Space Apps Challenge 2018

Space used to be this amazing thing that everyone was excited about. But now, there are so many things happening in the world that it has fallen off from peoples minds.

Some of the biggest reasons why space is not popular anymore are:

• Information is hard to consume
• Space isn't familiar
• Light pollution (Most people live in cities)

We have a solution to bring space back to the spotlight and to form communities around it.

App description

Based on a person location the app shows the best and nearest places where to look at the stars.

• The green areas on the map represent the darkest, best suitable areas for stargazing.
• The red and yellow areas are with more light pollution, making it more difficult.
• The markers pinpoint to the best spots for stargazing, you can see user ratings and comments about the spots once you click on them.
• We are also displaying another layer of data to show cloud coverage in real time and in the next hours.
• A Nightly weather forecast is also included on top of the screen, showing temperature, cloudiness and moon phases.

Additionally, the person using the app can connect with other people, chat, see astronomy-related events and news and also use the shop.

App prototype

https://marvelapp.com/51998ji/screen/49298807

Business side

Location:

1. Tartu, Estonia (building and testing)
2. Medium sized European cities
3. The world

Marketing:

• Educational institution
• Social media (Instagram, Snapchat, Facebook, Tinder, etc.)

Target group:

• Young people (16 - 40)
• Students
• Couples
• Families

Price:

• Free for users
• Revenue from 3rd parties

How it is built

We use six different data sources. All of which are open source.

To make the user experience better, faster and to save on data usage, we pre-process some of the data in our servers before sending it to the phones.

The app must also work in offline mode since it will be used in less populated areas. For that, we will cache relevant data for the user in their phone. Even the social side of the app can be used offline, location ratings and comments will be uploaded once the user goes online.

From the link, you can see the data structure, how everything is connected.
https://imgur.com/a/jVBKekV

And from another image, you can see an example of how we created the connections for the prototype.
https://imgur.com/a/vsjNL9X

Data resources

• weather data - https://api4.windy.com/
• base-map - https://openmaptiles.org/styles/#klokantech-terrai...
• geolocation - http://geo2tag.org/?lang=en_US&page_id=879
• light pollution - http://dataservices.gfz-potsdam.de/contact/showsho...
• stellar data - https://github.com/Stellarium/stellarium/blob/mast...
• sun/moon calculations - https://github.com/mourner/suncalc/blob/master/tes...
• storage/server - https://etais.ee/

To sum everything up.

Our main idea is to bring space back to the spotlight and expand the community.