The Phoenix Space LaunchPad Challenge is open to those who will be 15 to 19 years old at any point between 30 April and 10 November 2022. Only one entry per person is permitted. A person may not be on more than one team. There is no cost to participate in this competition.
Participants under the age of 18 on 10 November 2022 must obtain written parental or guardian consent to compete in the LaunchPad Challenge. The consent form must be signed and returned to Phoenix Space before the team’s work will be judged. The deadline to submit the form is 10 September 2022. The Parental Consent form may be downloaded here. An Arabic language version of the form is here.
Here are the key steps for competing in the LaunchPad Challenge.
A team may choose to have a mentor to support them and offer guidance.
The role of the mentor is to suggest research methods and resources, serve as a sounding board for ideas, and offer feedback and guidance on preparing your entry. The mentor cannot generate original ideas, or do any of the actual work for you. All original ideas and work must be done by the team members themselves. Mentors are most commonly teachers or others with whom you have an academic or professional relationship. If you have a mentor, you will enter their information when you register the team. You can also add a mentor later. Just let us know via email at launchpad@phoenixspace.org.
We recommend you find an adult that has experience in a technical subject. This could be mathematics, mechanical or aeronautical engineering, physics, material science, astronomy, or any other relevant discipline. We recommend that the mentor has the time and the commitment to review your ideas and provide you with feedback over the summer, and also be able to coach you if you make it through to the semi-finals or finals.
A mentor should guide you and help you focus on crucial aspects of whatever problem and solution you work on, and use their advanced knowledge to help steer you away from time-consuming and irrelevant research. The mentor should help you to prioritize the most salient information in your submissions, and point you in the right direction when conducting research. Mentors should review your work with some regularity to ensure that it is being improved and that it will be ready for submission by the deadline.
A mentor should under no circumstances write or structure the submissions themselves, or research and provide information for you.
We recommend that you speak to your own science teacher, search local colleges and universities for academics, or contact a local aeronautics or astronomy club. The internet is full of forums such as StackOverflow and Reddit, where experts regularly post; you could consider approaching a respected member of a forum with relevant knowledge and ask them.
You will research and define a problem statement from one of five topic areas and develop a logic-driven, researched solution to the chosen problem.
What earthly organism will the pioneer team bring to insure success of the Martian settlement? Choose a terrestrial organism that will be essential to the setup and/or maintenance of the camp. Describe how the organism will be transported, grown and used to establish a self-sustaining ecosystem.
The Perseverance mission has proven that ultra-light helicopter aircraft can fly in Mars’ atmosphere. How will a fleet of ten solar powered autonomous drones be used to establish, support, and grow a martian settlement?
Propose a physical experiment that takes advantage of the vastly different martian conditions and answer long pondered scientific questions. Consider logistical requirements (transport from earth) size (less than 1000kg) and support (carried out by a single pioneer having other required duties). Explain the significance, the hypothesis, the apparatus, the operation, and the analysis of the proposed procedure.
Over time, a large Martian community will have its own social systems due to the specific environmental challenges. Taking inspiration from recent earthly programs, how would we integrate new arrivals to the Martian community?
Consider and describe:
In the seventy years of human space exploration we have left about 27,000 objects that are now orbiting the earth. About 4,500 of these objects are working satellites providing intended information and services, but the rest are castoffs such as spent rocket boosters, obsolete satellites, or just parts that couldn’t safely be returned. This space trash causes several challenges, including navigating a path without collision. It is conceivable that it may be “easy” to leave items in the much smaller Martian orbit. Additionally we are likely to use more satellites to aid the Martian communities with a variety of applications.
Knowing about the Earthly space trash problem, how might we better manage manmade objects in orbit. This could include limiting what gets into orbit, but more importantly how would spacecraft arriving and leaving from Mars determine a path through the orbiting items.
Resources:
Want some more inspiration? View this video about last year’s topics , created by Alex Dutton, our Head of Education. You can also check out this video made for us by Dr. Simon Foster of Imperial College, which gives an overview on the process, challenges, and considerations for getting to and living on Mars. Dr. Foster also created a documentary several years ago entitled “How to Put a Human on Mars” that may help inspire you.
There are numerous resources available to conduct research into identifying both your problem and proposed solution. Here are a few that we have pulled together to get you started. Remember that you’ll need to cite the sources you use for developing your solution.
Title: “Mars: Our Future on the Red Planet” (National Geographic Books, 2016)
Author(s): Leonard David
Description: The next frontier in space exploration is Mars, the red planet. National Geographic goes years fast-forward to take a peek into the gravity-defying world of outer space with stunning photography, amazing visuals, and strong science. This book dramatizes the next 25 years as humans land on and learn to live on Mars. Filled with vivid photographs taken on Earth, in space, and on Mars; arresting maps; and commentary from the world’s top planetary scientists, this fascinating book will take you millions of miles away—and decades into the future—to our next home in the solar system. [From Amazon]
Why it will be helpful: This is a book for non-specialists which includes inspiration and details about the planned and theorised missions to the red planet. It will be a good overview before starting onto more specific topics
Title: Mars Colonies
Author(s): Mars Society
Description: This book contains the entries to the Mars Society’s own competition where entrants had to design a permanent settlement for 1000 people on the Martian surface. Each entry must detail solutions to habitation, economics, life-support, transport, energy creation and consumption.
Why it will be helpful: Each team’s entry has at least one area of knowledge they know well and have explored in great detail. They have already thought through many problems that Martian settlers will face – even if you don’t agree with their solutions, the descriptions of various problems can be very useful.
Title: How to Live on Mars
Author(s): Robert Zubrin
Description: A light-hearted journey through the eyes of a fictional future Martian. Full of irony, individualism and gritty realism, this book takes the reader through different stages of establishing a successful (and lucrative) life on Mars.
Why it will be helpful: There is little utopian dreaming or technological wizardry in this book, but it emphasises the absolute necessity of reliable, cost-effective, and proven technology and techniques.
Title: Sailing Alone Around The World
Author(s): Joshua Slocum
Description: This is the fascinating autobiographical account of the first solo circumnavigation of the globe by Nova Scotian Joshua Slocum (who never learned to swim!).
Why it will be helpful: Although not about space per se, it gives insight into the preparations, skill and psychology required to tackle a new feat of human exploration.
Title: The Martian
Author(s): Andy Weir
Description: This fictional account of a stranded Martian was adapted into a 2015 Hollywood movie with Matt Damon. A stranded Martian must single-handedly face the problems of Mars and develop life-support and transport from scratch.
Why it will be helpful: This gripping novel will give you a quick tour of the dangers of the Martian world, and how technological solutions and rigorous training can triumph over them.
Description: The Mars Society is a large, non-governmental organization which aims to collect and develop ideas for the eventual permanent settlement of Mars. They hold regular events, have a huge number of members from across the world and produce books, videos, talks and other media discussing all aspects of a Mars mission.
Why it will be helpful: This website will serve as an excellent place to understand the basic facts, challenges and available technology as well as to find specialists and links to in-depth research.
Description: A wiki containing 800 articles on Mars and relevant technology, developed by the Mars Society and Mars Foundation.
Why it will be helpful: This wiki is still in development and lacks references in many cases, but it will serve as a useful introduction alongside the Mars Society website.
Description: This website details information about Mars and NASA’s past, present and future missions to the red planet. It includes NASA’s science goals, information on the planet and its atmosphere, astrobiological information and a timeline.
Why it will be helpful: NASA has launched several missions to Mars and NASA members are a scientific authority in the field. Here you will find detailed and reputable information.
www.esa.int/Science_Exploration/Human_and_Robotic_Exploration/Exploration/Mars_sample_return
The initial submission includes a written document and brief video. The entry deadline for this submission is 23:59 hrs Central European Time on 10 September 2022.
The written document must be a maximum of 4 pages of content. Additionally, it should include a title page, team bio page, and a reference page.
The title page should contain the Solution Title, team name, team member names, email address of each team member, location of team, and the URL to the short video that the team has prepared. The Solution Title should be brief and informative. The Team Name should be what the team used when they registered.. The names of team members should include both first and last names. Please identify which member is the team leader (the person who registered the team). Location should include both country and the city of each team member. Team members are permitted to be located in different geographical locations as long as they have the means to collaborate effectively in a remote manner.
This is the main portion of your entry and presents your problem and solution. It should be 4 pages maximum and structured into the sections below. Please use the exact section titles below to structure your entry.
Include a brief biography of team members, their interests, and ambitions.
Alongside your written submissions, we would like each team to create a short video promoting and introducing their solution.
We don’t want a video version of the information included in the written submission, we want to go for a short and exciting video in the style of an ‘elevator pitch’.
Imagine one day you step into an elevator and find yourself standing next to the chief scientist or engineer for a Mars base. You’ve read all of their books, watched all their lectures and you’re thrilled to be in the same space as them, and you desperately want to share your ideas for a solution on Mars with them. You have just 2 minutes to convince them to read your written submission.
Your video should:
You will upload your video to the video-sharing platform of your choice (YouTube preferred) and include a link to the video on the title page of your written report. Please make sure that a log-in is not required to view the video.
For those who advance to the semi-final round, your task is to take your initial idea and impress us with the depth of your research and thinking – it’s time to enhance your entry! While your initial entry was about the idea, this round’s update is about the details. This is where you’ll really work to impress the judges with your thinking.
In this phase of the competition, you will expand on your research project ideas and go into much more depth. There are numerous ways in which you could expand your submission, depending on your topic area and problem. Below are a few examples:
The key takeaway for the judges when they see your expanded solution is this: “This team had a great initial idea, and now they have shared enough details about it that I have a very clear idea of how they expect to make it work.”
Please look at the example we have included below to see how our initial research proposal was expanded to include different areas, with descriptions of how and why we could carry them out.
Here are some key formatting, structural, and submission considerations for your revised entry:
The solution should be submitted in an unlocked PDF document under 8 MB. The name of the file should be “LaunchPad2022_TeamName_TeamLeaderFirstName_TeamLeaderLastName_SEMI-FINAL”.
We will send you instructions via email on how to submit your semi-final revision.
The deadline to send the semi-final submission is 19 October, 2022, at 23:59hrs Central European Time.
The five finalist teams will create a brief presentation which will be presented live via Zoom webinar to the senior judging panel on 7 November. This presentation will be given in English and should be in either a Microsoft PowerPoint or Google Slides format.
The purpose of the presentation is to deliver a summary of your research, solution, thought process, and evaluation of its pros and cons in a short, clear, and stimulating talk. The judges will have already read your submissions, so there is no need to include tedious tables of figures, compare numerous graphs, etc. This is your opportunity to sell your idea and attract the attention it deserves, conveying to the judges that this is a legitimate problem that needs to be solved for, and how your solution is the way to do it.
On joining the call, you should introduce your team and your motivation before presenting with the aid of slides. You should discuss both your entry as well as the process by which you arrived at it. You will have 15 minutes maximum to do this. We strongly recommend you keep the slides light on words – judges will not want to listen to you read off slides verbatim and too many words can be a distraction.
Your presentation will be in English and should include the following areas:
After you present your work, you will be asked questions about your work, findings, and ideas by the judges, which you will need to respond to. The judges might also give suggestions for the development of the solution and you might be asked to respond.
The agenda and timing of the final presentation session are as follows:
You will be cut off at 15 minutes, so please do not go over time.
Please see the Judging Criteria section of this page for information on how you will be scored. You can also find a sample presentation in the Sample Entries section.
Need some ideas on what your submission and video should look like? Here are a few sample submissions to get you started.
Coming soon!
The LaunchPad Challenge is a conceptual competition, and entrants will be judged on the quality of their thought above all else. There are three phases to the competition. Here are the details on scoring for each phase.
After submission, each entry will be assessed by a panel of three junior judges and will be scored in two areas: the written submission and the brief video. A maximum score of 40 points per entry per judge is possible: 30 from the written portion and 10 from the video. An entry’s total score in this phase can range from 0 to 120, based on three scores of up to 40 points each. The top 20 scores will advance to the competition semi-finals.
The following categories will be used by judges to score each written submission. An entry’s written score can range from 0 (minimum) to 30 (maximum).
The following categories will be used by judges to score each video submission. An entry’s video score can range from 0 (minimum) to 10 (maximum).
The senior judging panel will assess and score the revised submissions of the 20 semi-finalists. The five judges will use the same judging criteria that were used in the initial entry scoring. Each semi-final entry will receive 5 scores of up to 40 points each, for a maximum score of 200 points.
Each semi-finalist team will have their semi-final score (of up to 200 points) added to their initial entry score (of up to 120 points). For example, a team that had an initial score of 110 points and a semi-final score of 170 points, would have a combined score of 280 points.
The top 5 combined scores among the semi-finalists will advance to the competition finals.
The senior judging panel will assess the final presentations made via webinar and rank the performance of the 5 teams against each other. The teams will be ranked in 4 areas and will be ranked 1 (worst) to 5 (best) in each area, relative to each other. A team will receive a score ranging from 4-20 from each judge, and the scores of the 5 judges will be added together for a total score of 20-100. That score is then multiplied by 3 to give it the highest weighting of any of the three stage scores.
The following categories will be used by judges to rank each presentation:
A team’s final score will be calculated as:
Initial Entry Score (up to 120 points) + Semi-final Score (up to 200 points) + Finals score (up to 300 points) = Total Score (up to 620 points)
The competition winner will be the team with the highest Total Score, with the 4 other finalist teams ranked in order from second to fifth place based on descending Total Score.
Phoenix Space Education Limited is a company registered in England and Wales, Company Number: 12340748.
Phoenix Space is an Adopted Charity of Prospero World – a UK Registered Charity: 1163952.
