International SpaceApps Challenge

This weekend I joined the International SpaceApps Challenge, a hackathon initiated by NASA.

Official Website: https://2014.spaceappschallenge.org/
Collaborative wiki: https://spaceapps.hackpad.com/
SF Website: http://spaceappssf.weebly.com/

Welcome message from the International Space Station:


SpaceApps Welcome Video from ISS from Open Innovation Program at NASA on Vimeo.

This year, there are 5 themes for the challenge:
Technology in Space, Human Space Flight, Asteroids, Earth Watch and Robotics

In 2012, I joined and worked as volunteer staff to make the SpaceApps Challenge happen in Tokyo.
In 2013, I was traveling Switzerland so joined one in Lausanne.

This year, I joined one in San Francisco :) There was a team trying to track the orbit of satellites, a team working on Pebble app, etc.

This team is creating a rocket to fly to the moon.



Since I needed to leave early to prepare for our house warming party, I decided to work alone on looking at Earth Watch challenge- to visualize how the earth has changed, taking the data from NASA's satellite imageries.

Message from NASA:

"A Picture is worth a thousand words" is the name of the challenge.

Import satellite imagery from NASA’s Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS) to show how Earth has changed in the last two years. Load the data into a mapping platform of your choice and add additional data or imagery, and keep your eyes peeled for insights, mashups, and any improvements that would help others create mashups. Combining information like this can put data into context to tell a compelling story or unearth an interesting insight.

Ultimately- what I wanted to do is already done with Google Earth Engine's time lapse feature - it walks you through satellite imagery of the globe from 1984 to 2012, you can fast forward, slow down, drill down to specific areas or watch the whole world.

Examples:

Drying of Aral Sea
Growth of Las Vegas
Amazon Deforestation
Dubai Coastal Expansion

I made this time lapse of town of Otsuchi, which was hit by the 2011 tsunami in Japan. The whole town has disappeared due to the tsunami.


By the way, making Earth Time Lapse is super easy- you just follow the instructions here, no coding is necessary.

Resources:
Global Imagery Browse Services (GIBS)
GIBS Available Imagery Products
GIBS API for Developers


Disclaimer: The opinions expressed here are my own, and do not reflect those of my employer. -Fumi Yamazaki