NASA Space Apps Challenge 2025 Entry

Context

The NASA International Space Apps Challenge gives teams 48 hours to build a solution to one of the challenges NASA publishes for that edition. Each challenge points to open NASA data. What you do with it is up to you, as long as it works and can be explained.

This was my second time in the event. The 2025 submission was recognised as a Galactic Problem Solver.

Approach

Having done it once before changed how the weekend was planned. The challenge was chosen quickly and against practical tests: is the data reachable within the first few hours, is there a single result worth showing, and can that result be explained without the audience knowing the subject beforehand.

The rest of the time was budgeted in advance. A block for getting data in and cleaned. A block for the interface. A block, protected and not negotiable, for the submission text and the recording. Leaving documentation to the last hour was the mistake I wanted to avoid repeating.

What I built

The output was a working demonstration built on the open NASA datasets tied to the chosen challenge, together with the written submission the competition requires. The demonstration was kept deliberately narrow: one question, one view, one clear answer.

What I learned

Preparation beats speed. Knowing in advance how the datasets are structured and what the submission asks for freed most of the weekend for actual building. I also learned that the second attempt at a format is where you fix process rather than technique — the code was not the hard part, the sequencing was.

Note: this entry is a structural placeholder. The competition record is accurate; the technical write-up still needs the owner’s own detail.