Technolion

https://youtu.be/JjQwvuwMsCM

https://technolion2021.github.io/index.html

Our project emphasizes the pressure and spread awareness of hazards that astronaut’s face during their time in space. Our project is divided into four parts, which are launching(To infinity...and beyond!), space maze(trap in the void), Urgent controller(The Twisted Fate), and trivia(Space feud) at the end. In order to move through the storyline, you must press the word which is located below the progress bar to continue the quest. You can also skip some missions if you want, but we encourage you to try and complete the journey.

The first section, launching, requires middle school students to calculate the precise angle for a rocket to land on either Mars or the Earth, with the basic concept of the Hohmann Transfer Orbit Concept and Kepler’s third law. Also, by doing this activity, it allows students to understand why space fuel’s are scarce and why NASA needs four or five years to send a rocket to Mars. It's connected with the hazards of Distance and limited resources. For distance, once you leave Earth, no one can help you except you and your crewmates. For limited resources, we all know that space fuels are scarce, so we use the concept of launch window to find the most efficient way to arrive Mars.

The second part, which is space maze, talks about radiation and food supplies. Lots of people may not know, but astronauts are exposed to a great amount of radiation, causing harm to their internal organs if they don’t prevent it properly. For food supplies, we can talk about the research that is currently undergoing in NASA, which is about space plantation. With technology to space plantations, it’ll lead to astronaut’s being self-sufficient in food supplies, and that way they won’t need to worry about it anymore. It's mainly connected with the hazards of Gravity field, confined environment, and radiation. For gravity field, people can’t tell direction when they are in space because there’s no gravity, and in order to represent that, we make our maze spin randomly to create this effect. For confined environment, we use maze to represent a confined space. For radiation, during the game, players will need to go to an area to prevent radiation in space.

The third part, which is the urgent controller, we talk about types of problems that might happen in the space shuttle, such as oxygen depleting, Increasing concentration in CO2…, etc. People don’t know about these hazards when they are on Earth because we have a fully developed ecosystem, but when you’re in space, that’s a whole nother story. This game is related to the hazards of Gravity field and distance. For Gravity field, people can’t tell direction when they are in space because there’s no gravity. Astronauts will fly in from different directions and the player will need to press the corresponding buttons. For distance, throughout the game, you’ll face different types of system failures within the space shuttle, and it’s up to you to save yourself and your crew, no one on Earth will be able to help you.

The fourth part, which is space trivia, we created it as a friendly competition between you and your friends, you can also play it by yourself if you want. After playing our game, we believe that middle school students will be aware about these hazards and will be able to answer questions in our space trivia, which tests them about their understanding toward this game. Throughout our games, life is precious. Players have one life only because you can only live once in reality. Any tiny mistake might affect your life. That’s the type of pressure astronauts are facing, and we want to spread that idea out to let people know that being an astronaut is, in fact, more difficult than people thought.

Through our project, we hope that more people will be willing to learn more about the unknown space and will be aware of the risks that astronauts are taking when they are discovering new planets and stars for humanity. We used Scratch for these games and HTML/CSS for our webpage. We chose HTML/CSS because that’s what we normally use to code a web page and we chose Scratch because this topic mainly focuses on middle schoolers. Scratch is a programming language that is built specifically for people that are aged around 8~16 and middle schoolers fit within that age range. We hope that by using this simple programming language, kids that are interested in programming will be able to access and understand our code. Our project is a seed for future generations of computer programmers

Pictures of "To Infinity and beyond(Launch window)":

Pictures of "Trap in the void(Space maze)":

Pictures of "The Twisted Fate(Urgent controller)":

Pictures of "Space Feud(Trivia)":

Open source code link: https://github.com/andrewwang101/Technolion

Download Scratch: https://scratch.mit.edu/download

*If you want to check our open source code, click the link above to download scratch, download the game that you want to check from our open source code link, import it from your computer into scratch by choosing the load from computer button in the files section.*

We mainly used NASA’s pictures and the knowledge that it provides for our project. For part one of our journey, it’s about rocket launching, which we used NASA’s picture about Space X for this game. Space X has been planning on sending people into Mars, which is why we chose Space X specifically to represent this memorable moment.

Throughout our rocket launching game, we also used knowledge from NASA’s websites to connect the mathematical part into the rocket orbit setting. One concept that we used mainly for this is the Hohmann transfer orbit, and there’re NASA websites that specifically talk about this launch window concept. We also have a space where it shows the distance and how much time it takes you to successfully arrive on Mars and come back, and this relates to the hazard problem of distance and isolation. Once you leave Earth, there is no one that can help you except yourself and your crew. 

For part two of our journey, it’s about space radiation, space plantation and also loss of direction within the human body. For this game, we used images gathered on the space shuttle and also from the laboratory in NASA to demonstrate these crises that we faced within space. There’s a picture where astronauts are gathering all the objects that they have and build it up as a tower to block themselves from radiation, which is what inspired us to create this game because space radiation is one of the five major crises that you will face in space. On the other hand, NASA is currently collecting data and experimenting about space plantations, so we have pictures from resources that were provided by NASA. We also use maze to represent a confined space, which is another hazard that humans will face in space. 

For the third part of our journey, it’s about the ECLSS system. ECLSS system is a life support system in space shuttle or ISS to provide statistics about the space shuttle or the station as a whole. There will be five problems that the players face: Lack of oxygen, water purification process stuck, carbon dioxide concentration too high, room temperature getting lower and lower, and also the loss of direction in space as well. Four of the five problems can be represented through the ECLSS system, and we used the ECLSS system’s image, which is directly provided by NASA as a main concept that this game was built around. Loss of direction connects with the hazard of gravity fields because once you’re in space, your brain won’t be able to tell which direction you’re in because there’s no gravity in space and your brain uses gravity to detect direction.

For the last part of our journey, it’s space trivia, which contains questions that are related to this journey and also questions about Mars in general. Some knowledge can’t be represented through games because it's going to cut out some important information, which is why we decided to represent these knowledge through trivia. By creating a space trivia, people can go back to the questions and do research about them if they wanted, or they can compete with their friends on who’s the expert of space. Throughout the trivia, we used data that NASA website provides such as types of radiations, distance between mars and earth...etc.

Our Space Apps experience was fun and challenging. We learned a lot about the hazards that astronauts face when they are in space or heading towards space and also some soft skills like communication. The fact that it’s a game is what inspired our team to choose this challenge. Our team holds an annual summer volunteering coding camp to provide free programming classes to remote areas, so educational games are kind of our specialty. Our approach to developing this project is that we first list out the hazards, and then we list out the games that we are going to apply each hazard to and how to connect NASA’s open data with our game. Our team resolve setbacks and challenges by communicating with each other and discussing the topic we are arguing on. We would like to thank NASA for holding this competition. If NASA didn’t hold this competition, we might not know anything about space, but NASA changed our perspective towards astronauts and how they contributed to society.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/goddard/2019/how-nasa-protects-astronauts-from-space-radiation-at-moon-mars-solar-cosmic-rays

https://pwg.gsfc.nasa.gov/stargaze/Smars1.htm

https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Gravity_assist

https://www.jpl.nasa.gov/edu/teach/activity/lets-go-to-mars-calculating-launch-windows/

https://www.amnh.org/explore/ology/astronomy/field-trip-mars

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/neuromapping/#:~:text=%E2%80%9COn%20Earth%2C%20your%20vestibular%20%2D,of%20the%20eyes%20and%20head.%E2%80%9D

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=TlHD5HfFJlE&list=PL37Yhb2zout05pUjr7OoRFpTNroq_wd9f&index=3

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/how-nasa-prepares-spacecraft-for-the-harsh-radiation-of-space

https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/5-hazards-of-human-spaceflight

https://mars.nasa.gov/all-about-mars/night-sky/close-approach/#:~:text=The%20minimum%20distance%20from%20Earth,miles%20(54.6%20million%20kilometers).

https://www.nasa.gov/hrp/bodyinspace

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-protects-its-superheroes-from-space-weather

https://www.nasa.gov/analogs/nsrl/why-space-radiation-matters

https://mars.nasa.gov/msl/home/

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/phoenix/news/phx20100524.html

https://www.nasa.gov/press-release/nasas-record-setting-opportunity-rover-mission-on-mars-comes-to-end/

https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/missions/spirit/in-depth/

https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/how-do-spacecraft-orient-themselves/#:~:text=Using%20the%20defined%20coordinate%20frame,relative%20to%20the%20coordinate%20frame.

https://www.nasa.gov/feature/nasa-protects-its-superheroes-from-space-weather

https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/station/research/news/neuromapping/#:~:text=%E2%80%9COn%20Earth%2C%20your%20vestibular%20%2D,of%20the%20eyes%20and%20head.%E2%80%9D

#Journey_to_unknown #TechnoLion #Educational #Hazards_in_space

This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.