Dr Becca Wilson

This is a copy of the blog post (updated broken links) I wrote for the Space IDEAS Hub (link to original post, University of Leicester):

During the weekend of 19-21 April, more than 9,100 people around the world came together in 83 locations in 44 countries, to engage directly with NASA during the 2013 International Space Apps Challenge – now officially the largest hackathon ever held. Leicester hosted an event at the LCB Depot in the Cultural Quarter, led by the Space IDEAS Hub team with great support from the LCB Depot staff.

Over 50 participants signed up for the Leicester event, including a few students from the department. They combined into teams to tackle these projects:

Asteroid Occultator 

• crowd-source tool for amateur astronomers to plot the shape of asteroids based on their star ‘shadows’
• commended by judges for educational potential
• proof of principle tool developed

Xspacious

• Data capture and visualisation of urban climate, health, and other things
• Working capture and display demo and app developed

Prásinos Martis

• design concept for a 4-stage plan to deploy a sustainable greenhouse onto the Martian surface
• paper concept only

After 48 hours of intensive teamwork – facilitated by a spaghetti and marshmallow structural challenge on Friday night – the top 2 projects have been submitted into a global contest.