ALDDEJ the Solar Seekers

Tirana | Creative Data Display with the Parker Solar Probe

Awards & Nominations

ALDDEJ the Solar Seekers has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Global Nominee

Solar Seekers

High-Level Project Summary

Our team developed the idea of having a full-stack app including a Website, mobile App and a simple game in order to display data in a simple but effective way to the public. This strategy lets us target different public categories and makes it easier to focus on each of them separately. All of the 3 tools mentioned above have the sole intention to catch the interest of its intended group and present data in an interactive and fun way while also giving information and making the public aware of the Parker Solar Probe and how solar effects affect the space weather and in turn our Earth. Learning through fun and interesting experiences is important to raise public awareness and knowledge.

Link to Final Project

https://github.com/donaldmema/ALDDEJ-NASA-Space-Apps-Hackathon-Final-Project

Link to Project "Demo"

https://youtu.be/eGvvnQAnffk

Detailed Project Description

Website

We developed a simple web interface that catches the user's eye as soon as he enters the page with an informative video regarding the mission of the Parker Solar Probe as animated by NASA animation artists. Then the interesting and interactive part is at the second page(Info Page). At first sight it is just a normal photo but in reality the sun stages that are scattered across the screen are "objects" that can be hovered with the mouse cursor and open an informative small window.

This will make the users stay interested in the website while also expanding their knowledge about space weather.

In an updated version of the app we would like to add a real-time data connection (using NASA's iSWA) in order to make the site more responsive, by making the background color or the sun stages change according to sun temperatures or solar winds/storms.

We also used Wallpaper Engine to create a live desktop wallpaper that reflects the website in real-time which can be used by space enthusiasts as a cool background.

The languages used to build this website are React and TypeScript(of course CSS is used for the styling of the page).

App

We created a Demo version of the App using Figma and animations. The design was made to look cool and just like the website our purpose was to make it interactive so users enjoy a new experience every time they touch an object on the screen. Having a real-time connection with the NASA database for solar wind speeds would allow us to change the background color accordingly. While exploring the information "hidden" in the app there are also some options to see a timely updated hyperlapse of the Sun or get notifications for predictions made by iSWA which will in turn also affect the appearance of the app when they happen.

This app will be the main solar news source for users that will notify them about real time solar effects happening and displaying images and information accordingly.

Game

The game was coded in Python while also using the PyGame library. The target group for the game are children of the ages 5-12. It is a simple survival game where the player is a "satellite" and its goal is to get to its destination without being destroyed by space weather or more accurately solar wind/storm(which is represented by a yellow ray/flame). Every time the satellite gets "touched" by these rays its health bar gets lower. At the end of each level there can be a simple piece of information regarding how solar phenomena affect spacecrafts. Learning through having fun is one of the best proven strategies that work on a child's brain.

This will achieve that the younger generation grows more interested in space phenomena while being more knowledgeable and understanding its importance better than the previous generation.

In future updates the levels can get more intricate to introduce more complicated notions of space weather.

Space Agency Data

We made extensive use of the HD television of solar cameras(SDO, https://sdo.gsfc.nasa.gov/data/) which provided us with the photos we used for the "objects" placed all around our project including photos and information about them.

We also made use of animations from NASA Scientific Visualization Studio.

Hackathon Journey

Our Space Apps experience has been an unforgettable one. During this time we learned a lot starting from how to be effective as a group and teamwork all the way to using data from one of the biggest space science agencies in the world.

Our team was diverse(be it country of birth, age or hobbies) but we all were connected by our passion for technology and science. We were all taken in by the idea of doing something so big scale as to affecting public knowledge by using data visualization.

Our approach to this project was to find a way that would allow us to raise public awareness to space weather in an interesting way and so we did by dividing the solution in 3 pieces and distributing the work load across our team members.

At times of setbacks we would all jump in and help our friends in need so that the problem could be resolved quicker and that proved to be really efficient.

As a team we would like to thank NASA for giving us this amazing opportunity to get to know each other and be able to work on solutions to problems that are affecting the world on the daily. We are also really thankful to have known each other and of the friendships that were created during these days.

References

Software:

Figma (https://www.figma.com/)
VSCode (https://code.visualstudio.com/)
React+Ts (https://reactjs.org/)
Clideo (https://www.clideo.com/)