Challenge statements land tomorrow: a plan for 28 October

Road to HackAthlone: 17 days to go

Tomorrow, 28 October, the NASA Space Apps Challenge publishes the full statements for all 14 challenges. The summaries you’ve been reading since 17 September are a few lines each. The statements “include the full details, resources, and requirements”, so tomorrow is the day to start choosing for real.

Here’s a plan for the day, and for the two weeks after it.

First, the rule

Space Apps is clear: “Teams are not allowed to begin working on the challenges prior to the hackathon.” Its Team Formation Guide explains that this is “to ensure a fair and equitable process”.

So between now and the hackathon, it’s research and planning only. In practice:

• Fine: reading the statements and resources, looking through the datasets, learning tools, talking through ideas, choosing a challenge and agreeing roles.
• Not fine: writing code for your project, designing its screens, building a prototype or making its slides.

If you’re not sure which side of the line something falls on, email us before you do it.

Read each shortlisted statement twice

Read it once for the story: who has the problem and why it matters. Then read it again with a pen. Mark who the user is, what you’re asked to produce and anything the statement says your project must include. Pay most attention to the requirements. A project that ignores them is answering a different challenge.

Open every data link

Click every resource in the statement, tomorrow if you can. For each one, note:

• what it is, in one line
• the link
• the file format and rough size
• any account you need to download it

A small table like this shows you quickly whether a challenge is realistic for your team. If the main dataset needs software nobody has used, you want to know now, not at 10:00 on Saturday.

If you haven’t already, register for a free Earthdata Login account. Our post on NASA open data for beginners covers the main tools.

Shortlist two, then one

Give each challenge on your shortlist a score out of five for four things: how well it fits your skills, how easy the data is to get, how clear the demo would be and how much the team cares. Add them up. The scores won’t decide for you, but they’ll start the right argument.

Get down to two by the weekend and to one before the hackathon starts. Our earlier post on how to choose a Space Apps challenge has more on what to look for.

Talk to your team this week

Meet once, in person or on a call, for an hour at most. Agree on:

• the challenge, or your final two
• who does what over the weekend
• where you’ll talk and where files will live
• what you want the judges to see on Sunday, in one sentence

Once you’ve decided, the Team Owner can update your team’s challenge with the Edit Details button on your team page on spaceappschallenge.org.

Write the plan on one page

One page, not a document. It should say what the problem is, who it’s for, what the demo will show, which data you’ll use and what each person does in the first two hours of the hackathon. Pin it somewhere everyone can see. Over the weekend, that page is your finish line.

Get your setup ready

Accounts and software count as preparation, not project work. Before the weekend, make sure everyone has:

• a GitHub account, and Git or GitHub Desktop installed
• an Earthdata Login account, if your challenge uses NASA Earth data
• the editor, languages and libraries you plan to use, installed and tested
• a charged laptop and a charger that lives in their bag

Space Apps Connect opens on 3 November. It’s the place to ask Space Apps Navigators and NASA subject matter experts about a challenge or its data.

The statements will be on spaceappschallenge.org from tomorrow, and our challenges page links to every one of them.