Kate Arkless Gray was part of T-10 a London-based team at Nasa’s recent global Space Apps Challenge. In her first column for Tech City News she reports back on the experience
As we came in from the cold and happily embraced a mountain of croissants and urns of coffee, we had no idea that we were about to take part in the world’s largest hack weekend. With events in 83 venues across a range of time-zones NASA’s Space Apps Challenge was a truly global event.
Armed with a bright idea – approved by an astronaut no less – I set off to find some people to complement my ideas with coding skills. By lunchtime our crack team of four were busy building on the initial idea and bringing things to life.
Making an app for astronauts
The idea is simple. We love photos from space, and astronauts love taking them, but their time on the International Space Station is so precious that they don’t really have time to keep staring out of the window until the clouds clear over destinations they fly over in a matter of moments.
They’re going at 17,500mph. Trust me, that’s fast – they orbit the entire planet every 90 minutes! So what could we do to help? Our app, T-10, allows astronauts to select locations they’d like to photograph and gives them an alert a T-10 minutes before they’re going to fly overhead. The clever bit, is that the app also checks the local weather data, and will only sounds the alert if the conditions are clear. Simple huh?
It’s a nice idea for an app, but with a crew size of six, there’s a limited audience. That’s why we also designed T-10 for Earth. It’s pretty similar except it alerts you to times when the space station is visibly flying overhead. (You don’t need a telescope to see it you know!)
Space is exciting, but it can seem a bit far away for most people. That’s why we’ve added an even more exciting feature to the app. When astronauts are alerted that it would be a good time to take a photo, they can press a button announcing that they will be taking a photo. People on Earth in that area will get a push notification telling them to smile. Equally, when the T-10 alert lets you know the station is coming, if you say that you’ll wave, the astronauts get a note to let them know.
We feel it will be a really nice way of connecting astronauts with people on Earth. We’ll be plotting people’s wave locations and enabling them to share their photos. There may even be prizes or messages from astronauts for those people who waved the most.
Reaching for the Red Bull
In less than 48 hours the team went from being strangers to good friends, albeit slightly bleary-eyed and reaching for the Red Bull. We presented our work, complete with two “astromonials” (yes, that’s right, 100% of astronauts that we asked, said that they would use our app), some slick graphics and a working prototype of the app.
All our tiredness was washed away as we were announced as winners of the London Event, alongside a team who designed a mobile soil-testing kit/app. We’re through to the international judging stages and keen to do well so that one day we’ll see our app in the hands of the astronauts in space.
Check out our video and please tweet @spaceapps with the #teeminus10 hashtag so your vote is counted. Find our more about Kate’s project here.