On Thursday, February 20th, senior architectural designer Daniel Inocente will participate in a NASA Space Technology Mission Directorate (STMD) Centennial Challenges workshop. The event will take place at NASA’s Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.
Inocente will join a team of NASA researchers and representatives from other national agencies, academia, and various industries, to investigate the possibility of developing a new competition within NASA’s STMD Centennial Challenges program. The competition would focus on lunar excavation, manufacturing, and construction. SOM will assist in the development of this challenge by contributing its experience in state-of-the-art design and manufacturing technologies in order to advance NASA’s goals for lunar exploration capabilities.
NASA’s Centennial Challenges program was established to directly engage diverse and non-traditional sources in the process of advanced technology development. The goal of the program is to stimulate innovation in research and technology that could be applied towards NASA’s space and aeronautical activities. In 2018, a team of representatives from SOM and Northwestern University was announced as a finalist in NASA’s 3D-Printed Habitat Centennial Challenge.