Would you pay $250,000 for a pair of gloves? That's what's NASA is offering to the winners of its Astronaut Glove Challenge.
Bending fingers inside pressurised gloves in space is difficult – a day's worth of precision work often results in bruises, abrasions and damaged fingernails. So NASA is holding a competition this week in Titusville, Florida. At least two teams are expected to compete. Among them will be engineer Peter Homer, who took home $200,000 at the first challenge in 2007 and is now developing his glove for use on suborbital flights.
Unlike the previous competition, this year's competitors have been asked to include the glove's outermost layer, the thermal micrometeoroid garment. This layer is designed to provide insulation from temperature swings and solar radiation and to protect against micrometeoroids and space debris.
To qualify for a prize, competing gloves will have to better the performance of NASA's current model. Gloves will be evaluated on how easily they can be bent while pressurised and how well competitors are able to perform 30 minutes of dexterity tests.
The gloves will also be filled with water to test their strength.
NASA will award $250,000 to the top performer and $100,000 to the runner-up. An additional $50,000 will go to the best outer layer design.
If all the prize money is not claimed, it may be reused in another round of the glove competition. But NASA could also put the funds toward a new competition, says Andrew Petro, Centennial Challenge programme manager at NASA headquarters in Washington DC. The glove challenge is one of six incentive prizes recently offered by the agency, but more may be on the way. "We expect to start one new one this year, if not several, depending on funding," Petro says.
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Have your say
How about we use all those leftover Michael Jackson gloves, the astronauts deserve a little bling!
The problem is that sequins perform poorly against micro meteorites, Also due to the porous nature of the material used, when exposed to a vacuum the suit decompresses causing the astronaut do die within seconds.
Nothing gets past you Brandon lol
thats rude
Why so Serious?
Actually, while it wouldn't be suitable for part of the pressure holding part of the glove... the sequins could provide enhances protection while still remaining flexible... kinda like dragon skin... you might be onto something...
*runs to the patent office*
@Troy H.
Cool, did you invent a dragon?
If he works for SpaceX he might have...
Then they would have to add the following tests:
1. Grabbing the crotch while shouting "Hoooooo"
2. Moon walking while wearing a full space suit
3. Removing a fedora from the top of the space helmet, then throwing it like a frisbee
Unfortunately, the first time an astronaut stepped into space, he would realize that he needed gloves for *both* hands!
I suspect the main problem arising in the design of the gloves, is the conflict between the fact that the body is pressurised, and the skin is elastic and prestretched, and all these glove designs have this covering of multiple layers of inflexible restrictive frictional multilayer material. Present designs have trouble with pressure because they are like balloons, as they flex, they change volume, and so the air pressure inside forces it to flex back. What might end up being needed is a pin tactile waldo mechanism, where the hand and fingers are in a flexural mechanism within the ,palm, of the glove, but a variation on a braile reader is used to pass direct pressure sensations to the fingertips?
Or we could say that gloves are too bulky, and accept a finger impact at the rate of one a year of operation equivalent, and thus be able to use lightweight skintight gloves with armor only round the palm?
Fingertip accuracy and armour plating are always going to be a conflict of intrests, as its the armour design and implementation that the limitation, not the glove as such.
Still, anything to move things forward, and add to the $10 thousand leather and ceramic plate bikers outfit to hopefully end up with space tourist and motobike courier capable of walking away from any situation. At this rate, even a straight from orbit jump.
Virgin Galactic better start putting the orders in.
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