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Two students at the UPV’s School of Industrial Engineering, Joan Carles Sebastià and Francisco Presencia Fandos, have won the 2014 International Space Apps Challenge (NASA’s contest on applications for outer space) with their Space Helmet project, in the 'People's Choice' category.

The 2014 edition of Space Apps Challenge was held simultaneously in 100 cities around the world on 5 major subject areas -Earth Watch, Technology in Space, Human Space Flight, Robotics, and Asteroids. More than 6,000 participants proposed innovative solutions to NASA’s challenges on April 12 and April 13.

Only 20 teams reached the final in each of the 6 categories. In five of them, a winner was determined by a jury, whereas in the sixth, the prize was awarded by popular vote, which was open on Twitter until 7:00 AM on Tuesday, May 6 (i.e., midnight, May 5 to May 6, in the United States’ east coast time).

It was precisely in the latter category, 'People’s Choice', that Space Helmet, which was the only Spanish project -and one of 7 European projects- among the 20 finalists, has been declared winner. Its authors will therefore travel to Cape Canaveral in September, where they will get to know NASA facilities and witness the launch of a mission live.

A helmet for 'space tourists' connected through Arduino and including HUD technology

Space Helmet is a helmet designed for 'space tourists' that projects images onto a semi-transparent visor. Thus, the astronaut has a direct view of all kinds of information about his/her vital signs and the conditions of temperature or pressure of the suit. At the same time, the astronaut can make a video or participate in social networks.

As the authors explain, "the computer is connected through Arduino (which is an open-source hardware system created from a board with a microcontroller and a development environment that facilitates the use of electronics in multidisciplinary projects) to sensors in the spacesuit, including 3D cameras, so as to interact with the environment using our software".

"Besides", they go on, "we use HUD (i.e., head-up display) technology by reflecting a smartphone screen on the visor, and thanks to this we can communicate." Head-up display is a computer term used mainly in the world of video games, and referring to information which, by means of icons and numbers, is shown continuously on the user's screen throughout the game.

Tweets on the project have reached over 40 million people

After winning the contest with nearly 8,000 votes, Sebastià and Presencia, as the former admits, have been forced to make "every effort to meet the demands of users, since, this being a global contest, we had to be online 24 hours a day".

Not surprisingly, the magnitude of the project’s impact has been huge. Thus, as noted Sebastià, "tweets on Space Helmet have reached more than 40 million people".

Green Mars is among the 20 finalists for the Best Mission Concept

Green Mars, the other finalist project submitted by UPV members, has not been equally fortunate: it was on the verge of victory in the Best Mission Concept category, but did not win in the end. NASA will select the winner for this category this month of May between the teams from York, Exeter, Rome, Tokyo and Guatemala.

The Green Mars project, made by Joan Bono and David Riff, students at the UPV School of Telecommunications Engineering, Damià Poquet (studying at the UPV School of Computer Engineering) and Janusz Frackowiak (studying at the UPV School of Design Engineering), was chosen to be among the 20 finalists, but did not pass the very last stage of the selection process.

Great pride

The rector of the UPV, Francisco Mora, was happy and proud of the success of both teams: "To be among the 20 finalists is an award in itself, so congratulations to both teams from the UPV. We’re very proud that our students should compete at such a level and achieve such amazing results."