Space Apps Challenge 2018

Have you ever looked up above the skies and wondered “What does it look like in space?” We put on our imagination hat and visualize earth floating on a sea of stars on a black fabric.

And minutes later, our thoughts bring us back to reality with our daily life questions on what movie to watch tonight or on the results on our favorite football matches. The imagination of space fades away with reality.

We are team LookUpAbove.

And, we have selected the challenge on the theme: Artify The Earth.

The global interest in astronomy subjects declined gradually over the years (based on Google Trends searches) in comparison to healthcare, engineering, politics and religion. We believe that the possible reasons for lack of interest in astronomy could be that the space is viewed as “impossible”, “very Sci-Fi” or even a “fantasy”. To break this perception of space, we feel that astronomy/space topics need to be communicated in a fun and interactive mode. We are currently in the evolution of social media and mobile apps where young adults (manly millennial generations) are networking, collaborating and sharing their thoughts online. Thus, we decided to develop space filter, SPACEZA for these social technologies.

The space filter is created by an algorithm by inputting the images from NASA database and the user’s own images (from camera or photo album) to get a fancy, cool superimposed space filtered image. The user’s can continue to share their SPACEZA images on any social technologies (e.g. Instagram). We hope to attain collaboration with Facebook to allow our filters to be readily available for public use. We strongly believe that SPACEZA will elevate interest for space!