International Space Apps Challenge
International Space Apps Challenge is an innovative two-day hackathon initiative by NASA intended to bring together an international mass collaboration of students, developers, entrepreneurs, artists, educators, designers, scientists and technologists from around the globe. The Challenge will be focusing on space exploration and will extend for 48 hours simultaneously in different cities across the globe. This Challenge aims at having a collaborative approach to solving various problems by coming up with inventions and open-source solutions to address various challenges to life on Earth and life in space.
This year’s International Space Apps Challenge which will be held on April 12 – 13, 2014 will feature 40 challenges and 25 projects from the 2013’s Space App that will supports NASA’s mission that will be represented in 5 themes:
- Earth Watch.
- Technology in Space.
- Human Spaceflight.
- Robotics.
- Asteroids.
NASA is spear-heading this global collaboration in partnership with several governments and more than 100 local organizations. NASA appreciates the fact that space exploration program is indeed a universal event, and a unified international effort backed by a wide diversity of experience and perspective will go a long way in producing better products. NASA endeavors in making the Space Apps Challenge enlightening and available to the whole world. NASA also seeks to learn a thing or two that will teach them some lessons on how they can make the event truly global.
The Space Apps Challenge will champion NASA’s principles of transparency, participation and collaboration through availing the readily available data obtained from NASA’s missions and technology. Combined with the talents, innovativeness and skills of enthusiastic volunteers from all over the globe this Challenge is gearing towards advancing space exploration and improving the living conditions on Earth.
The outstanding innovations will be awarded various prizes but the main focus of this Challenge is to enable 48 hours of active engagement, collaboration and discovery and the number of promising solutions that could possibly come up during that time frame. The 48 hours intense weekend of April 12 – 13, is for entrepreneurs, engineers, designers, developers and anyone who has an interest in science and space. To participate, all you will need is a computer, internet connection and able to collaborate with other people in building up applications. To register for this event, click here. The following are some links to some of the African countries that will be participating in this Challenge. Click on your country below and if your Country is not listed, click on the link above and select your country to register: Nigeria, South Africa, Benin, Senegal, Kenya and Togo
