International Mission to Mars Engineering Design Competition
High School Online Competition
High Schoolers, Ready to Conquer Mars? Join the 2025 Mission to Mars Engineering Design Challenge!
The Mars Society is very proud to launch its Fourth Annual International Mission to Mars Engineering Design Competition for high school students aged 13-19 worldwide. This exciting virtual program invites students to take on a hands-on design challenge and explore the future of Mars exploration.
Running Monday through Friday from June 9 - July 18, 2025, the program features lectures and workshops led by top scientists and engineers from NASA, the aerospace industry, and global academia.
Participants will design a basic Mars surface mission lasting up to 18 months, covering key elements such as habitats, vehicles, scientific instruments, power systems, crew composition, mission objectives, and exploration plans. The challenge addresses the science, engineering, and operational hurdles of living and working on Mars.
Building on the success of past years, which welcomed students from across the world, this program continues to inspire young minds with its creative approach to science and engineering education.
To learn more and apply, visit [link]. Applications are due by May 15, 2025, at 5:00 PM PST. For questions, please reach out to Nicole Willett at nicolew@marssociety.org.
We encourage all students interested in space and Mars exploration to join this incredible program—an impressive addition to your college applications!
The Mars Society is launching its fourth annual International Mission to Mars Engineering Design Competition this summer for high school students from around the world. Students are encouraged to register online for this unique exploratory design challenge.
If you have any questions, email Nicole Willett, The Mars Society's Director of Education, at Nicolew@marssociety.org
Course Description:
Modeled on the approach taken in engineering design courses at some of the best global universities, the virtual program will involve morning and afternoon sessions (Monday-Friday) from June 3rd - July 12th, 2024, involving lectures with leading scientists and engineers from NASA, the aerospace industry, and the academic community.
Course Overview:
Students are tasked with designing a Mars surface mission of up to 18 months. This mission will include designing its habitat, surface vehicles, scientific instruments, power system and other equipment and supplies, crew size and composition, mission location, scientific objectives, rations, duration, and exploration plan. Students will keep the following major factors in mind: Science, Engineering, and Human Operational Challenges.
Details on Previous Year’s Programs
The past two summers, the Mars Society conducted a truly groundbreaking educational program for over 100 high school students from around the world, modeled on the approach taken in engineering design courses at some of the best universities in the world.
With this six-week virtual program, the Mars Society looks to make educational history by demonstrating the value of a new and much more creative way to teach science and engineering at the secondary school level than is currently being practiced.
Tuition fee for the course was nominal, making it possible for students of all economic levels to participate.
The first cohort represented a diverse and multicultural group of 40 high-school age students from around the world who were organized into five teams based on their time zones. Students hailed from the U.S., Canada, Germany, Poland, the United Arab Emirates, Peru, the Philippines, Singapore and India.
Reference Files and Videos
Watch On-Demand both this year’s and last year’s daily lectures.
Rubric & FAQ
Challenge: Design a human Mars mission.
Purpose: Accomplish as much scientific exploration as possible.
Your team is designing a Mars surface mission which will include designing its habitat, surface vehicles, scientific instruments, power system and other equipment and supplies, crew size and composition, mission location, scientific objectives, rations, duration, and exploration plan.
Keep four major factors in mind: Science, Engineering, Human Operational Challenges, and Cost. What are your priorities?
Your team should be divided into 3 groups, Science, Engineering, and Human Operations.
For your team's consideration-
Time on Surface: up to 1.5 years
Weight: 30 metric tons (not to include transport there or back)
You may split the weight in two for separate launches
Include in weight-hab, life support, supplies, instrument, vehicles, crew, consumables, consider a margin.
Crew: Up to 6 Marsonauts
Who should be in the crew? What are their skills and what is their training? What is their compatibility? Is there a commander? What type of space suits will they need?
Water: How much water will your crew need? How will the crew get the water?
Food: How is the crew going to eat? Where will the food come from?
Landing site: Your choice
Equipment and vehicles should take into account the landing site terrain and fuel type.
Power: What type of power supply would you use?
Food: Bring it or grow it? Or both?
You should have a certain amount of redundancy among crew and equipment
Hab diameter max: 8m for a rigid structure, larger for an inflatable, life support in the hab, lab space vs living space.
Cost: Take the equipment into account when deciding the amount you can spend.
Disputes: How will your team resolve disputes?
Exploration possibilities:
Geology
Climatology
Paleontology (possibility of past life)
Astrobiology (possible present life)
Resources for future use (example: precious metals)
How do you reach the best possible overall design? This will generally include a compromise between optimizing the various features of your design.
Design Report
- Due at the end of the 4th week
Designs are to be written in a report format and submitted by the deadline.
25 page limit
12 font
Standard margins
3 sections in the report-Science, Engineering, and Human Operations (these do not have to be even per section)
Each team member is responsible to write their own portion of the report
You may use publicly available images or draw your own
Reference your information (this is not included in the 25 pages)
Presentations & Debates
In the first round on Monday July 8th, you will have 30 minutes to present your design verbally and with any visuals you would like to share.
In the second round on Wednesday July 10th, each team will have 30 minutes to critique other teams’ designs, pointing out any flaws they see. They can choose to critique any of the other teams’ designs, and there is no limitation of how many or how few criticisms they can level, other than they have a time limit of 30 mins to do so.
In the third round on Friday July 12th, each team has 30 minutes to defend their designs from the criticisms leveled in round 2. This is essentially the “closing argument” of your design and the final component on which you will be judged.
After Round 3, you will be provided with feedback on your design by the judges to allow you to revise your final paper prior to publication in the book form by the Mars Society. This does not affect the scoring you will receive based on the initially submitted paper and the presentation rounds.
Scoring
The judging is 100 points on the following merits:
40 Science
40 Engineering
20 Human Factors/Operational
Resources
Previous and this year's lectures are now on Youtube.
You will be provided other materials to review in the coming days. We will link more information to this document.
Dr. Robert Zubrin’s Lecture on Mars Direct (Required Viewing)
Please access Marspedia for more information about Mars!
Some articles that may be helpful:
Feel free to browse the site and utilize the appropriate articles.
FAQ
1) Can we land additional personnel for manning more research missions?
No, you are limited to 6 crew members. You can have anywhere from 1 to 6 crewmembers on your mission. (However, I personally would not want to go to Mars by myself!!)
2) Can we assume to have a low orbit high-capacity communication system in place?
Yes, there is already a communication capability in place in the form of several Mars orbiters: MAVEN, the Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter, Mars Express, and the 2001 Mars Odyssey which is still active as of today! You can assume use of all of these assets for communication back to earth and between elements of your mission.
3) Should we ignore any other space missions (and act as nobody else is doing space research)
You are able to utilize other space missions active as of today (such as the communication question above) as well as assume that you have transportation to Mars of your 30 metric tons of cargo.
4) Could we include studying Mars moons as a scientific target?
Yes.
5) Are there any extra points if we design devices that can last much longer than 1,5 year of the mission?
There are no “Extra Points” in our competition. All elements of your proposed mission will be scored per the above criteria. If your mission elements can continue beyond the timeframe of your mission, it’s more desirable (and could factor into what the judges think about your overall design) but not required.
6) Would there be a possibility to increase page limit of final document?
No, the page limit is 25 including any lists of references (but not the text of the references themselves).
7) Is there a new syllabus available somewhere after extending the time for self-organized activities?
The syllabus is linked above, and is the only syllabus for this course. We have made some recent updates to the dates & activities in Phase 3, so please continue to reference this document.
8) The length of the document is limited to 25 pages, what does it not include: Annexes, graphs, calculations, references??
It includes all of those things except the text of any references. You make a list of your references (with hyperlinks to them) and that is included in your 25 pages.
Any other questions? Email Nicole