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The Victorian Space Science Education Centre (VSSEC) recently announced the launch of a multi-city Australian program as part of the NASA-convened International Space Apps Challenge to be held worldwide on 21-22 April 2012. VSSEC is the Australian convenor and host of the flagship event at its learning complex in Melbourne.

 

The International Space Apps Challenge was announced by NASA in March 2012 as a showcase project in collaboration with the 54-nation Open Government Partnership initiated by the US Obama Administration and Brazil.

 

As a worldwide code-a-thon style event, the International Space Apps Challenge will take place over 48 hours in cities on all seven continents – and in space – on the weekend of 21-22 April, 2012. The event aims to bring together disparate technical and subject matter experts to strategically address social or scientific challenges through the creative application of publicly available data.

 

The Australian convenor is Dr Naomi Mathers – a research scientist and program developer at VSSEC as well as a member of the Federal Government-convened Australian Space Industry Innovation Council. Dr Mathers said “This is an unprecedented opportunity for a wide range of disciplines such as space and geo-science to work hand-in-hand with tech coders and others to create innovative new solutions. This isn’t just a geek-fest. The Space Apps Challenge is firmly grounded in problem-solving, in meeting real world needs by imaginatively mashing-up open data with people’s skills and experience to produce something new that will eventually impact ordinary people and communities.”

 

The code-a-thon participants, advisors and supporting organisations will join a worldwide network for 48 hours across 21-22 April. Dr Mathers added “We expect that in the best tradition of such hackfests someone will be staying awake all Saturday to work on their challenge for the Sunday finale hoping to win one of the great prizes. In this event they’ll also be able to draw on the resources of the worldwide community through multi-channel collaboration spaces NASA are setting up so challenge teams can network ideas and solutions across cities and countries, as well as with virtual participants.”

 

Together with involvement from the McMurdo Base, Antarctica, and the International Space Station, participating cities include

·         San Francisco, New York, Miami and Boulder, United States;

·         Tokyo, Japan;

·         Jakarta, Indonesia;

·         Exeter & Oxford, United Kingdom;

·         Nairobi, Kenya;

·         São Paulo, Brazil;

·         Vancouver & Montreal, Canada;

·         Tel Aviv, Israel;

·         Istanbul, Turkey;

·         Santo Domingo, Dominican Republic;

·         Lausanne, Switzerland;

·         Stuttgart, Germany;

·         Santiago, Chile

·         Dublin, Ireland

·         Bangalore, India

 

Australia will feature four cities:

·         Melbourne: Victorian Space Science Education Centre

·         Canberra: Advanced Instrumentation and Technology Centre

·         Adelaide: Flinders University Centre for Science Education in the 21st Century

·         Sydney: UNSW School of Computer Science and Engineering

 

Dr Mathers added “Unlike many hackathons, this global event is really encouraging people to join teams around key challenges that they nominate or are already published on the central site. These challenges are then prioritised by the national and NASA teams to minimise duplication and also to encourage participants to focus on a particular problem ahead of the event. Publishing the challenges also helps to mobilise the support of subject matter experts and we’re very lucky to have the active support of a wide range of government and industry organisations to provide advice as well as access to data and resources.”

 

Over 12 public and private sector organisations have so far partnered with VSSEC for the Australian Space Apps Challenge. To date these include:

·         Australian Government Department of Industry Innovation Science Research & Tertiary Education (Space Policy Unit);

·         Space Industry Innovation Council;

·         Flinders University Centre for Science Education in the 21st Century;

·         University of New South Wales, School of Computer Science and Engineering;

·         Engineers Australia National Committee for Space Engineering;

·         National ICT Australia (NICTA);

·         Arup;

·         CSIRO;

·         Canon Information Systems Research Australia;

·         Advanced Instrumentation and Technology Centre;

·         Australian Youth Aerospace Association;

·         Cofluence;

·         Aerion Technologies.

 

Naomi Mathers said “It’s great that we have assembled an amazing collaborative network – but the success will be up to the concerned citizens, engineers, scientists, software code developers and other experts who team up to meet one of the challenges.”

She added “Not many Australians realise that we have a thriving space science community comprising government, industry and citizen interest groups and this community is rallying behind the Space Apps Challenge.”

 

“I urge anyone who is interested to sign-up early to identify their project and to ensure they have access to the data they need for their challenge. As a NASA-driven program the Challenge has access to leading-edge science and our advisory supporters can assist to access data but with advance notice. In Australia, the Space Apps stage is now set. It’s up to people to join in, have fun and create something new and different.”

 

More information on the Australian challenge is available via VSSEC at: http://cof.lu/spaceappsAU

More information on the international challenge is available at http://spaceappschallenge.org