How To Be A Space Hacker - CCCamp 2015 Transcript
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Mike Caprio discusses his experience as a software developer and community organizer in the field of space hacking, highlighting NASA's International Space Apps Challenge, a global hackathon focused on space exploration and solving Earth-related issues. He emphasizes the importance of diversity and collaboration, sharing examples of projects and initiatives, including partnerships with institutions like the American Museum of Natural History and the development of a space technology accelerator in NYC. Caprio invites the audience to engage with the space hacker community and explore opportunities for innovation and collaboration in space initiatives.
How To Be A Space Hacker - CCCamp 2015 Transcript
- 1. Good morning everyone, thank you all for coming out this morning to hear my talk My name is Mike Caprio and I'm a software developer, instructor, and community organizer, just like many of you out there in the audience. But since I first became involved in space hacking 3 years ago, I've been an adviser for NASA and the White House office of science and technology policy, and was selected for a brainstorming team focused on rallying the world's resources to defend the Earth from asteroids. And I'm here to tell you that you too can become a space hacker! I d like to start with a short video from earlier this year Since 2012, NASA has annually held the International Space Apps Challenge - a mass collaboration focused on space exploration that takes place over a weekend at locations all across the globe. It s the largest hackathon in the world, and it s a completely locally organized, grassroots, volunteer event; NASA puts forth the challenges and provides guidance, but all the funding, logistics, and solution making is done by unpaid volunteers. Anyone from the general public is invited to attend, and NASA requires that no admission be charged for attending. I ve had the privilege of organizing all four events in New York City with the help of local non-profits and I m proud to say we have established an 1100 member space hacker community, with around 300 members active in a Meetup.com group. NASA chose New York to be the global mainstage for Space Apps in 2014 and in 2015, and this year was our most successful event yet with nearly 400 people attending. In addition to our annual hackathon, we also hosted NASA s first Women in Data bootcamp, aimed at increasing diversity and participation in hackathons, and our inaugural space conference of renowned speakers - all of which you can find on YouTube at the Space Videos link at the bottom. This year we were invited to hold our event at Microsoft s headquarters in Times Square, where they gave us two floors of the building all weekend long for the hackathon and conference. We had people lining up as early as 5:00 a.m. to take part, and our space hackers produced close to 30 projects with one of our teams producing a global prize winning solution. So I ll just show you a few of NASA s mission briefing statistics for Space Apps. You can see this year s participation was just overwhelming, truly worldwide participation, and a great deal of it right here in Europe. Here you can see the explosion in growth over four events in a three year period. Almost 2500 projects have been created in three years, and tens of thousands of people have taken part. And we re not just talking about techies participating. Only about one third of attendees self-identified as software developers, and the rest were a broad mix of diverse, interdisciplinary people. Space Apps is in many ways a misnomer,
- 2. as it s not just about apps and it s not all about space - many challenges have to do with solving problems right here on Earth regarding issues around climate, agriculture, and clean water. Solutions to challenges can involve robotics, data visualization, hardware, design, and educational curriculums or displays. This diverse mix of people is exactly what NASA is looking for. They want to crowdsource new ideas, and they want them to come from voices outside of their mainstream. And this is why they initiated their Women In Data bootcamp, and followed it up with their Datanauts program. I m also proud to say that Space Apps NYC has been gender balanced and diverse from our very first event - and we even were able to provide on site childcare for all of our participants this year. All solutions built at the event must be submitted under an Open Source Initiative license that permits the free and open dissemination of the work. Just like everything else NASA produces, all the projects created at Space Apps must be placed into the public domain for anyone in the world to use. You can access any of NASA s resources at the four sites here and use their work for any purpose, even commercial ones. So you might be thinking to yourself, okay, a space hackathon is pretty cool, but do you really get to work with NASA? I m here to tell you that the answer is yes, you absolutely can work with NASA. Teams from all over the world over the last three years have been approached by NASA after Space Apps, and have even been offered the potential of contracting to continue their work on their projects. I ll offer the recent ISEE-3 reboot project as further proof to show that NASA is happy to work with outside parties. If you didn t hear about this last year, a small team of space hackers, led by Dennis Wingo, raced between ground stations all over the world in an attempt to salvage an abandoned NASA spacecraft from 1976 that observed the solar winds and was redirected to fly through the tail of a comet. Dennis Wingo is probably the ultimate space hacker - he specializes in resurrecting decades old technology, and he does it with small teams of so- called amateurs. His team reconstructed a radio using GNU radio software to reestablish contact with the ISEE-3, was able to execute several maneuvers with it, but ultimately discovered it had lost its fuel and the team could not bring it back to a stable orbit. But as long as his team was able to continue meeting the  gating  requirements that NASA established for their mission, NASA continued working with them. NASA wants to work with the public and to further commercial space initiatives! NASA will even launch satellites for you - and if you meet the requirements of the CubeSat Launch Initiative, they will launch it FOR FREE as an auxiliary payload on one of their regular missions. The CubeSat design is a modular system, 10 centimeters on a side, that can literally contain any kind of equipment, up to a designated weight.
- 3. A variety of types of CubeSat have been successfully launched, using equipment like Arduinos and smartphones for computing power, and all manner of sensors and systems. You may have heard of Bill Nye the science guy, and his recent Lightsail Kickstarter project, which is testing the use of solar power for propulsion of CubeSats - this slide is out of date, since his Lightsail raised something like a million and a half dollars in crowdfunding. But it s not just NASA who s looking to collaborate with the public in the exploration of space. Last year, Space Apps NYC was approached by the American Museum of Natural History to help them organize their first ever overnight hackathon -  Hack The Universe  under the Hayden Planetarium. The museum wanted to innovate and make its data available for participants to make open source visualizations and tools that would ultimately become exhibits or research aids. I have to say there is probably nothing cooler than space hacking next to an actual meteorite. This was only the second time in history that the museum allowed adults to stay overnight. And of course, if you need to hack throughout the night, there s only one beverage of choice to drink, and I made sure it was there! About 30 projects were produced in just over 24 hours using the museum s  known universe  API, which you can access for yourself at the link below. Another project that the American Museum of Natural History has been working on, in collaboration with Link show ping University in Sweden, is an open source suite of space simulation tools collectively called OpenSpace. The museum wants to grow an open source development public community around these tools, which can be used on any platform to render actual simulations of outer space, as recently occurred during the New Horizons flyby of Pluto. Who wants to make a space game on a VR headset?? This video is a demonstration of OpenSpace showing the New Horizons / Jupiter gravity boost, combining NASA telemetry with actual images of Jupiter to show how the mission performed taking images of the red spot. You can learn more about OpenSpace and take part in its development by signing up for the AMNH mailing list at the link here, or directly on Link show ping's web site below Lastly, I d like to mention that true to the mission of NASA s incubator innovation goal, I m in the process of creating a space technology accelerator program in New York City, and I m calling it Empire Space Labs. I m
- 4. currently working with a stealth hardware startup, and a company called SpaceVR. SpaceVR is launching a 3D, 360 degree virtual reality camera to the International Space Station, and is currently running a crowdfunding campaign to pay for the launch costs - the successful launch of  Overview One  into space will be a turning point in the new era of virtual exploration of space, allowing anyone with a smartphone, tablet, computer, or VR headset to experience what it s like to be an astronaut. SpaceVR will work with Nanoracks for launch services, Made In Space to 3D print the housing of the camera on station, and an ISS astronaut to assemble the camera and film content with it. And if anyone here in the camp has a VR headset, I d be happy to hook you up with some really cool unreleased footage taken by SpaceVR cameras. So I d like to invite everyone to come hang out at the SpaceVillage! You can come buy a model rocket, check out some awesome do it yourself space hacker projects, and chat with us about the future of space exploration. We ll be having a chill party on Saturday night, with free food and drinks sponsored by SpaceVR! Thanks for coming out!