One of our team members participates in NASA INSPIRE, a great STEM program that offers online and experiential learning opportunities for high school students. Among the great resources provided by NASA INSPIRE is a listing of ongoing STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering and Math) contests.  We thought TDT readers might enjoy learning about some of them, too:

• 2009-2010 Life and Work on the Moon Art and Design Contest NASA invites high school and college students from all areas of study, including the arts, industrial design, architecture and computer design, to submit their work on the theme “Life and Work on the Moon.” Artists are encouraged to collaborate with science and engineering students. Such collaboration is not required but would help to ensure that the work’s subject is valid for the moon’s harsh environment.

• 2009-2010 Fundamental Aeronautics Student Competitions The Fundamental Aeronautics Program has announced its new competitions for the academic year. Students from high school grades through graduate school are invited to research and design an amphibious tiltrotor vehicle with civilian applications. The competition has two divisions: High School and College/University. Teams or individuals may enter either contest, and the program encourages interdisciplinary partnerships. High school participants must be enrolled in an accredited high school, secondary school or home school. For the high school division, a notice of intent is requested by Dec. 15, 2009. Final projects are due March 1, 2010.

• Sixteenth Annual International Space Settlement Design Competition This contest puts high school students in the shoes of aerospace industry engineers designing a city in space that will be a home for over 10,000 people. Student engineers demonstrate creativity, technical competence, management skills, environmental knowledge, space, teamwork, and presentation techniques to conquer the problems inherent in siting and designing a Space Settlement (aka Space Colony). Each year the Competition organizers develop a new design concept with its own special requirements. Contest teams work together to create a 40-page report (see samples from index) that addresses the issues and communicates their ideas and designs. The prize: Twelve finalist teams from around the world are selected to compete with a new scenario in a live Competition at NASA Johnson Space Center in Houston, Texas, with real engineers sharing their knowledge and experience in both engineering and management.

• 2010 Team America Rocketry Challenge The rules for TARC 2010 offer a new kind of challenge to the student teams, forcing even teams that may have entered TARC previously to go “back to the drawing board” and learn some new rocketry skills. While the flight goal remains flying an egg to a precise altitude (825 feet this year) and duration, the teams this year will be required to use a completely different type of recovery device to return the egg and altimeter: a streamer rather than a parachute. The techniques for achieving the duration goal with a streamer are quite different; it’s harder, and it will put a new emphasis on protecting the fragile egg payload. TARC 2010 registration opens on September 2, 2009.

Find more STEM competitions at Cogito: http://www.cogito.org/programs/programslist.aspx?competitions and make the most of your techy tendencies!