After offering US$3 million in prize money for the builder of a telescope on a giant airship Wednesday, the National Aeronautic and Space Administration (NASA) the next day opened registration for its "Cube Quest Challenge."

The prize money for the Cube Quest Challenge, the largest in NASA's history, is a whopping US$5 million.

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Besides the prize money, the winning designer will also get the chance to join the space agency's exploration and technology development and will see his CubeSat fly to the Moon and other parts of outer space, reports Phys.org.

The CubeSat will be a payload aboard NASA's Orion spacecraft that will be carried into space by the new Space Launch System rocket.

"NASA's Cube Quest Challenge will engage teams in the development of the new technologies that will advance the state of the art of CubeSats and demonstrate their capabilities as viable deep space explorers," said Michael Gazarik, associate administrator of NASA's Space Technology Mission Directorate.

The challenge has three phases and the US$5 million is divided within these three major areas.

The first part consists of four qualifying Ground Tournaments that will determine which cube satellite will fly on the first SLS flight. The winner of this stage gets a US$500,000 prize.

The second stage is the Lunar Derby in which US$3 million will be awarded the designer that demonstrates his CubeSat's ability to enter a stable lunar orbit and communicate with NASA while near the Moon.

The third phase is the Deep Space Derby for the designer that can prove his CubeSat can survive and continue operating 2.5 million miles away from Earth, or tenfold the distance between the Earth and Moon. The winning CubeSat must also continue communicating with NASA from this distance.

"If we can produce capabilities usually associated with large spacecraft in the much smaller platform of CubeSats, a dramatic improvement in the affordability of space missions will result, greatly increasing science and research possibilities," predicts Eric Eberly, deputy program manager for Centennial Challenges at NASA's Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama.

TagsNASA, outer space, moon, cube satellite