NASA launches $150,000 contest to stop astronauts from static-shocking moon landers

By the Everything Space news desk · 12 Oct 2026 · written from the sources below

Image: Space.com

The agency wants solutions to discharge electrically charged spacesuits before astronauts touch lunar landers ahead of planned south pole missions.

NASA has opened a competition seeking designs to prevent static electricity buildup on astronaut spacesuits during moon missions, with submissions due in January and a total prize pool of $150,000.

The agency says simulations indicate that both friction between surfaces and charged lunar particles could cause spacesuits to accumulate an electric charge, a problem that worsens in permanently shadowed craters near the lunar south pole where sunlight never reaches.

Because these shadowed areas have more negatively charged electrons than positively charged ions, an astronaut's suit could pick up a strong negative charge. The danger arises when that astronaut returns to a lander, which carries a slight positive charge, creating a mismatch that could trigger a discharge.

NASA warns this could produce electrical arcing capable of damaging suits, igniting sparks in a spacecraft's oxygen-rich interior, or delivering shocks to crew members. The agency noted a prior Mars mission simulation in 2018 was disrupted by electrical issues, suggesting the risk is not purely theoretical.

Entrants are being asked to design a lightweight, low-power system able to safely ground an astronaut's suit before contact with a lander, while withstanding the moon's extreme temperature swings and supporting multiple moonwalks across a mission lasting more than a week.

The challenge also highlights that dust clinging to suits in these regions can extend the distance electrical arcs are able to jump, meaning any solution needs to prevent sudden sparks from reaching either the suit or the spacecraft.

NASA plans to run the competition through several phases, from initial concepts to a final selection, though no timeline was given for when such technology would be ready for use. The effort fits into NASA's broader plans for a long-term lunar base intended to be largely operational in the following decade.

Written in Everything Space’s own words by our news-desk model from the sources above, and checked against them in code: every number in this report appears in its sources, and no sentence is copied from them.