The ASME Foundation & NASA Team Up with Star Trek for This Year’s Future Engineers Challenge

Entries are now being accepted for the latest Future Engineers Challenge. The competition, which has a Star Trek-related theme this year, asks students to create a digital model of a non-edible, food-related item that astronauts would be able to 3D print and use in the year 2050.

The Star Trek Replicator Challenge is the third in a series of Future Engineers competitions, sponsored by the ASME Foundation and NASA, which are intended to help teach K-12 students about 3D printing and engineering design. Since the Future Engineers program began in 2014, NASA has sent a 3D printer to the International Space Station and astronauts have subsequently successfully printed 21 plastic tools, containers, and test samples, including the winning designs from the first two Future Engineers Challenges.

This year, the focus will be on the sustainability of the 3D-printed items, according to Niki Werkheiser, NASA in-space manufacturing manager. “Sustainability will be a critical aspect of long duration space missions and will require off-planet manufacturing technologies to create all of the items our future astronauts need,” she said.

The Star Trek Replicator Challenge was specifically designed to encourage students to think about future long-duration space missions beyond the International Space Station by asking students to design 3D printable objects that will help astronauts eat nutritious meals in the year 2050. Examples of possible designs include hardware needed to grow and harvest plants to hardware needed to prepare, eat, and dispose of food.

The winners of the Star Trek Replicator Challenge will receive educational prizes including a trip to New York for a tour of the Space Shuttle Enterprise with an astronaut and eight 3D printers, which will be donated to the winner’s schools. Star Trek is also supplying a prize pack, the contents of which will be disclosed at a later date.

The deadline for entries is May 1, 2016. Interested students can learn more about this year’s Future Engineers Challenge, or sign up to participate, at www.FutureEngineers.org/StarTrek.