Ukrainian teams that won top honors in NASA’s international hackathons recently visited the Goddard Space Flight Center for an official awards ceremony.
Roman Malkevych, local lead for the NASA International Space Apps Challenge Kyiv, said this in a comment to Ukrinform.
According to Malkevych, the Ukrainian teams Storm Prophet (Global Winner 2023) and NVS-knot (Global Winner 2024) were selected from among tens of thousands of participants representing over 150 countries. During their visit, they had the chance to see firsthand where some of the world’s most ambitious space missions are designed and developed.
One of the teams is currently at Cape Canaveral, where they witnessed a SpaceX rocket launch, Malkevych added.
In a Facebook post, he also said that while at NASA, the developers were shown the assembly of the Roman Space Telescope — a future observatory designed to study dark energy, exoplanets, and infrared astrophysics. The teams also saw space environment simulators and vacuum chambers used to test equipment under extreme temperatures and radiation. In addition, they viewed a centrifuge used for astronaut training and met fellow global winners from countries including Japan, the U.S., Canada, and Chile.
“This was an incredible opportunity for networking and future collaboration,” Malkevych said. “Our teams also visited the National Air and Space Museum in Washington, D.C. — a source of engineering inspiration for years to come.”
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Video: Roman Malkevych / Facebook
The Kyiv-based team NVS-knot won the prestigious NASA International Space Apps Challenge 2024, competing among over 90,000 participants worldwide. Around 10,000 teams created projects, with approximately 1,000 of them reviewed directly by NASA. The Ukrainian team claimed victory in the “Galactic Impact” category for their innovative application “2Plant or not 2Plant,” which integrates satellite and hydrological data to assess soil moisture and reduce water-related risks for crop planting.
Three Ukrainian teams were among the 40 global finalists in 2024: LazyVarenyky, Craft Lab, and NVS-knot (a joint team formed by Nave Analytics, VITech, and Sparrow).
This marks Ukraine’s third victory at the NASA Space Apps Challenge. In 2023, Storm Prophet won in the “Best Use of Data” category with a project that predicts solar storms — which can disrupt communication and navigation systems on Earth — using data from NASA’s Deep Space Climate Observatory.
In 2020, the FireWay team from Dnipro won the “Best Use of Technology” category for designing a universal orbital refueling connector for satellites, capable of transferring liquids, gases, and electricity in space.
The NASA Space Apps Challenge, launched in 2012, is the world’s largest hackathon focused on innovative solutions to challenges faced on Earth and in space. All members of winning teams are eligible to visit NASA and engage with its experts within two years of their victory.
