NASA has named three students the winners of the Artemis Moon Pod Essay Contest for their creative visions of a pioneering journey to the Moon. Nearly 14,000 students entered the contest, each competing for the grand prize: a trip to NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida, where they will witness the first launch of the Artemis era.
NASA invited students to envision themselves leading a crew, or pod, on a mission to the Moons South Pole, and capture these ideas in their essays. NASA and Future Engineers, an online platform for student challenges, launched the contest in September 2020 for K-12 students nationwide. The contests goal is to encourage the Artemis Generation kids growing up during the era of NASAs return to the Moon to think ahead about the human and technological needs of a lunar expedition. What types of tools or technologies would they bring to the Moon? Who would they include in their pod of crewmembers? What would they leave behind for future lunar crews to use?
Grand-prize winning essays in the three, grade-level-based categories are:
- Kindergarten through fourth grade category: Austin Pritts of Wolcott, Indiana.
- Fifth through eighth grade category: Taia Saurer of Laguna Beach, California.
- Ninth through 12th grade category: Amanda Gutierrez of Lincoln, Nebraska.
I want to extend my congratulations to the amazing Artemis Moon Pod Essay winners. NASA shares your excitement for humanitys return to the Moon, and we are so inspired by your creative ideas for how to lead that expedition. said Kathy Lueders, associate administrator for the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate (HEOMD) at NASA Headquarters. Get your boots ready, because you are the next era of space explorers the Artemis Generation.
Students across the nation wrote in to share their visions of a weeklong mission to the Moons South Pole. Over 1,000 educators, professionals, and space enthusiasts served as volunteers for the first round of judging, and selected 155 semifinalists in March 2021. The list was narrowed further to nine finalists in April. A panel of four judges, including two from HEOMD and two from the agencys Office of STEM Engagement, conducted virtual interviews with the finalists about their essays and ideas before choosing the three winners.
Pritts essay, My Mission to the Moon, tells the tale of a daring Moon Pod crew consisting of a test pilot/navigator, chemist, and mechanical engineer who establish a permanent lunar research facility powered by Kilopower Reactor Using Stirling Technology (KRUSTY).
In One Week on the Moon The Artemis Adventure, Saurers vision for the Moon Pod mission calls for a four-person crew including the first woman to step onto the Moon to build a habitat for future astronauts using a combination of lunar soil and a fibrous fungal material called mycelium.
Gutierrezs composition, Dream Big Moon Pod, follows the adventure of a three-person crew of a chemist, hydrologist, and astronautical engineer as they install an Endothermic Electrolysis Reactor (EER), designed to provide fuel and oxygen for future crews at the Moons Shackleton Crater.
I cant tell you how inspiring and energizing its been to read these essays and see the students enthusiasm and creativity in action, said Mike Kincaid, NASAs associate administrator for the Office of STEM Engagement. The future of space exploration is in good hands.
The contest was a collaborative effort between NASAs Office of STEM Engagement and the Human Exploration and Operations Mission Directorate, in partnership with the online platformFuture Engineers.
Through Future Engineers, the grand prize winners will have the opportunity to travel with their families to NASAs Kennedy Space Center in Florida to see the first launch of NASAs Space Launch System rocket and Orion spacecraft during the uncrewed Artemis I mission. On this first flight of the Artemis program, the Orion spacecraft will travel beyond the Moon, nearly 280,000 miles away from Earth farther than any spacecraft built for humans has ever traveled during a three-week mission.
