while(true): create

Hermosillo | Learning Through the Looking Glass

COSMIC EYES

High-Level Project Summary

COSMIC EYES is a computer-based set of mini-games aimed at children ages 6 and up with the objective of providing an entertaining and interactive experience for them to learn about the composition, functions, and incredible potential of the James Webb Space Telescope. The mini-games included are “puzzle” and “memory game,” the former being about the Webb’s components and their importance, and the latter about the process of taking a picture with the telescope. The mini-games chosen are intuitive but informative to awaken an interest in the player about the most powerful telescope to date. With this, players will not only learn, but also improve their cognitive skills while they have fun.

Link to Final Project

https://github.com/KevinAvz2203/While-true-Create

Link to Project "Demo"

https://youtu.be/0-rPKW7tfjE

Detailed Project Description

COSMIC EYES begins with… an accident!

The James Webb Space Telescope has just been hit and smashed to pieces by a meteor. It is now your mission to help Jimmy Bee, the player guide and mission commander, to restore the glory of the Webb and discover an area of space by using the telescope to take and develop a picture.

Puzzle Section

The first area of the game presents the player with Webb’s pieces laid out on the upper part of the screen, as well as a silhouette of the telescope in the middle of the screen. Jimmy Bee instructs the player to drag and drop a piece of the telescope, clicking the “Check” button to check their answer of the placement of the piece. Once a piece has been correctly placed, Jimmy Bee explains to the player the role of the component.

This is done with the 8 main parts of the telescope included. A full model of the telescope is shown when the player finishes placing and checking the placement of each piece.

Afterwards, the same drag and drop concept is presented, but with the instruments of the ISIM of the James Webb Telescope to explain the infrared capabilities of the telescope.

Memory Game Section

Finally, Jimmy Bee instructs the player for the final mission: taking a picture of space with the repaired telescope. This is presented in the form of a memory game, where finding pairs of numbers in the cards provided reveals a part of the image taken by the telescope.

Important Facts

In between the mini-games, fun facts and other pieces of information were included about the James Webb’s history, development, and functioning.

What benefits does it have?What do you hope to achieve?

Our set of classic mini-games has the potential to ease our target audience (children ages 6+) into the idea of dipping their toes into the immense pool of available knowledge of science, technology, engineering, and space. As a team, we acknowledge that people learn through doing, and what better way is there to learn about a complex topic than with a visually appealing and fun video game?

What tools, coding languages, hardware, or software did you use to develop your project?

“COSMIC EYES” was developed from scratch using Python as the project’s programming language. The “Turtle” library was utilized in order to take advantage of the possibility to:

“Drag and drop” images for the first puzzles of the game,
Make a memory game to complete an image,
Print text on a screen pop up character by character,
Use background images,
Change images with ease to simulate animations.

Space Agency Data

What space agency data did we use?

The space agency data utilized in this project ranges from images taken by the James Webb Space Telescope hosted by the Canadian Space Agency website and Flickr to Pdfs and articles about the telescope’s structure and functioning from the official NASA website and the European Space Agency site.

How did we use it?

The images were either used as is or as a resource for the elaboration of illustrations for the mini-games. Information about the telescope was included for the “learning” aspect of the game.

How did it inspire our project?

Upon investigating the James Webb Space Telescope, our team was awed by the incredible and innovative nature of this instrument. With this, it became obvious that our game would include pictures taken by the telescope, as well as information detailing why this gadget in particular is superior to previous space telescopes.

Hackathon Journey

This Space Apps project was one of the most enriching, yet challenging experiences for the team. We not only learned about the engineering masterpiece behind the James Webb Space Telescope, but also about resilience and teamwork. Programming and illustrating are not easy jobs, especially when such a tight deadline is set.

Our team chose this challenge in particular because we were inspired by the beautiful pictures that the JWST first took in July of 2022. These images aroused our curiosity to find out how this image quality was possible with a telescope at such a great distance from Earth. Just what kind of technology was involved?

The approach that we used for the development of this project was focused on investigating, drafting, illustrating, programming, and modifying any illustrations or code as needed. With this, a set of informative and interactive mini-games with a short storyline was created.

The way we solved setbacks and challenges was by applying a constant rotation of team members in the project plan.

We want to especially thank our university (Tec de Monterrey) for supporting us throughout the hackathon with food, space to work, and mentors for pitch and project feedback.