HeroX, the leading platform and open marketplace for crowdsourced solutions, today announced the winners of the “Honey, I Shrunk the NASA Payload, the Sequel” Challenge.
The Challenge sought designs for miniature payload prototypes that could be sent to the Moon to help fill gaps in lunar knowledge. The first “Honey, I Shrunk the NASA Payload Challenge” launched on April 9, 2020. Fourteen teams were recognized and rewarded for their innovative approaches to miniature payload development. These fourteen teams were invited to participate in the sequel challenge, which launched on October 15, 2020. From among those fourteen teams, four finalist teams were selected who then relied on crowdsourcing to recruit new team members and fill any resource gaps they might have. Two of these expanded teams completed the next step of the challenge and were each awarded up to $225,000 that was used to develop their proposals into functioning, flight-ready payloads. In addition, a third team was awarded $65,000 to develop their proposal. Two years later, these teams have completed their hardware development and testing, and could one day see their payloads operate on the Moon
More: Winners Announced for Lunar Exploration with a Miniaturized Payload Prototype Challenge, HeroX