The NASA Flight Opportunities program has selected three teams as winners of the NASA TechLeap Prize - Universal Payload Interface Challenge:
AEGIS AEROSPACE
Easy-to-use Payload Interoperable Integration Carrier (EPIIC)
ECOATOMS
Apparatus for Nominal Integration with Minimal Adaptations (A.N.I.M.A.)
UCLA SPACE Institute – ELFIN Student Team
Software-Defined Payload Interface (SDPI)
The Universal Payload Interface Challenge sought solutions to seamlessly adapt a wide range of space techs for testing aboard a variety of commercial suborbital vehicles, orbital platforms, and planetary landers. Reducing the costs and complexity of payload integration will help accelerate the pace of technology maturation to support future space exploration missions.
The winning teams will develop their ideas to streamline flight testing of new space technologies. Each team has the opportunity to win prizes up to $650,000 and the chance to integrate their solution with a NASA-provided payload onto a NASA-assigned flight vehicle.
We look forward to seeing the systems they develop, with the goal of seamlessly adapting a wide range of payloads — techs, lab instruments, and scientific experiments — onto various commercial suborbital vehicles, orbital platforms, and planetary landers. Let’s get to flight faster!
