What Epic Challenge?

Epic Challenge is
  • a learning program that was first developed by National Aeronautics and Space Administration, better known as NASA. 
  • The main idea of the program is to help students to develop their scientific understanding and skills by coming up with creative solutions to real-world problems. This is achieved by using the Innovative Conceptual Engineering Design (ICED) methodology developed by Dr. Charles Camarda, NASA astronaut, Senior Advisor of Innovation and the man behind Epic Challenge.
  • This year’s Epic Challenge is all about sustaining human life on Mars. Our sister group is developing a computer program that can be used to simulate events happening in the hypothetical Mars colony. Our goal is to come up with a way to grow edible plants in a foreign planet. Both projects are fascinating and equally important parts in the process of getting astronauts on Mars. 

What ICED?
  • ICED, Innovative Conceptual Engineering Design methodology, is an innovation methodology that was first developed to educate NASA’s engineers and help them to come up with practical but original solutions to different problems. ICED has several steps, starting with problem immersion and going through ideation and evaluation, analysis, testing, designing and finally prototyping. 
  • For us ICED is the basis of all of our work. We follow the steps and try to figure out a way to make the most out of our resources. Whatever the situation might be, the methodology is always present in one way or another. 
What is BioMars actually doing?

Our Bio-Mars mission is epic to the core. In only one short year we are going to design and build a prototype of a greenhouse that can sustain plantation on planet Mars. It’s not an easy task considering that in order to work, our prototype has to:
- only contain materials accessible in Mars
- gather enough sunlight to make the plants grow 225 300 000 km from Earth
- protect plants from harmful radiation and meteorites
- maintain suitable temperature for the plants
And those are not even all of the problems we have to solve. Our mission is without a doubt going to require time, effort and lots of patience. But that isn’t going to stop us. To quote a science fiction author Robert A. Heinlein; "everything is theoretically impossible until it’s done."

So hold on tight and join us on our Epic journey to Mars!

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