• See gallery of NSS 2009 Calendar contest entries
  
  
• See gallery of NSS 2008 Calendar contest entries

NASA Ames Research Center in conjunction with the National Space Society sponsors an annual space settlement design contest for 6-12th grade students. Each spring students send their designs for homes in space for judging by NASA engineers and scientists. The contest has inspired thousands of students and helped hundreds of teachers bring the excitement of space settlement to the youth of America and the world.

• Contest information
• Space colony designer's corner for students
• Teacher's page
• Space Settlement Quiz
• Continuing Education. A list of colleges and universities where you can prepare for space colonization work.
• Student Employment Opportunities at NASA Ames

This annual contest puts high school students in the shoes of aerospace industry engineers designing a city in space that will house over 10,000 people. Student engineers demonstrate creativity, technical competence, management skills, environmental knowledge, space, teamwork, and presentation techniques to conquer the problems inherent in siting and designing a Space Settlement (aka Space Colony).

Twelve finalist teams from around the world are selected to compete with a new scenario in a live Competition at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, with real engineers sharing their knowledge and experience in both engineering and management.

This contest is over but you can see the gallery of submitted designs.

To win the Google Lunar X PRIZE, a team must successfully land a privately funded craft on the lunar surface and survive long enough to complete the mission goals of roaming about the lunar surface for at least 500 meters and sending a defined data package, called a “Mooncast”, back to Earth. The total purse of the Google Lunar X PRIZE is $30 million (USD).

• Google Lunar X Prize video (8 minutes) — It's cool!