NASA Space Apps is offering participants 20 innovative challenges crafted by NASA Subject Matter Experts (SMEs) to tackle at this year’s hackathon. NASA SMEs provide their expertise and experiences to author these challenges, featuring some of the most pressing issues on Earth and in space science, as well as NASA’s upcoming missions and priorities for the year. Whether you're a beginner or a seasoned expert, now’s your chance to dive into NASA’s free and open data and choose a challenge to tackle on October 5-6, 2024!
This year’s theme, 'The Sun Touches Everything,' in collaboration with NASA Heliophysics’ celebration of the Helio Big Year, encourages you to explore the Sun's influence on your chosen challenge, highlighting its role as Earth's primary energy source and its influence on our climate, weather, and ecosystems. We even have a challenge from NASA Heliophysics called “Show Us What the 2024 Geomagnetic Storms Looked Like.” Get your creativity on and develop a visual representation (e.g., a movie, video of a dance, etc.) that helps the public better understand the May 2024 solar storms and their impacts.
If storytelling is your thing, take on “Tell Us a Climate Story!” Your challenge is to make sense of the vast amount of climate data and tell a meaningful story about climate change.
Join us to “Uncover the Role of Greenhouse Gases in Your Neighborhood!”. As policymakers and citizens race to combat climate change, understanding the interplay between human-caused (anthropogenic) greenhouse gas emissions and natural systems that produce and absorb greenhouse gasses (sources and sinks) is more important than ever. Your challenge is to use a combination of satellite and model-based datasets to map both human-caused and natural greenhouse gas emissions to enable a better understanding of how these emissions contribute to a warmer world.
What does Earth’s ecosystem heavily rely on? Sunlight! But imagine an ocean world where chemosynthesis, not photosynthesis, sustains life – “Beyond Sunlight: An Aquatic Chemosynthetic World.” Your challenge is to design such a world and its ecosystem, pushing the boundaries of astrobiology beyond traditional Earth-like conditions.
When thinking about agriculture, it’s important to understand the many challenges farmers face – especially water-related – due to unpredictable weather, pests, and diseases. These factors can significantly impact crop health, farmers’ profits, and food security. Depending upon the geography, many farmers may face droughts or floods—sometimes, both of these extreme events occur within the same season! “Leveraging Earth Observation Data for Informed Agricultural Decision-Making,” asks that you design a tool that empowers farmers to easily explore, analyze, and utilize NASA datasets to address these water-related concerns and improve their farming practices.
For those interested in software, there is a challenge for you – “Seismic Detection Across the Solar System.” Planetary seismology missions struggle with the power requirements necessary to send continuous seismic data back to Earth. But only a fraction of this data is scientifically useful! Instead of sending back all the data collected, what if we could program a lander to distinguish signals from noise and send back only the data we care about? Write a computer program to analyze real data from the Apollo missions and the Mars InSight Lander to identify seismic quakes within the noise.
No matter your background—designer, coder, storyteller, or dreamer—these challenges are for everyone! Choose one for you and your team today. Register now to explore all 20 challenges!
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