‘Runtime Terror’ wins Dublin’s NASA Space Apps Challenge

The project was described by judges as a ‘creative and inspiring submission that will spark curiosity in space exploration’.

A group from University College Dublin (UCD) known as Runtime Terror has been announced as this year’s Dublin Mission Control NASA Space Apps Challenge global nominee.

The nominee was celebrated by the National College of Ireland (NCI) on Monday (4 November) when the team was presented with award plaques at an event in Mayor Square. The team will now go on to take part in the global phase of the space hackathon.

The members of Runtime Terror are the minds behind an accurate digital orrery – a model of the solar system – which shows near-Earth objects in space. The team is made up of six members: Firose Shafin, Andrei-Alexandru Tabarna, Aditya Bhargav Akella, Pablo Periañez Cabrero, Maximilian Schöll and Nithyakamal Ilamurugu.

The project received praise from Paola Vercesi, the Dublin Mission Control lead, who told the team: “Your digital orrery is perfectly formed to become a map for identifying and plotting the pathways of space debris, something that is a hot topic at the moment, and of huge relevance not to just to ongoing space exploration and satellite communications, but to the Sustainable Development Goals (SDG), especially SDG 12.”

Speaking on behalf of the group, Schöll explained that the team first met when they started at UCD together back in September, and added that they had a moment where they thought they wouldn’t be able to complete the project. 

Fortunately for them, as Schöll puts it: “Suddenly, everything clicked – if nothing else, we have learned to keep going, keep trying, you will get there!”

Bhargav Akella also chimed in: “We had so much fun and learned so much, the mentors who worked with us through the two days were incredible. The talks were inspiring, and it was really great to be able to chat directly with people who are working on space projects at such a high level.”

The runner-up was a group called Alpha Centauri, a team hailing from Trinity College Dublin.

The members of this team worked on a programme to analyse and clean real data from the Apollo space missions and the Mars Insight Lander, in order to identify seismic quakes within the noise.

Alpha Centauri consists of members Ruby Ge, Thomas Creagh, Sean Dignam, Ash Keena and Angelos Eleftheriou.

The NASA International Space Apps Challenge sees participants from all over the world work in teams to solve various challenges using open-source data from NASA and its space agency partners. The global theme for this year’s challenge, titled ‘The Sun Touches Everything’, invited participants to tackle one of 21 challenges using space data and information. These challenges covered a wide range of topics, from astrobiology to space music, and the design of games for astronauts.

This year’s Dublin Mission Control event was host to several potential participants, with nine teams completing projects to submission level.

Other participants at the Dublin Mission Control event included: Les Intouchables, Starchasers, Sunlit, The Celtic Community Cartographers, Cache Me If You Can, Data Wizz, and Uncle Bao Fans. 

Mentors and judges who attended this year’s event at NCI included: Dr Ali Llewellyn and Dr Nick Skytland, who joined remotely from NASA Houston; Prof Peter Gallagher, head of astronomy and astrophysics at Dublin Institute for Advanced Studies and director of the Dunsink Observatory; Dr Jonathan Dunne, principal data scientist at IBM and space musician; and Colin Clarke, astrophysicist and science communicator, just to name a few.

Last year, an interactive app which was the brainchild of The Irish Moonquakers took the top prize at the competition.

The team designed a 3D map to visualise seismic activity on the moon, which was detected during NASA’s Apollo missions.

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