Making Global Data Beautiful for NASA’s Space Apps Challenge

For the last two years, Phuse has co-organized NASA’s International Space Apps Challenge in Toronto, a weekend hackathon with a global reach. We’ve also been a part of the wider Space Apps community by supporting the international events, evolving the Space Apps brand, and collaborating with Secondmuse to design the post-event Mission Report.

The Mission Report showcases the winning projects, summarizes the outcome and reach of the event, and cobbles together important statistics. Last year’s Mission Report turned out to be an especially rewarding project to work on. It was shared at a NASA event, and the infographic stands out as some of the best Space Apps work we’ve done.

Space Apps 2014 Mission Report

In early December 2014, Space Apps representatives handed out fifty full bleed color copies of the Mission Report to an audience at Kennedy Space Center. Around the globe, thousands of others accessed the digital version. Folks that gathered at Cape Canaveral celebrated two big events that day: the success of the spacecraft Orion’s Exploration Flight Test-1 (EFT-1), and another great year solving Space Apps Challenges with the global community.

Here are a couple shots of the Mission Report as it would have looked that day.

Space Apps 2014 Infographic

Originally created for sharing at NextGen Government conference in July 2014, the infographic was also included as a two-page spread in the middle of the Mission Report.

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The infographic was a particularly meaningful piece. You see, the Space Apps Challenge is focused on bringing local talent together to develop solutions to aeronautical challenges. It’s only the Mission Report — and this infographic in particular — that gave us the opportunity to aggregate the data from 95 locations across the globe, and display it in a meaningful way.

Our favorite insights from the event include:

• Ten astronauts participating, an impressive number!
• 29+ million tweets about the event.
• If you plot geographical points from northern, southern, western, and easternmost participating cities, you just about cover the entire globe.
• Toronto is one of seven cities to host a companion youth event.

To be involved in an event that has a world-wide impact is a reward in itself. But to be able to bring it all together for the participants, and show them what kind of impact their hard work had — that makes a difference.

Planning for 2015’s Space Apps Challenge

The 2015 Space Apps Challenge event is just around the corner. It will take place April 11–12, 2015 in cities around the world. Check out the Space Apps International website to find an event near you. There’s also a Space Apps Challenge 2015 event planning guide on SpeakerDeck if you want to organize an event in your own city.

Do you live in Toronto? Join us!

Once again, Phuse is organizing the Space Apps Toronto event. Plans are already underway for both an adult and youth event. Feel free to email james@phuse.ca if you’re interested in helping out. Registration for participants will open a month before the event, on March 11th. Sign up at SpaceAppsToronto.com to get notified about more details, registration deadlines, challenges, the youth event, and more!