193 locations, 72 countries, 26 challenges and unbelievable amount of data, code and APIs straight from NASA. International Space Apps Challenge is about to start this week!

Space Apps Challenge takes place on 22nd – 24th of April, simultaneously in all locations. It is the fifth edition of one of the biggest hackathons in the World! You don’t even have to be at the venue, all you need is a good wifi connection and your laptop. This year, NASA prepared 26 challenges in six mission-related categories: Aeronautics, Earth, International Space Station, Journey to Mars, Solar System and Beyond, and Space Technology.

Space Apps  is a NASA incubator innovation program and part of open.NASA – an Open Innovation program. This way NASA encourages to use their data, code and APIs in solving everyday problems. In case of Space Apps Challenge the problems will be a bit complex. But hey! Don’t we love real challenges? Here is an example:

“Develop an app or platform to crowd-source information for comparing changes in environmental factors, such as temperature, relative humidity, air pollution, with occurrence of symptoms of allergies and respiratory diseases. Create tools for public entry and grading of symptoms, including but not limited to cough, shortness of breath, wheezing, sneezing, nasal obstruction, itchy eyes; and geographic mapping of symptom frequency and intensity. Create a platform for comparison of symptom map with NASA provided data, with visualization options for web and/or smart phone.” – Category: Earth, Challenge: Aircheck

[easy-tweet tweet=”This is one of the most interesting hackathons in the world – @spaceapps” user=”150sec” hashtags=”spaceapps2016,opennasa” url=”http://goo.gl/oFY2pl”]
What’s so awesome about this hackathon? First of all it allows to use real data from probably the best known and respected governmental agency in the World, which is NASA of course. Additionally it brings the challenges which are about to solve real, everyday problems with data, code and APIs generated in the process of space exploration. How cool is that? 😉

Registrations are still open for participants. You may check location of an event nearby on the official website: 2016.spaceappschallenge.org. However, UX of this map is not the best ever, so we asked organisers to prepare for 150sec.com readers a list of events in our region. And here you go:
Austria: Vienna
Slovenia: Ljubljana
Croatia: Zagreb
Serbia: Belgrade
Macedonia: Skopje, Bitola, Tetovo, Ohrid
Kosovo: Pristina, Vushtrri
Albania: Tirana
Greece: Larisa, Athens
Bulgaria: Plovdiv, Burgas, Sofia
Romania: Cluj-Napoca
Poland: Warsaw
Belarus: Minsk
Ukraine: Kiev, Kirovograd

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