Space Dumpsters - Space Apps Challenge

Space Dumpsters| Orbital Scrap Metal — The Video Game

Project Details

Awards & Nominations

Space Dumpsters has received the following awards and nominations. Way to go!

Global Nominee

The Challenge | Orbital Scrap Metal — The Video Game

Nuts, bolts, spent rocket stages, and broken pieces of satellites orbiting Earth are just a few of the many thousands of items known as orbital debris, or space junk. Your challenge is to create an orbital debris collection videogame web-app! You may build upon NASA’s Spacebirds and real data.

Space Debris Collector

Using realistic spatial data, we have transformed Earth orbit information into a fun educational game to engage young people with knowledge and propose new solutions to the problem of space debris, with a purpose to placing

Motivation

Since 1957, about 8638 satellites have been launched into space, which means an average of 3 satellites per day. This technological advance has brought a number of benefits to humanity, such as wifi and gps signals, which can assist in communication and worldwide geolocation. However, inactive satellites and spacecraft debris have generated tons of space debris, which rotate in the Earth's orbit at about 28,000 km / h and currently endanger the future of space exploration.

The problem of space debris is considered serious by scientists and experts, but the general population is not yet very knowledgeable about it. We chose this challenge because we believe that bringing awareness to young people can generate a collaborative ecosystem of ideas that will solve the problem of orbital scrap.

Solution

With the help of NASA's 3D models and spatial data, we made a prototype 3D game in which the user is inserted into Earth's orbit and aims to capture or destroy space debris using weapons such as laser, harpoon and net.

With this prototype we want to make users aware of the problem of space junk, show the current solutions being studied and engage them to be part of the problem solving.

In the full version of the game we intend to develop 3 modules:

- In Science mode users will play and learn about space travel, satellites orbiting the earth and waste.

- In campaign mode the player goes into Earth orbit with the mission of capturing space debris, learning about current scientific solutions.

- In simulator mode the user is free to build new weapons and spacecraft having available all the parts and technologies of the game and can program new solutions.

We believe that the combination of these 3 modules will raise awareness and generate new solutions to the problem of orbital scrap.

Development process

For the prototype development of the game, resources from the NASA 3D website were used. Other additional elements were designed using Blender (3d model) and Substant Painter (texturing).

The main game is being developed on Unreal Engine 4 (version 4.23)

All scripts were written in C ++ programming language and blueprints (programming language within unreal engine 4).