Enter NASA’s 202N Space Innovation Contest: Join the Quest!

Registration for the 2024 NASA International Space Apps Challenge is now open. It’s your chance to build space-related visualizations, apps, and other projects for the “largest annual global hackathon.”

The challenge, whose first event was back in 2012, invites people from wide-ranging backgrounds and with diverse skills to use NASA’s free and open data to tackle real-world problems on Earth and in space. These problems will be submitted by NASA’s Subject Matter Experts, and the challenges range from creating artistic visualizations to conceptualizing and developing apps and software, covering topics including climate change, biodiversity, space exploration, and data visualization.

For example, in 2023, to address the Explore Open Science Together theme, teams’ tasks ranged from creating customized itineraries for future space travelers and producing educational material about the many different objects in our solar system, to creating visual tools laying out the complete path of water across Earth and using publicly available imaging spectroscopy data to map biodiversity hotspots. The theme for 2024 is The Sun Touches Everything, in celebration of the sun’s influence on our planet and the solar system as a whole.

All participants will receive a certificate, and projects are judged by space agency experts, with winners selected for one of ten global awards:

• Best Use of Science
• Best Use of Data
• Art & Technology
• Best Use of Technology
• Galactic Impact
• Best Mission Concept
• Most Inspirational
• Best Storytelling
• Global Connection
• Local Impact

People of all ages, skills, backgrounds, and interests are encouraged to enter—the one thing that connects those involved is their interest in space and science. Whether you’re a coder, scientist, designer, storyteller, maker, technologist, or innovator, you’re invited to join. And you never know what’s around the corner if you do partake—participants from previous years have proceeded to form companies, develop careers, and network with like-minded individuals, with 57,999 people from 152 countries and territories registering in 2023.

To participate, you must first create an account via the Space Apps website, and doing so is straightforward—simply insert your name, email address, area of residence, and, if you wish, an avatar. Then, you can register for the hackathon, and choose an event to attend. If there aren’t any events near you, don’t fret—you can join one of the many virtual events.

You can start finding and forming teams from August 22, 2024, before joining Space Apps Connect in late September, 2024. Entrants must submit their projects by midnight local time on October 6, 2024, which marks the end of the two-day hackathon event.

Source: Space Apps Challenge , Space Apps FAQ