Through the 2025 Blue Skies Competition, collegiate-level student teams will conceptualize novel aviation systems that can be applied to agriculture by 2035 or sooner with the goal of improving production, efficiency, environmental impact, and extreme weather/climate resilience.
Donor Name: National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA)
State: All States
County: All Counties
Type of Grant: Awards and Prizes
Deadline: 02/17/2025
Size of the Grant: $1000 to $10,000
Grant Duration: Grant Duration Not Mentioned
Details:
Teams are encouraged to consider high-potential technologies and systems that aren’t currently mainstream or highly regarded as becoming mainstream in the future and imagine beyond applying sensors to aviation systems.
This challenge seeks to investigate either new or improved aviation capabilities that, if developed further or approached differently, could modernize aviation capabilities in agriculture, increasing impact, safety, and ease of access to both these enabling systems and the products/services they ensure. For this competition, participants are asked to focus on cropland, rangeland, and livestock management. Forestry and aquaculture are excluded. Solutions should be aviation-centered.
2025 Competition Theme
The agriculture industry plays a vital role in providing food, fuel, and fiber for the global population. It not only sustains human life but also contributes significantly to the economy of many countries. However, the industry faces several challenges, including limited resources and growing demands to reduce agriculture’s environmental impact while increasing its climate resilience. With a growing world population, the demand for food continues to rise, putting pressure on available resources such as arable land, water, and energy. The changing climate exacerbates these challenges by leading to unpredictable weather patterns, extreme temperatures and natural disasters affecting crop yields and livestock. To ensure food security and sustainability in the face of these challenges, the agriculture industry must swiftly innovate and adapt to more efficient and resilient farming practices, embracing new technologies and promoting sustainability throughout the process.
NASA Aeronautics is dedicated to working with commercial, industry, and government partners in advancing aviation systems that could help modernize capabilities in agriculture as the industry adjusts to changes in productivity, efficiency, environmental impacts, and extreme weather/climate. Capabilities and opportunities for improvement include, but are not limited to:
- Cropland/Rangeland – surveyance, conservation, tracking, and inspection
- Pest and disease management
- Agriculture inspection prior to and following damaging natural or human-caused protectants
- Targeted application of fertilizers and protectants
- Agricultural essential variables, examples of NASA Acres EAV’s can be found here
- Autonomous or remotely piloted missions considered extremely risky for humans
- Livestock management
- Improved weather prediction update accuracy and frequency.
Funding Information
Award Funding for Finalist Teams Up to 8 finalist teams will be selected to present their 2025 Blue Skies concepts at NASA’s Armstrong Flight Research Center in late May 2025. Each team will be awarded $8,000 to facilitate each team’s full competition participation.
Eligibility Criteria
The Gateways to Blue Skies competition is open to full-time or part-time undergraduate and graduate students at an accredited U.S.-based community college, college, or university. Teams may also include senior capstone students, clubs, and/or multi-university teams. Multidisciplinary teams and teams from Minority Serving Institutions are highly encouraged to apply!
- University Teams Must Include:
- At a minimum, teams must contain one faculty advisor with a college/university affiliation at a lead U.S.-based institution, and 2 U.S. citizen (or lawful permanent resident) students from that lead U.S.-based college/university who work on the project and present at the culminating Blue Skies Forum.
- Team size is limited to a maximum of 6 student team members.
- A faculty advisor is encouraged to attend the Forum with each team.
- Special Eligibility Considerations:
- An individual may join more than one team.
- A faculty advisor may advise more than one team.
- A university may submit more than one proposal.
- Team members may not be federal employees acting within the scope of employment (this includes co-op students with civil servant status).
- The expectation is that Blue Skies projects are student-led initiatives (i.e., students are doing the work).
- Faculty take on the role as mentors, and if a team is selected as a finalist, help manage any monetary awards sent to the university.
- Blue Skies projects should originate in the academic environment, versus from a business or professional endeavor.
For more information, visit NASA.
