A World Away

Your challenge is to identify pandemic social problems that may have collateral effects in remote locations (such as space). How will you prepare for the collateral effects in remote locations, and/or evaluate on-Earth support and remote location risks, including psychological and technical risks?

On Space Companion Unit

Summary

We made an interface which processes information about the crew members and gives an analysis on their level of healthiness mental and physically, this in order to protect their well-being on mission. Also, we made an assistant that gathers information of the ship, its system and elements like spacesuits, it makes statistics on how sustainable is the base gonna be for a period of time, details on the mechanical parts of the base and calculations of management of the resources given on a mission for it to be completed with success. Our objective is to prevent all kind of issues in a practical way which gives safety for the crew and prevents the spread of COVID-19 for ground control.

How We Addressed This Challenge

We live in a world that is being affected by the COVID-19 Pandemic. With the Artemis program aiming to return to the moon in 2024 and giving that this is the perfect time to learn from the procedures we are creating to support our place in the exploration of Space and other remote locations even on our own Planet. We must be ready for everything and that should also include new Pandemic diseases. For this Challenge we created a scenario where a Lunar Expedition, has to endure the fact that some drastic measures have been taken and Mission Control might not be able to be present during their journey to the moon and during their stay. In this project we address the challenge “A World Away” with a Graphical User Interface, which we use as a therapy bot that, among other things, evaluates levels of oxygen, water, food and fuel resources in the spaceship in order to ensure its sustainability and avoid misuse of those resources. Another function it does is the evaluation of physical and emotional health of astronauts during the mission and give them feedback in order to improve those levels and avoid serious physical or psychological illnesses caused by the isolation, lack of exercise, or even eating disorders. This is inspired on the telemedicine projects from NASA, such as Actigraphy, a device used to monitor the astronauts and people around the world by the recovery of their movement and light reception. There are more functions like these that have to do with other issues and the restoration of resources in the spacecraft.

How We Developed This Project

While discussing which subject our project should be about we agreed that both astronauts and citizens shared one problem that is very present in this time, healthiness during isolation. We decided to make a system which helps astronauts verify the physical and psychological health in each astronaut, on a test in which they express how they have felt, if they have fulfilled their basic needs, done exercise and much other factors which help us to understand their state and make action in case it is needed, giving them advice in the areas they have problems with. This in order to show astronauts they are not alone and feel they have support covering their backs.

Then we figured out that mission control would have problems if they all gathered in one place, giving risk to the crew of acquiring COVID-19. That's why we also made a programmed assistant which calculates the base sustainability, and finds problems in the  space suits and verifies all the systems needed to accomplish a mission given information acquired by the developing mission. Giving a support on level of the one given by ground control.

All of this was made in JAVA language and has a GUI in order to have a more friendly sistem which helps the astronauts in their missions and makes them feel safe.

Project Demo

https://drive.google.com/drive/folders/1VuFMzp7P1_XSzhbGqhxooSTiSoL3Pi3h?usp=sharing

Global Judging
This project was submitted for consideration during the Space Apps Global Judging process.