NASA Centennial Challenges

NASA Centennial Challenges sits under NASA, the US federal civil space agency, and is administered through the Space Technology Mission Directorate's prizes and crowdsourcing work. It exists to put prize money behind hard engineering problems that NASA wants solved. The program is open to US citizens, permanent residents, and US-incorporated entities, including universities, nonprofits, companies, and individual inventors. Government employees and federally funded R&D centers are restricted. Prize awards typically range from $250,000 to more than $5 million per challenge, and teams keep their intellectual property. Competitions often move through concept, prototype, and demo stages. The strongest entries are concrete, buildable, and easy to judge against the challenge rules. This is a fit for teams that can move from design to hardware or a working prototype and are comfortable competing in a one-off format rather than a standing grant cycle. Each challenge launches on its own schedule, so applicants need to watch the specific challenge announcement rather than the parent program.