permanently shadowed craters near the lunar poles.
supporting subsystems (life support systems, communications, robotics, energy conversion and power, surface transportation, etc.) that may be simulated in the PISCES environment.
issues of operations in space and on planetary surfaces, such as the conduct of field geology, remote exploration from a planetary base, or problems of human performance and health.
Analog field demonstrations of planetary surface exploration systems. Field demonstrations hosted by PISCES were conducted by NASA, international participants and industry in November 2008. Ideas developed for student field demonstrations could lead to actual implementation in the field.

Up to three awards will be offered this year, depending on availability of funding. Each award will consist of travel funds to bring two students and a faculty advisor to the PISCES annual conference to be held in Hilo, Hawai’i, in November, 2008. At this conference, the university studies will be presented to the PISCES team and the student teams will be able to observe and participate in further planning of the PISCES program.

PISCES stands ready to assist interested university design teams in contacting engineers, scientists, and administrators in NASA field centers and in industry who can act as professional mentors for their design project, providing up-to-date information on existing concepts and sources of information. PISCES can support interested teams by: helping to refine the problem statement, in order to maximize the study's contribution to PISCES. Contact Dr. Mike Duke mikeduke@earthlink.net for information or assistance.

The PISCES design project will provide students with a unique opportunity to work on challenging and relevant space development and settlement projects, initiate new engineering design directions, and interact with key people from NASA, JAXA, U. S. and Japanese industry, and academia. Depending on the choice of topics, opportunities may also be available for interested design teams to interact during the design process with teams from Japan. [Top of Page]

Who May Participate?

Any U. S. university may field one or more teams that are interested in the topics of lunar surface facilities, technology development such as ISRU, surface operations, and commercial activities. It is expected that most participants will consist of design teams of three or more graduate and/or undergraduate students, with a faculty advisor. A student team leader and faculty advisor must be designated. Multidisciplinary teams are encouraged. It is not necessary for the team to be enrolled in a for-credit course to participate; however, they must have the support of a qualified faculty advisor. Teams are encouraged to document their work on a team web site that promotes the exchange of information and collaboration with other participating teams, particularly Japanese teams.

Proposals and Selection

A brief indication of interest is requested from university teams by January 31, 2009. This letter should include: team name; university; composition of team (number of graduate and undergraduate members, names, if available), contact information (email address, phone number) for the team leader and faculty advisor, and topical area chosen for study. This indication of interest will be used by PISCES to provide technical help to the university team and to coordinate interaction with Japanese teams. No selection of teams will be made at this time; everyone can participate and will receive recognition from PISCES for their participation. Communication between each team and PISCES at approximately bi-monthly intervals is recommended as the study proceeds.

The selection of the team(s) to be awarded travel grants to the PISCES annual meeting will be based on the review of reports, which must be submitted electronically (in MS word, no larger than 5 MB) by July 15, 2009. It is understood that studies may not be complete by that time; it is anticipated that selected team(s) will continue to work on their project(s) up to the time of their presentation at the PISCES meeting. Enough information must be provided in the July 15th report that a reasonable view of the expected contribution of the team can be obtained by PISCES reviewers. The report will be judged on the basis of:

Selection of the design problem. A short statement of the rationale for selecting the design problem or business plan must be provided. This should include both the technical rationale for the problem selection, how the team views the project to fit within PISCES, and a statement of how the problem fits into the educational goals of the student team.
Progress on the problem. A statement of what topics the team has researched with respect to the design problem, accompanied by no more than 10 pages of illustrative material (pictures, charts, prose).
A plan for completion of the project to meet the PISCES schedule (presentation November 2009).
Evidence of university, faculty advisor and team commitment to the project. This could take many forms, for example, evidence that the design study has been incorporated into the academic program of the students, outside presentations made to students and other groups (outreach), fund-raising activities to increase the number of participants who could attend the PISCES meeting if the team is selected.

The reports will be judged by a group selected by PISCES, which will be made up of space exploration experts from academia, industry and space agencies. The judging criteria will include

Responsiveness to directions: 10%
Understanding of problem: 20%
Quality and thoroughness of work completed to date: 30%
Quality of plan for completion: 30%
Evidence of commitment to project: 10%

Selected participants will be notified by August 15, 2009, in order that the selected team(s) may make timely arrangements for travel, which must be coordinated with the University of Hawaii, Hilo, Dr. Robert Fox rfox@hawaii.edu.
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Final Reports

Teams selected by PISCES will be expected to present reports of their projects and submit a final report. The final report should be less than 30 pages and should be submitted in the form of one hard copy and a complete electronic file in .pdf format. Teams may also support their results with a descriptive poster (36 x 48”), videos that can be displayed independently of their scheduled presentations, or physical demonstrations. Each team will be given 30 minutes of program time to present their results and answer questions about their work. The selected teams are encouraged to participate fully in other activities of the PISCES conference, including visiting the PISCES field test site on the flank of Mauna Loa.

Contact

All correspondence regarding technical should be addressed to: Dr. Michael B. Duke mikeduke@earthlink.net. He can be reached by telephone at 512-535-1671.

Other Competitions of Interest

There are a number of other design competitions that are available to student design teams and business plan development teams.