HOUSTON NASA is challenging schoolchildren to protect their future ride into space.

NASA's new Exploration Design Challenge, announced Monday (March 11) during an event at the Johnson Space Center here, engages U.S. students in kindergarten through high school in helping to solve the known problem of increased radiation exposure encountered on flights into deep space.

"If not all of us, most of us remember the immortal words associated with the 1970 Apollo 13 mission, 'Houston, we have a problem," NASA Administrator Charles Bolden said, standing before a mockup of the agency's new Orion crew capsule. "Today, we are here to announce an effort in partnership with Lockheed Martin and the young people of America that will allow us to take about a year from now to proclaim, 'Houston, we have a solution.'"

Through teacher-led classroom activities and, for the older entrants, access to the resources to design and perhaps build and then fly into space a prototype radiation shield, students from across the nation will be able to contribute to the first flight of the Orion Multi-Purpose Crew Vehicle, the Exploration Flight Test (EFT-1), targetedfor launch in September 2014. [How NASA's 1st Orion Test Flight Works (Video)]

"When Orion takes its first flight in 2014, that's next year, it'll travel farther into space than any spacecraft developed for human spaceflight in the 40 years since our astronauts returned from the moon," Bolden said. "This will require new technologies, including new ways to keep astronauts safe from deep space radiation. That is the purpose of this challenge and we're excited that American students will be helping us solve that problem."

Banking on student designs

The EFT-1 mission will launch from Cape Canaveral, Fla., on a United Launch Alliance Delta 4-Heavy rocket, which will boost an unmanned Orion capsule on a two-orbit flight around the Earth. Once in space, the craft will rise to more than 3,600 miles (5,800 kilometers) above the planet 15 times higher than the International Space Station prior to turning around to come home to perform a high-energy test of its heat shield.

The elliptical orbit that the Orion will follow will result in the craft lingering in the Van Allen radiation belts surrounding the Earth. This trajectory will expose the vehicle to much higher levels of radiation than a typical low Earth orbit or even moon-bound mission would encounter.

The EFT-1 Orion will be equipped with a NASA-designed radiation sensor to measure the harsh space environment that the capsule will fly through. But it may be the student design for a radiation shield from the Exploration Design Challenge (or EDC) that offers the breakthrough technology for astronauts to follow on future missions.

"My guess is that we will see something we never thought about," Bolden told collectSPACE in an interview, referring to the outcome of the EDC. "It may be totally different and it may even be affordable, which is most important."

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NASA to Launch Student-Built Radiation Shield on Orion Capsule Test Flight