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Aspiring astronomers came together in October for the first ever NASA Space Apps hackathon in the GCC, pitching science, technology and awareness-building projects to a team of top scientists and engineers in a bid to develop Bahrain’s space research capabilities.
The event, hosted at the University of Bahrain’s College of Information Technology, in partnership with the National Space Science Agency (NSSA) and Bahrain National Gas company (Banagas), attracted 15 teams, who each tackled one of the 25 challenges set by the US space agency.
Engineer Kamal bin Ahmed Mohammed, Minister of Transport and Telecommunications and chairman of the National Space Science Agency, said: “During the opening of the second session of the National Assembly in its fifth edition, His Majesty King Hamad directed the development of a national plan for the digital economy, adapting to the future requirements of the labor market and creating national competencies. What distinguishes the event in addition to being focused on advanced technologies, it is a world-class event, in over 235 destinations around the world, and more than 18,000 participants.”
The challenges ranged from solving the ocean plastic crisis to exploring the moon and are part of the Space Apps incubator programme, in which renowned global scientists are trying to solve these same problems.
Since there isn’t a dedicated space education university degree programme in the kingdom yet, the teams were multidisciplinary and brought together expertise from a wide range of subjects including, physics, computer science, engineering and even business studies.
Each team was given two days to understand their chosen problem and design a solution, prototyping it if possible.
Dr Hanan Albuflasa, assistant professor in UOB’s Department of Physics, said: “Given the short amount of time and that this was the first time a competition like this was conducted, we saw some interesting solutions. The hackathon was more to solidify the knowledge base of these students than try to come up with some huge solution. We were looking for good amount of understanding of the problem, critical thinking behind the solution and ease of implementation.”
Students developed solutions ranging from a global solution for providing remote internet access on the oceans to cargo ships to improvements on astronomer suits that detect and reduce space traps.
They were coached and mentored by university professors and industry experts. Each team then presented their solution to a panel of experts including Dr Hanan, Dr Abdulmonem Alshino, assistant professor of Astronomy and Physics and Dr Mohamed Alothman, assistant professor of Astronomy and director at NSSA. Each of the judges grilled the team to comprehend their depth of understanding for their subject matter and provide them with future pointers to think about.
The winning teams were: Nereus, that developed an algorithmic solution for detecting ice traps and water on the moon, Dustbusters, a team that developed a prototype for detecting and compressing lunar dust in space suits and Interstellar, a team that created a hologramlike booth to raise awareness about space missions and build stakeholder buy-in amongst the general population.
Dr Mohamed said: “Some of these projects are in line with the projects we have undertaken at NSSA but more importantly, we want to build an ecosystem and the educational capabilities around space exploration. Based on what we have seen today, I think we are progressing well towards the goal of launching a Bahraini space programme by 2023.”
The top two winners, Nereus and Dustbusters, will be showcased on the global stage and if selected, will fly out to Florida, US to visit NASA and interact with other members of the global space science ecosystem.
The International Space Apps Challenge attracted 29,000 space scientists from 80 countries, with Bahrain being the first country in the Middle East to hold the competition.
Shaikha Latifah Al Khalifa, one of the founders of Clever Play, a not-for-profit that aims to build awareness and involvement in Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) and helped organise the competition, said: “We were blown away by how many people enrolled for the competition. Next time, we might do an advance event to give the team members a chance to know each other, but despite the short amount of notice we had and the limited time each team got to develop solutions, we are delighted by the amount of passion and frankly, the number of space lovers we have in the kingdom. We look forward to doing the event again next year!”
