After multiple rounds of rigorous judging, we are excited to share the winners of the NASA MarsXR Challenge!
This challenge requested innovators to build Virtual Reality (XR) assets and scenarios for NASA, focused on a particular subset of extravehicular activity (EVA) scenarios that will be used to test procedures and informatics, as well as plan for conditions relevant to future Martian exploration.
At the submission deadline, we had more than 2,000 innovators registered for the Challenge and a pool of diverse submissions. Based on criteria such as realism, value, novelty, usability and documentation, the judges have selected nine submissions spread across four categories that will be awarded cash prizes:
- For the category: “Blow Our Minds”
- Overall Category Winner ($6,000)
Space Suit Upgrade + Ambience by the team Overheat - Best Asset ($3,000)
Mixed Reality for simulation training by the team WEDO - Honorable Mention ($1,000)
Weather Balloon Inflation and Launch by the team UND_AI-VR-LAB
- Overall Category Winner ($6,000)
- For the category: Exploration
- Best Asset ($3,000)
Exploration - Waypoints by the team Overheat
- Best Asset ($3,000)
- For the category: Scientific Research
- Overall Category Winner ($6,000)
Microscope survey of Martian rocks during EVA by the team OpinionGames - Best Scenario ($4,000)
Scientific Research - Seismometers by the team Overheat - Best Asset ($3,000)
Scientific Research - Rock Sampling by the team Overheat
- Overall Category Winner ($6,000)
- For the category: Set Up Camp
- Overall Category Winner ($6,000)
Set Up Camp - Mounting Solar Panels by the team Overheat - Honorable Mention ($1,000)
Test Your Solar Panel Deployment Skill On Mars by the team SciXP
- Overall Category Winner ($6,000)
Congratulations to the winners! We will be in contact with the teams to liase the prize arrangements.
We would also like to take this moment to send a sincere thank you to everyone who engaged in this challenge. While only nine winners were awarded, NASA was very impressed with many of the proposals that were reviewed!
We encourage you to keep innovating and solving problems such as these in other crowdsourcing opportunities.
Don’t forget that you can still join the Discord to keep in touch with the NASA MarsXR community and stay up to date on related opportunities!
We would like to thank Buendea for providing the VR environment/XOSS engine framework, and Epic Games for the use of UE5 and hosting the downloadable software package. Lastly, we would like to thank HeroX for assisting us in designing this challenge and for hosting us on their platform.
