By Jim Plaxco
NSS Board of Directors
The National Space Society (NSS), in partnership with the SmallSat Education Conference, recently concluded another successful Roadmap to Space Student Art Contest. The theme for this year’s contest was “Our Future in the Space Workforce” which challenged student artists, aging in range from 10 to 25, to envision a future where humanity has expanded its presence beyond Earth and across our solar system.
The student participants created a wide range of futuristic and original artwork that depicted their vision of humanity’s future life in space. The contest’s submissions were incredibly diverse and showcased a wide range of artistic styles and visions. Particularly noteworthy were the student’s ideas about our future of life on the space frontier. With visions ranging from lunar ISRU to asteroid mining operations to Martian colonies and agricultural operations, the artwork explored a wide variety of aspects of possible human activity in space. In addition to creating the artwork, students were required to provide a written description of the scene their artwork was illustrating as well as providing a brief description of how the artwork was created.
The contest received a number of wonderful entries and our judges had a difficult time in selecting the winning artworks. Fortunately the judges did have a degree of latitude in awarding multiple First Prizes and Honorable Mentions. The winning artworks were selected based on a combination of their creativity, technical skill, and adherence to the contest’s theme.
As a new component of this year’s contest, NSS has created an ebook that details the contest’s operations, the prizes awarded to the winners, and additional commentary. In addition, the ebook highlights the Grand Prize artwork, the 7 First Prize artworks, and the 14 Honorable Mentions. It also includes images of all the artwork that was formally accepted into the contest. Regrettably, a number of submissions were not accepted as they failed to meet the contest’s submission rules.
The ongoing success of the Roadmap to Space Student Art Contest demonstrates the enduring appeal of space exploration and the power it has to serve as a source of artistic and educational inspiration to students around the world. The 2025 Roadmap to Space Student Art Contest will open sometime in August of 2025 and will feature a longer open submission period.
The winning artwork can be seen online in the 2024 NSS Roadmap to Space Art Contest Winners art gallery.
The contest’s rules, guidelines, and list of prizes can be viewed at 2024 NSS Roadmap to Space Student Art Contest.
The 53 page ebook in PDF format is here: Our Future in the Space Workforce: The 2024 NSS Roadmap to Space Student Art Contest.
