Why Are We Running This Challenge

New Computing Innovations to Advance Regenerative Agriculture

Rapid advances in commercial space, artificial intelligence, and edge computing are transforming what is possible for Earth observation. By pushing more intelligence onboard, missions can move from passively collecting data to actively interpreting and responding to changing surface conditions in near-real time, enabling more targeted observations and dramatically improving the value of data returned to the ground. Within this context, land-focused applications such as regenerative agriculture, sustainable forestry, and broader land resilience efforts stand to benefit enormously from satellites that can adapt what, when, and how they sense based on dynamic environmental signals and algorithmic insight rather than fixed schedules or static acquisition plans.

NASA Earth Science Technology Office (ESTO) invites participants to design small satellite (SmallSat) mission concepts that leverage adaptive sensing and onboard processing to enhance regenerative agriculture, forestry, or a similar land resilience objective.​ Participants must work within onboard power, compute, and bandwidth constraints characteristic of SmallSat missions, focusing on how to orchestrate existing land observation algorithms into an efficient, responsive onboard intelligence layer.​ Both hardware-oriented and software-oriented solutions—or combinations of the two—are encouraged.

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The Challenge

Develop or describe potential adaptive sensing or onboard processing solutions that support SmallSat mission concepts to advance regenerative agriculture, forestry, or a similar land resilience objective.

NASA’s primary objective for this challenge is to advance computational and systems approaches for adaptive sensing or onboard processing on SmallSat missions. The goal is not to develop new agricultural or forestry science but rather to improve how SmallSats sense, process, and deliver information to enable these applications.

As a participant, we suggest to:

• Choose an audience for your solution.
• Define a clear problem statement within a regenerative agriculture, forestry, or closely-related land resilience use case.
• Describe a solution and how adaptive sensing and/or onboard processing would address the identified problem.
• Select one or more existing land observation algorithm(s) and propose  a software- or hardware-based technology (or hybrid) solution that advances adaptive sensing or onboard processing capabilities.
• Align your quantitative and qualitative design and output to the Judging Criteria, paying specific attention that the adaptive sensing or onboard processing solution meets onboard power, compute, and bandwidth constraints characteristic of your chosen SmallSat system.
• Provide a 5-page Submission Paper, 3-minute Pitch video, and either supporting Software Code (for software-based solutions) or Schematics (for hardware-focused solutions) documenting the key capabilities of your solution.

***Note: Ownership and use of intellectual property arising from this competition remains with you. Submission component #3 only supports Challenge Judges' technical evaluation of your solution.

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Why should I participate?

• Community Impact and Economic Development: Gaining expertise in regenerative agriculture and forestry enables participants to directly contribute to land use enhancements, creating a tangible impact in areas such as farming output, supply chain optimizations, and long-term hazard reductions.
• Interdisciplinary Learning: Regenerative agriculture and forestry are inherently interdisciplinary, blending elements of ecology, meteorology, geography, public policy, and engineering. This challenge offers participants a rich experience that integrates various fields of study, fostering well-rounded academic and professional development.
• Personal Growth and Leadership: NASA Challenges encourage participants to tackle complex problems, work collaboratively in multifaceted teams, and develop innovative solutions to impactful Agency and Earth Science initiatives.
• Networking and Collaboration: Participating in Earth Science initiatives often involves collaboration with government agencies like NASA, non-profit organizations, and private entities. This challenge provides participants with valuable networking opportunities, access to mentorship, and potential collaborations that can enhance their educational journey and career prospects.
• Cross-Applicability: By focusing on one tangible challenge, participants gain a greater understanding of the challenges and opportunities posed by different SmallSat sensing and processing methods and will be able to apply their skills in new contexts.
• Non-Dilutive Funding: Prize winners of the Challenge receive funding to further develop their innovative technologies and commercialization strategies without reducing equity or IP ownership in their ventures.‍
• Conference Presentation Opportunity: Winners will have the opportunity to present their work at IGARSS (International Geoscience and Remote Sensing Symposium), gaining visibility within the global Earth science and remote sensing community.‍
• Innovation Incubator Access: Winners will participate in an innovation incubator program designed to accelerate the development and commercialization of their solutions, providing structured support, resources, and expert guidance.

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What Comes Next?

Register:

• The first step is to register for the competition. Registering early is the easiest way to stay informed and can be completed on the Eventbrite link.
• Visit the Schedule page to view important events, submission due dates, and winner announcement timelines.

Understand the competition:

• Background: Familiarize yourself with the background information.
• Competition Structure: Be aware that the competition has 3 phases, with specific requirements and deadlines.
• Eligibility Requirements and Participation Agreement: Review Eligibility Requirements and familiarize yourself with the Participation Agreement.
• Judging Criteria: Ensure your submissions align with these judging criteria.
• Frequently Asked Questions: See the FAQs, which we will update throughout the competition.

Access the available resources:

• While not required for the competition, the resources ​​​provide additional guidance, including instructions on how to submit a licensing request to NASA, insights from NASA Spinoff on how NASA patents have been turned into groundbreaking technologies, and tips on using Lean Start-Up resources to strengthen submissions.​​​

Stay informed: 

• Join Slack to keep up-to-date on relevant announcements, important tips, share resources, connect with teams and other mentors and event staff.
• You may also reach out to us through email at info@NASA-Space-to-Soil.org.

Prepare and submit Phase One products:

• Prepare a 5-page Submission Paper:
  
  • Adhere to the provided formatting guidelines, including font size, margins, and content organization. See formatting instructions here.
  • A suggested submission paper template is provided here.
• Prepare a 3-Minute Pitch Video:
  
  • Adhere to the provided video rules. See instructions here.
  • Suggestions for an effective video are provided here.
• Prepare Software Code (Software) or Schematics (Hardware) supporting the Key Capabilities of your solution.
• Submit: Ensure all materials are submitted by the specified deadline.

If selected as a Finalist, more information will follow.

Good luck to all participants!

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Background

1. This challenge focuses on computational rigor in the context of regenerative agriculture and forestry applications.

NASA’s primary objective for this challenge is to advance computational and systems approaches for adaptive sensing or onboard processing on SmallSat missions. While the challenge is grounded in agriculture and forestry use cases, the focus is on how data are sensed, processed, and utilized onboard spacecraft. Submissions will be evaluated on how well they select, schedule, compress, and fuse the provided algorithms (and any optional additions) under realistic constraints, and on the clarity and completeness of the solution’s plan for full integration into potential SmallSat technology stacks.

Submissions for this challenge should focus towards adaptive, coordinated concepts that produce novel, high-impact products–not on post-hoc, ground-based data fusion.

• Adaptive Sensing: Adaptive Sensing is the ability to decide which observations to take next in an analysis as you go, rather than a strict pre-planned effort. 
  
  • Examples of adaptive sensing can be deciding when to take an image, where to point (if your SmallSat is agile), and/or changing the observing parameters (for example, sample rate, frequency, or resolution).

• Onboard Processing: Onboard processing includes capabilities like event detection, classification; and onboard instrument data processing like spectral unmixing, SAR image formation, and data fusion. 
  
  • Onboard processing could be combined with adaptive sampling to inform where to look next, or trigger other responses like downlinking thumbnails or alerts, cueing other observing assets, or prioritizing data for downlink.
  • Satellites and ground elements can coordinate with each other to observe events with different instruments, from different vantage points, or to take coordinated coincident observations.

2. Regenerative agriculture and forestry serve as powerful levers for earth system processes.

Examples of these levers include carbon flux, water availability, land-atmosphere interactions, and vegetation dynamics. These land management practices directly influence measurable Earth system variables such as soil carbon, biomass, evapotranspiration, and land surface albedo, all of which are essential inputs to NASA’s global models. New adaptive sensing and onboard processing capabilities support Earth system predictability, food security, disaster risk reduction, sustainability monitoring, and nature-based mitigation strategies. Regenerative agriculture also presents a high-impact, near-term market for satellite-derived analytics, supporting ESTO’s mandate to transition Earth observation technologies into commercial use.

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3. Participants must use at least one NASA dataset, or an algorithm built using NASA data or products, but can optionally build more capabilities on top of them.

Participants are required to use at least one land observation algorithm or dataset shared in the resources page (for example, crop stress detection, soil moisture proxy estimation, biomass or canopy mapping, or related remote sensing models). Teams may combine multiple provided algorithms and may also add their own models and data. Submissions will be evaluated on computational and systems performance for adaptive sensing and onboard processing, not the scientific novelty of new algorithms.

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4. Submissions should support regenerative agriculture or forestry with plausible technology concepts that have clear commercial potential.

Participants will propose a small satellite mission concept that:

• Targets at least one regenerative agriculture or forestry objective (such as irrigation efficiency, early pest/disease detection, nutrient or biomass monitoring, supply chain improvements, or a similar land resilience objective defined by the participant).
• Specifies a plausible onboard compute stack (for example, radiation-tolerant Central Processing Units [CPUs] plus small Field-Programmable Gate Arrays [FPGAs] or Neural Processing Units [NPUs]) with quantitative budgets for SmallSat constraints such as compute, memory, power, storage, and downlink.
• Additional product details may include how the provided algorithms run onboard versus on the ground, how they are pruned or quantized, how features and intermediate products are represented, and how an adaptive policy decides what to sense, process, and downlink.

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5. Solutions should consider how full-stack implementations could be integrated.

Teams are not required to implement a complete, flight-ready end-to-end system, but they must provide a complete description of how their solution would behave in a full technology stack. This includes end-to-end data flow, interface definitions between components, and discussion of operational modes and degradation strategies (for example, under reduced power or partial data return).  ​

Submissions will be evaluated based on the Judge Criteria. Some technical attributes to think about while building your solution include:

• Computational rigor: Credible quantitative treatment of resource budgets, algorithm selection and scheduling, and trade-offs such as accuracy vs. compression or latency vs. coverage.
• Systems thinking: Clarity and completeness of the described architecture, including how the SmallSat mission components would interface with realistic operational concepts and other technologies currently available​.
• Use of provided algorithms: Effective integration of one or more provided land observation algorithms as core building blocks, with optional additional models to contribute to computational performance and system behavior.

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6. This challenge seeks both hardware and software participation.

Both hardware and software solutions are welcome and will be evaluated through the same computational and systems-engineering lens.​ This challenge emphasizes ambitious, innovative ideas, so feel free to bring your own categories or build on ideas below:

• Hardware-leaning teams may focus on realistic SmallSat onboard compute architectures, accelerator choices, data paths, and resource budgeting, showing how the provided algorithms would be mapped, pruned, quantized, and scheduled on specific chip configurations.
• Software-leaning teams may emphasize algorithm orchestration, compression strategies, adaptive policies, and full-stack dataflow design, as long as they anchor their choices in plausible SmallSat resource assumptions and clearly describe how those software components would execute on representative hardware.

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Three-Phase Competition

Competition Structure

This challenge has 3-phases.

Phase 1: Participants will submit:

1. A short 5-page submission paper,
2. A 3-minute Pitch video, and
3. Software Code (Software) or Schematics (Hardware) supporting the Key Capabilities of your solution.

***Note: Ownership and use of intellectual property arising from this competition remains with you. Submission component #3 only supports Challenge Judges' technical evaluation of your solution.

Submissions will be evaluated per challenge Judge Criteria. Following the Judge evaluation period, up to 10 Finalists will receive a $5,000 prize each and be invited to the in-person Pitch Event.

Phase 2: Up to 10 Finalists will be invited to an in-person Pitch Event. Up to 3 Winners from the Pitch Event will receive a $100,000 prize each and invited to the challenge Incubator Program. Up to 2 Pitch Event Runners-Up will also receive a $25,000 each.

Phase 3: Pitch Event Winners will be invited to the challenge Incubator Program consisting of 10-12 weeks of content. These Winners will also be invited to IGARSS Conference 2026 to present their solutions at a Demo Day.