Challenges

Space exploration involves overcoming numerous challenges: extreme gravity, disrupted sleep and circadian rhythms, limited supplies, and access to medical care, etc. Your challenge is to design a platform that allows users to explore space travel stresses, understand how diverse organisms deal with these stresses, and then build a "Space Biology Superhero” by combining features from these organisms.

Data from the amateur radio International Space Station (ISS) broadcast and reception systems and networks of ham radio broadcasters can be utilized for applied Heliophysics research. Your challenge is to develop an application that uses these datasets to construct and display images of Earth’s ionosphere.

The NASA Technical Report Server (NTRS) includes hundreds of thousands of items containing scientific and technical information (STI) created or funded by NASA. Imagine how difficult it can be to locate desired information in such a large repository! Your challenge is to develop a technique using Artificial Intelligence (AI) to improve the accessibility and discoverability of records in the public NTRS.

Earth Observations (EO) can help policymakers around the world make more informed decisions to address natural disasters, land management issues, the impacts of climate change, and other environmental issues. However, policymakers and community members first need to develop the capacity (knowledge and skills) to use EO in their work. Your challenge is to create a user-friendly virtual gateway of capacity-building resources that will help professionals of all levels and disciplines find the training they need to apply EO.

Participants are invited to create their own challenge to tackle, but these are not eligible for Global Judging.

Several spacecraft, including the Parker Solar Probe, are gathering data about the Sun that will enable us to learn more about solar effects (a.k.a. space weather) in space and on Earth. Your challenge is to create an interactive tool to represent this data in a new and inviting way that improves public knowledge and understanding of space weather.

Numerous Earth visualization applications use available Earth Observation data to help us understand our planet, but some of these applications could be augmented to be even more useful. Your challenge is to select an existing NASA, Space Apps, or other open source Earth data visualization web application and improve it by incorporating one or more valuable data analysis features.

Your challenge is to design an energy storage system that will power a surface lander or rover on the surface of Venus for at least 60 days, so that there is a viable energy storage capability for long-duration exploration missions.

Climate change is a universal topic that may affect people all over our planet in different ways. Your challenge is to create a short video that provides factual and educational information about climate change based on where you might be located or experiences you may have encountered.

Earth scientists would like to use radar signals to observe small deformations of Earth’s surface, but interactions with tropospheric water vapor slow down the radar signal and make it look like the ground is moving. Your challenge is to come up with an algorithm to remove the tropospheric signal from various radar datasets and discern the real ground motion!

NASA’s James Webb Space Telescope is the largest, most powerful, and most complex space science telescope ever built. Your challenge is to develop a game to help people learn about the James Webb Space Telescope’s amazing capabilities.

When they explored the Moon, NASA’s Apollo astronauts left behind several instruments to collect geophysical data near each Apollo landing site. Your challenge is to develop an app that plots the seismic data these instruments transmitted back to Earth on an interactive 3-D globe.

Across the world, scientists are moving to make research and results available to all, but to evaluate research activities practicing open science, we need to measure the relevance and impact of the research to society. Your challenge is to create a new metric to evaluate the effectiveness of open science activities such as sharing of data, software, tools, and results.

NASA has a long and successful history of developing, launching, and operating Earth-observing missions that have contributed significantly to our understanding of the planet. Your challenge is to create an engaging multimedia depiction of all NASA’s Earth-observing missions that also demonstrates how the mission set evolved over time to include new technologies and meet science-driven needs.

On April 28, 2021, during its eighth flyby of the Sun, Parker Solar Probe did what no other human-made object has ever done: it “touched” the Sun—meaning the spacecraft flew through the Sun’s upper atmosphere (the corona) and sampled particles and magnetic fields there. Your challenge is to develop a creative way to tell young audiences the inspiring story of Parker’s record-breaking journey from Earth to the Sun and all the perils it overcame on the way.

Imagine you’re an astronaut who has newly arrived on the Red Planet. Your habitat has been pre-constructed for you, but, other than three 3-D printers, it doesn’t have most of the things you need to live and work. Your challenge is to design tools, furniture, and other items to assist you on your one-year mission.

If a major space weather event like the Carrington Event of 1859 were to occur today, the impacts to society could be devastating. Your challenge is to develop a machine learning algorithm or neural network pipeline to correctly track changes in the peak solar wind speed and provide an early warning of the next potential Carrington-like event.

NASA’s airborne campaigns collect high-resolution data to solve specific scientific problems, but these data can be used to study additional topics, especially when combined with other types of data. Your challenge is to create an app that will utilize the data from one of five selected airborne campaigns to educate the public about a problem associated with Earth’s changing climate.

NASA is moving its data to the cloud, and Machine Learning/Artificial Intelligence (ML/AI) can offer an innovative means to analyze and use this massive archive of free and open data. Your challenge is to create an application using ML/AI techniques that allows users to input short text phrases, matches that input to NASA science data or imagery, and displays the results for the user in a creative and artistic manner.

Applications that track the International Space Station are easy to find online, but their features and capabilities vary. Your challenge is to build and publish an open-source web application that tracks the space station in three dimensions.

A goal of open science is to make scientific information available to all, and original and innovative approaches can be helpful to effectively communicate scientific information to people with different cultural, socioeconomic, and ethnic backgrounds. Your challenge is to develop a creative method that uses the arts to share and explain the design, process, and/or scientific results from a NASA or partner space agency research project to your audience—i.e., develop an approach that combines science, technology, engineering, the arts, and math (STEAM).

The stars above are constantly changing, but usually these changes are too slow or too faint for the eye to see. Your challenge is to develop a learning tool to teach people about stellar variability and help them understand how dynamic the night sky really is!

While NASA’s space probe Juno orbits the planet Jupiter and its moons, its visible-light camera, JunoCam, captures dazzling views of the Jovian system in spectacular detail. Your challenge is to create innovative ways to process JunoCam raw images for scientific, artistic, or other fun purposes.