Award-Winning Future City Competition Announces Theme for 2020-21: Living on the Moon

Award-winning Future City Competition has announced Living on the Moon as the 2020-21 theme for its project-based learning experience for middle schoolers with the goal of conceiving a plan for sustained lunar living.

6th, 7th and 8th-grade students from across the country and abroad will take part in the annual competition this coming school-year as it will be virtual for the first time ever. Students will be tasked with identifying and tackling the challenges that come with living on the Moon from no breathable atmosphere and low gravity to 14-day nights and constant exposure to solar radiation.

The Future City challenge is to build on the history of thriving cities on the moon as imagined by artists, writers, scientists, engineers, and futurists. Furthermore, the challenge also involves describing the location of the future lunar city, share its innovative features, and provide detailed descriptions of how the city uses the Moon’s unique resources in creating a self-sustaining home where humans can live, work and thrive.

Students will present their vision of a future working with an educator and science, technology, engineering, and mathematics (STEM) mentor producing a 1,500-word city essay, a scale model of their city built with recycled materials, a project plan, a short video presentation and a live online Q&A session with a panel of technical judges. Additionally, students will be asked to address the real-world question of how to make the world a better place while keeping the engineering design process and project management in front of their minds.

The competition sees over 45,000 students representing 1,500 schools and 50 regions in the country and abroad each year taking part. Teams will present their ideas at Regional Competitions in early 2021 which will be followed by Future City Finals where regional winners will be joined by international teams from Canada and China.

Colorado’s regional finals and the Future City Finals will both take place entirely online, with Colorado’s final being held remotely Saturday, February 20, 2021, and the Future City Finals taking place in April 2021. The competition will culminate with one team taking home the grand prize of a trip to U.S. Space Camp and $7,500 for their school’s STEM program.

The deadline to register for this year’s Future City Competition is Saturday, October 31.

“Colorado boasts cutting-edge space exploration programs, four military commands, including Space Force, and renowned research laboratories and universities,” said Dr. Rebecca Spearot, Colorado regional coordinator. “Colorado has the nation’s second-largest aerospace economy, with more than 400 companies who are leading and supporting groundbreaking missions related to space and planetary science,” Rebecca said.

For more information on the Colorado Region, visit: https://www.futurecitycolorado.com/