NASA Crater Detection Challenge
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft recently made headlines by capturing stunning images of the Moon’s surface during its flyby of Earth on October 16, 2022, marking the first of three gravity assists in its mission. As part of an innovative project aimed at enhancing planetary navigation, NASA is now inviting researchers and enthusiasts to develop advanced methods for detecting crater rims in lunar imagery. These crater rims are critical for planetary science, serving as essential landmarks for navigation in space exploration. However, accurately identifying them in real images poses significant challenges due to varying lighting conditions, shadows, and the irregular shapes of the craters themselves.
The focus of this initiative is to enhance terrain-based optical navigation for future missions. NASA plans to use a visible-light camera mounted on spacecraft to capture detailed images of the Moon’s surface. The goal is to create a system capable of detecting crater rims, identifying these craters from an existing catalog, and estimating the spacecraft’s position based on the identified features. This project highlights the complexities of natural imagery, where lighting variations can obscure the full shape of crater rims, making detection a formidable task. To incentivize participation, NASA is offering a total prize pool of $55,000 for innovative solutions that can improve crater detection processes. The competition is set to open on November 25, 2025, and will close on January 19, 2026. For more details, interested participants can visit the official competition page at Topcoder.
This initiative not only underscores NASA’s commitment to advancing space exploration technologies but also encourages collaboration and innovation within the scientific community. By leveraging the expertise of researchers and developers, NASA aims to refine the techniques necessary for precise lunar navigation, paving the way for future missions that require accurate terrain mapping and navigation. As the space agency continues its journey toward deeper exploration of our solar system, projects like this are vital for ensuring the success of upcoming missions and the safety of spacecraft venturing into uncharted territories.
NASA’s Lucy spacecraft captured images of the Moon’s surface on Oct 16, 2022, after flying by the Earth for its first of three gravity assists.
Crater rims are vital landmarks for planetary science and navigation. Yet detecting them in real imagery is tough, with shadows, lighting shifts, and broken edges obscuring their shape.
This project invites you to develop methods that can reliably fit ellipses to crater rims, helping advance future space exploration.
In the pursuit of next generation, terrain-based optical navigation, NASA is developing a system that will use a visible-light camera on a spacecraft to capture orbital images of lunar terrain and process the imagery to:
detect the crater rims in the images,
identify the craters from a catalog, and
estimate the camera/vehicle position based on the identified craters.
The focus of this project is the crater detection process.
Natural imagery varies significantly in lighting and will impact the completeness of crater rims in the images.
Award: $55,000 in total prizes
Open Date: November 25, 2025
Close Date: January 19, 2026
For more information, visit:
https://www.topcoder.com/nasa-crater-detection
