NASA asks high school teams to design an LNG cargo aircraft in new challenge

NASA has opened its 2026–27 Dream with Us high school engineering challenge, asking student teams to design a conceptual cargo aircraft powered by liquefied natural gas, or LNG. The task gives students a concrete aviation problem: how a fuel stored differently from conventional jet fuel could change an aircraft built to carry heavy freight.

The theme, ‘Fueling Flight Design Challenge: New Energy Systems,’ extends beyond the aircraft itself. NASA asks students to consider how adding an emerging fuel could affect airports as well as aircraft. The high school and middle school categories have different assignments: high school teams work on an aircraft design, while middle school teams focus on an airport technology solution.

A cargo aircraft with defined limits

NASA frames the high school task as a scenario in which an air freight company wants a more efficient replacement for part of its fleet. The company is not named because it is part of the fictional design brief. Students are asked to present a new LNG-fueled cargo aircraft concept, not to respond to an announced order from a real carrier.

The proposed aircraft must carry 125,000 pounds of cargo, including the weight of the unit load devices used to hold it. Its cargo space must be at least 15,000 cubic feet. At maximum payload, the design must have a range of 3,000 nautical miles and cruise at Mach 0.8 between 35,000 and 40,000 feet. NASA also specifies a reserve mission of 30 minutes at 13,000 feet and Mach 0.8.

Those figures are design requirements, not measured performance from a built aircraft. NASA says LNG must be stored differently from traditional jet fuel, so teams must account for changes to the aircraft. The agency presents the possibility of a more aerodynamically efficient design as something students can explore, rather than a benefit already demonstrated by their proposed aircraft.

Who can enter and what to submit

The high school category is for students in grades 9 through 12 attending public, private, parochial or home schools in the United States. Children of U.S. military members stationed overseas are also eligible. NASA says a team containing both middle school and high school students competes in the high school category.

Teams must prepare an Engineering Design Notebook for judges. NASA directs students to use the headings in its scoring rubric as the notebook headings and to document their design work there. Judges will assess impact, practicality, originality and how clearly the idea is communicated. Selected finalists will present their projects virtually to judges.

NASA prohibits AI tools for challenge work. Its rules cover generative services, AI-assisted code tools and AI-generated imagery, and say submissions must be created by team members without AI assistance. The announcement also calls for signed permission forms from parents or legal guardians and limits submission to one entry per team.

The competition opened on September 25. NASA’s Dream with Us page lists December 8, 2026, as the registration deadline and January 25, 2027, as the high school submission deadline. It schedules finalist announcements for March 19, virtual presentations for April 2 and the winners announcement for April 9. NASA’s high school announcement still contains a placeholder where its submission link should appear, so the Dream with Us page is the practical starting point for current participation details.

Why LNG is in the design brief

The student task reflects questions also being examined in aviation research, though the challenge is a design exercise. Aerospace America reported in June on findings presented by teams working under NASA’s Advanced Aircraft Concepts for Environmental Sustainability studies. One Georgia Tech concept, called Athena, combined LNG with a blended wing body for a passenger aircraft carrying 150 to 178 people on missions of up to 3,500 nautical miles.

That research differs from NASA’s student cargo assignment in both aircraft purpose and specifications. Aerospace America reported it as a study intended to inform future research, not as an aircraft entering service. The high school challenge likewise asks teams to reason through fuel storage, aircraft shape and operational constraints; it does not establish that an LNG cargo aircraft meeting NASA’s figures already exists.