National Aeronautics and Space Administration November 19, 2020 – Federal Register Recent Federal Regulation Documents

The Break the Ice Lunar Challenge is open and teams that wish to compete may now register. Centennial Challenges is a program of prize competitions to stimulate innovation in technologies of interest and value to NASA and the nation. The Break the Ice Lunar Challenge is a prize competition with up to a $5,000,000 USD total prize purse to incentivize innovative approaches for excavating icy regolith and optimize logistics to transport acquired resources, primarily water, in extreme lunar environments. At this time, NASA is opening Phase 1 of the competition, which has a $500,000 USD prize purse. In this phase of competition, teams will design a system architecture to excavate icy regolith and deliver water on the lunar surface in a hypothetical mission scenario based on anticipated mission operations and environmental features of human and robotic exploration of the lunar surface. NASA is funding the prize purse and administration of the challenge competition.