NASA is now hosting a Martian contest where participants are asked to design a special habitat on Mars that can be produced by a 3D printer on the Red Planet where US $2.25 million is at stake.

NASA just announced the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge over the weekend where the main objective of the contest is to design a shelter for astronauts that will be living on Mars which will be crucial for the first manned missions to Mars.

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In order to build this, material and other equipment are needed to be shipped from Earth but this will take any important storage space so this is why a 3D printed design is needed for the mission's survival. 

With this new strategy, this can allow to build a whole habitat on Mars with just raw materials from the planet's surface along with recycled and no longer needed spacecraft parts that are essential in freeing up space to make room for more life sustaining provisions, according to NASA. 

The first phase of the contest involves a multi structural habitat challenge where architectural designs will be screened for 3D printing capabilities that can create a 1,000 square foot living habitat for four crew members of the Mars mission.

NASA will select the top 30 designs where it will be judged and a prize of US $50,000 will be given to the winner during the World Maker Faire 2015 in New York. According to Sam Ortega who is the program manager for NASA's Centennial Challenges, 3D printing technology is extremely crucial for the success of any deep space exploration mission.

The second phase of the contest called the Structural Member Competition will select technology proposals that can create housing components from native materials and/or recyclables.

During the third phase of the contest called the On-Site Habitat Competition, participants will be challenged to test their design and fabrication by demonstrating and testing their full scale habitat here on Earth that makes use of native materials combined with recyclables.

Each of the second and third phases of the challenge will have an award of US $1.1 million.

TagsNASA, 3-D Printed Habitat Challenge, NASA challenge design deep space habitat, NASA contest design 3D printed habitat mars, Mars, mars exploration, NASA Centennial Challenges, 3D Printing, 3D printing space exploration