Visualize the Asteroid Skies

2014 Challenge


  • Hashtags:

    #asteroid, #asteroidskies

    Contact:

    [email protected]

    Tags:

    Data Visualization


    Challenge Description :

    Create data aggregators and visualizations of asteroid data in meaningful ways can educate the public about the need to explore asteroids and protect the Earth from them. Extract data from existing asteroid databases and create clear, beautiful visualizations with them to show the power of asteroid exploration. You can develop code that establishes connections to asteroid data sources, create data visualizers that translate retrieved asteroid data into meaningful plots or presentations; and integrate the communications and data visualization code into an interactive educational website.


    Background

    The Minor Planet Center (MPC) is the single worldwide location for receipt and distribution of positional measurements of minor planets, comets and outer irregular natural satellites of the major planets. The MPC is responsible for the identification, designation and orbit computation for all of these objects. NASA’s Jet Propulsion Laboratory established Infographics in 2012 to crowdsource the creation of scientific works of art. People download data and pictures, create an infographic, and upload the image to the Infographics website. Another NASA website presents visualizations of orbital trajectories for more than 1,450 potentially hazardous asteroids. Other websites exist that provide details about asteroids with their potential values and profit along with an interactive visualization of the inner solar system with asteroids. Several dozen infographics exist that explain specific asteroid missions.

    In June 2013 NASA announced a grand challenge to “find all asteroid threats to human populations and know what to do about them.” A large part of this Grand Challenge is to expand the role of individual inventors, tinkerers, citizen scientists, developers and technologists in participating meaningfully in addressing the work of this challenge with their individual skill sets. Asteroids are both a threat and an opportunity to the planet and humankind; the threat of their impact is one of the few natural phenomenon that we could expand our knowledge base enough to prevent devastation from.

    Solution Ideas

    Here are some ways for you to frame this solution:

    Web pages, communications, and data visualization source code including communications code that extracts data from asteroid databases; web pages with information and embedded data visualizations; source code must use free languages and code libraries that do not require browser plug-ins; and source code with comments and associated documentation. Project Documentation can describe the design process for the communications code, the design process for the data visualizations with screenshots and code snippets to illustrate the design processes. Identify ideas for future work.

    Sample Resources

    Asteroid databases, Infographics, and data visualization libraries


    NASA Technical Reports or Research



  • The following projects are solving this challenge:

    • AsterioVision

      Create a web application that will help visualize asteroid data for the purpose of educating the public and creating interest around asteroid exploration. Visit Project

    • space chat

      宇宙にコメントを打ち上げて、地球の周りをくるくる回ります。 いろいろな大きさのコメントがくるくる回って、 ぶつかって、こわれて、くっついて、 そんな新しいコミュニケーションの表現方法を実現します。 Visit Project

    • Stalkroid

      Asteroid study is a revelation for understanding the early Solar System, the Extremophiles, the materials asteroid possess, its mining for global economy fuel and for divergence of the potential threat it poses. This is the next generation technology driven emerging science and it will in coming ... Visit Project

    • Asteroid Pursuit

      Taking a design instead of a development approach to making asteroid data available to the public. Our concept allows the user to learn through discovery as we let them explore the solar system along various paths. Data is made meaningful through use of info-graphic-style presentations. Further r... Visit Project

    • weSac

      weSac is an open source client-server asteroid monitoring framework. It now supports three features. (1) Check information of asteroids tracked by the system. (2) Augmented reality visualization of the asteroid sky - the mobile application will guide users to find asteroids in the sky and visua... Visit Project

    • AstroRift

      Travel through the solar system with the Oculus Rift (and Kinect) and discover asteroids! Visit Project

    • Asteroids and You

      Displaying important information about asteroids to the public. Visit Project

    • Asteroids in the sky with diamonds

      Showing the risks and the benefits derived from asteroids. Visit Project

    • NEOvi

      Many asteroid visualizations do a good job of showing asteroids in physical space, their orbits, etc. We decided to create a data visualization of asteroids' characteristics to give the public an understanding of how asteroid discovery has progressed over time and the types of asteroids that have... Visit Project

    • M2Stone

      Problemática Desde la década de los 90 del siglo pasado se inició el catalogado de los asteroides, pero estos corresponden en su mayoría a aquellos de tamaño mayor a un kilómetro, pero no así a los más pequeños que por cierto son más abundantes, ya que son más difíciles de detectar y seguir. ... Visit Project

    • The-Curiosity-Rovers

      Our project is to allow the public to visualize the size and composition of asteroids by comparing them to everyday objects that they are used to. By allowing users to enter custom objects and minimal information we allow them to compare these objects to asteroids to understand more about asteroi... Visit Project

    • Asteroid Education

      What is needed is context. Create a visual story of what an asteroid is, how they threaten the Earth, and how often they actually impact the Earth, intended for classroom educational contexts. Flow of information and impact as an educational tool. Package of resources that can be shared and drive... Visit Project

    • Down to earth

      Down to Earth! From space data to ground knowledge. === THE CHALLENGE --- From NASA’s plans for a manned mission to Mars to the meteor crash at central Russia in 2013, the necessity for space research is a topic that comes up quite often. However, for the majority of people this is still ... Visit Project

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