PROBLEM STATEMENT

The purpose of this challenge is to generate ideas for potential applications to allow exploration and analysis of the PDS databases. PDS is located at http://pds.nasa.gov/

While rich in depth and breadth of data, the PDS databases have developed in a disparate fashion over the years with different architectures and formats; thereby making the acquisition of data problematic. Consequently, the major challenge is how the data provided by PDS can be used and possibly combined to generate interesting applications (e.g., visualizations, analysis tools, educational applications, mash-ups).

The goal of this challenge is to generate ideas for these applications, not finished applications. However, keep in mind, a future challenge could consist of programming an API (or application programming interface) implementing the winning idea from this challenge. Submissions should include

• A description of the overall idea
• A description of the target audience (who might be interested in this application?)
• The benefits of the application for the target audience
• The nature of the application (how should the application be implemented? As a web-based system, on a mobile device, a Facebook application, integrated into Eyes on the Solar System, etc.)
• Which existing PDS data sources are used and which data sources will need to be created or modified in order for the application idea to function
• Limitations
• Any examples of the process flow or the interface behavior of the application - mock-ups would be a bonus.

Overall, submissions are expected to be around 2-3 pages of text including figures and tables and images. No code or software is necessary. Please make sure that submissions are as comprehensive as possible.

Duration:  The contest registration and submission processes will both last for two weeks from Monday, April 4 2011 at 9:00 am EDT until Monday, April 18 2011 at 9:00 am EDT.

Background: The PDS is an archive of data products from NASA planetary missions, which is sponsored by NASA's Science Mission Directorate as a basic resource for scientists around the world. All PDS-produced products (imagery, geolocational data, etc.) are peer-reviewed and well-documented via a system of online catalogs that are organized by planetary disciplines. Data sets from the following missions are included:

PRIZES

• A grand prize of $1,000 will be awarded to the highest scoring submission as evaluated by the expert panel.
• Up to three (3) $500 prizes will be awarded to additional submissions based on the discretion of the expert panel
• A $750 community choice award will be awarded to the submission with the highest number of TopCoder community votes based on the voting procedure held at the conclusion of the submission phase.
• T-shirts and stickers to be given to the first 50 distinct submitters who submit ideas that pass basic screening criteria – to be considered for this prize, submissions must contain a valid idea and meet all other criteria outlined within the competition specifications.
• All cash prize winners will be recognized by NASA

Note: It is possible for an individual submission to be awarded prizes in both the expert panel and community choice categories.

HOW TO PARTICIPATE

In order to submit an idea for this contest, you must:

Become a member of TopCoder

If you are not already a TopCoder member, become one here: https://www.topcoder.com/reg/

Register for this competition

You can register for this contest by clicking the register link at the top of this page or by clicking on this link: http://www.topcoder.com/tc?module=ViewRegistration&pj=30016974

Ask questions and check the forums often

You may visit the contest discussion forum here:

http://forums.topcoder.com/?module=ThreadList&forumID=543414

You are encouraged to post any questions you may have and to check back often to see what questions other competitors have and the answers they are receiving.

Make a submission in Online Review

Once you’ve documented your idea for this contest and are ready to submit, you can visit this link directly in order to upload your file as a submission:

https://software.topcoder.com/review/actions/UploadContestSubmission.do?method=uploadContestSubmission&pid= 30016974

Submissions may be a Word document, a PDF file, or any other common file format.  If you would like to upload multiple files as part of your submission, please create a standard “zip” file that contains your multiple files.  Each file submitted must contain one distinct idea.  If you choose to submit multiple ideas, please do so with distinct submissions.

CONDITIONS

Any person or organization receiving funding from PDS may not participate in the NTL PDS Challenges. All participants must be at least 18 years of age.  All participants must meet all other eligibility requirements that are a part of this challenge.

EVALUATION CRITERIA

Expert Panel: Idea quality will be judged by an expert panel consisting of NASA executives and Harvard researchers. Scores of the judges are then combined (mean score).

NASA Expert Judges:

• Dr. James L. Green, Director, Planetary Science
• Dr. Stephen Mackwell, Director, Lunar Planetary Institute

Harvard Expert Judges:

• Prof. Karim Lakhani
• Christoph Riedl

Idea quality will be measured by consensual assessment technique on four dimensions:

• Novelty
• Feasibility
• Value
• Elaboration

Judging will be performed “blind” – judges will not be informed of which submissions are from which TopCoder members at any time during the judging process.

Community Judgment: Based on forum voting by the TopCoder community to be run at the conclusion of the challenge.

DEFINITION

Definition in concepts – these terms are ASCII files in PDS

• Dataset (catalog) – file outlining the final product and the steps done in the processing
• Geolocation – identifying the pixel that allows comparison of similar measurements
• Post processing – the step that takes the telemetry stream and converts that to physical unit
• Instrument catalog – file describing the instrument in enough detail for the planetary scientist to understand the process
• Mission catalog – description of the science goals  in terms of the spacecraft and its associated instruments

CONSTRAINTS

Application has to be implementable across the 11 PDS databases. However, custom APIs that provide existing data in a specific format / combination are acceptable. In this case, a submission should include a specification of which data should be made available through a new API.

EXAMPLES

The application Eyes on Solar System accessible under http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/eyes provides rich examples of how data from the various PDS databases can be visualized and explored in an educational application.

The image link below shows another example of a data mash-up.

http://solarsystem.nasa.gov/images/YSS_PlanetaryMissionsBullsEye_11_30_10.jpg