Space Rangers| Mission to Planet Earth: A Digital History
Mission to Planet Earth: A Digital History
Trans-It
Summary
The project is aimed to be an immersive experience for the user to learn about and better understand NASA’s Earth science legacy. It is an interactive timeline which traces major events, missions, and political factors which influenced the formation and working of the Earth Science Division of NASA.
How We Addressed This Challenge
We have developed an interactive timeline which traces major events, missions and political factors which influenced in pushing the idea of treating Earth, like all other planetary bodies probed by NASA, as an object to be investigated on a planetary scale.
We believe that probing our home planet and more importantly the changes it is undergoing is very crucial in understanding not only the past or our common humanity but also the incoming future and the interdependent global ecosystem we exist in.
The user can immerse in an engaging tool to explore and learn about the legacy of NASA’s Earth science enterprise. User can move through the interactive timeline which traces the important landmarks in mission to planet Earth.
We hope to tell the history of NASA Earth science and the factors which influenced its formation and development. We hope to arouse the curiosity and interest of the user towards the exploratory journey of our planet and the untaped secrets it holds.
How We Developed This Project
Inspiration
Hindsight is always 20/20. We wanted to tell a big picture story, which captures the political components, the changes made after a setback or the technological breakthroughs which opened new gates of opportunities. Telling the history of Nasa's research and contributions in Earth Science felt like the perfect challenge for us.
Approach
After choosing to tell the stories of Earth Science Division of NASA, we had to plan the technology we'll use and build and how to tell that story through this technology. We researched on the different formats that could be employed, while keeping. check on time constraints of one weekend to achieve the task. Once we had landed on the medium to trace the legacy of journey to planet Earth, the next task was to trim and finalise the events that were the most relevant in the the telling of this story. The last but not the least part was to collect the media from various sources and make the overall material engaging.
Tools Used
For making an interactive timeline, we used the tech stack for web development which includes HTML, CSS, Javascript ( jQuery, React.js, and framework Angular), Sublime Text, SVGS which are animated and added to make the experience more engaging.
Problems
From the beginning, we had to keep ourselves under check and has to strike a balance between making our tool more engaging and interactive while keeping a close eye on our time constraints.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
The archives from the past missions of NASA were used to help set up the story we wanted to tell. Apart from that, the current missions and experiments in the field of Earth Science by NASA were used. Many articles from the NASA History Office were taken to trace major events which either directly or indirectly affected the formation or working of the NASA Earth science.
Project Demo
https://drive.google.com/file/d/19Tnrd-6AUyNY7n9EHTJK9szPyAcQI_g5/view?usp=sharing
Project Code
Data & Resources
https://crgis.ndc.nasa.gov/historic/Projects_and_Programs
https://www.nasa.gov/multimedia/imagegallery/image_feature_1627.html
https://www.nasa.gov/content/goddard/nimbus-nasa-remembers-first-earth-observations
https://landsat.gsfc.nasa.gov/landsat-1/
https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/calipso/mission/#:~:text=NASA%20launched%20the%20CloudSat%20and,weather%2C%20climate%20and%20air%20quality.&text=CALIPSO%20is%20planned%20for%20three%20years%20of%20on%2Dorbit%20operation.
https://www.sciencedirect.com/science/article/pii/S0924271614000720
https://www.nasa.gov/50th/50th_magazine/earthSciences.html#:~:text=%22We%20shall%20never%20cease%20from,place%20for%20the%20first%20time.%22
https://www.nasa.gov/content/earth-missions-list
https://terra.nasa.gov/
https://www-calipso.larc.nasa.gov/