The Blue Stars - Space Apps Challenge

The Blue Stars | 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.

Observing Earth with The Blue Stars

Summary

Our challenge was to find a way to familiarize more people with NASA’s work on Earth in a way that’s both insightful and fun. We have achieved this by creating our website thebluestars.com that takes users through NASA’s history regarding Earth Science, more specifically on the historical journey of NASA’s Earth-monitoring satellites. An animated version of the newest satellite Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich takes users on a journey back in time, beginning when NASA as an organization was created, all the way to their first satellite launch and through their developments in the field of Earth Science.

How We Addressed This Challenge

Our team The Blue Stars has developed an innovative way of showcasing and spreading awareness of the discoveries and technology made to assist in the study of Earth Science by NASA. We created a website as well as an Instagram account to reach out to as many people as possible. The website is an interactive page where users follow the animated satellite, Sentinel-6 Michael Freilich, on a journey back in time. They visit and learn about the major breakthroughs made by each satellite, starting with the first satellite to be launched, Pioneer 1.

How We Developed This Project

We chose the Mission to planet Earth: a Digital History challenge because we are fascinated by how much NASA has improved the field of Earth Science and we want to share our knowledge for the past and excitement for the future with the entire world. We approached this challenge in a modern way, we not only developed an interactive website on google sites but also an Instagram account that will reach out to various different individuals, to better raise awareness.

Website: https://sites.google.com/view/thebluestarsociety/home/the-langely-research-center

Instagram account:https://www.instagram.com/thebluestarssociety/

How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project

Our challenge required extensive research into the history of all satellites that have a purpose to monitor earth. Our team used NASA's history resources and data. We gathered key information from the available data on the NASA website as well as information from all of NASA's partnering agencies.