We are PlanetCrafters - the best team - who came from different backgrounds with one huge interest - space exploration and innovation. Our mission is to spark an interest for young children in planetary exploration by game-based learning.

Our game is based on creating possibly-habitable exoplanets in the stellar system by modifying various features such as mass, radius, distance from the star and many more. Player can create a unique exoplanet or find a match with an already discovered one. If the planet is very unlikely to support life as we know it, the player learns a lot about the crucial conditions to success in the future.

NASA database (https://exoplanetarchive.ipac.caltech.edu/cgi-bin/TblView/nph-tblView?app=ExoTbls&config=planets) of discovered exoplanets is very useful in our project as it might help to find a match for newly created exoplanet and display many of its parameters.

We tried to implement our back-end functions using Google Cloud hence using Space Apps offer for this cloud provider however after encountering some technical difficulties, we have migrated to using AWS.

Our back-end is using serverless AWS Lambda functions to read data from NASA Exoplanet Archive which later on get called by Javascript code. All game front-end is coded using Javascript.

We are planning many technical improvements in the future: dragging and dropping of elements for better user experience, extending general game functionalities and logic and creating a leader-board to allow competition with your classmates are the main enhancements to do.

We create first PlaneCrafter game beta version with few basic features which allow player feel game-based learning process. All game codes are available for the public use there: https://github.com/jankunas/planetcrafters?fbclid=IwAR0Sw-ok1GysSAYS8eJHci7xgxDp4sNAI5iRa9k--l1LxwVSudZpixac5OM Download and try it!!!

Tags: #Game, #Learning, #NASA data, #Critical thinking, #Exoplanets, #Kids, #Creativity, #AWS, #Javascript, #Exploration.