Technology Accelerators
The broad spectrum of NASA’s commitment to technology acceleration includes public-private partnerships, co-located spaces, citizen engagement and innovation mentoring – all in addition to making enormous amounts of open scientific data available for public use. The International Space Apps Challenge and Random Hacks of Kindness emphasize quick, collaborative development, while LAUNCH has developed a closely connected community of innovators that develops specific technology needs over a longer term. Both types of events offer immeasurable opportunities for hardware and software development, diverse participation, and validation of the immense value of spaceflight data to improving life on Earth.
International Space Apps Challenge
The International Space Apps Challenge is a technology development event during which citizens from around the world will work together to solve current challenges relevant to both space exploration and social need. NASA is leading the global Challenge as a United States domestic commitment to the Open Government Partnership (OGP) – a new, multilateral initiative that aims to secure concrete commitments from governments to promote transparency, empower citizens, fight corruption, and harness new technologies to strengthen governance.
Participation in the Space Apps Challenge creates unique opportunities for NASA and the other global event partners:
- A visible demonstration of a government’s interest in using space data and technology, in partnership with others, to address global needs.
- An opportunity for citizens in countries with little or no investments in space technology to contribute to space exploration through open source, open data, and code development.
- A demonstration of commitment to the principles of the Open Government Partnership.
- Promote Science, Technology, Engineering and Mathematics (STEM) education by encouraging students from around the world to utilize space technology for solutions to global challenges.
- Demonstrate the value of space technology for addressing global needs of life on Earth.
- Encourage international partnership and mutual understanding.
The Space Apps Challenge offers the opportunity for focused software and hardware development via a truly international collaboration while emphasizing the vast potential of NASA’s open data for life on Earth and life in space.
Initiative goal:
To hold the International Space Apps Challenge in April 2012 in at least 10 global locations. (1 year)
LAUNCH
LAUNCH is a social entrepreneurship enterprise that breaks new ground with public/private partnerships to bring about innovative solutions to intractable sustainability challenges around the world. The concept of LAUNCH is based on a foundation of collaboration across non-traditional disciplines and organizations.
NASA partnered with U.S. Agency for International Development, the State Department and NIKE to form LAUNCH in an effort to identify, showcase and support innovative approaches to global sustainability challenges. LAUNCH searches for visionaries whose world-class ideas, technologies or activities show great promise for making tangible impacts on society in the developed and developing worlds.
LAUNCH creates three unique opportunities for NASA:
- Sharing the sustainability story of how living in space mirrors Earth — we have no natural resources in space which forces us to generate, collect, store, conserve, recycle, and manage our resources wisely — just like Earth but more extreme;
- Offering our problem-solving expertise and convening power of the NASA brand to host crucial conversations on sustainability-related topics with innovative problem solvers from around the world, and
- Promoting the emergence of transformative technology to solve problems that we share as global citizens of this planet, which may also address issues of long-duration life in the extremes of space.
The LAUNCH Accelerator phase follows each forum and provides critical support for each innovator’s LAUNCH journey. The LAUNCH team walks the Innovators through recommendations and insights shared by the Council, refines and crafts a forward strategy, and helps make connections necessary to solidify future support for each innovation.
Initiative goal:
To directly support at least one LAUNCH event each year. (1 year and 2 years)
Random Hacks of Kindness
Random Hacks of Kindness (RHoK) is a community of innovation developing practical open source solutions for social good. Developed in partnership between NASA, World Bank, Google, Microsoft, Yahoo!, and HP, RHoK’s unique model builds the capacity of subject matter experts and local stakeholders to identify problems where technology can help, volunteer technologists to understand these problems and create solutions, and event organizers to run events that bring these groups together for synergistic collaboration. NASA participates by encouraging the utilization of NASA’s immensely valuable open databases, which can serve as the content to many potential world-changing apps.
Random Hacks of Kindness creates many unique opportunities for NASA and global event partners:
- Offering NASA’s open data as a resource for solving global challenges
- Offering innovators opportunities to participate in NASA’s space exploration mission
- Offering NASA opportunities to work with citizens and learn from the experience and entrepreneurial spirit of those outside the government, helping to facilitate even more open policy, technology, and culture.
RHoK is an activity of the Open Government Initiative within the Office of the Chief Information Officer. The Open Government team is part of the core strategy team for RHoK and attends some of the physical RHoK events and also participates in the online RHoK community year-round. Membership in the global RHoK community now includes more than 4000 people in more than 45 cities, with 180+ partners having worked on more than 100 events.
Initiative goal:
To directly support two Random Hacks of Kindness events each year. (1 year and 2 years)
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