Lord Mayor of Dublin, Cllr Ray McAdam, was welcomed to National College of Ireland on 20th November, to award the winning teams from Dublin Mission Control, whose projects now go forward to compete globally at this year’s NASA Space Apps Challenge, and to congratulate the Community Choice winners, voted by their peers.
We asked NCI’s School of Computing academic adviser for the NASA Space Apps Challenge, Dr Athanasios Staikopoulos to talk us through the projects that received a community choice award or a global nomination in 2025, to give you the chance to see what is possible in a two-day hackathon.
Team DeepEnd
Team DeepEnd received this year’s Community Choice Award. This project also earned Team DeepEnd an ESA Rising Stars prize for the best under-18 participants.
These TY students from Cross and Passion College in Kilcullen, Co. Kildare were encouraged to participate by their TY coordinator, Glenda Groome. The team's three mentors were NCI's Aditya Pandey and Georgii Korenkov, and Give(a)Go's Lorena Seabra. Though amongst the youngest of competitors, they won the hearts and minds of their fellow participants and received the ‘popular vote.’
Archer Davis, Meryem Atasever and Runé Swart used React.js, Veo AI, and NASA Open Data to build “Astro Defenders,” an educational game designed to make real NASA asteroid data fun and accessible for children aged eight to twelve. Players encounter live meteors from NASA’s API, collect them into a personalised “Spacepedia,” and explore fun facts about asteroids while earning points and power-ups, blending science, creativity, and education to inspire curiosity about space exploration.
"Great deck for the communication of the project and the card collection of the asteroids as part of the game was an excellent idea! I really enjoyed playing AstroDefenders!" ~ Judges' comment, 2025.
Global nominees received trophies sponsored by InnaLabs. The teams also received goodie bags containing a treasure trove of badges, merch and vouchers from the European Space Agency (ESA) and Code Week Europe.
Team Outer Wilds Ventures
The first Global Nominee is Team Outer Wilds Ventures. Their platform titled “Embiggen Your Eyes! / Zoomers” was designed to visualise massive astronomical datasets.
Every day, NASA missions capture high-resolution images of planets, moons, and galaxies, but much of this data remains scattered across different platforms and is difficult for the public to explore, so images remain unseen and unused. Team Outer Wild Ventures developed a web platform that transforms these massive imagery datasets into simple maps. Using a tile-based system, it loads gigabyte-scale images in real time, allowing users to seamlessly zoom in, compare datasets side-by-side, and mark anomalies or interesting features directly on the map.
Its user-friendly design also empowers citizen scientists and enthusiasts to contribute, learn and explore.
"The project showcases a creative, practical approach to benefit both scientific and public community. The interface is easy to use, and the demonstration of the potential scalability by including Mars and Moon map layers is interesting." ~ Judges' comment, 2025.
Team KARLVerse
Team KARLVerse, with their AI-powered space habitat design platform titled “HabitatForge” followed closely as the second Global Nominee.
HabitatForge is an AI-powered space habitat design platform that revolutionizes how engineers and mission planners create safe, efficient space habitats for Mars, Moon, and Gateway missions. By integrating NASA's rigorous safety standards (NASA-STD-3001, 3000, 8709.22, 5005) with cutting-edge artificial intelligence, the platform automatically generates compliant habitat layouts while providing real-time constraint validation and 3D visualization.
HabitatForge makes NASA's complex engineering accessible to everyone. No aerospace background is required.
"A habitat layout platform that’s functional and stays close to the challenge of defining volume and exploring layout options. It communicates very well, linking design steps to constraints, and is well informed by standards so could be useful for planners and students." ~ Judges' comment, 2025.
These two teams will now advance to the Global Judging phase of the NASA Space Apps Challenge. Global Winners will be announced on December 18th.
NCI is proud to host the NASA Space Apps Challenge as this exciting event celebrates teamwork, creativity, innovation, and the fact that ideas can be brought to life with the right support. Well done to all who participated in this year's hackathon.
Want to learn more about the NASA Space Apps Challenge? You may enjoy what previous participants had to say in our To The Moon and Back series.
