To the moon| Mission to Planet Earth: A Digital History
Mission to Planet Earth: A Digital History
Exploring NASA
Summary
When we think about NASA the first thing that comes to mind are the missions to the Moon and outer space. However, a large part of the population forgets or is unaware that the organization also studies the Earth and everything that surrounds it. That's why we developed the Exploring NASA app that aims to show, in an interactive way, the trajectory of NASA and the people responsible for the missions that changed the way we see our planet. In order to inform the public through a game, we seek data from satellites over Earth, space flights and monitoring by the US space agency. In this app the user will have access to curiosities and information, instigating their curiosity on the topic.
How We Addressed This Challenge
The developed project fulfills the idea of informing the population in an interactive way about the fact that NASA has studied, in addition to the space that surrounds us, the planet on which we live, bringing various information about events in an enlarged view, seen from space. The interactive part to be fulfilled in the challenge is due to the fact that the system built is an educational game. Thus, it makes the user's interest and curiosity greater compared to the same in the case of using less participatory sites or platforms. The application will address several sub-themes related to the study of the Earth by the organization, such as information about the first studies carried out, the most important data that were collected, information about how these events changed the way we understand the planet and the people who made it possible. Thus the project aims to provide knowledge in an interesting and accessible way, about the impact that NASA has on the study of the Earth, something that many are unaware of.
The game works like this: the user is guided by the narrator on a journey to build his own satellite collecting pieces along the way, while discovering curiosities and a bit of the history of NASA, the Earth Science Division (ESD) and some related historical facts.
How We Developed This Project
One of the biggest problems in the world today is misinformation and lack of educational accessibility for people. According to a survey by ONU, 258 million children don't have access to education 'cause of the current pandemic in the world, but we know that before that number was already large.
Based on this, our team reconciled studies with leisure in a dynamic and popular approach, which are electronic games. In this way we will bring life to NASA's greatest achievements by addressing a new world of knowledge for our children.
According to studies, educational games help in the knowledge, socialization, affectivity, creativity and other technical skills required in the 21st century. Technological advances have enabled accessibility and visibility for games that favor learning. Thinking about it, we developed a game, called “Exploring NASA”, which aims to inform about the satellites that study our Planet. In this game it is possible to know the history of each satellite, arousing the curiosity of the players on the topic.
In creating the prototype of the application, the One Day Code software was used, which is widely used in the creation of games with an easy programming language.
In this software, differently from the source, the program works from programmable blocks, but it has the same logical programming reasoning, as in the creation of variables to store information as well as in the creation of a condition to perform a certain action.
With the conditions present in the programming, it was possible to determine the next level, the tasks, in addition to the actions of the character and the objects of the game. The image below shows a step of how the system works and how it was programmed.
The Space Apps event was a test of time and during the development of the Exploring NASA project the main difficulty we faced was: how to solve a question and develop a project in 48 (forty-eight) hours? we can point out that it was a great challenge for the team, however, with success and after discussions it was possible to complete the project-idea with quality and effort, a project that was pre-developed 100% remotely and made use of commitment and planning by part of the whole team so that it could be finalized. The issue of time and social distance, a consequence of the Covid-19 pandemic, were two major challenges that we faced, and due to this, face-to-face meetings with the team were not possible, which consequently prevented further discussions, but with the several technological advances in the world today, the meetings were held online, where we could base our ideas, organize our team and finish with quality all phases of this challenge.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
In the project we use data provided in the materials made available in the challenge resources. They were extremely important for a better understanding of the desired proposal and provided a technical basis for the information that would be inserted in the game in its first version. NASA sites were used to have data on satellites, launch dates, Earth studies conducted by the organization and related information.
Project Demo
Data & Resources
Jim Green, Lawrence Friedl & Brian Odom (NASA) | Navigating the first challenge on NASA history .NASA Space Apps Challenge, 2020. Available at: <https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=w105Deq3Fos&feature=youtu.be> Accessed: October 4, 2020.
TIROS.NASA SCIENCE SHARE THE SCIENCE, 2016. Available at: <https://science.nasa.gov/missions/tiros> Accessed: October 4, 2020.
258 million children do not have access to education, alerts Unesco .Galileu, 2020. Available at: <https://revistagalileu.globo.com/Sociedade/noticia/2020/06/258-milhoes-de-criancas-nao-tem -acesso-educacao-Alerta-unesco.html> Accessed: October 4, 2020.
Image of the Earth from TIROS 1. NASA Official, 2007. Available at: <https://www.nasa.gov/vision/earth/features/bm_gallery_3.html> Accessed on: October 4, 2020.
NASA Earth Science. NASA SCIENCE SHARE THE SCIENCE, 2020. Available at: <https://science.nasa.gov/earth-science> Accessed on: October 4, 2020.
Earth Science Data Systems (ESDS) Program .EARTHDATA, 2020. Available at: <https://earthdata.nasa.gov/esds> Accessed: October 4, 2020.