On October 19-20, Noosphere joined the largest international space hackathon – NASA Space Apps Challenge. In 2019, the hackathon featured about 230 locations in 80 countries. NASA declared 20 challenges relating to Earth, Moon, near and far planets. More than 29,000 space enthusiasts joined the movement to solve global issues with NASA.
2019 was the third year Noosphere organized and hosted NASA Space Apps Challenge at Noosphere Engineering School, Dnipro. This year was a record success, with 200 registrations from Dnipro, Kyiv, Zaporizhzhia, Kharkiv, Zhytomyr. In total, there were 28 teams. Noosphere encourages children to explore space technology; this was evident with one of the crews entirely made up of children aged 12-14.
As always participants only had 48 hours to tackle a particular problem and present their solution to the public. While working, teams could access assistance from mentors of NASA Space Apps Challenge Dnipro. These mentors also helped to structure ideas and craft presentations.
Projects’ presentation was day two. Among the projects were a spacecraft to clean plastic ocean debris as well as space debris from orbit, mobile applications for space exploration, space-based educational portals, and other developments.
An expert jury led by Michael Ryabokon, Chairman of the Board at “Association Noosphere”, evaluated the projects and selected two teams to compete globally: SDGS and KISS. SDGS introduced two concepts within one project: a mobile game where a player can operate a space drone, and a controller (joystick) that connects to a phone or tablet and facilitates the gameplay. KISS presented the concept of an airplane in which overcomplex communications between systems are conducted through one single network (wire). Such a solution would significantly reduce the weight and cost of aircraft construction.
The global winners will be announced in January 2020. The creators of the top six projects will receive invitations to NASA’s Kennedy Space Center.
