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Artash and Arushi Nath, 2020 Global Winner NASA SpaceApps Covid19 Challenge

NASA SpaceApps 2020 happens from 2-4 October 2020. It is one of biggest hackathons in the world open to anyone interested in solving real-world challenges related to Earth and Space. The SpaceApps is happening for the ninth time this year. And the theme of 2020 is “Take Action” – a critical reminder that you can make a difference, even from the comfort and safety of home.

The NASA SpaceApps is also our favourite hackathon. We have participated in it 7 times as contestants and emerged as a Global Winner at the 2020 NASA SpaceApps Covid19 Challenge. This year we have switched roles to encouraging more youngsters, including school children to participate in it and mentoring and sharing our experiences with them. We both are mentoring NASA Youth SpaceApps Toronto 2020 and helping with NASA SpaceApps Las Vegas 2020.

On 29 August 2020, we delivered an online workshop for students from schools and colleges on space, artificial intelligence and big data. The workshop was organised by Nova77 who are the organisers of SpaceApps Vegas. It was attended by 25 students. The recording of the webinar is available online at: https://www.youtube.com/watch?time_continue=1&v=sSv4NTZIMIw&feature=emb_logo

On 1 October 2020, we gave a workshop to the Youth SpaceApps Toronto on how to prepare for NASA SpaceApps 2020 Challenges. It was interesting to share our experiences with elementary, middle and high school students over zoom and social media channels. For most of these students it was their first hackathon. They have already overcome their first hurdle – by deciding to participate in the hackathon. They are in for a very enjoyable and exciting space journey.

The journey is full of curiosity, imagination, collaborating, experimenting, meeting new people and combining all their knowledge and passion to solve challenges posted to them.

We have made available our presentation to all the participants and it has some advice and suggestions on how to approach challenges, what kind of projects they can make and free resources that are available to them.

We wish everyone happy hacking and lots of fun. Be creative, be imaginative, meet new people, take time to learn about projects that other teams are doing and keep coming back.