NASA Space Apps Challenge 2025 — Galactic Problem Solver

About the challenge

The NASA International Space Apps Challenge is the world’s largest annual global hackathon, held over a single weekend in cities around the world. NASA and its partner space agencies publish challenge statements alongside open datasets, and teams have to deliver a working answer to one of them before the deadline.

Local events forward their strongest teams to global judging, where teams may be nominated for one of the global award categories.

The nomination

Our team received the Galactic Problem Solver nomination in the 2025 edition. It is one of the global award nominations given to standout teams, recognising a solution judged to be an elegant answer to the chosen challenge.

The second time around

Receiving the same nomination in two consecutive editions is the part worth noting. A single good weekend can be luck. Repeating it means the method held: read the challenge statement properly, check what the data actually supports before promising anything, cut the scope to something that can be finished and demonstrated, and write the presentation as carefully as the code.

The second year also changes what you build. Having already been through the format once, less time goes into deciding how to work and more goes into the problem itself. The tooling, the repository layout and the division of work are decisions you no longer have to make on the day.

The submission is described in the linked project entry.