Background

Our project consists on a game inspired in the first video game of history called “SpaceWars!” where you can perceive the amount of space junk you have in orbit, the game seeks to eliminate this space junk before you ran out of energy. To achieve it, you will need to move in space while keeping an eye on Earth's force attraction and the amount of energy to move, which regenerates approaching to sun to get energy and continue with the mission.

We decided to build this project to raise public awareness about the large amount of space debris in the Earth's orbit and the risk provoked by this problem, such as the following listings:

• There is a large volume of space junk orbiting Earth that could affect satellite communication systems and space structures like the International Space Station.

• After different missions that succeeded or failed, all of them produced some level of spatial debris that will be orbiting the Earth.

• Orbital debris travels at a speed of 18,000 miles per second, turning into a projectile capable of making a perforation or destroying other satellites.

• The collisions between satellites or space debris could duplicate them which would result in more collisions.

• In the last years, this debris has occupied a lot of the terrestrial orbit. Currently there is calculated approximately more than 100,000 pieces of spatial waste between sizes of 1 to 10 cm orbiting the Earth.

• The increase of space debris is reducing the area that can be used of the terrestrial orbit, with the result of a near future where people will no longer be able to send new monitoring devices.

• Satellites that can’t be redirected to the cemetery orbit or the atmosphere, remain on the orbit of the Earth.

• The Space junk with a size less than 10 cm are considered as micrometeorites, which are a big danger to the astronauts during spacewalks, likewise spaceships tend to be protected of this debris with some panels.

• When a satellite finishes its service, they tend to maintain on the same orbit that they used to, because they can’t be manipulated for someone that isn’t the owner, which increases the number of satellites out of service.

• Since more than 60 years, space programs and missions began to send satellites to orbit, then started a policy of keeping space debris to a minimum, but now there are a lot of them just orbiting with no use because their period of mission has passed.

What it does?

We design a 2D video game in first person with two different game mode where you control a spaceship or a polynomial while collecting the largest amount of space debris, taking into account several real aspects of space, such as the gravitational attraction of the earth, the functional satellites that orbit the earth, the limited energy of the ship that is recharged with solar energy and the danger of getting too close to the sun, which is intended to raise awareness in the player of the problem and the difficulties posed by the collection of space debris and thus involve more to support people to find a solution to this big problem.

At the beginning of the challenge we found ourselves quite scattered about how to start approaching the challenge, since we had very good ideas to develop, which presented a decision-making problem but after an intense debate we decided to choose the option of an inspired 2D game in the video game “SpaceWars!”. We also decided to develop the project in a module for graphics and video games creation called "Turtle" which agreed to us a lot since its development was significantly simplified even so we found some problems when trying to manipulate images within the game since they didn't respect the limits that had been defined, like its mobility in the game represented a problem since the development began based on polynomials which behave in a simpler way to the images, but all these problems were successfully overcome, also being a program of Open source and being well documented allows anyone to use it to replicate or modify the game can do it to their liking and in a simple way.

NASA Resources and Data Used

Creative commons(2019). Recovered from: https://creativecommons.org/

Dunbar B.(2017). What Is Orbital Debris?. Recovered from:

https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/features/nasa-knows/what-is-orbital-debris-58.html

Dunbar B. (2017). What Is a Satellite?. Recovered from: https://www.nasa.gov/audience/forstudents/5-8/feat...

Erickson K. (2019). Orbits 'R' Us!. Recovered from: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/geo-orbits/en/

Erickson K. (2019). What Is a Gravitational Wave?.Recovered from: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/gravitational-waves/en...

Erickson K. (2019). Where Do Old Satellites Go When They Die? Recovered from: https://spaceplace.nasa.gov/spacecraft-graveyard/e...

Greicius T. (2017). CloudSat. Recovered from: https://www.nasa.gov/mission_pages/cloudsat/main/i...

Mishchenko M. (2019). Glory Mission Science. Recovered from: https://glory.giss.nasa.gov/

Levy R.(2009). Space Debris. Recovered from: https://earthobservatory.nasa.gov/images/40173/space-debris

Trepte C.(2019). The Cloud-Aerosol Lidar and Infrared Pathfinder Satellite Observation (CALIPSO). Recovered from: https://www-calipso.larc.nasa.gov

Westmaas R. (2018). Damage That Space Junk the Size of a Pencil Eraser Can Do. Recovered from: https://curiosity.com/topics/check-out-the-damage-...

Zell H. (2011). Feature. Recovered from: https://www.nasa.gov/news/debris_faq.html

Other resources

• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/49989929/pytho...
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48082783/pytho...
• https://stackoverflow.com/questions/48082783/pytho...
• https://www.reddit.com/r/learnpython/comments/9pg3...
• https://docs.python.org/3.7/library/turtle.html#tu...
• https://www.onlinegdb.com/online_python_interprete...

Future plans

We pretend to continue working with the project until a completely finished and completely open source product is reached, both the code and the hardware so that any user can manipulate it to develop their own video game using our project as a basis so that it can continue to improve continuously with the community.

Built with

Hardware: Computer, Arduino, electronic components (potentiometers).

Software: Turtle Module, SYS, Math, Random module, PlaySound Module, Time Module, Python.

Try it out

Project Description:https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=4WNSrX_PwQ4

Instructions: https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=S3gHPy9eL-g

Game Install Instructions: https://github.com/AlvaroSMoreno/SpaceAppsChallenge_Valhalla

Tags

#Python #Videogames #Fun #STEM #Nasa #SpaceApps #Satellites #Sun #Earth #UniversalGravitationalLaw #Arduino #Scrap #SpaceScrap #Orbit #Energy #Computers #SpaceWars #Wifi #Servers

Conclusion

Valhalla is a game where you not only test your skills and abilities on video games, but also seek to raise awareness among people about the problems generated by space debris, as well as learning about factors involved in space environment such as Earth's attraction force, the orbital movement of satellites and the fuel needed to perform these operations. All this through a retro-style game inspired by the first game in history "SpaceWars", providing an all-age user experience.