High-Level Project Summary
NASA has spent many years in researching and collecting data and images of the outer space. This information is not only useful for understanding & studying important aspects of outer space, but it has also proven equally important to enable safe human expeditions into space. Moved by this research and treasure of images, we took up the challenge to design a 3D game that will inspire future scientists. Through this immersive virtual reality game, we aim to inspire young space enthusiasts – how to land a human on the surface of moon – by providing them experience of landing sequence of a lunar lander & exploring the rocky and perilous lunar terrain.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
How We Addressed This Challenge
Project Summary:
Very often, astronauts struggle to land safely so this online game helps raise awareness and makes the landing sequence easier to understand. This way future generation will be prepared for the challenges required for a safer landing on moon or mars.
Importance of Project:
NASA has current plans of returning their astronauts on moon, however this plan might consists of many obstacles keeping in mind the complexity of the project. While designing this virtual game, we studied different aspects of the upcoming project NASA is working on for safer landing of their astronauts on moon. The challenges they might face are kept in mind while designing this game along with the studies done in this regard.
NASA’s moon landing Project
The planned 2024 mission, known as Artemis III, will be the first human lunar landing in over 50 years and is the start of larger plans for NASA. Later Artemis missions will establish a longer-term lunar presence. That could include establishing a lunar base camp for stays of 1 to 2 months on the moon’s surface, and developing rovers to help astronauts conduct lunar research.
But recently, U.S. Government Accountability Office found that a moon landing in 2024 would be difficult to achieve.
Image ref (https://www.gao.gov/blog/moon-what-challenges-does-nasas-2024-lunar-mission-face)
The importance of this virtual game becomes vital with the upcoming project of NASA return on moon, hence we wanted to play our part to educate school kids and other people understand the challenges faced by the astronauts, in which safe and smooth landing on the lunar surface has the pivotal role.
Methodology of the Project
The purpose of the game is to make a safe landing on the designated areas. If you hit the terrain you will restart, if you land safely your score will increment and you will progress. Your fuel is also depleting as you maneuver and avoid the lunar ground. On the top left corner you can see some statistics; your fuel, your altitude and score.
The other part of the game is exploring the moon. Here you can explore a part of the lunar surface, specifically the petavius crater. You can also collect samples of the ground to send back to earth.
Future Prospects of the game
In the future we hope to transfer our game to a mobile app that is available on Android and iPhone. It will be on various gaming consoles like Xbox, Nintendo, and PlayStation. We hope it will be very useful game to learn how to land safely on the rocky and perilous lunar terrain.
Software Used
- Coding in C#
- Unity as a cross-platform game engine
- Godaddy Free Domain Registration
- HTML Coding for website host
- Canva for video presentation
- Adobe Premier Pro for Video
- Google Drive for collaboration
- Google Chat for communication
Space Agency Data
We have used the information provided on NASA's website to conceptualize our project. The information about human-landing on moon (Artemis III) was pivotal for our game development; using the Apollo lunar lander 3D-model we have tried to simulate human landing and moon exploration closer to reality to inspire the young space enthusiasts.
https://nasa3d.arc.nasa.gov/detail/lunarlandernofoil-c
https://www.nasa.gov/specials/artemis/
Hackathon Journey
Our journey is similar to our project, it comprised of many challenges. This journey of ours started with our school recommending us to participate in this competition. We chose this challenge because we love making innovative solutions for worldwide problems and helping the society, so we thought that this challenge would be perfect for us!
This journey was challenging for us as we are still in the learning phase. Researching about the problem and then implementing it in virtual reality as a game to show the complexity of the challenge was one of the task we have to work on as none of us have studied this kind of challenge before. We tried our best to portray the landing difficulties through this virtual game and we will continue to study to inculcate best of our knowledge in the future version of the game.
References
Tags
#MoonLanding #SpaceChallenges #NasaSpaceApps #SpaceApps #MoonLandingSimulator #PlanetaryLander #OutterSpace #apollo11
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.