It is a five-star delight for India, as NASA announced the finalists and special mentions in their coveted Space Apps Challenge. Two teams of youngsters became finalists: Dark Mode from Harohalli village in Karnataka and EcoNet from the city of Nashik in Maharashtra. Winners are expected to be announced on January 16, 2025, according to NASA.
Among the special mentions were three entries from India—from Space Odyssee from Kothamangalam town in Kerala, Phyto-makers from Ahmedabad city in Gujarat, and SR-Hub from Ladakh’s capital city Leh.
Nashik-based EcoNet comprised Snehal Sanap, Vedant Purkar, Sanchita Rajurkar, Piyush Satish Sanap, Gayatri Nilesh Duse, and Harshita Gandhi. Their project with the same name was an educational app engaging primary and middle school students in environmental science through a gamified learning environment.
Dark Mode from the village, Harohalli, was a team formed by Manoja D, Rahul S, Aditya Srinivasan, Arya Prashanth, Aryan Choudhary, and Vilas CP. Their project, “Habitable Exo Planets (HEP)”, was an algorithm that determines if any exoplanet is habitable or not exoplanets through astrophysical models and observations.
Forty projects among more than 940 nominees from around the world made it to the finals. With two Indian teams comprising young, bright minds from the country finding their places among the finalists, chances are that we might bag at least one among the top ten spots.
Honourable mentions that narrowly missed the finale
Space Odyssee from Kothamangalam created their version of an “Orrery Web App” with a user-friendly interface to see the movement of celestial bodies. It opens to a visual representation of the solar system, and users can customise their view as they see how the planets orbit around the Sun.
The app shows near-earth objects and potentially hazardous asteroids in a bid to raise awareness of the importance of space monitoring. The team comprised Azeem N, Alan Antony, Aswin Krishna, Anandhu Krishna P, Dhanay J, and Anandha Krishnan A.
Manan Kapkar, Paraj Mehta, Shrey Parsania, Dhriti Sojitra, Shah Nevil Mitesh, and Kher Rudra were the Ahmedabad-based Phyto-makers, who designed a “PACE classroom environment”—complete with interactive quizzes and maps, engaging videos, and DIY projects for learners who wanted to know more about space with data from the Plankton Aerosol Cloud Ocean Ecosystem (PACE) satellite.
The snowy mountains of Leh produced the team SR-Hub, with Girish Gaurav Sharma, Shabd Patel, Ajay Mokta, and Aarushi Saini as members. Their project was a web-based app with the same name that compared ground-based spectral data with Landsat satellite imagery. Users can select geographic areas, see corresponding Landsat Surface Reflectance (SR) data, and get timely notifications about Landsat satellite overpasses through WhatsApp or email.