Foothill Students Win National Mars Contest

Foothill High School students in Pleasanton, California, won Lockheed Martin’s national Mars Mission Challenge after submitting a scalable nuclear energy concept for a future Mars settlement, according to Pleasanton Unified School District and local reports. Pleasanton Unified said the team took first place in a field of more than 100 teams from across the country. Lockheed Martin has described the contest as a U.S. high school competition focused on technologies needed for living and working on Mars. The company said the winning team and its educator sponsor receive a trip to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. ### How was the contest set up? Lockheed Martin said in an October 2025 feature that the Mission Mars Challenge invited teams of two to three students to design projects supporting a sustainable presence on Mars. The company said the challenge focused on transportation, habitation, power generation and resource development, and pointed students to real-world reference material including its Mars Base Camp concept. (patch.com) In February 2026, Lockheed Martin said students from across the United States submitted entries and that five finalist teams were selected for the final round. The company did not identify the finalists in the material surfaced here, but it said the overall winner would earn the Space Camp trip. ### What did the Foothill team build? Patch’s Pleasanton report said the Foothill students won with a scalable nuclear energy concept for a Mars settlement. (lockheedmartin.com) Pleasanton Unified’s weekly E-Connect newsletter separately confirmed that Foothill High School students won first place in the Mission to Mars Challenge and that the national competition included more than 100 teams. The available public summaries do not name the students or describe the design in technical detail. (lockheedmartin.com) Lockheed Martin’s contest materials show that power generation was one of the required problem areas, which matches the description of the Foothill proposal as an energy system for a sustained Mars presence. That connection is an inference based on the contest rules and the local description of the winning entry. (patch.com) ### Why would nuclear power be part of a Mars design? Mars mission planners have long treated power as a central design problem because crews would need energy for habitats, life-support systems, communications and industrial equipment. Lockheed Martin’s challenge materials explicitly listed power generation as one of the four target categories for student proposals. (lockheedmartin.com) Lockheed Martin’s Mars Base Camp materials also describe a broader architecture for sustained human operations around and on Mars, giving students a framework for thinking about infrastructure rather than one-off experiments. The Foothill team’s “scalable” concept, as described by Patch, suggests the proposal was aimed at expansion over time rather than a single fixed installation, though no public judging memo was available in the sources reviewed. (lockheedmartin.com) ### What has been confirmed by the school district? Pleasanton Unified School District included the result in its E-Connect newsletter published this week. The district said Foothill High School students won the Lockheed Martin Mission to Mars Challenge and earned first place in a national competition involving more than 100 teams from across the country. The district newsletter entry is brief and does not list the team members, the teacher sponsor or the judging date. (lockheedmartin.com) Patch’s local item adds the description of the winning concept as a scalable nuclear energy design for a Mars settlement. ### What happens next for the winners? Lockheed Martin said the next step for the winning team and its educator sponsor is a trip to Space Camp in Huntsville, Alabama. (pleasantonusd.net) The company described the prize as hands-on STEM activities and simulated missions tied to engineering and space exploration. Pleasanton Unified said its E-Connect newsletter is published weekly on the district website, and that is where the district posted the Foothill team’s first-place result. (pleasantonusd.net) Lockheed Martin has continued to publish Mars challenge and STEM-program updates on its website, where additional details on the winning team may appear. (lockheedmartin.com)