The goal of this program is to provide student teams from Maine institutions of higher education the opportunity to compete on a national stage in challenge programs. We have worked with the University of Maine Chapter of Students for the Exploration and Development of Space (SEDS) who intended to represent the state of Maine in the NASA Student Launch Initiative, however they did not make it to the competition. In this year, we awarded the University of Maine’s Black Bear Robotics team to compete in the NASA Robotic Mining Challenge.