We have the first winners of NASA's Cube Quest Challenge

By Christopher Waldeck

NASA has awarded the first winners of the first round of it’s Cube Quest challenge. The entire challenge is a four ground tournament that aims to build flight qualified, small satellites, capable of advanced communications and propulsion near and beyond the moon. Teams that achieve the highest score will win a 5.5 million prize purse in NASA’s first ever in space challenge. Cube Quest is part of NASA’s Centennial Challenges Program, which accelerates technology by engaging non-traditional sources in competition. The ground tournaments started this past April and the first one just officially ended on August 26, 2015.


Here are the standings from NASA for the first ground experiment of the tournament.


The ground tournaments are a series of ground-based checkpoints that allow the judges to review the teams’ progress and to incentivize advancement with intermediate awards.

At Ground Tournament 1, (GT), 13 teams presented their spacecraft and mission designs to a panel of judges from NASA, industry and academia. Judges assessed all the team submissions — engineering designs, plans, analysis and models — as well as presentations by each team. Judges award points ranging from 0 to 5, 5 being exceeds expectations or analysis indicates excellent likelihood of achievement.


The five top-scoring teams for GT-1 are:

1. Team Miles of Tampa, Florida

2. MIT KitCube of Cambridge, Massachusetts

3. Cislunar Explorers of Ithaca, New York

4. Novel Engineering of Cocoa Beach, Florida

5. Ragnarok Industries of Wilmington, Delaware


In February 2016, G-2 or ground experiment 2 is set to begin and will take place in Cambridge Massachusetts. MonsiRoman, program manager of NASA’s Centennial Challenges believes that “Cubesats are a technology with commercial space potential. For 10 years, we have supported challenges that research the innovative solutions needed for NASA’s future exploration goals, and this event is one of many steps toward our journey to Mars and beyond.”

I’d like to especially congratulate Wesley Faler who is the lead on Team Miles and I had the pleasure of interviewing him after the Small Satellite Space Conference in Utah. This interview will be posted later this week regarding the win and the importance of small satellites. Team Miles won the first tournament and are currently ahead in the rankings. They’ll have to keep this momentum going through four more ground checkpoints in order to win the chance of deep space exploration with small satellites. I'd also like to congratulate NASA on seeing so much success so far and having so many talented people working on this initiative.