It's time to go back - to stay! Join the waste limitation management and recycling design challenge and create a sustainable water recycling system for the moon. The challenge begins fall of 2009. Entries due February 1, 2010. The first place team will win a trip to the Kennedy Space Center and more!
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If a one-liter bottle of water costs $20,000, what would you do? That may sound like a silly question but it's a real problem. Transporting supplies, including water, to the International Space Station (ISS) costs about $20,000 per kilogram!

In the third decade of this century, astronauts will be living and working on the Moon. Transporting water to the Moon for drinking, cooking, and cleaning will be far more difficult and expensive than carrying it to the ISS. What would you do?

Look around your classroom. Some of your students may become those future lunar astronauts. Certainly, some will be working in jobs that will support a future Moon base. Managing supplies of basic items, like water, will be a huge and exciting challenge.

But you and your students don't have to wait ten or more years to get involved. You can do it right now with NASA's Waste Limitation Management and Recycling Design Challenge (WLMR - DC)!

If you are a grade 5 to 8 teacher or a home schooler or science center or museum educator working with grade 5 to 8 students and are looking for real world challenges that meet science and mathematics content standards, WLMR - DC is for you!

Form development teams of up to 6 students and a teacher or a mentor. Design a water recycling system for the unique environment of the Moon. Test your system on a simulated wastewater stream and report your proposal and its results to NASA.

Just meeting the challenge will make your students and you winners but you might do better than that. The top team nationally will win an expense-paid trip to the NASA Kennedy Space Center for VIP tours, meetings with NASA scientists and engineers, and much more!

Classroom time is precious and every effort has been made to tie the challenge and supportive activities to your curriculum standards and expectations. We hope you and your students will enjoy this real word application experience!

Read on for more information and join the WLMR - DC!