The US space agency NASA to reach to students to seek for Ideas that would be innovative in terms of novel technology to lead a heavy manned spacecraft on red planet Mars.  They have named it as inflatable spacecraft heat shields or hypersonic inflatable aerodynamic decelerator (HIAD) technology, that will be delivering 22 tonnes or more to the surface of Mars. Right now Mars Curiosity Rover is the heaviest on Red planet that weighs around 1 tonne.

A crewed spacecraft will be  landing on Mars that  would weigh between 15 and 30 tonnes,” said Steve Gaddis from Nasa’s Langley Research Center in Hampton, Virginia.

NASA will be addressing this challenge via aeroshells that will provide right amount of aerodynamics to decelerate the payloads. For this NASA is inviting college and University Students to be a part of this mission by providing their terrific innovative ideas to NASA. That would be a breakthrough and Game changing Idea Challenge called BIG. Interested teams of around 3 to 5 members who are graduate or undergraduate will be asked to submit their paper work thereon describing their unique concepts by November 15. Concepts may employ new approaches such as shape morphing and pneumatic actuation to dynamically alter the HIAD inflatable structure. Further on selected teams will be continuing and submitting in the spring of 2016 their whole research work over the concept.
Each Finalist will be awarded with a $6,000 stipend for their full participation by the forum.