Orion

Thessaloniki | Discovering Science Connections

Sciders

High-Level Project Summary

Our solution to the challenge was the creation of a group, Sciders (Sciders = Science + Spiders, due to the “web” that is created if we connect all the scientific fields), that will highlight and promote the value of interdisciplinary NASA missions through interactive means. Our “tools” to achieve that goal are mind maps and the intelligent use of social media. Mind maps are a great way to visualize and to communicate interdisciplinary connections, while social media is the best way to get in touch and connect with a large and diverse audience

Link to Project "Demo"

https://1drv.ms/u/s!As4bdJlH8Jw8gT_iMKsf0OOpjkcQ?e=9gIV7S

Link to Final Project

https://1drv.ms/u/s!As4bdJlH8Jw8gTtr5nr7OeWgCUKy?e=2KS3fS

Detailed Project Description

Our aim with the mind maps are to highlight the connection between NASA's Science Mission Directorates, using as a starting point common and seemingly non connected items such as water, the earth, the sun and so on. We also decided to include an explanation for our connections made in the mind maps that briefly illuminates our thought process during our work. We aimed to make the mind maps as diverse, and yet as understandable as possible, while at the same time asking “what if” kinds of questions and adding some advanced information here and there for the curious ones!

On the other hand social media provides us with the ability to connect and to communicate with thousands of people. There we can upload, as a first step, our interesting mind maps, and then with more time and work, comedic sketches and videos that will highlight the ability of scientists from many different backgrounds, to work, solve, make breakthroughs and ultimately have fun together!

Our grand goal is to promote a new culture that will advocate for constant connection with new sciences, skills, ways of thinking and that will challenge us to leave our comfort zone!

Space Agency Data

Most of our data is sourced back to the NASA Science Mission Directorates. We also studied video material from NASA Science Live and NASA Image and Video Library to further our understanding of the material we were going to use. While going through NASA Ocean Worlds, we tried to realize how we could illustrate the connections between the sciences through a common ground like water. We came up with the idea of mind maps, a way to show these relations through a diagram, and quickly expanded our starting "common grounds" into other concepts as well, such as the sun and the earth. The data we had gathered was used in these diagrams, while also using some information from the Canadian Space Agency, the European Space Agency and the UK Space Agency.

Hackathon Journey

We would describe our Space Apps experience as both challenging but also extremely fun! We chose this challenge due to its uniqueness, and to also inspire more people to get involved with space and STEM in general. At first, due to our lack of experience and due to the fact we had just met each other, we had some difficulty finding solutions, but we persevered, and after a lot of planning and hard work, managed to come up with creative, innovative, and unique solutions that make us extremely proud! We would like to thank our organizers and our mentors for their support, our judges for their well-thought-out questions that helped us improve our project, and finally, we would like to thank NASA and the other space agencies themselves for their amazing opportunity!