KAPA - Space Apps Challenge

KAPA| Can You Hear Me Now?

Can You Hear Me Now?

Human missions to Mars are moving from the realm of science fiction to science fact. Your challenge is to design an interactive application to explore the challenge of communicating with astronauts on Mars from Earth.

To Mars and Beyond: Can You Hear Them?

Summary

Our project aims to bring about a deeper level of understanding on the existing types of communication that take place in Space- both interplanetary and between Astronauts, in the form of an interactive, educational game that helps the player visualize the whole process in an engaging gaming environment that also makes the whole learning process interesting. Apart from the types of communication, the game also focusses on various features of the Red Planet that interests us folks on Earth and also looks at the scope of future colonization. Our ultimate aim was to make the game as realistic as possible in terms of Mars exploration so as to give the player an experience rich in individuality.

How We Addressed This Challenge

It is quite a well-known fact that communication in space is crucial. It is more important to understand how it works so as to come up with new, improvised and advanced methods of communication with the help of this type of understanding. In accordance with that, we, Team KAPA, developed an interactive game that seeks to instill in the minds of the players a basic sense of understanding of how different communication types employed in Space work. This is important because it enables people to understand an integral part of Space Exploration which in turn, paves the path for further development in said area. The game enables the user to explore Mars and explains to them the various features of the planet and thereby giving the player a deep insight on Mars and it's geology apart from the different communication methods employed out there. The game achieves this by giving the user the liberty to explore Mars on their own, especially in a fun, interactive learning environment. We aim to give the player at least a ground-level understanding on how communications work in Space and between two planets and hope that this game only serves as a pedestal that further piques their interest in the beauty of Space and the wonderful relations we humans have built and will continue to build with it.

How We Developed This Project

The fact that humans have evolved so much and are unravelling unthinkable mysteries is mind boggling. Mars is one such intriguing topic. The thin atmosphere, the craters, the red soil and above all, human's quest to conquer a new planet was most inspiring for Team KAPA. We started off by keeping the major goal-having knowledge/information and fun go hand in hand, so as to educate people who are not in mainstream science too. We developed an interface where player/learner can interact with the surroundings (Martian terrain graphics) and learn. We used Unity Engine to design and code our game. For modelling the game, we used the inbuilt tools of Unity and Blender software. We used Visual Studio for coding (C# language). The major problem was time constraint as none of the team members knew even the basics of game development. Owing to this challenge, we are now well versed with a new programming language and a new skill. Apart from these, we also gained immense knowledge on various aspects of mars, various communication systems and are inspired to explore more!

How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

Deep space communication systems was a good start to develop a deeper understanding of current communication networks between Earth and Mars.

We initialize our project with the given DSN data with the help of Curiosity Rover to visualize a demo of the working mechanism and disadvantages of this system.

To provide a constructive and realistic solution for the time delay in current Deep Space Network, the data provided in the optical communication system was taken and animated a 3D model for the Laser communication relay that shows how lasers are better than radio frequency signals and can transmit more data with more speed between Earth & Mars.

To build this game more interactive to users, we designed a 'Mars Human explorer' Rover inspired by LEAD Rover and Curiosity Rover.

While wandering around the Red planet, users will have advantages to know about some geological events on its surface like Geysers, previous Mars missions ,craters, ice canyons etc.

We found that ESA scientists proposed the solution of communication during 'Mars solar conjunction'. We animated the solution as a better technology that demonstrates how astronauts will be able to communicate with Earthlings when the Sun blocks all signals from both sides.