Discovery Space

Inspiration

Learning about space can be hard when it is so far away, so by connecting the cool parts of space with what has happened near you, like meteorites, it gives people a fun way to learn more about it.

What it does

Discovery Space uses a server to parse the raw data on all past, recorded meteorite landings from NASA and then passes the largest 10 within a 100 mile radius of the user's location and places them, along with some useful information, on a map. The user can then press the button to open the location in google maps to get directions to the site if they want to see where history was made!

How we built it

We used NASA's data and API to get the data and then parsed it using Python to then return the relevant data to the user's phone. On the client-side, we used Android Studio to create the look and set out the get request. This app addresses something both our grandma and our younger sister would love.

Challenges we ran into

Getting the server and phone to communicate was one of our biggest challenges. It took much more time and googling than we anticipated but we were able to figure it out with some help.

Accomplishments that we're proud of

We are proud that it was one teammate's first app ever and that the app is relevant to our background. Growing up as sisters, we were always interested in space, but at the time, nothing offered an easy to use way for people our age to foster this interest so we are proud that the app is easy to understand for all ages, even those not technologically-savy like young children and older adults.

What we learned

We learned how to use APIs and combine a large data-set with an application as well as how to get two devices to communicate.

What's next for Discovery Space

We would like to use the same parsing code on other NASA data sets, like shooting stars, and add those to our map view so users can see a bigger variety of space objects that are relevant to their earth lives.

Built With

• android-studio
• java
• local-server
• math
• nasa-api
• python