NASA Space Apps 2026 challenge
Space Mission Design Game
Subjects: Games
Summary
Designing a space mission requires careful consideration of competing demands, including mission objectives, spacecraft design, scientific instruments, launch vehicles, budgets, power, mass, communications, and orbital constraints. For students who rarely get to experiment with an entire mission from concept to operation, these trade-offs often remain abstract. Your challenge is to create an interactive game that allows participants to design, manage, and simulate a complete space mission while making engineering decisions, managing limited resources, and evaluating how each choice shapes the success of their mission.
The full challenge statement, with its data and resources, is published on 28 October. Until then, you can read this summary, talk it over with your team and plan, but the Space Apps rules say no work on the project itself before the hackathon starts.
From the NASA Space Apps Challenge. The official page is the final word on this challenge.