Launch CROPP team to NASA!
- What's happening
We are very excited to announce that we won the 1° Prize at the Global Space Apps Challenge 2015 by NASA! The Space Apps Challenge is a 48-hour global hackathon organized by NASA. The main goal is producing relevant solutions to address global needs applicable to both life on Earth and life in Space. This is one of the most prestigious engineering competitions on planet earth, and it is such an honor for us to have participated and even won it!
- We need your help
Now you might be asking yourself why we've launched this campaign. Well, the reason why we're doing this is because the prize NASA gave us, is the chance to attend the September 2nd Space X launch from NASA’s Kennedy Space Center in Florida to send a resupply ship to the International Space Station!
However, we will be responsible for paying our expenses, such as travel, lodging, and food. This is such an amazing opportunity for all of us, this experience might change the path of our lives. It is a once in a life chance that we will remember forever. As you can see from the images, the US Embassy gave us 1.5k as a local prize, but they are definitely not sufficient to cover all of our expenses. Sadly, most of us are broke university students who can't afford all the travel expenses and would miss this astonishing opportunity.
-Who we are
We are a team of 9 engineering students, 4 of us study computer science and 5 of us study aerospace engineering, so you can image how important it is for us to visit such an impressive NASA research center.
-A bit of history
During the hackathon, we decided to tackle the "Crop Alert" challenge. We focused our attention on preventing the infection of croplands and the loss of valuable harvests.
The livelihoods of many people are dependent on the success of crop harvests. As an example, it has been estimated that more than two million people in Latin America have been affected by coffee rust disease since the 2012 epidemic, causing an estimated $1 billion in economic damage and the potential loss of up to 500,000 jobs.
We couldn't ignore such a big problem, and that's why we've chosen to solve it.
We've developed CROPP, a sensor network station able to gather data from the fields, that, merged with optical and radar satellite imaging is able to provide real-time crop risk assessment.
Here's a short video that explains how it all works!
If you want to know more about the project, please check out our website .
Links:
- CROPP website
- NASA Announces Winners of 2015 International Space Apps Challenge
- Project page
- Space Apps Challenge Global Winners
You can also find us on Facebook and Twitter.
Our main goal with this campaign is to cover the project development and the travel expenses. Please support us to make this project available both in developed and in developing countries!
It would be really awesome if you could donate something to make this dream happen, even the smallest amount helps! Sharing on socials helps a lot too!
Thank you!