Nightshade

Mountain View | Build a Space Biology Superhero

Universal Hero

High-Level Project Summary

This project explores the environmental stresses astronauts face in space, including factors like radiation, lack of gravity, and atmospheric pressure. We developed a website that informs the user about each of these limitations, and how various organisms have adapted to deal with these stresses. After reading through the information, the user has the opportunity to create their own “space biology superhero” by combining the features of the organisms listed.

Link to Final Project

https://universal-hero.chelseaz2.repl.co/

Link to Project "Demo"

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/e/2PACX-1vR_hvm6ciJim_CYXz06tPD0CPNSW-6ur-A2R4_2llwyd-q-y-l0MSZmEfxcKvX31lsFvX_HptU5_L8C/pub?start=false&loop=false&delayms=5000

Detailed Project Description

This project is a website with 5 different pages. The home page loads into a full view of the title screen, and an arrow at the bottom brings the reader down to more information. It introduces the reader to 3 different issues that organisms encounter in space, and links them to each corresponding page. It informs the reader about each problem, and the harms it may cause, as well as possible solutions to these problems found in nature. The last page allows the reader to design an organism of their own, with features introduced in the previous pages. It uses a combination of HTML, CSS, and JavaScript, hosted on Replit.com.

Space Agency Data

In our project, we used data from NASA and the Canadian Space Agency to compile research for our information pages. The intelligence from these sources provided us with information on the environmental stresses of space exploration. Our project was inspired by the studies done by NASA on how different organisms were affected by spaceflight environments.

Hackathon Journey

Throughout this hackathon, we’ve learned so much more not just about space exploration, but also coding. Of course, research was needed to complete this project. We started with one person collecting information onto a document about various organisms and their approach to limitations in space. The other began to develop the website, starting with the home page and navigation bar. Throughout this project, we faced many struggles, both relating to the content itself and the coding. It was slightly difficult understanding many of the sources used, and trying to put the words into understandable phrases for any reader. The main challenges faced in coding this were in formatting. Many times something would not look the way we wanted it to, and it was a matter of carefully searching through each file to adjust minor problems, such as switching a display attribute from inline to block. Overall, we faced many difficulties, but we worked through them and learned so much about how to deal with obstacles such as the ones we faced, as well as information about the content itself. We would like to thank Space Apps for hosting this event, and for giving us the opportunity to share our projects and ideas with others who share our passion.