TMNT

Almaty | Learning Through the Looking Glass

Exploring the James Webb Space Telescope

High-Level Project Summary

James Webb Space Telescope is the largest and most powerful spaced-based telescope ever known – its image results are shockingly astonishing. Our project is dedicated to show the whole power and difficulty of such tools in a fun video-game form using NASA Open-source data in educational purposes. The game itself is a digital museum full of different challenges to complete and achieve new awards. Moreover, all challenges are packed with essential information players can use in their researches, and it’s delivered in an easily accesible way so anyone can understand it. The main goal is to interest students and create an influential product to help parents in studying process of their children.

Link to Final Project

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1Pl4-rYnIMPP_mj-tc8Q3gjnSKQ50xxua

Link to Project "Demo"

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1ECIKjFlv3TjN0hzYbW0r3Qg2z3W431r6

Detailed Project Description

Our project, named “Exploring the James Webb Space Telescope”, is a videogame, developed on Unreal Engine 4. It's based on the idea of virtual museums or attractions people can access via their devices (phones, tablets, PCs, etc.). Exploring in-game world of science facility, heavily inspired by real life laboratories and observatories, players can get information about James Webb Telescope and its photos as well.

What kind of gameplay does it have?

The game consists of 3 major challenges, each one related to essential part of JWST’s history. Along with that, each challenge represents 1 of 3 difficulty levels, first one being easiest due to its low requirements, second being medium because it needs not only logical, but playing skills as well, and finally – third challenge, being hard – it needs a lot of focus and strategical thinking to achieve your goal in best way possible. First one is puzzle game, where you should assemble all the image parts to pass it – the prize for it will be first ever image taken by telescope and detailed description of it and what instruments did it use to collect such data. Second one is a challenge where player must focus telescopes lenses so it will be able to collect data you need. To do that, player needs to adjust every lens manually, and at the same time make sure that the image does not deteriorate. As a trophy in the end of the level player gets to see the cleared image of Neptune and its satellites. Third challenge is analogue of the game called “Asteroids” – old retro game developed for Atari console where you controle your spacecraft, avoid obstacles and shoot meteorites to score points. Here we use the same concept. As a reward player gets image of Nasa’s spacecraft destroying an asteroid, just like what we did in the game. In the end of the game, player gets congratulation for completing all challenges.

What are the benefits of "Exploring JWST"?

The benefits of such project are massive – firstly, player develops his/her multitasking skills, along with others, such as logical and critical thinking, reaction speed, etc. Secondly, player learns a lot of new information about space and JWST specifically. Such lessons are easier for students of any age to be learnt, comparing to usual school lessons. Lastly, players can get immersed in proccesses they usually can’t attend. It’s obvious that not everyone can see working science facility and work in it. However, our game gives them such opportunity – sitting in their homes, they can easily access all those places.

What software did we use to create it?

The main tool we used to create our game is Unreal Engine 4. It’s easy to use and has powerful toolkit to create either interactional games or techno demos. As a coding language we used “Blueprints” – graphical programming language, closely integrated into engine itself. It made real all the challenges with every functionality they carry. Due to the lack of time, we decided to use ready assets for our virtual facility. They were quality made and fit into our game’s setting. But every other model, material, or code we used was made by our own hands. Lighting - one of the most important aspects of every 3D game, that influences experience a lot, was made manually so players can get immersed better. Along with engine, we were using Blender for 3D modelling and rendering; Figma for 2D drawing.

What about the future?

We plan on launching this project soon after we finish its functionality and add all the features we want to. Most importantly, we are going to add new museums like this, related to different themes, from climate change to robotics, in order to create a whole new metaverse - platform, where students can interact, play and learn at the same time. We hope that we will be able to create new generation of space scientists that will lead us to brighter tomorrow. We aim on changing school educational system to achieve better results in preparing students for their future workplaces.

Space Agency Data

To work with research JWST made we used “Webb Telescope Image Database (webbtelescope.org)” to find photos of space objects in high resolution so we can use it in our game. Moreover, we used all the additional information and facts in educational purposes as well. Each challenge in the game was dedicated to one major event occurred in telescope’s lifetime, starting from its launch, and ending with its lastest photos taken. We used photos of objects, such as: galaxy cluster SMACS 0723, Neptune and its ring, and our personal favorite – image of NASA’s DART (Double Asteroid Redirection Test) impacting Dimorphos, the asteroid moonlet in the double-asteroid system of Didymos. Some photos are interactive - for instance, the image of JWST, that is used in our 1st game as a puzzle. Thanks to open-source data NASA provided, people like us are able to create such projects in order to solve global issues or satisfy their curiosity. Wihout game being related to that data it could’ve lost most of its fun and interstingness.

Hackathon Journey

We are a group of 11th grade students, studying in NIS PhMd, located in Almaty, Kazakhstan. From the very beginning of our high school journey, we were highly passionate about anything related to technologies and science. Thanks to our local robotics club and tons of competitions we were participating at, we learned tons of knew and enjoyed a lot all the experience we got from those activities.

When we heard about “Nasa Space Apps Challenge 2022”, we were extremely curious about it, because we knew that it will be a lot of fun and useful for us. We had all the skills to create and develop our own projects, such as programming, artistic, design, writing, and other skills, but we didn’t know much about space challenges presented on this hackathon, especially about James Webb Telescope. The only thing we knew for sure was the fact that this amazing creation reveals the whole beauty of infinite space, and we wanted to study it as deep as we can.

After the beginning of the challenge, we got to work. At the very start we were inconfident about what we are going to do, but after research we made about the telescope, we understood the main features of it and got the idea of the project we are going to create. After we devided our jobs, process went on. We worked as hard as we could to be in time and finish our project.

As a result, our game became enjoyable to play and even we were immersed in it. After all the study and work we got to know a lot of new about space, specifically how telescopes work. We understood the main features of JWST and the importance of its unique structure. We hope that from now on we will be able to use those knowledges and that we will develop our project further so it will become something more than just a virtual museum.