Join Queen City Robotics Alliance and NASA as We Discover “The Sun Touches Everything”
As we announced last month, Queen City Robotics Alliance is the Charlotte host for the 2024 NASA Space Apps Challenge. NASA recently released the 20 challenges for this year’s theme “The Sun Touches Everything.” Which challenge will you tackle?
The NASA International Space Apps Challenge is the world’s largest global hackathon. This two-day event on October 5-6 allows participants of all ages to use NASA’s free and open data sources and its Space Agency Partners’ space-based data to address real-world issues on Earth and in space. During the event, participating teams gather at designated sites all over the world in person and virtually to address challenges submitted by NASA experts.
The 2024 challenges were announced on August 22. Here are a few of this year’s challenges* and each one can be adapted to fit different education levels from beginner, intermediate, advanced, and professional. (*Information from the NASA 2024 Space Apps website.)
Beyond Sunlight: An Aquatic Chemosynthetic World – Earth’s ecosystems heavily rely on sunlight, but imagine an ocean world where chemosynthesis, not photosynthesis, sustains life. Your challenge is to design such a world and its diverse ecosystem, pushing the boundaries of astrobiology beyond traditional Earth-like conditions.
PACE in the Classroom – The Plankton Aerosol Cloud ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite launched and has begun returning data about Earth’s oceans and atmosphere. NASA’s open science policy allows for all the PACE data to be accessed by the public, but it can be difficult to understand if you are not already familiar with these types of data. Your challenge is to create a digestible set of materials that can be used in classrooms across the world to help students understand the data and information that PACE is gathering and improve ocean literacy worldwide.
Tell Us a Climate Story – Over the last several decades, a huge amount of climate data from numerous sources has been collected. This data is freely available to the public, but making sense of this vast amount of data is not easy! Your challenge is to use the open-source data on the U.S. Greenhouse Gas Center website to tell a compelling story about climate change.
These challenges are designed to incorporate a variety of skills, not just math and science, but art, research, software design, graphic design, creative writing, photography, and even music. This allows participants from diverse backgrounds and skill sets to contribute to NASA’s understanding of both our world and beyond.
TWO (2) SPECIAL ANNOUNCEMENTS: 1) QCRA sponsor Sullenberger Aviation Museum will provide one (1) family four-pack day pass to every participant who completes a NASA Space Apps Challenge at The Zone. 2) Thanks to our sponsors Infosys and Bosch Rexroth, QCRA will offer local awards to Charlotte teams participating at The Zone.
QCRA CEO Kaiwen Cheng is excited the organization has this unique opportunity to host this singular event because it will bring more recognition, interest, and outreach for QCRA’s STEM (Science, Technology, Engineering, and Math) programs in the Charlotte community.
“This is an opportunity for students to use NASA to explore ideas,” said Cheng. “Space technology is a leading technology. It’s using space to inspire and impact our daily lives. Things like GPS and memory foam mattresses. We wouldn’t have those things today without NASA technology.”
“This is also an exciting opportunity for our students,” he continued, “because it is an interesting and tangible way for them to explore STEM education and find out what their talents are through NASA and the wonders of space.”
