The iconic success of NASA is planted firmly on three foundational elements: innovation, inspiration, and integrity. While innovation and inspiration are visible through our endeavors and successes, it is our integrity – how we work, and our commitment to excellence and openness – that earns us the trust of the public and ensures our continued ability to inspire and innovate.  Integrity is woven throughout the fabric of NASA.  It has always been there. And each and every day, we recommit ourselves to keeping it there.

(You can read more about the Agency’s framework for scientific integrity here.)

Innovation is what NASA is known for. Every day we are asking new questions and solving problems in new ways. We are encouraging innovation internally and building innovative communities externally, incubating technologies that are deeply committed to making a better world. We are developing innovative partnerships all the time to encourage cross-pollination of research and ideas.

Almost all of us have wondered about life beyond Earth or dreamt of flying in space at some point in our lives; inspiration is the part that seems to come so easily. Who isn’t inspired by this? Or this? Or this? NASA gives us perspective on our planet – and on what it means to be human – every single day. Every time I watch brave explorers suit up and climb onto a rocket to go to space, like I did just this week, I get excited again about what is and can be possible.

Integrity, however, is the commitment we make every single day. Integrity is doing the hard work of putting things into the light – documenting ideas, insuring safety, working through processes, truly engaging citizens. It’s what allows crewmembers to “strap themselves to a few million pounds of explosives and trusting that everything will work as planned.” Sometimes it means asking hard questions about our own issues. Integrity is insuring that not just the crew but the public can trust what is behind the decisions we are making – and committing to appropriately share that information with them. The National Aeronautics and Space Act of 1958, as amended, stipulates that NASA shall “provide for the widest practicable and appropriate dissemination of information concerning its activities and the results thereof.” And as the policy notes: unless a determination is made that public dissemination of  information must be prohibited or restricted, NASA information is made available to the public. (NPR 2200.2, Section 4.5.1)

I fully believe that this is why openness is so important at NASA as we stay focused on such an important mission. As Dr. Abdalati notes, our “awareness of the freedoms and responsibilities [that integrity requires] will help us continue to pursue new knowledge, fuel wonder, and make groundbreaking discoveries about the universe and our place in it.” It is also why we continue to engage citizens, pressing forward with open source policy development, building an effective platform for open data, accelerating effective technologies, and strengthening the open communities here across NASA.

It is a commitment that is often hard. But it is one that is always worthwhile.

The videos submitted on behalf of each nominated project also demonstrate the vision of the collaboration process, the passion of the participants, and what it means to them to engage the data in their context. These videos tell the story about what is possible when people get a vision about exploration and for changing the world with science. What earth observation data could help people, organizations, and governments make better decisions? How can we convey the orbital perspective to people on Earth? What are other low-cost off-the-shelf hardware options for exploration? What are new ways we could visualize data? How else could we communicate ideas too big for words or organize data bigger than we have yet been able to manage? What new things can we learn when we mashup data sources? How can we share data more efficiently? Space Apps asked all these questions in the global community – and discovered some interesting ideas and answers along the way.

The nominated apps:  (main voting page)

Aurora Project: Model & Data (Dublin, Ireland) An app that visualizes near-real time aurora data. During the Science Hack Day Dublin in March, we built up an Aurora Lamp. This consisted on an artistic representation of an Aurora using LEDs. However, this was not connected with any data feed. For the Space Apps Challenge we tried to improve this original project by using real data. On one side we developed a program that automatically downloads and processes data from NOAA’s POES satellites. This gives an indication of aurora activity. However, as the satellites measure just what is below them the data needs to be extrapolated to show all the hemisphere. Simultaneously, we also developed software to generate a layer for Google Earth showing the forecast of aurora activity. This is based on magnetic field measurements from NASA’s ACE spacecraft. Vote here.

Code/Game Controller/Water Sampling Mechanism OpenROV Framework Development Challenge (San Francisco, USA) OpenROV is a DIY telerobotics community centered around underwater exploration and education. The community has developed a low-cost telerobotic submarine that can be built with mostly off-the-shelf parts and is increasingly capable of doing serious scientific research. The goal of the project is to democratize exploration by allowing anyone to explore and study underwater environments. The OpenROV community is also laying the foundation for globally-connected citizen scientists to share their data and findings. Vote here.

Commonality of NASA Datasets (Adelaide, Australia) A data schema attempts to capture the commonalities between datasets acquired by NASA to allow citizen scientists and data mining softwares to quickly locate relevant datasets required to answer questions posed in broad terms, such as “Has the sea level risen in the last 10 years? Have you ever had a question and not been sure where you could get the data to answer it? Team Adelaide’s Space Apps project is here to help!
We’ve produced an RDFS schema that attempts to capture the commonalities between datasets acquired by NASA, to allow citizen scientists and data mining software to quickly locate relevant datasets required to answer questions posed in broad terms. Vote here.

Daily Myths (San Francisco, USA) An app to help education the public on common misconceptions regarding the solar system and astronomy. There are many misconceptions about science. Our challenge was to create a trivia website to educate people of all ages about science by developing a simple game. Vote here.

Exoapi.com (New York City, USA) ExoAPI is an ongoing project that extends the accessibility of exoplanetary data by providing an easy to use RESTful API. ExoAPI was created during the NASA Space Apps Challenge [spaceappschallenge.org] by a team of three amazing geniuses who knew nothing about space before they started this…and still don’t really. Currently the data is provided by http://exoplanetology.blogspot.com/ who in turn feeds the data from http://exoplanet.eu/. The ExoAPI team plans on extending the API to encompass a wider array of data sources and more interesting space data to reach as many programmers as possible and encourage an explosion of space data based mashups. Vote here.

Fragile Oasis Mashup (Lausanne, Switzerland) A custom user interface to display the data from Fragile Oasis website in a world map. Fragile Oasis is an effort to get everyone to see the Earth as a single home for humanity, and to inspire people to make a difference, changing things for the better. Our mashup focuses on giving a great user experience on the Fragile Oasis dataset by means of geolocalization, category filtering, data enhancement from multiple sources, etc. Vote here.

Growers Nation (Exeter UK, San Francisco USA, New York City USA, Santiago Chile, Nairobi Kenya and Santo Domingo Dominican Republic) An app that explores the potential of unused land for the growing of fruit, vegetable and other crops through the use of location, climate and growing data. The Grower’s Nation application is designed to reduce the barriers to growing by taking location, climate and growing conditions data into consideration and aims to give more people the information they need when selecting what to grow.  The crop dataset we are creating is possibly the first of its kind that is available open source, and will enable cross referencing of crop, climate, weather and soil data. When complete, it will include the growing conditions required for different varieties of fruit, vegetables and grains. During the challenge weekend, we had some great collaborations with teams from around the world including: Exeter, San Francisco, Chile, the Dominican Republic, Nairobi and New York. We hope to continue collaborating with related projects into the future. There is a lot of potential for follow on work from this project and the Growers Nation team members are enthusiastic to continue working on what they regard as a very worthwhile project. Vote here.

HXL Exporter (Jakarta, Indonesia) An app that exports an excel database to the HXL standard. HXL, Humanitarian Exchange Language, is machine-readable language. HXL product can be updated in near real-time.HXL is the answer for significant delay which is faced by humanitarian manager during crisis response.HXL Exporter as a component for HXL is very important because it use to gather and sent the important information during crisis response. Every Information in the format of spreadsheet or service (API) which are come from many different NGO can be easily sent out, translated and unite (in one format) to HXL data storage. Indonesia had faced many natural phenomena such as earthquake and tsunami. And NGO has helped us during the crisis. hopefully, the application that I build for helping in developing HXL is a gratitude from the Indonesian people to the world. Vote here.

ISSlive API And Limit Notification System (Bangalore, India) A native Android and iOS app that implements REST API for ISSLive data consisting of space station system parameters and crew timeline data. Designing and implementing REST API for ISSLive data consisting of space station system parameters and crew timeline data. Further developing an SDK and a demo webapp to help application developers use the REST API easily. Finally, Limit notification system will be developed to allow applications to get notified when a custom set of limits are reached. Native Andriod and iOS applications will also be developed. These will allow the user to browse the data using REST API and will use the above Limit notification system to notify users when a subscribed event occurs. Vote here.

Kepler Visualizer (Bangalore, India) A solution to visualize Kepler data, such as changing star intensity, using an Arduino. Kepler Visualizer aims to visualize the data gathered by Kepler mission in multiple presentation forms. It uses Arduino to visualize Kepler data and present it in an audio-visual form (LED lights, motor and complementing sound) to aid us to visualize the changing star intensity. The objective is to enable school children understand how kepler data is used to find extrasolar planets and visualize binary star systems, planetary transits, and variable stars. Vote here.

Linkastar (Tokyo, Japan) A web application for iOS that allows users to search for a star by holding iphone or ipad to the night sky if it’s cloudy. ’LinkAStar’ is a social communication app that users can wish upon a star on AR and share with friends or someone else on the planet. Vote here.

My Travel App (Canberra and Melbourne, Australia) How would you like to save time, money, effort on your daily commute while ALSO helping the environment? The solution we propose for the My Travel Impact challenge does just that! By aggregating yours and others usage data, calculating carbon usage based on the distance and mode of transport you take, this app will provide you with a list optimised routes detailing time, cost and carbon usage to give you ultimate control on your journey! If even just a small percentage of smartphone users are influenced to change their commuting habits to more environmentally friendly modes of transport, the potential that the MyTravel App has in the battle to reduce carbon emissions is enormous. Vote here.

Planet Hopper (Oxford, United Kingdom) Aimed at school children and non-scientists, Planet Hopper isﾠa prototype web app that makes the Kepler exoplanet data more accessible by displayingﾠit in a visual and fun way, making comparisons with each planetﾠto our own. By presenting the data in this way, Planet Hopper aims toﾠraise interest in the new discoveries of hundreds ofﾠplanets orbiting otherﾠstars, stimulate questions and encourage debate about what it might be likeﾠthere, andﾠthe plausibility, or otherwise, of life on these planets. Through a simple interface, you choose a star using the systemﾠfinder then view its planets. Find out how longﾠit would take to get to there,ﾠhow old you would be if you were born there there, or how high you could jumpﾠifﾠyou were standing on the planet’s surface. Perhaps its sun is a strangeﾠcolour, or much larger in the sky thanﾠEarth’s. Go to www.planethopper.co.ukﾠand explore. Vote here.

Space Ring Design App (Tokyo, Japan) Jewelry created using the location of a planet in space on a desired date and time. ”astro-ornaments” (formerly “Space Ring Design App”) is the solution by the Artistic Data Materialization Team, Tokyo, JAPAN. Vote here.

Strange Desk (Oxford, United Kingdom) An app that allows users to socially share and analyze the occurrence of strange events with others. Strange Desk is a vision of using living data and a crowd of impassioned citizen scientists to help support the space program from the ground. From the migration of species or weird weather, to black swans and bumblebees. Strange Desk could become a powerful asset in understanding our rapidly changing planet. Vote here.

Travelisa (Jakarta, Indonesia) Travelisa is an application to keep track of an individual’s travel history, distance, and methods and determine the impact it has on the individual as well as in wider community. The results of the collected data is expected to influence the individual’s travel behavior by discovering the most efficient means to travel. The app can also determine the carbon emission of individuals based on their methods of travel. Vote here.

Ufahamu (Nairobi, Kenya) Ufahamu is a data visualization platform that promotes awareness on health related issues. Ufahamu is a ‘swahili’ word for Awareness. This project is based on Data Visualization, Fragile Oasis: Map-a-Difference category. Ufahamu is a tool that performs visualization of data related to health issues from opendata repositories like opendata.go.ke; which it combines with existing geo datasets from NASA opendata and other reliable sources. Additionally, Ufahamu can also perform a mash up of different datasets establishing relationship as to how they relate. Such provides information that can be easily understood and interpreted by researchers, public and private NGO’s, interested parties, and common persons. This is meant to arm the public with information on underprivileged areas, as a result driving efforts towards improving the health situation around communities. Vote here.

Watch Out – Hazard Map (Melbourne, Australia) We are proposing to use people as sensors and social networks as the infrastructure for the early warning systems. Using this method, in less than a minute; citizens and governments of any country can be aware of disasters in any part of the world. We have developed a web based map that tells you, in real time, locations of natural disasters. The hazard data is sourced from social networks. Our application detects hazards from dialogues in social networks such as Twitter. Vote here.

Vicar2png (Virtual Participation) Much of the image data from NASA’s Planetary Image Atlas is in the VICAR format, which was unreadable by any existing open source image conversion tools. We wrote and packaged vicar2png so that anyone can view, enjoy, and remix NASA’s mission image data easily by converting VICAR files to the popular PNG image format. Our submission video demos vicar2png and showcases some beautiful images we converted from NASA’s Cassini mission, as well as a short movie stitched together from raw Cassini data. Vote here.

Connect and Survive! (Exeter, United Kingdom) We want people to learn to manage long-term healthcare through connecting to healthcare information in their homes. If we only ever use computers to connect people to data then we are neglecting the majority of the global population. At the SpaceApps Challenge in Exeter we made a demonstrator Pollen Predictor that used live pollen data to change the colour of a 3D printed pollen ball. The colour of the ball is used to represent the next day’s pollen level. So what next? We would love to develop this into a standalone Physical App that enables people to see data. In the first place we would like to design products to help children manage asthma caused by pollen allergies and to test this across a range of cultures and languages. Vote here. 

Growing Fruits: Pineapple Project (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) Our success was the result of a dedicated team that is passionate about exploring the potential of unused land for growing fruit, vegetables and other crops. Multiple resources (currently in the Beta testing phase) have been designed to reduce the barriers to growing by taking location, climate, and growing requirements into consideration to provide potential farmers recommendations they need when deciding what to plant. Vote here.

Pinapple.org (Santiago, Chile) Choosing the Tropical crops variety for your community to be self sustainable. Vote here.

My Travel Impact (Melbourne, Australia) The system was developed to demonstrate how transport and weather data can be represented in an easy to read format with the aim of changing travel behaviour. Currently the app allows a user to record travel information, calculate and compare their carbon impact against the wider community and considers how the weather alters a user’s travel impact. This project has the potential to impact the global community through awareness. It has the ability to provide suggestions on travel based on weather and past experience. The aim of this project is to create a community movement by giving people enough information to make greener travel decisions. Vote here.

Bit Harvester (Nairobi, Kenya) BitHarvester is a broadly applicable sms-based remote data acquisition and control system for remote renewable energy installations. Vote here.

Offline-Online Solution (Virtual Participation) This is the demo pitch of the Mobile Web App in HTML5 solution to the “Offline-online problem.” There is also a demo of the application available (see comments in Challenge page). The team, in virtual participation, have been working from 4 different time-zones; this video has been made after the challenge by the “Italians” of the team. Vote here.

Night Time Illumination (Sydney, Australia) Analysis of night time illumination can be used as a measure of development, especially in rural areas. We built a tool which compares different geospatial data sources, allowing differential measurements to be made over time. In this case it was used to compare night time illumination with population density changes over the last 20 years. Vote here.

Fragile Oasis Mobile/Social Oasis (Tel Aviv, Israel) We created a mobile application to make the Fragile Oasis website more accessible to the general public. Vote here.

CERES (New York, New York) Farmers in the developing world lack proper access to food pricing information. Without proper information, rural farmers are vulnerable to a variety of problems.CERES solves these problems by allowing farmers to exchange commodity price information with their peers, allowing them to make better-informed decisions. Farmers interact with the service by using SMS to check current prices within seconds. For large purchasers and governments, CERES provides a powerful web interface for decision makers to view the data in aggregate. Over the coming months, our launch partner, Opportunity International – Nicaragua, will be piloting our application in rural Nicaragua. Won’t you join us in driving economic transformation? Vote here.

Please vote for your favorite apps… and share your thoughts here about other ways that citizens can engage NASA’s open data to communicate new ideas, create new technologies, and make the world a better place. 

In addition, the integration of science with art can provide a more effective outreach tool for youth and adults than using science alone. Prompting artistic expression with information about our current knowledge of human space exploration has the potential to reach a wide audience of youth. The resulting artwork can then be used as a communication tool to inspire even more people of all ages, enhancing awareness, interest, and support for human space flight. The artwork can also provide new ideas or renewed inspiration to those already working in the space industry. In the past, many of our science programs in human space exploration have been inspired by the works of artists.
-Jancy McPhee

It’s exciting to see NASA and our partner agencies exploring new territory at the intersection of STEM and art. Now in its second year, the Humans in Space Youth Art Competition continues to invite young people all over the world to think about the future of human space flight and to creatively communicate their ideas – and then promises to share those ideas with the world. By including the next generation in the planning of the future, the competition aims to enhance their awareness, interest in and support for human space flight, and to allow their ideas to begin shaping the future now.

The current 2012 competition encourages young people from 10 to 18 years of age to submit visual, literary, musical and video artwork expressing their vision of how humans will use science and technology in the future to explore space and uncover its mysteries. Their submissions will be judged by an international panel including artists, scientists, teachers, engineers, astronauts and others. The winning artwork will be woven into displays and performances designed to relay the young artists’ messages to other young people and adults around the world.

Interested in entering? Competition guidelines are found here and you can follow the event on Facebook here. Be inspired. Be creative. Be heard.

BEAM (Base Exploration Aboard Moon) Emily Miedema and Abby Bull, age 12, Canada (2011 Humans in Space)

But art is not just something we invite students to do. At the recent International Space Apps Challenge, Jon Spooner, director of Human Space Flight Operations at the Unlimited Space Agency, attempted to hack his way into space using a secret launch point alleged to be hidden somewhere in the UK Met Office. Read here for the real story of Jon’s mission and how theater and creative engagement are opening doors to talk about space science and STEM in the UK – and all over the world. He tells part of his story here:

Other thoughts on the intersection of scientists and art… or artists and science:

Science communication is not a one-way street between researchers & journalists to the lay public. From the Science Art Feed you can see the array of conversations non-scientists are starting through visual media. There’s a response, an echo and an amplification to the impact the scientific method has had on culture. Researchers, too, are stepping in and showing the inspiring, baffling and illuminating images they come across and use. Does it mean there is a new aesthetic, a new movement afoot?
Glendon Mellow in Scientific American 

…art is not only close to science but it is complementary, and even necessary. Thus the scientific eye is able to penetrate the smallest sub-atomic particle, which moves perpetually creating energy waves and makes one realise that the structure of matter consists of emptiness. The artistic eye can see in that void, in that fluid “emptiness”, a seed for a new vision of the world: a world no longer dominated by materialism and its devastating consequences.
Liz Else in New Scientist 

Art remains an invaluable tool not just for outreach but for how we talk about science and exploration. Alan Alda gave this interesting lecture at Stony Brook on training scientists to talk about their work and communicate differently:

Improvisation for Scientists: Workshops by Alan Alda and the Center for Communicating Science

Finally, John Bohannon and the Black Label Movement gave this incredibly powerful TEDx Brussels talk called Dance your PhD, reflecting on how sometimes dance could communicate more than science – or words – ever could on their own. Human movement can communicate incredibly complex ideas, expressing facets of the unknown in new and powerful ways.

TEDx Brussels – John Bohannon & Black Label Movement – Dance Your PhD

Where and how do you think art can help shape exploration? How could art help NASA continue to tell its story of pioneering the future?

Banner image:  The Cradle of Cosmos, Anastasia Pronina, age 14-17 years old, Russia (2011 Humans in Space)

Fueled by copious amounts of coffee and a desire to make a difference in the world, “hackers for humanity” working alongside subject matter experts have created innovative solutions to pressing problems in their communities.

• A team at RHoK in Trento, Italy designed a mobile application that connects charities distributing food to needy populations with restaurants and businesses with excess food to donate.
• A team at RHoK Philadelphia designed a web platform enabling homeless service providers to easily identify empty beds and open soup kitchens for Philadelphia and New Jersey homeless populations.
• A team at RHoK Washington D.C. designed a tool to visualize complex landslide risk algorithms, making the information accessible to local mayors and urban planners making building decisions.
• A team at RHoK Sydney created a crowdsourcing tool to allow Australian citizens to rapidly report and respond to Bushfires.

In the two short years since its inception, RHoK communities have sprung up in close to 50 cities around the world, with the support of over 180 diverse partner organizations, from government and academia, to the non-profit and private sectors.

RHoK Global in June 2012 will be taking place simultaneously in 21+ cities globally, from Seattle to Santo Domingo, from Philadelphia to Prague.

Be a part of this global movement to make the world a better place through the innovative use of technology.  Register at www.rhok.org/events and come out to hack for humanity in a city near you on June 2nd and 3rd, 2012!

A simple Google search uncovered a webpage for the project, known as SERVIR or, to serve, in Spanish. Here, I learned that the SERVIR initiative integrates satellite observations, ground-based data and forecast models to monitor and forecast environmental changes and to improve response to natural disasters. This enables scientists, educators, project managers and policy implementers to better respond to a range of issues including disaster management, agricultural development, biodiversity conservation and climate change. Principally supported by NASA and the US Agency of International Development, or USAID, a strong emphasis is placed on partnerships to fortify the availability of searchable and viewable earth observations, measurements, animations, and analysis.

Impressive, yes, but how do they do it and who are the people involved? This question and others I pondered as I drove to the NASA Marshall Space Flight Center in Huntsville, Alabama to see the SERVIR coordination office and rapid prototyping facility firsthand.

Upon arrival, I was warmly greeted by the project director Dan Irwin, an energetic and articulate man who has committed his career to serving his passion for both those in need and leveraging the multitude of resources NASA generates in our quest to uncover the unknown. Over the next hour I had the honor of meeting his diverse team as they highlighted current projects and past accomplishments which had caught the attention and support of not only the head of NASA, but the US president and multiple dignitaries on numerous occasions.

Spanning three continents, several countries, and affecting thousands of lives, SERVIR’s reach is extensive and a result of well-conceived, sustainable efforts. Their latest project, ISERV: The ISS / SERVIR Environmental Research and Visualization System promises to be yet another win for social good.

This tool, scheduled to launch to the international space station on June 26th, is dedicated to assisting social innovators and emergency responders to accessing much needed data and imagery within 3 hours of a web or mobile app request. The ISERV Pathfinder is the first phase in an envisioned series of Earth observing instruments designed to leverage the unique attributes of the International Space Station in order to provide high quality data for science and disaster response at relatively low cost.

Pathfinder is a telescope that is ground commanded for pointing and image acquisition. Individual commands or command scripts are uplinked to the ISERV computer where they are executed at scheduled times. Data frames are immediately stored aboard the ISERV computer, downlinked to ground stations, and finally transmitted via Internet to the ISERV Science Operations Center at MSFC’s National Space Science and Technology Center (NSSTC) who then pushes it to the requester. When complete, the ISERV suite could also include internal and external optical sensors operating in the visible, near- and mid-IR portions of the electromagnetic spectrum.

This effort was accomplished by a dynamic team of less than 20 individuals that comprise the Coordination Office, many of whom have personally founded nonprofits and spent time living and working in the regions they serve. Their offices are strategically located outside of the Marshall campus, thus allowing the group to receive employees, intern and volunteer support from individuals around the world who can offer relevant local perspectives.

Two SERVIR project regional operational facilities support the Coordination Office in 1) Nairobi, Kenya, at the Regional Center for Mapping of Resources for Development (RCMRD) and 2) Kathmandu, Nepal, at the International Centre for Integrated Mountain Development. A third hub, located at the Water Center for the Humid Tropics of Latin America and the Caribbean (CATHALAC) in Panama City, Panama, recently “graduated” from the SERVIR system and is providing information on its own. Each SERVIR facility is housed in an existing organization with a regional mandate, and the project is primarily staffed and operated by people from that region. Together, the SERVIR facilities form a broader SERVIR network with exchange of data, knowledge, and experience among the centers that transcends geographic and organizational boundaries.

Connect with SERVIR

While SERVIR boasts multiple successes, the group seeks to expand. Building and relying upon a network of collaborators is fundamental to SERVIR. Beyond the sponsorship and active participation of NASA and USAID, collaboration spans a number of other US government agencies and projects, as well as partnerships with government agencies in the regions in which SERVIR operates joint research with universities and non-governmental organizations, and capacity building with a host of specialized groups. SERVIR puts special emphasis on working with national space agencies to improve the discovery and use of available imagery. Collaboration also includes interaction with institutions that play important roles in relevant global research and operational activities (e.g., GEO, UN-SPIDER, International Charter, CIESIN, and IRI). Operational and implementation partnerships, too, are critical and have been established with SERVIR’s regional centers (e.g., RCMRD and ICIMOD) to deliver products and services and improve outreach to different thematic communities

In the future, SERVIR plans to augment data sets, collaborations, and opportunities receive requests and observations. We invite you to learn more about SERVIR, including opportunities to see the lab in action, request information, download data, collaborate, or to intern as a student researcher at: http://www.servirglobal.net/.

About the author: Samantha Lynne Snabes is an intern for NASA OpenGov with interests in social entrepreneurship and human space exploration. 

Each location had the opportunity to nominate up to two winning solutions for consideration in the Global Judging process. The solutions thare were nominated are identified as well. Congratulations to everyone who contributed to one of the solutions below – the results truly speak for themselves.

1. 3D Printing in Zero Gravity (San Francisco, USA)

A redesign of current Earth-based 3D printing technology to allow for 3D printing in zero gravity environments.

2. Aeration & Low Temperature Baking (Oxford, United Kingdom)

An energy efficient, self sufficient process to produce ordinary, fresh bread with minimal ingredients at lower, safer temperatures in a limited resource environment.

3. Aurora Live (Vancouver, Canada) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app that shows aurora intensity, the ISS location and space weather data using the WebGL globe platform.

4. Aurora Project: Model & Data (Dublin, Ireland) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app that visualizes near-real time aurora data.

5. Autokepler (Virtual)

A HTML5 generative art experiment to visualize Kepler data.

6. Baseline (Stuttgart, Germany)

A demonstration of how to parse Kepler data into a database to improve accessibility.

7. Beam Be Up To A Satellite! – Space Checkin (Virtual)

A spaceobject checkin game that visualizes the nearest satellites overhead and provides points and badges for each check-in.

8. Bringing Mathtrax to Modern Web Standards (San Francisco, USA)

A prototype of a web-based conversion of MathTrax to improve accessibility, as well as documentation for how to integrate MathTrax with the MakerBot 3D printer.

9. C.E.R.E.S. (New York City, USA) (Nominated for Global Judging)

A platform that allows farmers in remote areas to seamlessly exchange commodity price information with their peers, allowing them to make better-informed decisions.

10. Caribbean Fruits (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app to share and obtain social information on weather conditions, soil data and crop pricing.

11. Climate Change Kenya (Nairobi, Kenya)

An app that uses satellite data to shows the effects of Climate Change in Kenya.

12. Co-Cupola (Tokyo, Japan)

A projection of the view Astronauts enjoy from the Cupola Module on the ISS using a common PC, projector and web-browser.

13. Code/Game Controller/Water Sampling Mechanism OpenROV Framework Development Challenge (San Francisco, USA) (Nominated for Global Judging)

Further development of the OpenROV platform to build out functionality for power conditioning, code refactoring, game controller configuration, water sampler, and vinyl decal.

14. Command and Control Protocol for Cubesats (Lausanne, Switzerland) (Nominated for Global Judging)

The development of a command and control protocol for Cubesats.

15. Commonality of NASA Datasets (Adelaide, Australia) (Nominated for Global Judging)

A data schema attempts to capture the commonalities between datasets acquired by NASA to allow citizen scientists and data mining softwares to quickly locate relevant datasets required to answer questions posed in broad terms, such as “Has the sea level risen in the last 10 years?”

16. Connect (Tokyo, Japan)

A web service to connect humans to Earth’s magnetic field through the visualization and social sharing functionality.

17. Connect and Survive! (Exeter, United Kingdom) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app that provides the next day’s pollen count to provide asthmatics and hay fever suffers information regrinding potential life-threatening situations.

18. Data Majic (Nairobi, Kenya) (Nominated for Global Judging)

Data majic is a remote data acquisition and control system aimed at collecting data about a wind turbine. The system monitors the periodic status of the wind turbine and reports to an SMS server from where the information can be analyzed and visualized.

19. Data Mapping (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)

A solution that translates multiple XML data and map values into relational database.

20. Daily Myths (San Francisco, USA) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app to help education the public on common misconceptions regarding the solar system and astronomy.

21. Displaying The Tour (Stuttgart, Germany)

A Matlab script that displays an orbital tour of planets and is able to determine the optimal orbit.

22. Electronic Foosball Solution (Nairobi, Kenya)

A solution to display the results of a Foosball game digitally using a web client, motion sensors and an arduino board. The display can also be used as a countdown display for anything (such as a rocket launch).

23. Enterparty.org (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)

A social network.

24. Eturl (Virtual)

The Extra-Tererstrial Universal Resource Location allows for the categorization of an object in the solar system, say, a surface feature on an asteroid, or on the moon, or the voyager spacevraft.

25. Exoapi Sydney (Sydney, Australia)

An app that collates disparate sources of Exoplanet data and provide an API for access to this data.

26. Exoapi.com (New York City, USA) (Nominated for Global Judging)

ExoAPI is an ongoing project that extends the accessibility of exoplanetary data by providing an easy to use RESTful API.

27. Expanded Meta-Data for NASA Open Data (San Francisco, USA)

The development of a unified API interface to NASA’s data that does not require specialist knowledge of each data-set to explore.

28. Experiment Deployment Capsule (San Francisco, USA)

An inexpensive, reusable module that can serve as a platform for high altitude, microgravity experimentation.

29. Extremophiles Space Resources for Bio Incubators (Virtual)

A resource to enhance scientific understanding of adaptive functions of organisms in space environments to help us be more aware about planetary life.

30. Fragile Oasis Interactive (San Francisco, USA)

An interactive application that compares side-by-side maps of the content from the Fragile Oasis website.

31. Fragile Oasis Mashup (Lausanne, Switzerland) (Nominated for Global Judging)

A custom user interface to display the data from Fragile Oasis website in a world map.

32. Fragile Oasis Mobile App (Tel Aviv, Israel) (Nominated for Global Judging)

A mobile application to make the Fragile Oasis website more accessible to the general public.

33. Galaxy Sexy (Tokyo, Japan)

An app that generates a graph of brain waves from a user who is interacting with space data, using a cheap EEG device, a PC and an arduino.

34. Garbage Collector (Jakarta, Indonesia)

An app to provide an easy way for citizens to report and to notify others of garbage piles that are happening in public space by posting images and descriptions.

35. Gcpricer (Nairobi, Kenya)

A Mobile and Web based application that enables farmers to view and post current prices of commodities in different locations.

36. Growers Nation (Exeter UK, San Francisco USA, New York City USA, Santiago Chile, Nairobi Kenya and Santo Domingo Dominican Republic) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app that explores the potential of unused land for the growing of fruit, vegetable and other crops through the use of location, climate and growing data.

37. Growing Together (San Francisco, USA)

The app to reduce the barriers to growing by taking location, climate, and growing data into consideration and to give people the information they need when selecting what to grow.

38. Hazardmap.info (Exeter, United Kingdom)

A real-time hazard map application that is powered by social media observations to help provide a a useful risk assessment for potential (and actual) crisis situations.

39. Hxlator (Jakarta Indonesia and Luasanne Switzerland)

A tool that allows a humanitarian in the field to upload their data in a way that can be aggregated and queried. The application accepts excel files of any structure, has a user interface for annotating them, and converts them to hxl, a format for capturing unstructured semantic data.

40. HXL Exporter (Jakarta, Indonesia) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app that exports an excel database to the HXL standard.

41. Indian Astronomical Calendar (Virtual)

An app that maps Indian calendar’s (panchang) astronomical parameters for use by amateur astronomers.

42. ISSlive API And Limit Notification System (Bangalore, India) (Nominated for Global Judging)

A native Android and iOS app that implements REST API for ISSLive data consisting of space station system parameters and crew timeline data.

43. Kepler Companion (New York City, USA)

An app that uses data from Exoplanets.org to visualize the entire set of confirmed exoplanets as well as provides the relative properties for each planet and Earth.

44. Kepler Confirmed Planets Interactive (Virtual)

An HTML5/canvas attempt to display Kepler confirmed planets in a simple 3d format.

45. Kepler Visualizer (Bangalore, India) (Nominated for Global Judging)

A solution to visualize Kepler data, such as changing star intensity, using an Arduino.

46. Life On Mars Based On Real Life Earth (Virtual)

An augmented reality app that simulates life in mars based on geolocalization of the users movement on Earth.

47. Linkastar (Tokyo, Japan) (Nominated for Global Judging)

A web application for iOS that allows users to search for a star by holding iphone or ipad to the night sky if it’s cloudy. Includes social media functionality to share the experience with others.

48. Lunar (Oxford, United Kingdom)

A heatmap visualization of the Moon created by processing a database of raw altimeter data.

49. Lunar Compound (Miami, USA)

A process to protect concrete Lunar modules from solar heat, radiation and cosmic rays.

50. Lunar Elevator Space Education (Virtual)

A website for education about Lunar Elevators.

51. Lunar Landing App (Vancouver, Canada)

A lunar landing iOS game.

52. Lunar Terrain Roughness Mapper (Tel Aviv, Israel) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app that calculates the ideal landing site on the Moon using NASA Lunar Reconnaissance Orbiter and produces a “heat map” that can be viewed using Google Earth.

53. Mobile App for Hirise Mars (Lausanne, Switzerland)

A mobile web app that allows users on mobile phones and tablets to browse the very high resolution map images of Mars, and a Web Standards based platform on top of it for educational/citizen science applications.

54. Mobile Web App in HTML5 (Virtual)

A new version of an HTML5+Javascript web application, to develop plugins allowing reporting from (almost) any web-enabled device, with and without Internet connectivity.

55. Moon Phase Count (Jakarta, Indonesia)

An app to visualize the phase of the Moon using java.

56. My Travel App (Canberra and Melbourne, Australia) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app that uses NASA weather satellite data to bring carbon footprint computation down to the individual level, allowing trends to be associated with decisions people make based on weather conditions and convenience of transportation options.

57. NASA Open Data API (Oxford, United Kingdom)

A preliminary design and schema for a NASA Open Data API to improve accessibility and a unified interface to NASA datasets without requiring specialist knowledge.

58. NASA-Ex (Virtual)

An 3d solar system exploration tool that uses C# ASP.NET MVC3 for a backend to interface with HORIZON data over telnet, Three.js to do the WebGL rendering, HTML5 and CSS3.

59. Neo Analyzer For Mobile (Ipod/Iphone) (Vancouver, Canada)

An app that brings website widget interaction and querying of images to mobile platform so that users can see how the world changes based on categories of surface temperature, chlorophyll concentration, water vapor, carbon monoxide concentration, radiation, active fires, snow cover, cloud fraction, leaf area index, net primary productivity, population, and vegetation index.

60. Open Data Schema (San Francisco, USA)

An initial proof of concept of an open data schema extension for the data.nasa.gov website, to improve accessibility to NASA data.

61. Open World Sensor (Openws) (Istanbul, Turkey)

An app that visualizes sensor data on a world map, using an arduino for reading sensor data and software for managing and visualizing the data.

62. Our Sphere – Portable 3D Data Map Viewer (Tokyo, Japan)

A Web and Mobile platform widget to share 3D Earth imagery data from NASA satellites.

63. Parsing and Displaying Data From Horizons (Stuttgart, Germany)

A script to display and plat data from the Horizons mission, which demonstrates the calculation of a trajectory of a planet between two timestamps.

64. Patched Cone Approach (Stuttgart, Germany) (Nominated for Global Judging)

A Matlab simulation and approach for a tour of the solar system.

65. Pineapple (Santiago, Chile)

A web and mobile app that filters a tropical crop database by location’s Rainfall, latitude, elevation and pH.

66. Planet Finder (San Francisco, USA)

This software improves accessibility to Kelper exoplanets data by allowing users to search for starts using a simple http GET string that returns data in both machine and human readable format.

67. Planet Hopper (Oxford, United Kingdom) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app that visualizes Kepler data to allow children and teachers to explore all the exoplanets that we know about.

68. Planet Pong (San Francisco, USA)

A distance-free virtual game of ping-pong that can be played between Astronauts in space and citizens on Earth, using mobile devices.

69. Possible PHP Command Encoder (Stuttgart, Germany)

A php command encoder that utilizes standardized commands and provides access to a databases through one main command prompt.

70. Predict The Sky – Cross-Platform Mobile Client (Oxford and Exeter, United Kingdom)

An app that combines ISS, HST and weather forecast data for a specified location to inform people about what they’ll be able to see in the night sky.

71. Predict The Sky SMS (New York City, USA)

Predict the Sky SMS is a text message service for satellite enthusiast that tracks satellite events and sends the user a SMS message when one is visible from your location on Earth as it’s happening.

72. Roach Rover (Nairobi, Kenya)

An arduino based rover that avoids obstacles by sensing how much light is reflected off the obstacle.

73. Satellite Data Correlation Tool (Sydney, Australia) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app to visualize the growth in electrification and population across the globe, using night-time lighting from satellite data across a region as a proxy.

74. Sky Map App Layer Addition, Exoplanets (San Francisco, USA)

Integration of code for an exoplanet layer into Google Sky Map app for Android, which includes search function and the ability to add additional multimedia features.

75. Social Hazard (Santiago, Chile)

An app that analyzes twitter trends to find global risk and crisis events and visualizes them on a world map in real time.

76. Solar Wind Graph (Virtual)

A desktop client that takes solar wind speed live from the web and produces an animation of the current wind speeds. The same feed is also used by an Arduino to show the live intensity of the solar winds by lighting more lights the more intense the winds.

77. Sonic Telescope (Oxford, United Kingdom)

An app that investigates sounds of space, by using the azimuth, altitude and proximity of a mobile phone to calculate various celestial sounds.

78. Sounds of Space (Virtual)

An app that uses the built-in microphone on the Nexus Android phone to create a high fidelity audio recording of the sound during the 90 minute mission.

79. Space Debris Cleanup (Virtual)

A poster to serve as a Public Service Announcement raise awareness of the risks associated with the growing space debris problem.

80. Space Ring Design App (Tokyo, Japan) (Nominated for Global Judging)

Jewelry created using the location of a planet in space on a desired date and time.

81. Spatium Quaestionrium (Vancouver, Canada) (Nominated for Global Judging)

A cross-platform quiz web app, to test, inform and correction misconceptions kids may have about space.

82. Star-Tweeting Bangle! (Exeter, United Kingdom)

Social data-connected jewelry that lights up based on twitter trends.

83. Strange Desk (Oxford, United Kingdom) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app that allows users to socially share and analyize the occurrence of strange events with others.

84. The Application Of “A View From Space” (Tokyo, Japan)

An app that restricts a shared social media stream based on the orbit of the ISS in order to provide a common viewpoint and build a community around space data based on location.

85. The ISSduck (Exeter, United Kingdom)

A physical demonstration of the relative position of the International Space Station using an “ISSDuck” printed on a 3D printer, that floats on water, which is disrupted through a rudder controlled by an arduino and servo motor.

86. The Optimal Lunar Landing Analysis (Lausanne, Switzerland)

A cross-platform app to process multiple lunar data sets and analysis strategies in order to find optimal landing sites for spacecrafts.

87. Transview (Virtual)

A low cost, low data-rate camera system system for SERVIR that uses a web camera and micro-controller interface.

88. Travelisa (Jakarta, Indonesia) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An application to keep track of an individual’s travel history, distance, and methods and determine the impact it has on the individual as well as in wider community.

89. Tripping NASA (Vancouver, Canada)

A social app that maps ground and satellite data on google maps.

90. Tweetsat (Virtual)

A program that allows a satellite to tweet from space.

91. Ufahamu (Nairobi, Kenya) (Nominated for Global Judging)

A crowd sourcing platform that creates awareness for health related issues in Kenya and aims to improve productivity of end-users while minimizing labor and research expenses.

92. Vicar2PNG (Virtual)

An app that allows anyone to view, enjoy, and remix NASA’s mission image data easily by converting VICAR files to the popular PNG image format.

93. Visualisations of Space Data (Oxford, United Kingdom)

An app that animates current solar wind speed, taken live from the web, using an Arduino to visualize the live intensity of the solar winds through lights.

94. Watch Out – Hazard Map (Melbourne, Australia) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app that harvests and analyses real time hazard data from social media e.g. Twitter and provides a user friendly web based visualization of the data.

95. Webcam Approach (Stuttgart, Germany) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app that calculates the average BGR value of an image useing a logitech c920 and python code.

96. Web Page for NASA Planetary Data System (Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic)

A new web interface to improve accessibility to the NASA Planetary Data System.

98. Wet (Water Evaluation Tool) (Miami, Florida) (Nominated for Global Judging)

An app that centralizes Landsat5TM and available water stage and precipitation data and displays the output on a map.

98. Where In The Solar System (Melbourne, Australia)

A concept for an educational iPad app that allows users to explore space through touch gestures.

99. World Weather Symbols (Exeter, United Kingdom)

Digital representations of common meteorological weather symbols, which are currently not offered in a re-usable digital format.

100. Worldatnight.org (San Francisco, USA)

World At Night is a tool that intends to show WHO on planet earth has access to light. Its data visualization allows anyone to see the state of the world today, in terms of access to electricity.

101. Ze-Api (French For “The API”) (Nairobi, Kenya)

An API that converts inaccessible NASA data into popular formats used by developers, by converting Json data XML, YAML and a better structured JSON data.

This weekend, NASA successfully fulfilled a commitment on behalf of the United States as part of the Open Government Partnership Domestic Action Plan.  The stated goal of the event, per the US Action Plan, was to “promote innovation through international collaboration“. Space exploration was the ideal catalyst to foster this culture of innovation, and NASA, in collaboration with 8 government agencies and 103 other organizations, hosted the International Space Apps Challenge in 25 cities in 17 countries on all seven continents and online.  The event held 21-22 April 2012 brought together 2,083 registered participants (ages 16-70) together to address 71 challenges.  More than 100 unique solutions were developed in less then 48 hours during the event.  All solutions were developed in a completely open source environment, and each have their own unique potential to go even further to address world and space technology challenges.

In addition to the technology developed, the event itself generated considerable media coverage for the agency, resulting in 72 English articles, including landing on the front of the BBC website on 21 April 2012.  Gov2.0Radio provided special coverage for the event which included 45 interviews with organizers, experts and participants from all locations.  The entire event was streamed online to thousands of people around the world, and although hard to measure the total viewership, the twitter stream alone generated 3.3M impressions.

We have compiled a small cross-section of 11 examples, that represent the quality of the technology developed. Over the next few days, we will be featuring the top 50 solutions on this website and Innovation Endeavours and Talenthouse will start the global judging process.

Predict the Sky - An app that combines ISS, HST and weather forecast data for a specified location to inform people about what they’ll be able to see in the night sky.

Planet Hopper - An app that visualizes Kepler data to allow children and teachers to explore all the exoplanets that we know about.

MyTravelImpact - An app that uses NASA weather satellite data to bring carbon footprint computation down to the individual level, allowing trends to be associated with decisions people make based on weather conditions and convenience of transportation options.  Further application could include city planning based on climate change predictions.

Growers Nation - A collaboration between developers in Exeter, San Francisco, New York City, Santiago, Nairobi and Santo Domingo, that explores the potential of unused land for the growing of fruit, vegetable and other crops through the use of location, climate and agriculture data.

HazardMap - A real-time hazard map application that is powered by social media observations to help provide a a useful risk assessment for potential (and actual) crisis situations.

Commonality of NASA Datasets - A data schema attempts to capture the commonalities between datasets acquired by NASA to allow citizen scientists and data mining softwares to quickly locate relevant datasets required to answer questions posed in broad terms, such as “Has the sea level risen in the last 10 years?”

Aeration & Low Temperature Baking - An energy efficient, self sufficient process to produce ordinary, fresh bread with minimal ingredients at lower, safer temperatures in a limited resource environment.

Solar Wind Visualization - A desktop client that takes solar wind speed live from the web and produces an animation of the current wind speeds. The same feed is also used by an Arduino to show the live intensity of the solar winds by lighting more lights the more intense the winds.

NASA Open Data API - A preliminary design and schema for a NASA Open Data API to improve accessibility and a unified interface to NASA datasets without requiring specialist knowledge.

ISS Open Hardware Design - An open hardware design that visualizes the location of the ISS in space.  The distance is calculated and if closer than 15,000km (ground projection) lights are turned on using an Arduino. The closer the ISS the more lights that are lit topping out at 10 lights when within 0.5km.

A View from Space - An app that restricts a shared social media stream based on the orbit of the ISS in order to provide a common viewpoint and build a community around space data based on location.

In recent years NASA has also taken steps to minimize our footprint on the planet by constructing green buildings and investing in green aviation research to inspire the development of more fuel-efficient aircraft and spark the start of a new electric airplane industry.

In the spirit of stewardship exemplified by our agency, I encourage you to participate in Earth Day educational events, programs, and activities planned at your center or in your local community. Whether you decide to walk to work, volunteer for a local community clean-up, or talk to students about NASA’s Earth science or green aviation research, let us celebrate this planet we call home on Earth Day and all year long. 

NASA Administrator Charles Bolden for Earth Day 2012 

It’s no accident that we are holding the International Space Apps Challenge on the same weekend as Earth Day. NASA’s vision to reach for new heights and reveal the unknown so that what we do and learn will benefit all humankind has as much impact for how we live on Earth as for how we will explore beyond the Earth.

How can you make a difference?

• Have an idea for a cool app to celebrate Earth Day? The only limit is your creativity! Join the challenge here. (You must be registered for the International Space Apps Challenge for your solution to be eligible for global judging.)
• Get involved in Fragile Oasis, where we are connecting Space and Earth every day. “It is very difficult to look at our beautiful Earth from space without being moved in some way. One of the main goals of Fragile Oasis is to share this orbital perspective and inspire people to go out and make a difference; to go out and somehow make life better for those with whom they share this fragile oasis. The Fragile Oasis community was established to unite in the common goal of sharing our humanity and improving our world. Let us inspire, recognize, and help each other in our collective quest to make life better on our planet.” You can also follow @fragileoasis on Twitter.
• What does a global moment look like? Read here and submit images from every part of the world for Environment in a Day. The Space Apps Challenge is on every continent this week – wouldn’t it be great if we could submit images from every continent as well?
• Six Words for the Planet. What are yours?
• Get a new perspective on our home planet here with time lapse videos from our crew onboard the International Space Station. Here are the top 10 most requested images of Earth taken by astronauts. (Thanks to Expedition 28 crewmember Ron Garan for taking the photo of the Horn of Africa featured in the banner above.)
• Learn, teach, and share. More Earth Day information from the EPA here, or follow @greenversations on Twitter.

In preparation for the International Space Apps Challenge, NASA was invited to lead a Salon at Vanderbilt University as part of the Curb Creative Enterprise and Public Leadership Scholars Program. The Curb Center Leadership Salons provide some of Vanderbilt’s brightest students the chance to engage in informal conversations and hands-on workshops with leaders from across the creative spectrum. Some of their previous guests include the co-creators of Guitar Hero and Rock Band, to fashion designers and entrepreneurs. Given that the International Space Apps Challenge is one of the most creative undertakings the Agency has ever attempted, the invitation seemed appropriate!

The NASA Open Government Initiative in general, and the International Space Apps Challenge, in particular, are activities that value creativity and require “outside-the-box” thinking.  The idea of a Salon incentives students to apply the use of a creative process in order to develop innovation solutions to tough challenges. The approach is much more engaging then a lecture about a topic and challenges the students to develop creative solutions to real problems facing real organizations.  The Curb Center is all about understanding and applying the creative process. Through creative practice workshops, the Curb Scholars experiment and gain experience in the creative process and problem solving—brainstorming, improvising, storytelling, asking provocative questions, synthesizing ideas, using humor, recombining materials and ideas, diagnosing problems, prototyping, and pitching their innovations.

As predicted, the process works.  When presented with a sub-set of the 60 challenges posted on the International Space Apps Challenge website, the students came up with some very impressive solutions. The ideas and feedback generated by the students in just a matter of hours were so good that we used them to refine and improve the challenges for the event. To give you an example of what the solutions looked like, one team took the approach to develop a challenge by NASA for schools across the nation to “Visualize the All-too-Common Astronomy/Solar System Misconceptions.”

Wouldn’t you like to party it up with an astronaut at your school?!? Visit NASA’s “How Well do You Know our Solar System?” page to enter your school in our national competition. We have listed dozens of misconceptions that exist about our universe and we would like you to solve them. Help educate others with a 1 minute music video/jingle that spreads the truth about the solar system! Next, upload your videos onto our page. You will compete with hundreds of other classes around the world for a chance to meet an astronaut. The class with the best jingle will be rewarded with an all day visit from a real astronaut! If your video is chosen, it will also be featured on television!

Not interested in creating a video but still want to be involved? Purchase your own space buddy that have been modeled after actual astronauts! Each stuffed doll comes with a URL that allows you to access your own universe. You will be able to play interactive games and build your own world! See what happens if the Earth does get bigger than the Sun! If the Sun did disappear at night! Each item purchased will provide funds for an impoverished child to learn more about the solar system by providing them with a scholarship to attend a NASA space camp!

So why does creativity matter?

In an article posted on the Curb Center’s website by Steven Tepper and George D. Kuh called “Let’s Get Serious About Cultivating Creativity,” the authors explains that “To fuel the 21st-century economic engine and sustain democratic values, we must unleash and nurture the creative impulse that exists within every one of us, or so say experts like Richard Florida, Ken Robinson, Daniel Pink, Keith Sawyer, and Tom Friedman. Indeed, just as the advantages the United States enjoyed in the past were based in large part on scientific and engineering advances, today it is cognitive flexibility, inventiveness, design thinking, and nonroutine approaches to messy problems that are essential to adapt to rapidly changing and unpredictable global forces; to create new markets; to take risks and start new enterprises; and to produce compelling forms of media, entertainment, and design.”

As we get ready for the International Space Apps Challenge and start to think about the solutions we plan to develop around one of the many challenges this weekend, I really encourage you to consider your creative approach. Are you thinking about the problem in a traditional way or are you really stretching yourself creatively? What are the decisions, practices, regulations, and laws that you are letting nurture or constrain your creative work?

Please use this event as an opportunity to experiment – to learn – to try something different. Being creative may feel like a risk, but it’s one that is well worth it.  You may be surprised with the results!

Participants included representatives from NASA, representatives that will be supporting the event in San Francisco, people from organizations that have an interest in the results from the challenges, people who submitted challenges, and many skilled and talented Yahoo developers. After our short presentations, we turned challenges over, for the first time, to software developers who could begin brainstorming to provide input for the challenges. All that was provided were some basic guideline questions such as

People formed teams and worked on approximately ten challenges each – brainstorming and asking key questions. The results were exciting! Developers were excited to see what challenges had been proposed. They assessed underlying questions, provided information where they found challenges that already had full or partial solutions, and assessed challenges that should be worked together rather than as independent challenges. They captured their thoughts on the comment fields for the challenges or on the Etherpad links provided with some of the challenges.

This event confirmed our belief that we have some very compelling challenges. I was impressed by how quickly the teams were engrossed in the challenges that were proposed. At one point, pizza was delivered to the room full of developers who had not yet had dinner, and no one moved – everyone kept brainstorming and discussing the challenges despite the wafting smell of bread and cheese. This seemed rather notable given the crowd in attendance.

I was and am incredibly encouraged by the pre-event and think that this could be a great thing for all future apps development challenges. Just like any other mission, we want to do as much work as we can ahead of time to make the mission itself successful. Thanks to the Yahoo Developer Network for all of their support and for hosting the event that we think is going to help making the International Space Apps Challenge an even larger success.

To everyone reading this, we encourage you to do something similar – start discussing the challenges and asking some of those guiding questions above. Visit the challenges at http://spaceappschallenge.org/challenges and share your thoughts and concerns now so that on the weekend of the event we can move forward even more quickly. I’m so encouraged by the challenges that have been submitted the conversation that those challenges inspired and the people that they’ve brought together. I can’t wait to see what solutions will come forward on April 21st and 22nd!