Argonautica| Orbital Sky
Awards & Nominations
Argonautica has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!
Orbital Sky
Argonautica
Summary
The day-to-day actions of an average person nowadays is largely facilitated by satellites around the earth that provide us with enormous amounts of information and make our lives much easier and safer, but thoughts about them rarely cross people’s minds. Our goal is to give them the tools with which to interact with the actual satellites and fuel their passion to explore more. Using augmented reality and live information about every active satellite in orbit, we aim to do just that. Be the first to explore the required amount of satellites and you get to name the next one that goes into orbit.
How We Addressed This Challenge
How we addressed the challenge
To spark real interest and enthusiasm toward the satellites all around our planet, we’ve decided to give the users as much incentive as possible to actually engage with what they see in their skies by implementing a system of achievements, creating the possibility and almost a necessity of strategically teaming up with individuals from different locations on earth and offering a reward of actually leaving your mark on humanity’s space related endeavors.
Collecting the necessary amount of satellites can prove a difficult challenge for a single person, but just like in any science, everything can be done much easier and faster if people collaborate. Inviting others across the globe to join forces will foster the scientific spirit of exploration.
Main Insights
If you want to win, you better collaborate / Want to win? Collaborate.
Collaborating with others is exactly what happens in science all the time, so doing so brings the user a little closer to the scientific spirit necessary to explore.
Since in order to win one needs to reach a very diverse collection of satellites, it is almost necessary to team up with very diverse people, which is a valuable experience on its own.
Impact
Users around the world teaming up to tackle the enormous challenge that is exploring such a large and diverse amount of satellites has the potential to make the endeavor viral and further incite interest, engagement and enthusiasm in people who before might not have given satellites a second thought.
How We Developed This Project
Argonautica is an app designed to combine actual live information with an exploration themed game. The user can monitor the positions and orbits of active satellites through augmented reality, which can be done in two ways: Globe View and Sky View.
In Globe View the user can position the globe anywhere, watch live how satellites trace their orbits around the planet, pick what types of satellites to observe, which to leave out and access information about each one.
In Sky View, the user can look at the sky and actually see where the satellites are at a given moment. In this mode, the user can interact with the satellite that has entered the skies and add it to the “explored satellites” list. The first person/team to explore/collect the set amount of satellites in each category will have the pleasure to name the next one that goes into orbit.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
Both Globe View and Sky View have access to the following information:
- Location data of the user from the mobile device;
- List of satellites, handpicked from https://www.ucsusa.org with love and filtered by purpose;
- https://www.ucsusa.org/resources/satellite-database
- Satellite locations live feeded from https://www.n2yo.com/
- Satellite 3D models from https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/models
The API key from N2YO makes it possible to perform 2000 requests per hour. Consequently, we pinpoint the locations of the satellites only once a day and integrate along the curve using numerical integration methods. We assume that the integration does not result into non-negligible errors within the 24-hour frame.
The source code for the two distinct parts of the application are open at: