High-Level Project Summary
Cosmic Quest is an app that allows users to access and translate space research data. Not only does it search images and text from NASA and other space agencies' multiple APIs, but it also renders and translates the results into 100+ different languages. The inbuilt audio support for the app makes it even more powerful. Our app mainly focuses on inclusion, diversity, and easy access to space data for all. The main problem with space research is not being able to share the data to the diverse groups in multiple languages. Unifying the open data and sharing knowledge is crucial for scientific advancement especially in the field of space research. This is the goal of our app Cosmic Quest.
Link to Final Project
Link to Project "Demo"
Detailed Project Description
In middle school, we learn about Astronomy. This subject is our favorite. We got curious on what different countries around the world are doing in space research. I found that different countries publish their data in different languages and there is no one common platform to share this data with each other. We wanted to solve this problem by creating an app linking multiple APIs from various space agencies. We added a translation feature which translates the searched up data into over a 100 languages. It even reads out the translated content in the language of our choice. This will allow kids, space enthusiasts around the world to easily access research data and translate it to the language of their preference.
- We did this by using the Thunkable app platform to write code and design the interfaces. We focused on small things first and started translating various acronyms used in NASA. We downloaded the data from NASA's resources page and used it to look up the acronym entered by the user and find out the matching records. The found records will then be translated in to the language of the users choice. The app even gives the pronunciation of the translated language as speech/audio.
- We then extended the app to connect to the NASA's APIs to find the images based on the keywords users type in to the search box. For ex, if the user types in the keyword Apollo 11, the app connects to the NASA's Image search API and downloads and shows the picture with a description of the image. The description would also be translated into the preferred language of the user. The API accepts multiple parameters like nasa_id, Keywords, media_type etc.
- After connecting to the APIs from NASA, we then started to look for other APIs from ISRO etc. We were able to connect to ISRO launches API and get the list of all launches till date.
- We can extend our app to connect to any public APIs in the world to look up space research papers, patents, softwares, launches and can translate it in to different languages.
- The App will be available publicly free of cost to anyone who wants to use on both Andriod and IOS.
Link to docs: https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1IS1-HkwErhgsBDc0UXL5aw_dRWAT_pXl?usp=sharing
Space Agency Data
We used NASA API Portal - The NASA API Portal where NASA data, including imagery, is accessible to application developers. We particularly used this NASA Image and Video Library
API to access the NASA Image and Video Library site at images.nasa.gov.
The images API contains 4 endpoints GET https://images-api.nasa.gov. We can use any of these
GET /search?q={q} Performing a search
GET /asset/{nasa_id} Retrieving a media asset’s manifest
GET /metadata/{nasa_id} Retrieving a media asset’s metadata location
GET /captions/{nasa_id} Retrieving a video asset’s captions location
We used the GET /search end point and GET /asset end points in our project.
We also downloaded datasets from https://data.nasa.gov/.
Hackathon Journey
We are super excited about this challenge. This is our first time at Space Apps challenge and we thoroughly enjoyed working on our project and learned a great deal.
The first thing that interested me is the collaboration with all the different space agencies. The challenges were all interested and it was hard to pick one. But then, we knew exactly the problem we wanted to solve and the challenge "The art in our worlds" suited perfectly for our concept. We quickly started working on it. We used the SOLVED approach to solve the problem.
S - Study - We studied the problem
O - Observe - We observed what others are doing. The various space agencies, how they are publishing open source data.
L - List - We brainstormed and listed all our ideas
V - Visualize - We visualized our app by creating wireframes on paper.
E - Enhance - We enhanced our idea in to an actual working solution plan
D - Develop - We then completed coding and testing and developed the final working app
We have future plans to extend it further to make it connect to many more apis from other space agencies.
References
- https://github.com/isro/api
- https://api.nasa.gov/
- https://sa-2019.s3.amazonaws.com/media/documents/NASAs_Open_Data_Universe.pdf
- https://thunkable.com/?utm_term=thunkable&utm_campaign=US/UK/CA%20|%20Search%20|%20Brand&utm_source=adwords&utm_medium=ppc&hsa_acc=2723599162&hsa_cam=15000671177&hsa_grp=127293870903&hsa_ad=554377436828&hsa_src=g&hsa_tgt=kwd-360955260416&hsa_kw=thunkable&hsa_mt=e&hsa_net=adwords&hsa_ver=3&gclid=CjwKCAjw7eSZBhB8EiwA60kCW3QoNHVEkEIxg0LwFq-3VpC7TCAvTLkg5bTSM3KR07weyUK_XVPzcRoCpzwQAvD_BwE#/
- https://data.nasa.gov/
- https://www.esa.int/About_Us/Art_Culture_in_Space
- https://www.asc-csa.gc.ca/eng/open-data/
- https://datos.gob.mx/busca/dataset?theme=Geoespacial
Tags
#NASA, #ISRO, #Spaceresearch #inclusive #diversity #AIML