NASA International Space Apps Challenge: some 170 Romanians will participate

The mission of the NASA International Space Apps Challenge is to foster collaboration, creativity and critical thinking, encourage interest in Earth and space exploration, raise global awareness of NASA data, and develop the next generation of scientists, engineers, technologists, and designers.

The twelfth edition of the competition will take place in five cities in Romania and in hundreds of other places around the world. The event will take place offline in Bucharest and Cluj-Napoca and online in Timișoara, Iași and Oradea.

Among the speakers of the event are Dumitru Prunariu - the only Romanian who reached the outer space, Eduard Mititelu - Secretary of State within the Ministry of Research, Innovation and Digitalization and Kuldeep Kaushik - CEO NN România.

Among the jurors of this year's edition are Cristian Român - Senior Editor of Știință & Tehnică magazine, Ulpia Elena Botezatu - Research Engineer at Romanian Space Agency and Armand Doru Domuța - Founder & Chairman of the Board of Restart Energy.

Entries for the NASA International Space Apps Challenge can be made here until Friday, October the 6th, at the end of the day.

Programmers, scientists, designers, engineers, technology enthusiasts, storytelling specialists from all over the world can participate in the hackathon.

Participants can register for the event organized by any of the five cities, regardless of where they come from in Romania. Persons under the age of 18 who wish to participate must be registered by a parent/legal guardian and be accompanied to the event by the parent/legal guardian.

For each of the five cities in Romania, one or two winning teams will be chosen to participate in the global competition where they will compete with over 3,000 teams from around the world. 

"At each edition of the NASA hackathon, we see a lot of technology specialists who come up with ideas that most of the time can be implemented and proudly compete in the higher phases of the competition. But NASA's hackathon isn't just for techies. It is a hackathon in which adults, but also children who are passionate about storytelling, design, geography, ecology, astronomy, physics can sign up to. It's a hackathon for anyone who wants to help find solutions to various problems we have on Earth and in space”, said Tudor Pasc, Project Manager NASA Space Apps Challenge &Incubation Director ROTSA. 

"I believe that a hackathon like the NASA Space Apps Challenge can help popularize science at a time when we increasingly need solutions to the many problems we face. And the fact that this event is also aimed at those with less technical knowledge, for example, those who know how to tell stories or are talented in graphics, is a fundamental step to bring ordinary people closer to a science that has always seemed very elitist", said Dumitru Prunariu, the only Romanian to reach the outer space.

The first edition of the NASA International Space Apps Challenge in Romania took place in 2016. The event is organized with the support of Google Romania, NN, Restart Energy and Cloudsoft. 

Some of the partners of the event are the Romanian Space Agency - ROSA, AIESEC and aSpace.