These Are the Winners of the 3D Printed Mars Habitat Design Contest

NASA and the National Additive Manufacturing Innovation Institute, America Makes, had launched the 3D Printed Habitat Challenge, that challenges designers to construct habitat for deep space exploration, back in May last year.

The competition is part of NASA’s Centennial Challenges program and was launched to advance the additive construction technology in order to create sustainable housing solutions on earth and beyond. NASA has picked three wining designs out of 30 finalists. The first-place award of $ 25,000 went to Team Space Exploration Architecture and Clouds Architecture Office for their “Mars Ice House” design. In second came Team Gamma, followed by Team LavaHive.

Centennial Challenges Program Manager Monsi Roman said: “The creativity and depth of the designs we’ve seen have impressed us. These teams were not only imaginative and artistic with their entries, but they also really took into account the life-dependent functionality our future space explorers will need in an off-Earth habitat.”