Space innovation prize idea contest
The British Interplanetary Society, in association with Challenge Works by Nesta, invites you to submit your idea for the UK’s next space innovation challenge prize.
What is a challenge prize?
Challenge prizes reward breakthrough ideas that solve complex problems. They’re open competitions with outcome-based funding, expert support, and a grand prize to scale the best and winning solutions. For more information on challenge prizes, and how Challenge Works build them to solve technology and societal problems, see here.
What are we looking for?
We seek ideas that are technically tough, exciting, and unusual – problems with no obvious solution that could attract brilliant, diverse minds from any sector. For an example of a space innovation challenge prize we’d like to run, see our pitch for a Precision SpaceFlight Prize.
What do you get?
By entering our contest, you could help shape the future of UK space innovation. Winners will be featured in a forthcoming issue of SpaceFlight, and win one of three cash prizes.
1st Prize: £325; 2nd Prize: £100; 3rd Prize: £75
The contest is now open for entries.
How to enter
Submit one side of A4 to [email protected] by 23:59 BST on Monday 1st September 2025 outlining your prize idea, including:
- The problem/challenge
- An indicative challenge statement
- What the outcomes would be and what the prize would achieve
- The kind of innovators it would attract
Full details of the opportunity, challenge prizes, how to enter, terms and conditions, and judging criteria are available in the entry pack.
Who’s involved?
The Aqualunar Challenge
The Aqualunar Challenge was a £1.2m challenge prize funded by UKSA to develop a water purification system for use on the lunar surface, which concluded in March 2025 and in which The British Interplanetary Society was a finalist.
The Aqualunar Challenge was delivered by Challenge Works by Nesta on behalf of the UK Space Agency and the Canadian Space Agency, as part of their International Bilateral Fund.
The Aqualunar Challenge was the UK’s first space sector innovation prize, and we hope it will be the first of many. It has been widely regarded as a successful venture by UKSA, partners and participants and as a consequence there is a healthy appetite to continue progressing the UK space sector through subsequent prizes.
Challenge prizes however, must be carefully matched to appropriate innovation problems. Typically, this means a clearly defined technological problem, for which there is no obvious best approach, that would benefit from multiple innovators experimenting with small pots of unrestricted funding. A prize must also form part of a pathway to financial viability for innovations, where necessary investment is not presently forthcoming from markets, governments or NGOs.
This is where we feel that the British Interplanetary Society has a role to play. There is a connection between the kind of problems that challenge prizes are best placed to address and the kind of visionary thinking on which BIS prides itself – frontier, inspiring but perhaps overlooked challenges, grounded in sound technical reasoning, that might lend themselves to a variety of different approaches that aren’t quite ready for primetime.
