Team members:

Oisin Cassidy Dawson, Ben Sloan, Omar Salem, Mark Spiers

Our planet exists in a thin corridor of our solar system where it can sustain life. Earth's existence in this corridor is thanks to countless astronomical variables coming together to make human life a possibility. Our game explores how any changes in any number of solar and planetary values can alter the characteristics of a planet. It allows user to explore the fragility and uniqueness of our planet, and to generate and discover an infinite amount of new planets with new possibilities, while comparing results to existing planets in our solar system, and beyond.

When users are finished getting to grips with the orbital and thermodynamic physics of the game, they can test their new-found knowledge ans skills by taking on one of the games "missions", where they are tasked with finding and creating new solar systems for a plethora of requirements.

All members of the team have an innate passion for and interest in space. We decided to tackle this challenge to increase our understanding of our solar system, and to pass this knowledge on to all of our game's users in an exciting, fun and interacting way.

The team used the 'Unity' game development engine to create the game. User inputs and outputs for physical quantities, as well as the bespoke 'Missions' game-mode were based on Newtonian and Kepplerian orbital mechanics models, and Planetary temperature equations based on Steffan-Boltzmann Laws.

The Planet X team used data from NASA's exoplanet data archive and the Solar System Exploration site to implement real-universe examples of planets into our game, giving users a tangible reference to use while exploring inside the game's universe. We also used these resources to create data sets of the chemical compositions of planet atmospheres and surfaces.

NASA ExoPlanet Archive: https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/TblView/nph-tblView?app=ExoTbls&config=planets&constraint=pl_facility%20like%20%27Transiting%20Exoplanet%20Survey%20Satellite%20(TESS)%27

NASA Solar System Exploration https://solarsystem.nasa.gov/planets/overview/

The largest challenge the team overcame was figuring out how to implement the mechanical equations and functions into the game's script, to enable the user to realistically manipulate their solar system environment. This challenge was solved by categorizing all relevant variables into user inputs and user outputs, which were then linked together by a number of individual equations.

With future development, we plan on adding more functionality to our game: such as the option to explore the surface of planets; adding more 'missions'; adding more variables for user to toggle; and fact boxes to provide users with more educational information.

We are confident in our solution to this proposed challenge, and look forward to developing it further in the future!