The bad news: the U.S. Government is shut down.

The good news: the deadline has been extended to enter the Speed2Design Exploration & Discovery contest for a visit to NASA’s Johnson Space Center in Houston.

In August, I was able to attend the Speed2Design  event at NASA’s Ames Research Center in California, and it was an unbelievable experience (see my blog of September 4). Sponsored by Littelfuse , the events give ten winners a chance to spend two days at a NASA facility, where they go behind the scenes to see what’s being developed at NASA, and meet the engineers who are inventing these state-of-the-art technologies. In these peer-to-peer TechTalk discussions, winners will discuss technological breakthroughs in spacecraft, bioengineering, robotics, and more.

The event at NASA Johnson is scheduled to include experts covering the International Space Station National Laboratory, the Orion program, Project Morpheus, Robonaut, spacesuit design, the Human Health and Performance Center, avionics and electronics for space, non-destructive testing, and technology transfer and collaboration.

I’ve been there, done that, and it doesn’t get any better than seeing NASA from the inside.

Enter today , and if you’re lucky, I’ll see you there!