Codernauts| Breakthrough
Breakthrough
NASA Mission Museum
Summary
Our application provides a hands-on experience to learning about NASA's past missions and their relation to the solar system. In fact, this app also happens to be a simulation of the solar system with its speed controlled by the user. One is able to view mission trajectories and timing while also following the orbits of the planets around them.
How We Addressed This Challenge
Our project serves as a way to easily view NASA's technological breakthroughs as they are used. It is important because it is a way to visualize the complicated and extensive list of NASA launches and projects that history has recorded. This project serves as an interactive museum by which one can navigate through its pages by controlling the flow of time.
How We Developed This Project
We were inspired to choose this challenge because it allowed us to utilize the knowledge about that NASA that we had and our skills about how to use certain devices that we also had. At the same time, we understood that we would have to tackle certain obstacles relating to the project that would require us to learn new methods and information. For coding, we used Unity, were we could apply our abilities quickly and efficiently without needing to learn how to use it from the ground up. Every part of Unity that required programming used C# in Microsoft Visual Studio. As for data collection, we dug for facts and missions information in Wikipedia and many of NASA's large quantities of data in their websites. This information was compiled into various spreadsheets and documents all shared in a Google Drive folder. This folder also contains many of the graphics for the project, created in an editor named Pixel Studio. For music, we chose to combine music from Gutav Holst's The Planets as well as some home-recorded piano pieces. The most challenging part of our project was due to time-constraints, specifically when working with Unity. Our greatest achievements came from seeing the fruit of labor combine together into one cohesive project.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
Though we used many sources of information for our project, many of such information came from NASA's own library of information online. For simulating the solar system, we used NASA's Solar System Exploration website. For mars missions, we took information from NASA's official mars website. For most NASA missions, however, we used the NSSDC website, which holds records of all NASA launches and landings throughout history. This information was critical to our application, as it is what is supposed to be showcased and accurately presented in our application.