NASA announced on Sunday the opening of its Moon Base Student Challenge, a $1 million competition inviting student teams from U.S. high schools and post-secondary institutions to submit designs for a Moon base. The announcement was made during a MAX POWER event at the Kennedy Space Center Visitor Complex in Florida.

The initiative, framed by the agency as a Golden Age of Science, aims to gather ideas from the next generation of engineers and scientists for a future sustained human presence on the Moon. The available material does not detail the judging criteria, the schedule of phases or how the prizes will be distributed among participating teams.

The challenge adds to the outreach and talent-attraction efforts NASA is carrying out around the Artemis programme, which aims to return astronauts to the lunar surface and lay the groundwork for prolonged exploration. The agency has not yet specified whether the winning proposals will feed into the actual engineering plans for the base.