Australia-based Freelancer Ltd. (ASX: FLN) announced it secured a contract with the National Aeronautics and Space Administration (NASA) in the US.

Freelancer secured a USD 510,000 task order for the US Bureau of Reclamation to improve the Speed of the US Bureau of Reclamation’s Sedimentation and River Hydraulics Model.

According to Freelancer, NASA’s Sedimentation and River Hydraulics Challenge project seeks a ‘stable, fast, and parallelisable sparse matrix linear equation solver (numerical algorithm implemented in a subroutine) for typical CFD (computational fluid dynamics) models.’ 

“To date, NASA has sourced over 13,000 product designs from more than 6,000 product designers. We’re excited to help Reclamation and NASA improve the speed of Sedimentation and River Hydraulics Model using the world’s largest online talent in what will be the new largest challenge yet by an order of magnitude”, said Freelancer Chief Executive, Matt Barrie.

Of the total amount awarded, USD 300,000 will be prize money paid to freelancers. This prize challenge is envisioned to be in two stages of USD 150,000 each. The Challenge participants will have 29 weeks for Stage 1 and 34.5 weeks for Stage 2 to complete their submissions.