GoSat| Orbital Sky
Orbital Sky
An app enhancing public awareness about satellites by gamifying it.
Summary
GoSat is a user-friendly app that utilises the GPS location of the user and compares it with satellites nearby to assess satellite visibility. Before detection user does not know where the satellite is, to prevent careless hunting of satellites that could have caused accidents. User is notified about satellite detected and given some text to increase knowledge and then asked to answer questions after which the badge is awarded and stored along with information to increase public awareness about satellites that have now become a crucial resource in our lives.
How We Addressed This Challenge
Simply reading stuff might be boring for the general public. The app gamifies this experience to target a broader section of the society. Badges become perks to the people to flaunt and boast about. Earning badge after answering questions makes a small sense of pride and further motivates people. We hope that people from all over the globe and walks of life know that what is tirelessly walking high above around the globe. When the public is involved, it facilitates greater collaboration and hence better brainstorming. Without getting awestruck people don't tend to have feelings of wanting to get involved in all of this.
How We Developed This Project
India is a country where there are many back-stage people whose contributions go unrecognized, this has what has really driven us to recognize the off-camera indispensables without whom the world would come to a standstill that is the elaborate network of our eyes in sky, the satellites. We have used up a great deal of animation to connect in the best possible way to make this a reality. Most important resource we have put in here is our brain and time.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
The rough version of the app we made used data from NASA's SSC API in order to track satellites. The API is the backbone of this app. The API was used to track the satellites and match with the user geo-location in order to notify the user about badge earned.
Data & Resources
NASA SSC RESTful API. Handful satellite data.