High-Level Project Summary
Our solution to the challenge “When Light Curves Throw us Curve Balls”, is to make a program that explains how the curve light of the trojan asteroids work, which is intuitive and easy to use.We consider this challenge to be important because asteroids contain relevant information that can help us understand the early days of our solar system, and we’ve never been able to look closely at these bodies until now that the Lucy spacecraft is going to explore the Jupiter Trojan asteroids. With the implementation of our interactive program we aim to create a user-friendly interface that allows users to explore how the shape of an asteroid affects the appearance of its light curve.
Link to Project "Demo"
Link to Final Project
Detailed Project Description
Our project consists of a program in which people can modelate 3D bodies and analyze their behavior by studying the area that is reflecting light.
First and more importantly we got to have a 3D model of an object, in this case, we decided to utilize a 3D model of a cone to represent de asteroid. The 3D model is then slashed by particular planes in different axis in order to model the solid volume by the intersection with planes. The planes serve to simulate what the observer would see from different perspectives, i.e. if the object rotates the planes will rotate as well.
Once the program has the figure or “shadow” in 2D of the 3D model it is time for the program to analyze the area of the figure (In this case, we made use of the function “polyarea” to approximate the area of the figure). Thanks to these steps we now have the possibility to determine the approximate area that is reflecting the Sun’s light to us.
With the implementation of our interactive program we aim to create a user-friendly interface that allows users to explore how the shape of an asteroid affects the appearance of its light curve. This, in addition to benefiting the scientific community to estimate the appearance and characteristics of these bodies, aims to awaken interest in science for new generations.
We are focusing on developing the project entirely in a MATLAB environment. We decided to use this programming language because MATLAB not only offers a myriad of functions and tools to analyze data but it is also the perfect programming platform to develop projects related to engineering and science.
Finally, we consider that its implementation has a great potential to be used in educational centers. Using this type of program as a friendly method of education awakens the attention of the new generations and provides them with an early approach to science. We would like to sell this project as an opportunity to bring science closer to young people. It will allow them to have visual support and will facilitate the understanding of the phenomenon.
Space Agency Data
It is important to mention that at this stage we are not currently making a huje usage of the variety of data from the space agencies, however the modeling of the 3D objects and its subsequent analysis must be related to the asteroid 3D models made by NASA. The open data portal from NASA is planned to be the place where the hard data is going to support the general function of the program as well as providing the correct information needed to analyse real asteroids within the Solar System.
Hackathon Journey
What inspired us to choose this challenge was that it required research and applied science skills. It should be said that we are all Engineering Physics students and share many interests related to the scientific field. For example, we share a special interest in astronomy and astrophysics, as well as mathematics. Basically, we love working in the field of applied sciences and our curiosity was caught by this challenge in general.
Being part of this was certainly a very peculiar experience given that most of us had never participated in a hackathon with a duration of two days. Without a doubt, having so little time and the specifics of the tasks made these two days a great challenge. Overall, this experience brought out the best in us and helped us to improve, since in addition to having the opportunity to learn about NASA databases, topics and challenges we were also able to learn about the NASA hackathon and all that it encompasses.
It was definitely two days full of new experiences, and we also had to face a variety of challenges. The first challenge we faced was to know how to approach the problem, to solve it, we consulted the information available on the site and researched on our own. Once our ideas and objectives were clear, we just had to work hard to achieve them.
Finally, we would like to thank the organizers of this event and the mentors of NASA SpaceApps Guadalajara for making this possible and giving us the opportunity to live this experience.
References
NASA Deep Space Network. (2021, September 8). ¿Cómo se descubrieron y nombraron los asteroides troyanos?. Retrieved from: https://www.mdscc.nasa.gov/index.php/2021/02/23/como-se-descubrieron-y-nombraron-los-asteroides-troyanos/
NASA Goddard Space Flight Center. (2021, October 3). Light Curves and What They Tell Us. Retrieved from: https://imagine.gsfc.nasa.gov/features/yba/M31_velocity/lightcurve/lightcurve_more.html
NASA Jet Propulsion Laboratory. (2021, September 8). Why study Asteroids?. Retrieved from: https://ssd.jpl.nasa.gov/sb/why_asteroids.html
Katherine Kutke [NASA Space Apps Challenge]. (2021, September 8). When Light Curves Throw Us Curve Balls | NASA Space Apps Challenge [Video]. YouTube. https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=xcTTn9g_0SY&list=PL37Yhb2zout05pUjr7OoRFpTNroq_wd9f&index=4
Tags
#software, #lightcurves, #asteroids, #matlab
Global Judging
This project has been submitted for consideration during the Judging process.