Outreach - Development Presentation and QuanTime Science
Today, we held our first presentation. We also raised awareness about Quantum activities.
NASA APP DEVELOPMENT CHALLENGE 2024
We're the DVExplorers.
Competing in the NASA App Development Challenge 2024 while exploring technology and science through learning, community engagement, and teamwork.
Stay up to date with our progress.
View all posts »Catch up with our developments with the app design and development progress, as well as our community outreach events. All updates will be posted here and on our Instagram.
Path Finding and Communication
Using algorithms for pathfinding and optimzing efficiency before displaying communication links on visualized paths.
Creating the App - Terrain Generation
Visualing a lunar terrain using Ursina to create the basic outline of our app to later create a User Interface.
Researching and Choosing a Landing Site
Finalizing a landing region based on the five provided landing sites considering all potential factors including slope and resources.
Development Overview
Modeling and Visualization
The project involved using Python to visualize lunar terrain data by creating a heightmap, integrating Perlin noise for realism, and developing an interactive app with navigation controls and toggles for different visualization modes and information displays to aid exploration of the simulated surface.
Landing & Destination Sites
After analyzing data on slope, access to water ice, sunlight, iron abundance, and earth visibility, the Faustini Rim A site was selected for the Artemis landing due to its proximity to permanently shadowed regions likely containing water, adequate sunlight to power the base, flat terrain, and high iron levels and earth visibility.
Path Finding
The app utilizes a bidirectional A* search algorithm to efficiently calculate and display the shortest distance paths or least hill climbing paths from the Faustini Rim A landing site to the four largest nearby permanently shadowed regions, with flexibility to adjust the maximum slope threshold and compare path options.
Technologies & Skills
The inexperienced team explored unfamiliar gaming engines Unity and Ursina, deciding on Ursina for its coding simplicity, also leveraging Python for data analysis and pathfinding algorithms, overcoming initial gaps by dividing across computation, visualization, and optimization focus areas.
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