Criteria for Evaluation

Each project will be judged on its own merit by a group of NASA engineers. Award level entries will be well written, thorough, and concise. Entries will be judged on how well students have focused their essay and how well they have addressed four basic criteria: Informed Content*, Creativity and imagination, Organization, and Writing.

Scores will be determined using the following guideline:
• Informed Content*, 30 points
• Creativity and imagination, 30 points
• Organization of the essay, 20 points
• Writing, including documentation, 10 points
• References 10 points

*Informed content means that the students have educated themselves about the technologies and have set their research paper in the context of scientific and technically valid information. This should be demonstrated with a list of references at the end and with citations of sources in the document where needed. Under no circumstances should students copy the words or ideas of others without proper documentation. If students use ideas or words of others, they should give credit to their source of information using a standard reference or footnote format. Papers submitted with plagiarized material will be disqualified.