Navigating NASA’s Space Hackathon
With 35 new challenges and over 10,000 datasets, where do you start?
This weekend, citizens from around the world will come together in 138 cities to build technology that aims to improve life on Earth and life in space, as part of the 4th annual International Space Apps Challenge*. Over a 48-hour period, people will create new solutions to address a broad range of challenges such as designing wearable technology for astronauts, building your own drone, turning NASA’s many breathtaking Earth images into art, or mapping clean water resources. The event features 35 new challenges and is supported with over 10,000 datasets by NASA and a number of partners. It can all be quite overwhelming, and since your time is limited, we want to help you get started! This is a short guide to navigating the 2015 International Space Apps Challenge that features 8 compelling challenges and 11 useful datasets.
#CHALLENGES
This is an image captured from the International Space Station on 1 April 2015 that shows the super-typhoon Maysak as it heads through the western Pacific en route to the Philippines.
“The world is moving so fast these days that the man who says it can’t be done is generally interrupted by someone doing it.”
― Elbert Hubbard
You have 48 hours to develop a solution to a pressing challenge. Tackle something that matters and impress us with your ingenuity! If you are not sure which challenge to work on, here are 8 mission-relevant challenges related to humans, earth, outer space and technology. Develop solutions to these challenges and NASA will notice!
Humans
Challenge: Create an interactive app that visualizes the data gathered while ESA astronaut Samantha Cristoforetti has been in orbit. You can imagine and prototyping new possible features, plugins or “easter eggs” for the app that will take advantage of the platform, integrations, and data connections.
Why it matters: Samantha if orbiting Earth, right this very moment, every 90 minutes traveling at a speed of 17,500 mph. You need to help keep track of Samantha’s travels off the planet and her social engagement with those of us Earth-bound.
Challenge: Develop an interactive tool to leverage NASA audio files from space missions in new and innovative ways, from arts and entertainment to science and engineering. Your solution could be a new audio capability or platform to feature, consume, enhance, or alter NASA files. Or perhaps you can decode hidden messages in files that NASA missed. The future is in your hands. Show us what you can do.
Why it matters: NASA missions generate expected and unexpected audio files, but the files are stored in a number of collections housed in different places. Help make sense of this data and go the extra mile to integrate NASA into your daily life through the development of new sound applications.
Earth
Challenge: Improve mapping of drinking water resources. This could include development of a crowdsourcing app to monitor and map: potable water availability (well/stream/reservoir levels as measured by local people/ organizations), water quality, contaminants and ground water.
Why it matters: Access to drinking water remains a significant challenge in rural areas of the developing world where its users, type of access and access limitations are largely unknown. We need access to clean water both on and off the planet.
Challenge: Enable crowdsourced local data to contribute to assessments of land cover change and the contributing factors by developing an application to help monitor deforestation and forest degradation, and the reasons behind it.
Why it matters: Deforestation and forest degradation are increasingly prominent environmental issues. Currently, Land Use and Cover Change (LUCC) assessments are one of the key tools used to understand land use dynamics and the underlying causes of change through the use of observations and modelling. These assessments are generally lacking specific in-situ information about the causes of deforestation, which can be improved with crowdsourced data.
Outer Space
Challenge: Create a way of visualizing the threat of atmospheric airbursts using newly released data gathered in the Bolide study. Check out this amazing visualization at http://bolid.es for inspiration.
Why it matters: Thousands of meteorites have collided with the Earth since 2500 BC. More than 45,000 have been recorded. Only 1,123 have been seen falling. Understanding the implications and protecting our planet requires new and innovative ways to visualize this airburst phenomenon.
Challenge: Design and model a feasibility demonstrator of a nano-satellite (e.g. cubesat) that can orbit and take pictures of deep space spacecraft during events of interest, e.g. planetary flybys.
Why it matters: Cubesats are the next big thing in space exploration. Developments in cubesats are now pushing the concept into supporting deep space missions.
Technology
Challenge: Use actual Space Station telemetry data stream to build an app that alerts to space events. A starter toolkit includes information on available telemetry (telemetry data dictionary) and sample code on how to connect a thin-client to the telemetry backend.
Why it matters: NASA has many telemetry clients running in Mission Operations centers across the United States all of which take up valuable space on the real estate constrained screens.
SpaceGlove: Spacecraft Gesture and Voice Commanding
Challenge: Design a new and unique method to change the way crew members and operators interact with computer systems using wearable devices, gestures and voice control.
Why it matters: NASA is constantly trying to improve and update it’s space suit technology. This is your chance to apply commercial consumer technology (or invent new technology) that could be applied to a manned space mission to improve the human-machine interface.
#DATA
This is an image of a circular depression on the surface of Mars that was acquired on Jan. 5, 2015 by the High Resolution Imaging Science Experiment (HiRISE) camera on NASA’s Mars Reconnaissance Orbiter (MRO). The spacecraft has been orbiting Mars since March 2006 and completed its 40,000th orbit around Mars on Feb. 7, 2015.
“Data! data! data!” he cried impatiently. “I can’t make bricks without clay.”
- Arthur Conan Doyle, The Adventure of the Copper Beeches
In pursuit of its exploration mission, NASA has generated, collected and compiled vast amounts of data that has helped us better understand Earth, other planets in our solar system, and the depths of space through the eyes of satellites, telescopes, robots, and through the cameras of astronauts. With each passing decade, advances in technology made images clearer, the information coming back from space richer, and the world smaller. Technology (in particular, data) makes it possible for all of us to make discoveries, in ways that weren’t imaginable just a few years ago.
In 2011, we launched data.nasa.gov as a directory for NASA’s ever-expanding data universe. Today, data.nasa.gov has more than 10,000 datasets listed and you’ll find 19,307 if you search on data.gov! Save yourself some time and check out these 11 of fantastic data resources below. Most of the ones listed here are relatively developer friendly (as in proper, fully functioning API’s) but some are just interesting for those first starting to explore NASA data.
One of the most popular websites at NASA is the Astronomy Picture of the Day. This endpoint structures the database of images so that they can be repurposed for other applications. In addition, it adds the ability to process the APOD explanation into core concepts using natural language processing and cross-referencing the text with large, online databases.
Global Change Master Directory
The Global Change Master Directory database holds more than 30,000 descriptions of Earth science data sets and services covering all aspects of Earth and environmental sciences.
This endpoint retrieves the Landsat 8 image for the supplied location and date.
Global Imagery Browse Services
The Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) are designed to deliver global, full-resolution satellite imagery to users in a highly responsive manner, enabling interactive exploration of the Earth.
Built at the International Space Apps Challenge in Kansas City, the {MAAS} API is an open source REST API built to help make it easier and more efficient to build interactive applications that want to utilize the wealth of weather data being transmitted by the Curiosity Rover on Mars.
This comprehensive data set from The Meteoritical Society contains information on all of the known meteorite landings.
The Minor Planet Center is the single worldwide location for receipt and distribution of positional measurements of minor planets, comets and outer irregular natural satellites of the major planets. This web service interface allows users to programmatically fetch minor planet properties data from the MPC’s database. Data from four tables are joined to produce the results which can be returned in either JSON or XML format.
This is a simple api to return the current location of the ISS, ISS pass times and the total number of people in space.
The API to find out when the weather is good enough to see cool things in the night sky, anywhere in the world.
SkyMorph enables searches for variable, moving or transient objects. It provides convenient access to 693,905 optical images and catalogs generated by the Near Earth Asteroid Tracking (NEAT) program. This API wraps wraps NASA’s SkyMorph archive in a RESTful JSON interface.
Interactively browse and download full-resolution, global, near real-time satellite imagery from 100+ data products from NASA and other data providers. In essence, Worldview shows the entire Earth as it looks “right now” — or at least as it has looked within the past few hours.
There is an entire universe of data out there, and many possible challenges to address with it, are just 8 of the 35 challenges and 11 of the thousands of datasets offered this year, so we encourage you to explore more at http://spaceappschallenge.org.
We look forward to seeing what crazy, amazing and innovative solutions you invent this weekend at the International Space Apps Challenge!
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* The International Space Apps Challenge is technology development event hosted by NASA and partners that draws on the talents and initiative of bright minded volunteers — developers, engineers, technologists, designers, and anyone with a passion and desire to improve life on Earth and life in space. The event will take place on April 10–12th in 138 cities around the world. For more information visit http://spaceappschallenge.org
