2026 challenges
Each challenge comes from NASA with real data. Filter by level, search by topic and pick the one your team wants to solve.
The challenge
Tell stories about some or all of this equipment that introduce school-age space enthusiasts to the hardware and the science it made possible.
The challenge
Find and examine variables measured by NASA missions or produced by NASA models, visualize how they change over time, and determine what is changing, where, by how much, and whether those changes are what scientists call “significant.”
The challenge
Design and build an interactive game or app that lets students run a lunar or Martian outpost, balancing competing demands like life support, radiation shielding, power, and food production, so they experience firsthand the decisions that determine whether a mission fails or succeeds.
The challenge
Create an intuitive tool that lets mission planners, educators, and the public quickly compare landing sites and dates, visualizing Sun and Earth positions relative to the horizon to assess power generation potential and direct-to-Earth communication windows.
The challenge
Build health monitoring software that gathers health indicators and enables astronauts to evaluate and act on the status of their health.
The challenge
Build an interactive application that uses radar remote sensing data from the NASA-ISRO Synthetic Aperture Radar (NISAR) mission to track and visualize one or more types of surface change at locations around the world.
The challenge
Create a decision-support tool that uses NASA Earth observations along with local soil information, crop characteristics, and farmer priorities to help farmers explore rotation strategies that could strengthen soil health and adapt their farms to changing conditions.
The challenge
Create an interactive, AI-powered dashboard that summarizes, ranks, and interprets those findings to deliver fire safety insights for human space exploration.
The challenge
Build a web application that harmonizes these records into a burning-activity calendar based on active fire hotspots, so early-warning teams, emergency responders, scientists, and land managers can examine historical fire patterns, unusual conditions, and critical periods within a selected area.
The challenge
Use open Earth, Moon, and Mars data from NASA and other space agencies to identify and characterize new terrestrial analogs for future bases or landing sites, drawing on deserts, polar regions, volcanic and arid terrain, caves, and other environments that share conditions with the lunar or Martian surface.
The challenge
Create a layered, integrated view of a location or route on the Martian surface that pulls together data from multiple NASA science missions and could help a human explorer plan and carry out a successful Marswalk while doing new and exciting science along the way.
The challenge
Create a public-facing web tool that displays images of the sky from the SPHEREx mission, making it easy for anyone to quickly see how they change over time.
The challenge
Create an interactive game that lets participants design, manage, and simulate a complete space mission while making engineering decisions, managing limited resources, and seeing how each choice shapes the success of their mission.
The challenge
Build an “Earth Jukebox”: an interface, script, or application that pairs Earth Information Center (EIC) visual frames with dynamic sonifications generated in real time.
Summaries from the official NASA Space Apps Challenge website.
14–15 November 2026
Registration is open on the official NASA Space Apps site. Sign up for the Ulaanbaatar local event and join or form a team.
Free to participate · Limited in-person capacity
