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over 8 years ago

Why the Asteroid Hackathon (and other news!)

We've been getting the question lately of why we're hosting this event. Well, asteroids are a real threat, and a real opportunity. For those who haven't see it, check out an interivew with two of our main sponsors (and judges!) in our blog post from August. 

Also, wanted to share the same updates we sent out via eventbrite the other day. I know this may seem like A LOT of information, but in the absence of FAQs (since people rarely read those anyway), we've opted for frequent updates with digestible tidbits of info each day :)

Here are a few of those tidbits.

1) Ideas. Still exploring inspiration? Check out the results of the Asteroid Design Jam we did in August as a practice run-up for this Asteroid Hackathon. It was ideas only (with data only as inspiration). Hitch a ride on an asteroid!

2) Guidance. If you've had a chance to look, you'll know that the asteroid dataset is not classic BIG DATA. Our challenge is more of doing something interesting and informative with the data that we do have (or don't have! which is also part of our asteroid challenge). That's partly why this is a DESIGN & development hackathon.

3) More Data! The SETI Institute has provided some supplemental data to play with. (We really like these guys!) The Minor Planet Center data is still the primary dataset, but more the merrier.

  • DAMIT 3D models. DAMIT is a database of hundreds of asteroid models, and also some other information about the asteroids. When browsing for asteroids, you're going to want to download the OBJ files, since those are readily importable. The PNG links provide a visual overview. A description of the other sorts of information to be found at the site.http://astro.troja.mff.cuni.cz/projects/asteroids3D/web.php?page=db\_browse.
  • RADAR 3D models are a small collection of asteroid models, generated by a different technique. The actual model files are in OBJ format and can be found by going through "Browse" and then "data" links on the site. http://sbn.psi.edu/pds/resource/rshape.html