Mangalyaan 2012

Muscat | Unlocking the Secrets of the Sun

Parker Greets Venus

High-Level Project Summary

The chosen challenge is "Unlocking the Secrets of the Sun". The objective of the challenge is met by creating a comic strip. The comic strip, "Parker Greets Venus", has been developed to enhance public knowledge of the spacecraft exploring the Sun- namely, NASA's Parker Solar Probe. The aim of this comic is to educate the general public of the project by engaging the readers through interactive and enticing plot, characters, images and dialogues. This comic strip shall provide valuable information regarding the aim and accomplishments of NASA's Parker Solar Probe Mission and also leaves the readers inquisitive about NASA's future Solar projects.

Link to Project "Demo"

https://1drv.ms/p/s!AtvBBgvnj4XBgrItUVJoUKoddZXsrQ?e=kgOIdv

Link to Final Project

https://1drv.ms/p/s!AtvBBgvnj4XBgrIuRwnf8FjZMzVZKQ?e=QUUhLL

Detailed Project Description

The developed project is a comic strip based on the Parker Solar Probe mission. It has been designed to kindle the curiosity and amazement of the readers. This visualization tool shall augment the general understanding of the common people about the probe, its mission and its accomplishments. This mode of educating the masses shall enable them to comprehend the significant and beneficial data provided by this mission and how such data can be used to improvise our daily essential needs. The comic strip not only instills interest in the current mission but also encourages the readers to explore future innovations. The tools used in creating this project include the online platform "Storyboard That" and Microsoft PowerPoint.

Space Agency Data

The web portals of space agencies from which ample data were collected to support this work were of NASA (National Aeronautics and Space Administration), ESA (European Space Agency) and ISRO (Indian Space Research Organisation). Significant data regarding the aim, working, current status of the Parker Solar probe and its use were obtained from various sources related to NASA. this has helped to prepare the plot of the comic strip. European Space Agency has launched the Solar Orbiter on 10th February, 2020, to join the Parker Solar Probe in its mission to study the Sun closely. Valuable data regarding this launch mission and the objective of this mission helped to create the script of the comic strip. The research on the Solar missions of ISRO was beneficial to learn the future plans in the field of heliophysics. It has been officially declared that the Indian Space Research Organisation (ISRO) is all set to send its first scientific expedition to study the Sun. The mission, Aditya-L1, expected to be launched in 2022, will observe the Sun from a close distance as the Parker Solar Probe and will optimistically obtain unknown information regarding its atmosphere and magnetic field. Hence, this was useful in providing essential information in the comic strip regarding future solar missions.

Hackathon Journey

Space Apps challenge experience was a rather new experience to our team. The team members have always had an inclination towards astronomy and space missions conducted by various space agencies, especially NASA. this was indeed a great opportunity to delve deep into the numerous space missions, especially those related to the Sun. Sun and moon has been an inspiration for our team members to lean towards astronomy. So when given the chance we chose one of the two - the Sun. As we started exploring the challenges we came across the one related to Parker Solar Probe and so decided to base our project on it. From the start we wanted to present an interesting and visual art based work to solve the challenge. Comic strip was considered the most apt medium to express our views with clarity. The major setback that we faced during our journey was the short time period allotted to submit the project. However with gift of technology we were able to gather all necessary data on time from web sources. We would like to thank our father who introduced us to Space Apps. I also thank my mother who helped us find the right tools to create the project. Lastly, I thank NASA and all the partner space agencies for providing us with this opportunity.