NASA Awards $350,000 to Winning Astronaut Glove Designers
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WASHINGTON -- NASA's Centennial Challenges program awarded $350,000
this week to a pair of designers who developed concepts for more
flexible space gloves that could make it easier for astronauts to
perform tasks.
The 2009 Astronaut Glove Challenge awarded a first place prize of
$250,000 to Peter Homer of Southwest Harbor, Maine, and a second
place prize of $100,000 to Ted Southern of Brooklyn, N.Y. The
competition seeks innovative spacesuit glove design concepts to
reduce the effort needed to do work during spacewalks. In this
challenge, competitors demonstrated their glove design by performing
a range of tasks with the glove in a pressurized chamber.
"It is remarkable that two designers working on their own could create
gloves that meet the requirements for spaceflight -- a task that
normally requires a large team of experts," said Kate Mitchell, an
engineer at NASA's Johnson Space Center in Houston.
The competition was held at the Astronaut Hall of Fame in Titusville,
Fla., on Nov. 19. It was managed for NASA by Volanz Aerospace, a
non-profit space education organization based in Owings, Md. Secor
Strategies LLC of Titusville was a commercial sponsor of the event.
In order to qualify for a prize, the gloves had to meet all of the
basic requirements of NASA's current spacesuit gloves and exceed
their flexibility. The gloves also were tested to ensure they would
not leak.
For the 2009 challenge, teams had to develop a complete glove,
including the outer, thermal-micrometeoroid-
inner, pressure-restraining layer. In a previous 2007 competition,
only the pressure-restraining layer was required.
The two competitors were tied in several categories, but Peter Homer,
who won $200,000 in the first Astronaut Glove Challenge in 2007,
claimed first prize again this time by outscoring his rival in the
joint-flexibility and pressure tests. Ted Southern, who captured
second place, also competed in 2007. The designs presented in the
competition were measured and evaluated by engineers from Johnson,
NASA's Kennedy Space Center in Florida and NASA's spacesuit
manufacturer, ILC Dover of Dover, Del.
The Astronaut Glove Challenge is one of six Centennial Challenges
prize competitions managed by NASA's Innovative Partnerships Program,
which provides the prize funds. This was the fourth consecutive
Centennial Challenge event with prize winners. The program has
awarded $3.65 million in 2009.
"Our challenges have been difficult, multi-year efforts and in many
cases it has taken several years for competitors to perfect their
designs," said Andrew Petro, the Centennial Challenges Program
manager at NASA Headquarters in Washington. "We are now seeing the
results of their perseverance."
For more information on Centennial Challenges, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov/offices/
For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:
http://www.nasa.gov
Source: NASA
