1. People’s Choice: #SpaceApps Public Voting

    We have 133 projects qualified for global judging… and we’re excited to see which one is the People’s Choice!

    Voting for the People’s Choice award starts tomorrow! You’ll go to the Awards page and click on the Vote button next to your favorite project. Anyone and everyone is eligible to vote for the project they consider most deserving of the title People’s Choice.

    We are using Twitter to collect votes and have assigned a unique hashtag to each project. Individuals simply need to tweet @spaceapps with the hashtag of their favorite project to vote. This hashtag is not alterable, so please be sure that you are sharing the correct one so that we can track your support online.

    If you have a Twitter account: everything should work from the website as long as you are also signed in to your Twitter account.

    If you do not have a Twitter account: no problem! Go here to create an account. Once you have an account and are signed in, go back to the Awards page and select the project you would like to vote for.

    Please help spread the word about your favorite projects! Voting is only open until May 17th. We want to hear what #SpaceApps project you believe deserves a special award.

    The global judging panel is reviewing the 133 nominated projects to award Best Use of Data, Best Use of Hardware, Galactic Impact and Most Inspiring. These best-in-class awards will be announced on May 22 along with the People’s Choice winner. Want further details on the International Space Apps Challenge voting process? Go here to read more.

  2. Virtual winners and honorable mentions

    We had a very large response to the International Space Apps Challenge this year by people who were participating virtually.  Over 1,400 people from all corners of the world participated online to tackle the 58 challenges.  170 solutions were submitted and today we are announcing the top 4 virtual winners!  These teams will progress to the global judging round and will also receive two K’NEX Building Sets which were provided by the organizers of the Philadelphia Main Stage location.
    <drum roll>
     
    And the winners are…
    We would also like to highlight five other solutions that received “honorable mentions:”
    </drum roll>
    We look forward to reviewing all solutions nominated for global judging.  As a reminder to all those who were nominated, here’s what you need to do to compete at the global level:
    By May 1:
    1. Prepare a 100 word description of your project and place it at the top of the Description field on your project page.
    2. Prepare a 2:00 minute video giving an overview of your project. (including demo if possible)
    3. Be sure that  your project page is as complete as possible with resources, all team members, all code. 
    Congratulations to everyone!

  3. Congratulations to the global nominees

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    Congratulations! The weekend is over… but #SpaceApps is definitely still on and moving into global judging! You can read the specifics of how judging and awards will work here.

    Next steps for projects and teams that won their local event and are globally nominated:

    1. You need to be sure that your project page is as complete as possible. All team members, all code, links to any photos, presentations and datasets, social accounts if you have them – the more information you have included on your page, the better. If you have a software project where the code is not included, you will not be eligible for judging.

    2. You need to make a video. For local judging, you gave a presentation in person. For global judging, we need you to make a video introducing your team, describing and demo-ing your solution. The video can be simple or fancy, but should be no more than 2 minutes and should highlight the impact of your project. You will have until May 1, 2013 to submit a video describing your challenge and solution and link it to your project page.

    Check out this awesome example from Space Apps Kansas City for their project Sol:

    And another great video example from Space Apps Kennedy Space Center (plus a virtual collaborator) for their project Inbound:

    Inbound from Matthew Congrove on Vimeo.

    Great submission videos will tell the story of your team, why you chose your challenge or thought it was important, what you accomplished, how you got there, and what the next steps are.

    You should also start to think about sharing the story of your project online and with your friends, as there will be a People’s Choice award given to the project with the highest number of public votes!

    We can’t wait to put up all these videos on spaceappschallenge.org and share the stories of the people and the projects collaborating for Earth and for space. Watchspaceappschallenge.org and @spaceapps for updates and information. We expect to announce the Global Best in Class awards on May 22.

    Congratulations and good luck!

  4. The Power of Mass Collaboration

    This weekend, more then 9,000 people and 484 organizations from around the world came together in 83 cities across 44 countries, as well as online, to engage directly with NASA at the largest hackathon ever held. In just 83 total hours, we collectively tackled the 58 challenges by developing awe-inspiring software, buiding jaw-dropping hardware, and creating stunning data visualizations that together resulted in one giant leap towards improving life on Earth and life in space. After the dust settled, an impressive 750+ solutions were submitted.

    The International Space Apps Challenge was the culmination of months of planning, years of experimentation and thousands and thousands of hours of hard work from people across the globe who share in the excitement of building our collective future. It is a shining example that transparency, participation and collaboration are alive and well at NASA. This event could not have been possible without you.

    Our space program, more then ever, requires the active engagement of the public to co-create our future. This weekend demonstrated the true potential of participatory exploration and what can happen when a government agency like NASA takes a chance on engaging the untapped, unexpected, and uncharted know-how of thousands of passionate citizens around the world.

    THANK YOU for participating in the International Space Apps Challenge.

    With huge respect,

    Nick, Ali, Chris, Sean and the Space Apps team

  5. Can Space Hackers Colonize the Solar System?

    Dr. Phil Metzger is a physicist/planetary scientist at NASA Kennedy Space Center who works on technologies for mining the Moon, Mars, and asteroids; for developing extraterrestrial spaceports; and for robotic industry in space. Outside his day job he blogs on his vision for extending human civilization into the solar system (and graciously allowed us to cross post his blog.). At this weekend’s International Space Apps Challenge, he created a challenge called Moonville and joined the event at the Kennedy Space Center. 

    I am sitting in a room at at the Kennedy Space Center for the International Space Apps Challenge.  It is late at night, I’m very tired, and there are eight other people in the room:  all much younger than me, all college students, all writing software for a game called “Moonville“.  It will be a strategy game where the players simulate the beginnings of industry in the solar system.  I submitted the Moonville topic to the Space Apps Challenge so that eventually people will play the game and through the game develop a winning strategy that we can use to actually start industry in space.  It’s an exercise of double-nested crowdsourcing.  The Space Apps Challenge is crowdsourcing the writing of the game, so the game can crowdsource the development of the strategy for space industry.  I’m amazed how much these students have gotten done already, just sitting here in a room by themselves with their laptops, a wifi, and this older guy (me) answering a few questions.  They started entirely from scratch before dinner.  They plan to be done by lunchtime tomorrow.  I didn’t know this was even possible.

    Laptop computer and engineering journal on solar system colonization

    Developing a Moonville game to help colonize the solar system

    A few minutes ago they were taking a pizza break, and I told them that the fate of humanity very well could depend on space hackers.  I asked, what if the governments of the world don’t prioritize space highly enough to get lunar industry started?  What if the commercial space companies don’t find enough investors to fund more than their immediate business plans and so are unable to truly colonize space?  Who then will take humanity beyond this planet?  I’m thinking it will have to be the private citizens of the world, space hackers like these young people.  Individually, they may not have billions of dollars like the private investors, or trillions of dollars like the governments of the world, but collectively they have much, much more.

    For example, there are seven billion of us here on planet Earth, so what if just four billion of us paid one dollar a year for ten years into this future in space?  That would amount to forty billion dollars.  That should be enough to get the job done.  Just one dollar a year.  Surely we can do that.

    But we might not convince four billion people to participate.  Too many people don’t understand that a higher level of civilization is really possible.  It seems too much like science fiction and so they don’t want to throw away their dollar.  So here is another idea.  How about if just the space enthusiasts of the world do it?  We have something more valuable than cash, after all.  We have our abilities and our time.  We could start developing the relevant technologies in our garages.  Some of us could build lunar soil-mining robots.  (There are already hundreds of people building robots in their garages for competitions and for fun.)  Other enthusiasts could develop soil-to-metal refineries in the Hackerspaces that are popping up all over the world.  Others could adapt 3D printers for use with lunar-derived feedstock.  Still others could write software to teleoperate this equipment.  How about if we agree to build these things for a few years and then bring it together to a volcano or to a desert location for a full-up, lunar-analog field test?  We could demonstrate the equipment functioning like it would on the Moon, robots building robots from nothing but the soil and some ice and the sunlight as inputs.  (We could add some carbon dioxide and ammonia to the water ice to better simulate the chemistry of lunar ice.)  It would certainly be a grand party, as well as a great field test!  You could count me in!

    So how about if we do this every other year for a decade or two, improving our technologies until we have engineered an entire set of hardware that can build a copy of itself?  It would be like the Global Village Construction Set, but designed for the Moon.  It would be a tangible demonstration that self-sufficient space industry is now possible, that humanity can master the solar system and possess billions of times greater capacity to do things than we can here on planet Earth.  It would demonstrate the imminence of human civilization at a truly higher level and the possibility to solve the big global problems including pollution, poverty, and resource depletion.  It would give hope and excitement to the next generation of youth.  It would enable us to do great things on Earth, in our solar system, and in the galaxy.  If we do this — in our spare time in our garages — how could the politicians and the corporate financiers of the world fail then to pay the last bit of cost in sending it to the Moon?

    The eight space hackers busily writing software here where I sit are by no means alone in the International Space Apps Challenge.  Over eight thousand space enthusiasts are participating in this event tonight.  Some are in other rooms of this building, working on more of the 52 challenges besides Moonville.  And participants are all over the world, including the 83 official event locations in places like Tokyo, Manila, Abu Dhabi, Managua, Nairobi, New York — cities in 44 countries on all seven continents.  Eleven of the locations are completely “sold out” with no room for more participants.  According to the NASA website, those are in Adelaide, Bangalore, Bogota, Guatemala City, London, Monterrey, Recife, San Francisco, Santa Cruz, Santa Marta, Santiago and Toronto.  Space enthusiasm is not limited to the countries that are already flying in space!  It is a global phenomenon.  The young people that I am watching in this room are right now collaborating with others in Ecuador.  Meanwhile, I’m answering Moonville questions from Lieden, emailing participants in Rome, waiting for the 2:30 a.m. Google Hangout with Jakarta, typing this blog post, and reflecting on how the fate of humanity might depend on young space hackers like these.

    And you know what?  I’m feeling pretty good about that.

    You can see the projects developed for the Moonville challenge at Space Apps 2013 here.

  6. Space Apps Toronto: Teams Prepare for the Final Stretch at Space Apps Toronto

    spaceappstoronto:

    image

    Space Apps Toronto is in full swing as we near the end of Saturday. It’s doors-closed at the Royal Ontario Museum at midnight, although a number of teams are in it for the long haul — likely heading to one of Toronto’s 24-hour greasy spoons to get a head start on the final stretch. …

  7. spaceappsatlanta:

    Space Apps Atlanta may not have the biggest group in the world, especially compared to the turnout in places like Toronto, but we’ve made up for numbers with shear tenacity!

    Working late into the night, we had groups working on an ArduSat, bringing all the sensors online and aggregating data, 3D printing a case for  the ArduSat, design for a Mars Rover blog, global rainfall data visualization and a Ruby Gem to provide a more accessible interface for SkyMorph.

    Great work from everyone!

  8. The Space Apps Youth Challenge

    Here in Toronto at the featured NASA Space Apps Youth Event, we have a roomful of intensely curious young makers taking a shot at a half a dozen different challenges.
    image
    At the “Create an Exoplanet Alien” challenge, kids are devotedly working on their design for an alien life form. Nearby, three 3D printers are chugging away printing off the aliens. Afterwards, they can go to “Create a Planet” to design a home for their alien, and then visit “Wish You Were Here” to put themselves - in full astronaut costume! - in a postcard from another planet. The “CubeSat” challenge uses origami to solve an engineering problem for tiny satellites. Plus there’s fun to be had with meteorites, a space-dress-up photobooth, and creepy Oobleck tentacle creatures made from cornstarch.
    image

    Other kids are creating a soundtrack for the event by combining deep space sounds as our in-house DJs, and remixing videos from space to make something new. Meanwhile, the whole event is swarming with youth microbloggers capturing the event on iPads and video cameras. http://hivetoronto.tumblr.com/.
    image
    Thanks to the organizers and fabulous volunteers (led by Marianne Mader) from all the event partners:
    And a big hand to the sponsors who made this possible:
    Reporting by Jen Dodd (Toronto Mini Maker Faire 2013)

  9. Kicking it Globally!

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    Who better to tell the global story then folks from around the world! I’ve Storified some highlights from Twitter, Instagram and Facebook.

    (photo via @ideateca)

    Some of my favourite global snapshots:

    See the whole story.


    Onward!


    Heather

  10. Explore #SpaceApps

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    There are a number of interesting things you can do on the International Space Apps Challenge website to follow along.  Here are four things you should know -

    #1. You can view the live stream from locations around the world! Just click on the icon on the upper right corner of the map on the home page of http://spaceappschallenge.org and then click on a location. Prepare to be amazed.

    Livestream #2. We have a great visualization of @SpaceApps highlights. Just visit this zoomph page and sit back for a few minutes take it all on in.

    Screen Shot 2013-04-20 at 12.01.05 AM

    #3. The story of space apps is being captured live by @heatherlesson via Storify.

    If you have something awesome to share, make sure to let Heather know!  

    storify #4. We have a great error page!

    This is a reminder that if you find a bug or have an issue, let us know!

    404 Page