Founding Hackers | Mission to Planet Earth: A Digital History

Mission to Planet Earth: A Digital History

NASA’s activities in space have brought new knowledge of the Earth, inspiring new ways of thinking about humanity and the planet. However, many people aren’t aware that NASA studies the Earth in addition to other planets. Your challenge is to tell stories of NASA’s Earth science enterprise using interactive digital tools. This will test your technical skills and your ability to think like a historian or educator.

Trash Vortex Video Game

Summary

Telling NASA’s Story in a Fun New WayOur unique spin on NASA’s Garbage Patch Visualization ExperimentAn Endless Runner game in which the player collects trash and avoids harming other sea life

How We Addressed This Challenge

The game’s main menu features a visualization from NASA’s Garbage Patch Visualization study, showing how ocean trash travels and clusters. The game’s website will feature additional information, and relevant links such as NASA’s own research to help raise awareness for issues that NASA is currently studying.

Normally in a game such as this, garbage would be an obstacle to avoid. We took the opposite approach and made collecting garbage the primary way in which the player increases their score. Our intention is to spread the idea that it is the responsibility of each and every one of us to keep our planet clean, and that the ocean trash issue should not merely be avoided, but confronted head on.

https://docs.google.com/presentation/d/1EW5mwv2dheMc9vDsQhu9XHX-FnvdxbWTxxq4ll1CQqA/edit?usp=sharing

How We Developed This Project

The intent of our game is to create a fun experience for users that will encourage them to research topics related to the game. We intend to have a section of relevant links and information accessible within the game (such as NASA’s own studies on the Ocean Garbage Patch). While ocean garbage has become a more well known issue in recent times, NASA’s own studies on the matter are relatively unknown to the public

How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

Climate change, pollution, and other environmental issue become more prominent by the day. Research such as NASA’s Earth Science studies is crucial in to monitoring worsening situations, such as melting polar ice caps or massive patches of garbage accumulated by ocean currents.

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Tags
#game #3dgame #nasa #trashvortex #website #github
Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Judging process.