NASA Digital Probe - Experiencing History and Impact of Asteroids
Nasa’s digital probe
Probe means to physically explore or examine with the hands or an instrument. Here the goal of the NASA digital probe is to explore asteroids and give the users an depth experience of it.
How our project addresses the challenge?
Our design sprint
Why is it important?
NASA’s activities in space have brought new knowledge of the Earth, inspiring new ways of thinking about humanity and the planet. However, many people aren’t aware of Nasa observing the asteroids in space to guard our planet earth from any distructive Impact.
Asteroids are hidden figures lurking in near earth’s orbit, who can be creators of new life, or weapons of destruction. Hence it is necessary to convey people about the origin, evolution, impact that asteroids have created on Earth. Also to showcase how various missions are being planned to study these asteroids as well as for planning future measures to prevent the destruction caused by asteroid impacts.
What do we hope to achieve?
To provoke interest in people about asteroids.
To enclose information about asteroids digitally, without going to any museum.
To inform people about the impacts that asteroids can create on earth.
To Inform people about the planned asteroid missions.
For the NASA space apps challenge we had a weeks time to go through the whole process and create a prototype for our idea. We followed a design process to go about the project this is what it looked like this:
We developed a solution that encourages people to interact and explore asteroids past history and impact along with future space mission.
As we wanted to spread awarness about asteroids’ contribution in space, we designed an interactive web portal that visually depicts asteroids in space and/or its impacts on earth along with future missions that space agencies like NASA have planned. It explains details of the asteroids like the name, type of asteroid, distance from sun, moons it contains, location of impact, etc
While doing so we also connect people with smiliar interest in form of a community, here people have the freedom of either joining an existing forum or creating a new one. This platform provide endless communication methods.
Let’s look at it in detail...
Our solution
Home Page
360°
On the Home page we have a 360 degree movable screen through which users can locate an asteroid and when they hover on it shows infromation about it. Double click on the asteroid and it opens in a page that gives brief information about that asteroid.
The Asteroid
The Impact
After choosing an asteroid, the landing page is redirected to a detailed informative layout.
On left, there are some facts:
Name of the asteroid, it’s type, positioning in the solar system, the lenght of it’s year, number of moons it has and it’s distance from the sun along with a small descriptive paragraph is shown.
On the right
The asteroid has a 3D render in a 360° view, to show the users how the asteroid looks up close.
After choosing an asteroid of the past that has already hit the Earth and gone, the landing page is redirected to a detailed informative layout.
On left, there are some facts
Name of the asteroid impact, it’s type, location of the impact created on Google Maps , the diameter of the asteroid as well as the impact , the depth of the crater along with a small descriptive paragraph is shown.
On the right
The impact on Earth has a 3D render in a 360° view, to show the users how the impact looks up close.
Developed solution
Asteroids Timeline
A timeline of how asteroids are creating impacting since 2.5 billion years, this page shows the asteroid image, their impact date along with some information and gives them an option to know more about any particular asteroid impact event. The page gives an overall view of asteroid Impact history over years.
Missions page
The missions page consists of all past, present future asteroid missions.
In the missions page the users can search for a specific mission of their choice too to gain more information about it. The missions can be filtered by their launch date and their type as in spacecraft, rovers/landers, instruments and more.
Mission information page
“Deep Space 1” is one of the mission the page shows you relevant information about the mission.
The page contains detailed description about the mission. A know more option is also available which would redirect the users to the mission page of NASA to get more information regarding the specifications of the spacecraft such as the kind of machinery used and what new parts were developed during the mission.
The page also shows the mission badge and acronnym used for the mission, type of mission, status, launch and end date, launch location and target.
Community
Coterie is an initaitive by NASA’s DIGITAL PROBE which aims at building
a community for people who are space enthusiasts around the world.
We provide a platform for all the space enthusiaists to come and collaborate
with other people of similair interests.
It allows to the users to directly communicate with the admin and conduct
sessions for all the users of the community. A user can can be a part of
lot of communities.
Joining/creating a community is absolutely free for the users as we only aim
in connecting and helping people collaborate on their topics of interetsts.
Create a community
Create a community allows the user to create a community with people
interested in a specific topic and wanting to collaborate and discuss about
it.
Create a community gives freedom to build a community of people not only
around the user’s location but also let’s the user collaborate with people
around the world.
Join a community
Joining a community allows the users to join communitiies which are formed on a specifici topics.
The user can join a community and start collaborating with other
users. A small brief would be provided by the team leader as soon as
the user join the groups to keep the user active in the discussion.
Local Community
Local commuity allows the users to communicate and collaborate with
people in and around youur location. Since you provide your location while
you sign up for the community, you will be redirected to your local
community automatically.
It encourages the users in the community to collaborate by creating meetingsand meet-ups.
Considering the current situation due to the COVID -19 pandemic
we enable the users in conducting a virtual meeting to collaborate.
Application
To make the history and impact of asteroids more interactive and accessible to the users, a QR code will be added to books and diaries that will give an interactive function of connecting the dots to get asteroid outline which opens the information page of that particular asteroid. This provides an easy way for all kinds of users to know about the asteroids.
Scan the QR Code
Directed to the Landing Page
User needs to connect the dots on the screen to know more about the asteroid.
Shows the asteroid in the outline joined by the user.
Shows detailed asteroid information to the User.
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Isha
Deosthali
Purnima
Sharma
Namrata
Dharmadhikari
Srushti
Adake
We are User Experience Design students,
Thanks for Viewing!
Meet our team: Historgraphers