NASA Contest Challenges Young Students to Build Water Recyling System for the Moon

Can children in grade school or middle school create a water recycling system that astronauts could use on the moon? NASA wants to find out, and has announced a national competition with just that challenge.

Janet Dotzauer, a program specialist with the Virginia Space Grant Consortium, of which Old Dominion University is a member, is promoting the contest to educators throughout Virginia.

The contest is part of NASA's Waste Limitation Management and Recycling Design Challenge and the specific goal is to "create a sustainable water recycling system for the Moon." NASA's poster publicizing the contest refers to Moon exploration and declares, "It's time to go back - to stay!"

Teachers or other educators responsible for Grades 5 through 8 are asked to form small teams of students for this engineering project, which will begin this fall. The goal is to design and test a water recycling system for the Moon and submit the results to NASA by Feb. 1 of next year.

The first place team will win a trip to the Kennedy Space Center in Florida.

For more information and contest rules, visit http://wlmr.nasa.gov. Dotzauer said competitions such as this support the consortium's mission to promote science, technology, engineering, math and geography experiences for a broad range of students. She can be contacted at jdotzaue@odu.edu.