The Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) today formally announced the opening of submissions for a nation-wide all-student space art contest.

This competition which is open to current students in high school or college, challenges students to depict their vision of humanity's short term future in space. These two dimensional pieces of art should fall into one of three categories:

• Space Exploration Systems - Art pieces in this category should depict a spacecraft (manned or unmanned), a space station, or space launch system in the near future.
• Life in the Final Frontier - This category challenges space artists to depict what life in space will be like. What will a supermarket on an Asteroid colony look like? Where will kids on the first Mars colony play? What will sports in the Zero Gravity of space look like?
• First Contact - We all know in our hearts that first contact with alien life will happen someday. For this category, depict how and where first contact will happen. Will it be through the camera of an unmanned probe? Or an Astronaut stumbling into a lava tube biosphere? Will the life be green algae on a rock or little gray men?

There will be several large prizes for the winners of each category, as well as a Grand Prize for the overall best submitted artwork. Finalists will be offered display opportunities at the Space Vision 2007 conference at MIT in November

Submissions will be accepted on the contest website, http://art.seds.org starting August 1st and ending October 1st 2007. The artwork will be judged by leaders from both governmental and private space industries.

For further information on the competition (including rules, prizes, and general information) all parties should visit the competition website: http://art.seds.org

Private companies and governmental space entities donations are still needed to make this competition a success. Entities interested in sponsoring this competition or a prize for a sub-category of art (such as a prize for a Space Exploration Systems artwork containing that company's spacecraft in use) should contact the project director immediately.

All questions, comments, and suggestions about this Space Art Competition should be directed to:

Joshua V. Nelson
Director of National Projects, SEDS-USA
(203) 610-3378
jediarizona@yahoo.com

Mailing Address:
Box 174
Space Sciences Building
The University of Arizona
Tucson, Arizona 85721

Note: All submissions must be made via the contest website. No submissions will be accepted via the above mailing address.