Student Competition Yields Prize-Winning Mars Plans

The 20th Annual International Space Settlement Design Competition challenged teams to design human habitats on Mars in just 24 hours. The team from the Amity International School in India came up with the idea for a city of 24,000 people located inside a crater, made mostly of transparent aluminium oxinitride. The facility as planned would cost billions to create, but more importantly than its practical application, it fulfills the competition’s goal of giving high school students real-world experience on industrial and engineering challenges.

The space agency is also calling for freelance developers to create apps that could help astronauts in various capacities.

In other news, Google’s rearranged Project Wing aircraft may have skirted the U.S. ban on commercial drones by using a NASA exception usually meant for government agencies.