NASA Space Apps Challenge, the largest international hackathon, has launched registrations for the twelfth edition, which will take place on the weekend of October 7-8 in five cities from Romania, as well as hundreds of other places around the world. 

Programmers, scientists, designers, engineers, technology enthusiasts, storytelling specialists, producers, and builders from all over the world can participate in the hackathon. For 48 hours, they will have access to public NASA data and work together to find solutions to real problems on Earth and in space. 

The event will take place physically in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca and online in Timișoara, Iași, and Oradea. Registrations can be made until Friday, October 6. Participants can register for the event organized by any of the five cities, regardless of where they come from in Romania.

Space Apps teams have between 2-6 members. Those who wish to participate can come in already formed teams (registration is done individually), or they can come along and be helped by the organizers to form a group. 

“We encourage students, engineers, artists, and storytelling experts to sign up for these events because, yes, some challenges are technical, but many tasks require artistic skills, business knowledge, or a lot of imagination. Moreover, precisely because it is a collaborative event, the best teams are those whose members have a range of skills, such as programming, storytelling, science, technology, and engineering,” said Tudor Pasc, project manager of NASA Space Apps Challenge and incubation director ROTSA. 

More than 200 people from Romania between the ages of 16 and 56 participated in 2021 during the most recent local edition of the NASA Space Apps Challenge. Among the six winning projects were a greenhouse to provide nutritional supplements for a mission to Mars, space exploration games, or a virtual map highlighting the waste orbiting the Earth.

In Romania, the biggest hackathon in the world is organized by ROTSA, DiFine PR, and ClujHub. The first local edition of the NASA Space Apps Challenge took place in 2016.

Among the partners of this edition are Google Romania, Cloudsoft, and AIESEC Romania.

radu@romania-insider.com

(Photo source: the organizers)