What: The winners of the 2007 Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award will be recognized at NASA Headquarters in Washington, D.C. on January 18, 2008. NASA will unveil a Spirit of Innovation traveling exhibit, and the X PRIZE Foundation will announce plans for the Conrad Award Scroll to be carried to the International Space Station in the fall of 2008.
Michael Hakimi and Talia Nour-Omid from Los Angeles won first prize in the Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award at the X PRIZE Cup in October 2007. Their winning idea was a device to monitor a human’s vital signs while in space. They received a $5,000 prize and a trophy presented by Nancy Conrad, wife of the late Apollo astronaut Pete Conrad and creator of the prize, and Erik Lindbergh, X PRIZE Foundation Trustee, great-grandson of Charles Lindbergh and designer and sculptor of the trophy. The NASA Innovative Partnerships Program provided a total of $10,000 in grants for the top three teams.
The Pete Conrad Spirit of Innovation Award is a competition for teams of high school students to create a concept to benefit the personal spaceflight industry. Teams submitted graphical representations, technical documents and business plans for their concepts.
Who: NASA Deputy Administrator Shana Dale, NASA Innovative Partnerships Program Director Doug Comstock, X PRIZE Foundation Executive Director for Space Bretton Alexander, and Nancy Conrad
When: Friday, January 18, 2008 – 10:00 a.m.
Where: NASA Headquarters, 300 E Street, SW, Washington, D.C.
The event will be held in front of the NASA Headquarters Auditorium. Guests are asked to enter through the West Lobby.
ABOUT CHARLES “PETE” CONRAD
Charles “Pete” Conrad, Jr. was the third man to walk on the moon and served on Gemini 5 and 11, Apollo 12, and Skylab 2 missions. Conrad was the recipient of the Congressional Space Medal of Honor awarded for his rescue of Skylab. He was posthumously awarded the Ambassador of Exploration Award by NASA in 2006.
ABOUT THE X PRIZE FOUNDATION
The X PRIZE Foundation is an educational nonprofit prize institute whose mission is to create radical breakthroughs for the benefit of humanity. On October 4, 2004, the X PRIZE Foundation captured world headlines when Mojave Aerospace Ventures, led by legendary aircraft designer Burt Rutan and Microsoft co-founder Paul Allen, built and flew the world’s first private vehicle to space twice in two weeks to win the $10 million Ansari X PRIZE. The X PRIZE Foundation has since launched the $10 million Archon X PRIZE for Genomics and the $30 million Google Lunar X PRIZE, and will continue to offer new prizes for breakthroughs in the areas of life improvement, exploration, equity of opportunity and sustainability. The Foundation is widely recognized as the leading model for fostering innovation through competition. For more information, please visit www.xprize.org or email prcontact@xprize.org. ‘
