Challenge Overview
Project Overview
The Cassini spacecraft is orbiting Saturn in an extended mission to study the planet, its satellites and rings. In this challenge series, NASA via the Harvard IQSS NASA Tournament Lab is looking to the community to develop software that can automatically detect anomalies and features of interest in Saturn's rings. This contest forms part of the initial and important steps needed to prepare the images taken from the Cassini spacecraft for the anomaly detection software.
Competition Task Overview
In this contest, NASA is looking to you to develop code that can compute ring intercept geometry for a given image. Given a specific image, use parameters to create two 2-D arrays with the same dimensions as the image. One contains the value of the intercept radius in km at each pixel; the other contains the inertial longitude in degrees. These 2-D arrays are known as the backplane.
Documentation containing the details about the provided parameters, process and maths to convert pixel coordinates to radius and longitude will be provided in the forums.
Given an image file (.img) and metadata / label file (.lbl), you must design and implement an API that should support the following methods:
- For a given (x,y) pixel location in the image, output the intercept radius in km and inertial longitude in degrees.
- For a given intercept (radius, longitude), output the (x,y) pixel location in the image.
- Output a 2-D array containing the intercept radius in km for each pixel in the image.
- Output a 2-D array containing the intercept longiitude in degrees for each pixel in the image.
Your solution should be modular such that it can read in different image and label files. We want to use the software in the next steps of the challenge series.
Final Submission Guidelines
Submission Deliverables
Below is an overview of the deliverables:
- Code for your solution. Java is preferred, but C++ will also be accepted. The code might be used in the tester code of a marathon match which has to be java.
- A solution with minimum or no external dependencies is preferred and will score more points.
- A complete and detailed deployment document, explaining how to compile and execute your application including configuration information.