NASA Lunar Art Contest Winners Announced

May 30, 2008

Sonja Alexander
Headquarters, Washington
202-358-1761
sonja.r.alexander@xxxxxxxx

Keith Henry
Langley Research Center, Hampton, Va.
757-864-6120
h.k.henry@xxxxxxxx

RELEASE: 08-135

NASA LUNAR ART CONTEST WINNERS ANNOUNCED

HAMPTON, Va. -- A fanciful vision of a lunar traffic jam won the
first
annual NASA Lunar Art Contest sponsored by NASA's Langley Research
Center in Hampton, Va.

A work by Justin Burns, a sophomore at the University of Memphis,
depicts a cartoon-like motorcyclist on her air cushioned bike leading
a long line of traffic in a tube stretching across the otherwise
barren lunar landscape. A city under a dome stands in the background.


"The Lunar Art contest allows students from the creative arts
disciplines to become involved and excited about the nation's space
exploration program. It also enables us to see the future from very
different and important perspectives," said Richard Antcliff,
director of Langley's Advanced Planning and Partnership Office.

A total of 26 college and high school students from around the
country
entered the contest with paintings, posters, design packages, and
sculpture. Judges rated the art on the basis of originality,
creativity, artistic elements, and if the concept was valid for harsh
lunar conditions. The contest encouraged university and high school
art and design students to partner with science and engineering
departments to create art representative of living and working on the
moon.

The goal is for students in arts, science and engineering to
collaboratively engage in NASA's mission to return humans to the moon
by 2020, and eventually journey on to Mars and other destinations in
the solar system. Such collaboration may generate new ideas for
living and working in extra-terrestrial environments, resulting in
more successful long-duration space missions.

The top four college-level and top two high school-level entries will
be exhibited this summer at Langley, the Virginia Air and Space
Center in Hampton, Va., and at NASA Headquarters in Washington. The
entries also will be posted on the NASA website

Second place in the college group went to "A busy day on the moon,"
by
Johnathan Culpepper, a senior at Medgar Evers College in the City
University of New York. Lann Brumlik and Corey DiRutigliano, a team
of graduate design students from University of Cincinnati, earned
third place for their poster "Enabling Exploration." Ellen Ladwig, a
fine arts major from University of Missouri, took fourth place for an
oil painting she calls "Perseid Meteor Shower on a Newly Terra-Formed
Moon."

High school students Asa Shultz from Virginia and William Zhang from
California tied for first place in the high school group. Shultz is a
home-schooled senior enrolled in Covenant Academy who lives in
Forest, Va. Zhang is a sophomore who attends Skoldberg Art Academy in
San Diego.

The contest was co-sponsored by Christopher Newport University in
Newport News, Va. The university provided small cash awards for top
prizes, and the NASA Center for Educational Technologies at Wheeling
Jesuit University in Wheeling, W.Va., provided a Web site to support
the contest.

For information about other NASA education programs, visit:

http://artcontest.larc.nasa.gov

For more information about NASA and agency programs, visit:

http://www.nasa.gov


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