Mochileiros da Galáxia| Hey! What Are You Looking At?
Hey! What Are You Looking At?
"Mochileiro da Galáxia" - The missions for enthusiasts
Summary
The available data about astronomy are plenty. However, this data is provided through platforms with scientific jargon that can be complex to understand and with specific ways to retrieve information. That is understandable in the scientific community, however it brings difficulty for enthusiasts and hobbyists. To democratize this data access, we developed a mobile application prototype with a simple graphical interface, so that users can filter, by date and location, satellites orbiting the Earth, getting simplified information about them. Furthermore, users can interact by sharing comments about their impressions. To obtain the data, we utilize NASA databases, mainly HEARSAC.
How We Addressed This Challenge
Although there is a lot of data available on astronomical missions and events, these can be difficult to understand and access by people without much knowledge in the area. On the other hand, the dissemination of knowledge and the encouragement of learning is essential for society. So, the challenge “Hey! What are you looking at?” asked the participants to find a way to expose the data available by NASA and/or NASA’s partners in an easy way, with an interactive interface.
Due to this, our team developed a mobile application prototype that can search about missions and satellites in NASA Astronomical Virtual Observatory (NAVO) data and show this information in a user-friendly interface for astronomy enthusiasts beginners. Our app provides information about satellites based on location, date and time chosen by the user. To address this, the user logs into the app and chooses a date and a location. Then, it is redirected to a map view, where they can select a time of the day with a slider. After that, the user can see the satellites in that date and time above the region and choose a satellite to show more interestings information about it. Finally the user can comment and share their opinion and experience, in addition to viewing other people's comments, creating community engagement.
To get information about coordinates to user input, the app searches NASA data with Simple Conical Search Protocol (SCSP). To retrieve information about a particular satellite, it uses the Table Access Protocol using Astronomical Data Query Language (ADQL) execution with the PyVO, a python package that allows the access to remote data and services of the Virtual observatory (VO).
On the weekend of the Space Challenge, we made available a form asking about the interest for learning astronomy and how hard they think it was for access and understanding the satellite data. The research had 102 answers, where 57% people have high interest in astronomy, 64% declare to have little or no knowledge about astronomy and 41% encounter difficulties. In addition, 65% of people would use a mobile application, like the one proposed, to solve this problem. Respondents also gave suggestions for the app, showing interest in using it.
With this project, we hope to democratize astronomical data search and viewing, and encourage all the enthusiasts and hobbyists for astronomy to advance in their adventure in gaining knowledge.
How We Developed This Project
When we were getting information about the challenge resources, our difficulty to understand some of the data, as hobbyists in astronomy, inspired us to make it easier for others that might have the same problem.
We developed a mobile app prototype to find and show information about satellites and their captures in an easy and simple way. To find the satellite, the user can filter with location and date. After that, the satellites icons will show up in the map with the number of satellites in the specified region where they can zoom and click on these satellites to get their information. Furthermore, we include an interactive way to communicate through comments on each satellite tab, where users can say interesting things about events and add more information about the referred satellite.
To access and manage the data made available by NASA we used the package PyVO, a package providing access to remote data and services of the Virtual Observatory (VO) using Python. To design the prototype of the interface we used the software Figma. To research about the data, we utilized the XAMIN.
Regarding the team's difficulties, we highlight summarizing our ideas to avoid high complexity from the user point of view and ensure an easy and simple usability. On the other hand, we had great achievements in learning more about NASA and how it stores its data, as well as how we can access it, in addition to new concepts, such as the Celestial Coordinate System.
How We Used Space Agency Data in This Project
The accessed data in the app is available by NASA Astronomical Virtual Observatory (NAVO). The satellite's positioning can be retrieved with Simple Cone Search Protocol (SCSP) and merged at the location specified on the map. Then the data about individual satellites can be accessed through Table Access Protocol (TAP) with Astronomical Data Query Language (ADQL).
Project Demo
Data & Resources
About Orbits, Earth Observatory. Sep 4, 2009. Accessed on: Oct 4, 2020. Online. Available: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/features/OrbitsIntro
Astronomical Data Query Language - Version 2.1. Jan 12, 2018. Accessed on: Oct 4, 2020. Online. Available: http://www.ivoa.net/documents/ADQL/20180112/PR-ADQL-2.1-20180112.html
Open NASA. Accessed on: Oct 4, 2020. Online. Available: https://open.nasa.gov/
Python Notebooks. NAVO: NASA Astronomical Virtual Observatories. Accessed on: Oct 4, 2020. Online. Available: https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/vo/summary/python.html
PyVO Package. Jun 26, 2020. Accessed on: Oct 4, 2020. Online. Available: https://pypi.org/project/pyvo/
Xamin System. Accessed on: Oct 4, 2020. Online. Available: https://heasarc.gsfc.nasa.gov/xamin/