NASA, through the Harvard-NASA Tournament Laboratory at Harvard University (a lab under contract to “study crowd sourced innovation that leads to tournaments for scientific and engineering challenges”), is sponsoring a t-shirt design competition in line with the program’s final space shuttle mission.  The challenge, dubbed “The Final Frontier,” is meant to commemorate NASA’s contributions to space exploration over the years.

Threadless, one of the original sites to introduce the concept of crowd sourcing to e-commerce, is hosting the competition. For those of you unfamiliar with Threadless, it is an online community of designers and t-shirt enthusiasts. Designs for t-shirts are submitted, and then opened to the public for a vote. Those designs with the greatest number of votes are selected by Threadless for actual printing, and sold through their online store. Designers receive cash prizes and store credit for any winning submissions.

Designers have until July 22nd to submit their designs for The Final Frontier competition, with the winner with the most votes receiving a $500 cash prize, a $500 Threadless gift certificate, and (the coolest part) a shuttle-flown patch from that winner’s home country.

Here are fifteen designs submitted to date. Go cast your vote here!

You can learn more about the final space shuttle mission here on NASA’s site.