Education Technology

About the mISSion imaginaTIon Challenge

Download the official Design Challenge packet here. It contains complete directions for participating and submitting solutions that adapt the systems that support life aboard the International Space Station (ISS) into processes that will make long-duration, deep-space exploration by humans possible.

frequently asked questions

How does the Challenge work?

  • Students and teachers will be presented with four challenges and asked to design a solution for each.
  • Teams may be formed. However, each team may be no more than five members.
  • A teacher/leader may sponsor more than one team.
  • Each design solution needs to be documented in the official Design Packet.

What are the mISSion imaginaTIon Challenge requirements?

For each of the four Challenges, individuals or teams must:

  • Post a video to Vimeo of students explaining their processes, their pathway to their product, and the final product, answering the following questions:
    • How did we collaborate? How does an individual answer these question?
    • How did we evaluate the work of other team members?
    • Why did we approach it this way?
    • How did we share it with others?
  • Written documentation explaining their processes, along with diagrams, drawings and other work to answer the same questions (above).

Upon completion of all four Design Challenges, with the students’ work entered into a single Design Notebook, submit a PDF of the notebook for review. You must be an adult to submit the notebook.

If you prefer, upload the notebook at the end of each Design Challenge. Use the same notebook for each challenge, so that at the end of the contest all four Design Challenge solutions are in the same document.

Deadline for submissions is May 2, 2016.

How do I submit Design Challenge solutions?

  • Each submission will be associated with a given email and subsequent submissions will overwrite previous attempts.
  • Please keep a saved copy of your Design Packet.
  • Each team will post a video that summarizes their solutions.
  • Videos should be no more than three minutes long and need to be posted to Vimeo.
  • Challengers will submit only the link in their Design Packet.
  • Submission file size needs to be less than 10mb.

What is the Design Challenge contest?

  • Each month, individuals/teams can document their progress on the challenges by Tweeting a picture, with a description and #mISSionimaginaTIon.
  • A winner will be picked at random and will receive a prize.
  • The mISSion imaginaTIon contest winner will only be selected from those applicants who completed all four challenges, submitted a completed Design Packet, and posted a summary video on YouTube.
  • The winner of mISSion imaginaTIon contest will receive a personalize Subject Matter Expert (SME) chat, a class set of TI technology.